Bastrop, Tx–Almost at the last minute March 8, Bastrop City Council Member Joe Beal drew an opponent for re-election to a second two-year term.

The filing deadline was 5 p.m. yesterday, and after 4 p.m. Tahitian Village resident Bob Parmelee appeared at City Hall on Main Street to file for a place on the May council ballot.

Previously only Beal, Mayor Terry Orr and Council Member Julie Hart had filed for places on the ballot. All three were first elected to office in 2008.

Over the past year Parmelee has emerged as an outspoken participant in various so-called Tea Party politicanl events in Bastrop and Travis County. Last fall he was ejected from Kerr Community Center in Bastrop for being disruptive during a gathering which featured US Congressman Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat.

Beal is a former general manager of the Lower Colorado River Authority. Previously he served on Bastrop’s Planning and Zoning Commission.

Bastrop, Tx–The value of agricultural production in Bastrop County last year fell more than $20 million from 2008, a drop blamed on severe drought conditions which extended back to 2007, according to a report delivered to Bastrop County commissioners on March 8.

The report by Texas AgriLife Extension Service agent Rachel Bauer estimated total production in the county at $46.9 million for 2008. That total fell to $26.2 million in 2009, she said.

In 2006, before the onset of a multi-year drought, the total production was valued at $63.2 million.

Bastrop County’s biggest products, hay and cattle, also took the biggest hits, according to Bauer’s figures. Hay production, valued at $5.7 million in 2006, sank to $2.3 million last year.

Beef cattle production, which reached some $34 million in 2006, fell to an estimated $24.9 million in 2008 and sank to $16.7 million in 2009 as producers thinned or sold off herds while grass and water disappeared during the dry period.

Pecan production, which topped $3 million in 2007, dipped to less than $1 million in 2009. Vegetables were valued at $1.9 million in 2007 but fell to $837,000 last year.

A few minor production categories showed increases, however. Bauer estimated the value of hogs in 2006 at $45,000, a number which had more than doubled to $99,000 by 2009. Hunting, recreation and timber production also either held steady or showed small gains since 2007, according to the report.

Bastrop, Tx–GOP voters swamped polling places in Bastrop County today in party primary elections to select nominees for local, state and federal offices, delaying the final tally to name winners, losers and runoff hopefuls.

Democratic ballots were fully counted and winners determined by about 10:30 p.m., with party voters favoring the two incumbents who had primary opponents.

Republican poll watchers were still waiting for the final ballots to be counted at 11 p.m. Some GOP polling places ran out of printed ballots and voters were forced to fill out makeshift ballots which were then transferred to a form which could be counted by an optical scanner, officials said.

Incumbent GOP County Commissioner Clara Beckett in Pct. 2 seemed headed to an easy renomination over challenger Adam Meuth. With some votes still out, Beckett held a 1047 to 431 vote lead.

The race was much closer between Republican Pct. 4 Commissioner candidates seeking to challenge Democrat Lee Dildy in the November general election. David “Rocky” Palmquist held a narrow 342 to 321 lead over rival Ron Jay, with results from one voting box still to be reported. The winner will face the veteran Democrat in November.

Dildy overcame a challenge from Michael Flowers for the Democratic nomination, 502 to 444, with all ballots counted.

In the contest which has drawn the most candidate interest this year–for Pct. 1 justice of the Peace–Democratic incumbent Bill Weddle turned back challenger Dickie Henderson, 503 to 325.

On the Republican side in Pct. 1, Justice of the Peace hopeful Donna VanGilder apparently won a four-way race without a runoff. With one voting box still to be reported, Van Gilder had 708 votes (54.7 percent) with a large lead over other GOP candidates including Vann Pressley with 279, J.W. Snell with 221 and Sue Fruge with 84.

Bastrop, Tx–A jury was seated today to consider a three-year-old felony evidence tampering charge. Testimony is expected to begin March 3 before 335th District Judge Reva Towslee Corbett.

Corbett said she will not hold court during party primary elections in Texas on March 2, which is also Texas Independence Day.

Daniel Lee Holmes is accused of altering or destroying a quantity of methamphetamine to prevent its use as evidence in a drug possession investigation. The alleged offense took place March 16, 2007.

Holmes is being defended by Bastrop lawyer Van Presley, who is also a candidate in Tuesday’s GOP party primary. Presley is seeking the party’s nomination for the Pct. 1 Justice of the Peace slot. He has three primary opponents. Two other candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination for the post.

The Holmes trial is expected to conclude later this week.

