SXSW

'Source Code' director: Marrying film, interactivity

AUSTIN, Texas--Duncan Jones has only made two films, but he's already developing a reputation as quite the science fiction auteur.

With 2009's "Moon," starring Sam Rockwell, and now "Source Code," starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jones is becoming the kind of director that actors say they seek out because they want to share in his vision.

In "Source Code," which seems to be one part "Groundhog Day" and one part "Speed" with a heavy degree of sci-fi and technology thrown in, Jones created a world in which Gyllenhaal "wakes up in the body of an unknown man [and] discovers he'more

Deal with it: SXSW has changed

AUSTIN, Texas--The first time Steve Jang came to the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (historically known as SXSWi), it was 2006. He had come to the then-tiny geek-culture fest to help launch a music social-networking service called Imeem. Though SXSWi was known as a wacky gathering of party-friendly dot-commers and digital futurists, making a splash as a start-up was a pretty routine procedure.

"Back then, it was a very concerted thing," Jang told CNET. "You got a booth, you put together a team, and everyone wore the t-shirts, and you hired a PR firm, and you really wanted to do more

The Internet and the 'Art of Immersion'

AUSTIN, Texas--At the South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSW) over the last few days, the bulk of the conversation, in hallways, at parties, and in panels, has been about social media. But what about the fascinating ways that people are using technology to take storytelling to the next level?

The team behind the new Jake Gyllenhaal film "Source Code" was in town and talked a bit about the interactive game associated with that film, and a few panels here also touched on the subject. One of those was about the film "Tron: Legacy," and was moderated by "Wired" contributing editor more

New York, Silicon Valley teams win Startup Bus competition

AUSTIN, Texas--After three days jammed into buses headed here from cities across the country and four days perfecting their pitches, the winners of the second-annual Startup Bus competition claimed victory tonight.

If you haven't been following the happenings of the Startup Bus, 38 teams of so-called "buspreneurs" departed on six buses from San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, and New York last Tuesday, headed for the South by Southwest conference (SXSW) here. Each team, formed mainly from strangers aboard their bus, faced this challenge: conceive of an idea, and take the time from departure to arrival in Austin to build more

At SXSW, IE9 envisions a happy, appy Web

AUSTIN, Texas--Just one year after it initially previewed its new Internet Explorer 9 browser, Microsoft formally launched the software today at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW), bringing in representatives from launch partners from The Huffington Post, Foursquare, Groupon, and Pandora to demonstrate an experience that looks less like the Web as we know it and more like the app ecosystem of a smartphone or tablet.

"We're used to the Web getting better because of everything other than the PC," Internet Explorer's Dean Hachamovitch said of how the most innovative kinds of Web development have, of late, more

CNN at SXSW: All about citizen media, connected TV

"We now have over 50 people on the ground from CNN, the men and women of CNN who report on these things, there in Japan," Estenson said. "(But) in the 36 hours that led up from Friday through the weekend, we just couldn't get people in. It's a long way to Japan, the infrastructure wasn't set up to get outside correspondents in and this is where the power of iReport (CNN's citizen journalism initiative) really comes to life for us, and it's frankly at the core of why we're here at SXSW is this more

Al Franken seeks Net neutrality support at SXSW

AUSTIN, Texas--U.S. Sen. Al Franken wants tech savvy entrepreneurs to keep pushing Congress to protect Net neutrality.

Franken (D-Minn.), a comedy writer, author, and radio talk show host turned senator, spoke to attendees at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) conference here today where he urged them contact their representatives in Congress and let them know that protecting a free and open Internet is important. He also wants this community of creative business people to attend rallies and do all they can to raise awareness of the issue.

In his speech, he railed against big broadband service providers, more

At SXSW, a peek at the post-laptop age?

"These people are serendipity addicts," said Nate Westheimer, an entrepreneur who said that he didn't have enough time to optimize his latest project, a scheduling start-up called Ohours, for SXSW simply because it's only available on the desktop Web, not as a mobile app or site. Its growth among tech-industry professionals more or less screeched to a halt as SXSW began, because this is an event where the mobile screen, not the desktop, is front and center. For Westheimer, lesson learned.

"It's almost rude to have a computer here," said Andrew Mager, a developer at geolocation software more

Mastering social media saturation at SXSW

AUSTIN, Texas--There was a time, just a couple of years ago, when you could figure out almost everything going on at the South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSW) just by keeping an eye on the #SXSW hash tag.

Whether it was an impromptu wine party hosted by Gary Vaynerchuck or a Laughing Squid meet-up or word about a great panel going on, that hash tag was many people's essential organizing principle.

But with the explosive growth of SXSW and Twitter, the thousands who are prowling around day and night here this week looking for the next great thing to more

Twitter: 140 million tweets per day and counting

Among them: It took three years, two months, and one day for Twitter to hit 1 billion tweets; now, a billion tweets are posted in the course of a week. An average of 460,000 new accounts were created per day over the past month, and an average of 140 million tweets were posted per day. Twitter now has 400 employees, 50 of whom have been hired since January.

The numbers that were missing, of course, were anything about revenues or company valuation--and those are the numbers that everyone really seems to want to hear. A surge in secondary-market trading more