SXSW

TUSCON, Ariz.--I'm not a stock market whiz, but I'm trying to play one on a bus.

For the last 35 hours, I've been riding on the Startup Bus, chronicling the entrepreneurial exploits of a couple dozen techies trying to build new companies from scratch in just three days. We're all on our way to the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.

And while that has been an illuminating experience, another element of the project has got me captivated as well: trying to win the Startup Bus stock market game.

This virtual exercise is … Read more

I woke up on Monday morning to about two dozen text messages, and none of them were really for me.

Rather, they all came from two separate group messaging accounts set up through a start-up called GroupMe, both of which had been created in the prior few days specifically to corral people before the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival--part of the broader South by Southwest music and film festival--kicks off Friday in Austin, Texas. One was a posse of New Yorkers trying to coordinate carpools to and from their Thursday and Friday flights. The other was a group … Read more

Microsoft will be formally launching the next version of its Internet Explorer browser, IE9, at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) on Monday--an interesting place to launch, given that the Austin, Texas, geek fest is packed full of the hordes who have long since ditched Internet Explorer for the decidedly hipper pastures of Firefox, Safari, or Chrome.

The new browser, which had its first and only release candidate land in users' hands in early February, will fully launch to the public at 9 Pacific time that night. In a blog post, Internet Explorer senior director Ryan Gavin described the … Read more

Group messaging service GroupMe launched a big upgrade last week, timed to occur right before the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, the biggest event of the year for digital start-ups looking to make it big. But that wasn't enough: GroupMe today launched what co-founders Steve Martocci and Jared Hecht call "version 2.1-more-thing" in a nod to the famed Steve Jobs line.

What's new this time? Instead of making groups invite-only, groups can now be "joinable" through solicitations on Facebook and Twitter. There are also some smaller tweaks, including avatars alongside … Read more

FIREBAUGH, Calif.--It's standing room only, 25 or so entrepreneurs jammed into the aisles brainstorming ideas, and maybe, just maybe, building the next multimillion dollar business.

This is the San Francisco Startup Bus, one of six coaches ferrying "buspreneurs" to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest interactive (SXSWi) festival. Across the country, 150 people from all over the world have packed up their laptops and iPhones and agreed to spend two days aboard a bus with (near) total strangers. The mission? Build the best business you can before Austin city limits.

My job here is to … Read more

It sounds like the beginning of a joke: a couple dozen coders and geek entrepreneurs step off a shiny, high-tech bus at a barbecue joint in Texas.

But a joke it's not. It's a scenario that will likely play out this week on the Startup Bus, which is, yes, a group of a couple dozen coders and geek entrepreneurs riding a shiny, high-tech bus through the Lone Star State from their hometowns to the South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSW Interactive) in Austin, Texas, part of the broader SXSW music and film festival.

This is no ordinary bus … Read more

Editor's Note: This is the second installment in a series about start-up Fast Society. Click here for the first part.

NEW YORK--The nightlife-heavy East Village neighborhood can, in fact, be very quiet and unassuming in daylight.

On this Saturday afternoon, for example, you'd never know that there was anything going on at White Noise, a bar hidden behind blacked-out windows in the space above a discount liquor store. Inside, it's Gilded Age excess meets glam rock sleaze, with black chandeliers holding red light bulbs, black vinyl couches with fake gold trim, and floor-to-ceiling velvet drapes framing dark … Read more

NEW YORK--"It was like a black hole," Matthew Rosenberg, 28, says of the failure of his first company, eDopter. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Having a start-up and putting two years of your life into something and watching it fail is gut-wrenching."

eDopter, a trend-tracking start-up, launched in 2008 at a time of peak economic panic, when venture capital activity in New York was stagnant and, as Rosenberg and his co-founder Andy Thompson relate willingly, a prospective investor bailed in the middle of a lunch meeting because he saw what a … Read more