Bastrop, Tx–Bastrop County Sheriff Terry Pickering had barely finished briefing the media Friday on the arrest of a top-ranking department officer when the suspect, charged with a series of sexual offenses involving a nine-year-old girl, posted bail and was released from jail.

Lt. Eddie L. Matthews, 45, was taken into custody about 8:45 a.m. Friday and ordered held under $100,000 bail. Jail records show that Matthews was released at 3:21 p.m. after a local bail bond company posted a bond the same day.

Pickering scheduled a media briefing on the case for 2 p.m. Friday, but the session did not begin until almost 2:30 p.m. It lasted about 30 minutes.

Matthews, a 16-year veteran of the sheriff’s department, was in charge of the patrol division prior to his arrest. He was immediately suspended from duty pending an internal departmental probe, said Pickering. Matthews is accused of repeated assaults on the girl beginning last year.

Bastrop, Tx–A veteran Bastrop County Sheriff’s Department supervisor was jailed today on charges he sexually molested a nine-year-old girl repeatedly since October 2009.

Lt. Eddie L. Matthews, 45, was arrested at 8:45 a.m. Friday and ordered held in the Bastrop County Jail under $100,000 bail, according to public records and a statement by Sheriff Terry Pickering. A 16-year veteran of the sheriff’s department, Matthews was also suspended with pay pending an internal sheriff’s department investigation, said Pickering. Matthews had been in charge of the sheriff’s department uniformed services sections, including the patrol division, according to the sheriff.

The investigation began Feb. 25 when an Elgin police detective contacted Texas Ranger Brent Barina about child sexual assault allegations against Matthews, according to a court document. Barina subsequently met with state Child Protective Services officials, interviewed the girl’s mother and arranged for the child to be interviewed at the Children’s Advocacy Center in Bastrop. Matthews was also interviewed and denied any inappropriate conduct, according to Barina.

The child said she had been repeatedly molested and assaulted by Matthews since October 2009, according to a sworn statement by Barina.

In a press statement Friday, Sheriff Pickering said the alleged offenses did not arise from the officer’s law enforcement duties, and the alleged victim “was not a stranger” to Matthews.

The formal charge against Matthews is “Continuing Sexual Abuse of a Child,” an offense which carries a penalty, upon conviction, of 25 years to life in prison without parole.

Bastrop County employment records show that Matthews worked for the sheriff’s department from January 1993 to July 2204, then was rehired in January 2005. Pickering said Matthews had received a number of commendations for his job performance during his time with the department.

Bastrop, Tx–Bastrop County election officials were shipping additional ballots to busy voting places this afternoon because of heavy turnout in both Republican and Democratic races for party nominations to the November general election for county, state and federal offices.

In a dramatic turnaround from recent polling patterns, voters in the Republican primary are outnumbering their Democratic counterparts by a margin of almost two to one. Through Feb. 25, 1495 ballots in Bastrop County had been cast in the GOP primary. Through the same period only 844 votes had been cast in the Democratic primary.

Today was the last day for early voting in the primaries. Election day is Tuesday, March 2.

Four years ago, when Texas staged its last election for governor, Bastrop County’s early voting primary turnout reached only 611 Republican ballots and 832 on the Democratic side.

GOP primary interest is centered on a heated contested for the governorship as well as contests for the party’s nomination for county commissioners in Pct. 2 and Pct. 4, not to mention four Republicans seeking to challenge the incumbent Democrat, Bill Weddle, for the Pct. 1 Justice of the Peace bench.

Weddle also has a Democratic opponent, Dickie Henderson, and Pct. 4 Commissioner Lee Dildy is facing a Democratic Party challenger, Michael Flowers, as well.

Bastrop, Tx–Bastrop school officials have delayed the start of classes by two hours on Wednesday in the wake of cold, snowy and possibly freezing weather overnight Tuesday.

School will begin at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday for students in grades Pre-K to 4. Students in grades 5 to 12 will begin classes at 10;30 a.m., according to an announcement emailed from BISD offices at 9:20 p.m. Tuesday.

As rain, sleet and snow dusted the Bastrop area during the day Tuesday, emergency management officials worried about the possibility of icy bridges and roads if temperatures fell below freezing overnight.

The Bastrop City Council called off its 6 p.m. meeting Tuesday because of weather conditions.

Bastrop, Tx–An unusual late winter storm dropped a mix of rain, frozen rain and snow across Bastrop County beginning early today, putting school, city and emergency management officials on alert for worsening conditions through the afternoon.

Bastrop school officials said all events scheduled for Tuesday evening have been called off. They will monitor conditions overnight and decide early Wednesday whether or not to cancel classes for the day, said BISD communications director Donald Williams.

