sxsw

With so many millionaires minted by companies like PayPal, Google, and now Facebook, angel investing has become a big deal, particularly in tech. But some of the more seasoned investors are apprehensive about participation from newcomers.

Investors Paige Craig, David Tisch, and Naval Ravikant discussed the topic of angel investing in a panel led by CNET executive editor Paul Sloan. The group agreed that many investors have no business investing.

According to Ravikant, there are, "too few sophisticated investors," and he'd know. As the founder of AngelList, a network that connects startups with angel investors, he's … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Standing out amid the army of startups clamoring for attention at South by Southwest Interactive isn't easy. That is why RecordSetter, a site designed to do just as the name implies, and GroupMe brought in competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi do battle with others at a tent giving away grilled cheeses.

Kobayashi, best known as the former champion of the Nathan Hot Dog eating contest, went at it with fury. In a minute flat, he tossed back 13 grilled cheese sandwiches, complete with 26 slices of bread filled with slices of American cheese. His strategy: he dunked each sandwich … Read more

Marvel Comics unveiled a new way to read comic books today at South by Southwest Interactive that involves an augmented reality app and the physical comic itself.

The app, called Marvel AR, is half of the entertainment company's new push to further integrate digital and print comics, an effort it's calling Marvel ReEvolution. The other half is a digital-only line of comics called Marvel Infinite Comics, which will be available to readers from the standard Marvel Comics app for free when they buy the print comic with a digital coupon, when they buy the standard digital comic, or separately as a 99-cent digital download. The first Infinite Comics story will tie in to Avengers versus X-Men and be written by Mark Waid, with art by Stuart Immonen and colors by Marte Gracia. These are big names in the comics business, so Marvel's clearly not publishing throwaway stories, even if they are digital-only and feel more disposable. … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Barry Diller knew full well that the TV broadcasters would go to battle to stop Aereo, a streaming service that's scheduled to go live in New York City on Thursday. And he couldn't care less.

Speaking at SXSW, Diller explained why he loves the service, and then said, ""Another reason I love it. It's going to be a great fight."

Indeed.

The service, as explained in detail here by my colleague Greg Sandoval, was slammed with two complaints early this month, one from NBC, ABC, and CBS (parent company of CNET) and the … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--If you want to lose weight or overcome the effects of asthma, Jane McGonigal thinks she has a solution you might not have considered: a game.

At the South by Southwest festival here this week, the world-famous game designer formally launched her latest project, SuperBetter, a project that is designed to help players attack any of a wide variety of personal challenges.

It's not a quick fix. McGonigal and her team built the game with a sense of reality: nothing important happens overnight. But commit to taking on challenges, and a game like SuperBetter can help just about … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--When Richard Garriott went to space, he lost money on the deal. Next time, he wants to make a profit.

In October 2008, Garriott, a well-known video game designer, traveled as a space tourist to the International Space Station.

The son of a NASA astronaut who grew up thinking everyone goes to space--because his neighbors all had been--his dream of following in his father's footsteps was dashed when he learned as a teenager that his eyes disqualified him for the job. "Being told I was not going to be allowed to go into space," Garriott said, &… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Darren Kitchen spent this weekend walking around the SXSW festival with an unobtrusive but relatively evil red box attached to his backpack: it impersonated Wi-Fi networks in hopes of convincing laptops, phones, and other wireless devices to connect to it.

Kitchen's hot-spot honeypot worked. During just a few minutes in the lobby of the Omni Hotel here, he disrupted dozens of Wi-Fi connections and rerouted them to his own "network" that replaced all Internet pages with a video of the Nyan Cat kitten flying through space. Someone with malicious intent could have done far worse.

Kitchen, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Some funny things were happening at the South by Southwest conference here today. My virtual private network connection kept getting disabled, and even stranger, on a friend's laptop a window popped up showing an animated cartoon cat flying through the air with a rainbow in its wake.

The image, known as Nyan Cat after a popular 2011 Internet meme, immediately alarmed me because it was used by the hacker group LulzSec on at least one occasion. I joked about being hacked, and my friend quickly turned off his laptop. (See CNET's related story about how to protect your Wi-Fi links, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Social-networking sites need to curb users' anonymity in favor of requiring real names and logging Internet addresses, an attorney said at a debate at the South by Southwest Interactive conference here moderated by CNET correspondent Declan McCullagh.

Collette Vogele, a Microsoft senior copyright counsel who said she was not speaking on behalf of her employer, suggested that anti-anonymity, anti-pseudonymity policies were a better business practice that would attract more users and reduce the number of cases of online harassment, especially of women. Google+ initially disallowed pseudonyms but earlier this year adopted a more liberal policy; Facebook is more restrictive.… Read more