By mid afternoon Tuesday some roads in northern Bastrop County, including U.S. 290, had begun icing over in places, forcing some lane closures, said Peter Hicks in the Bastrop County Office of Emergency Management. The chief worry, however, is what happens overnight as temperatures fall, possibly into the upper 20s, said Hicks.

Some forecasts hint that overnight lows could reach 28 degrees F, cold enough to freeze moisture on bridges and roadways after a rainy day, said Hicks. Anyone considering a drive late Tuesday or early Wednesday should take notice of overnight temperatures and the possibility of icy roads, he added.

Bastrop, Tx–Court documents obtained by Bastrop-News.com shed new light on the alleged fatal beating of a Paige cook last year at the hands of two friends and what happened to the dead man’s body, which criminal investigators now say may never be recovered.

Michael Vandyke, 23, had been employed as a cook at a Paige restaurant before his disappearance about Dec. 15 last year. On Dec. 30 relatives reported him missing to Bastrop County law enforcement. His body has never been found, but a roommate and another friend are both being held in the Bastrop County Jail on murder charges.

Dustin Dickman, 24, and Dennis Leetch, 25, are behind bars under $500,000 bail each. Dickman and his girlfriend shared a residence with Vandyke near Paige. According to a court document, Dickman told investigators that he and Leetch assaulted Vandyke early on Dec. 16 “to teach him a lesson on how to treat family and friends.”

The documents do not suggest what might have prompted this instructional session.

Investigators believe Vandyke died after Leetch knocked him to the ground with a beer bottle and was kicked both by Dickman and Leetch before being struck repeatedly in the head with a block of wood by each man. Dickman was arrested Jan. 25 after being interrogated by investigators. Leetch was arrested Jan. 29 in San Marcos and talked with investigators as well, according to court records.

According to court documents Leetch also told investigators that Vandyke was initially buried in a shallow grave near the Paige residence Vandyke shared with Dickman and his girlfriend, was exhumed early in January and taken to a rural site near San Marcos in Hays County. The body was placed in an metal tool box designed for the bed of a pickup truck, doused with gasoline and burned for “approximately 1 1/2 days” or roughly 36 hours, one document says.

Afterward the “ashes” went into “an old BBQ pit” and were discarded in a trash dumpster at a San Marcos apartment complex, the documents suggest.

Investigators told a judge they found a site near San Marcos where they believe Vandyke’s body had been burned . They later recovered from a separate rural location the tool box which may have been used to incenerate the corpse.

Sheriff’s Department investigator Mike Daniel said Vandyke’s remains are likely long buried in a solid waste landfill but that the tool box and other items recovered during the investigation are being examined for trace evidence by the Texas Department of Public Safety crime laboratory in Austin.

Bastrop, Tx–This year the city council has launched a laudable long range planning exercise aimed at envisioning what Bastrop can and should be like in the next few decades while imagining some strategies which can help the city get from now to then. They’ve even engaged some (free) consulting services from the Lower Colorado River Authority focusing on community development issues and choices.

The undertaking is especially important at this juncture, perhaps, because our most senior council members have not yet been in office two years, the others less than a year. So, yes, they might profitably spend some time together thinking through what they most need to focus on and why.

Yet keeping the council’s collective eye on a unifying and distant dream of the future is proving problematic, for two reasons at least. One is temperament. Council members Ken Kesselus and Kay McAnally seem most comfortable with forming overarching visions to help shape near-term goals, activities and plans. Perhaps the sharpest contrast is with Mayor Terry Orr and Council member Joe Beal, both engineers by training. Just looking around town, they see lots of issues which need addressing sooner rather than later. Council member Julie Hart seems temperamentally more aligned with Orr and Beal.

Sharpening this divide, perhaps, is that Orr, Beal and Hart are all facing re-election in less than three months, and at least in some cases they’ve clearly been hearing from likely voters who have causes to plead. The last day to file for a place on the May city ballot to challenge any one of them is March 8.

And to be fair, every Bastrop council since at least 1985 has been pushed and pulled by the competing demands of thinking and planning for the long term vitality of the community versus handling the press of more mundane tasks like fixing the potholes, draining the swamp, cleaning up the trash, deciding on construction plans and permits, etc., etc. For proof, just look at any regular council business meeting agenda.

The city manager and all his department directors face the same problem because each day has only 24 hours and all of them must stop to eat and sleep at least occasionally. So it’s small wonder that a few vital planning and visioning issues so far seem to have slipped under the council’s long range radar horizon.

I’ll touch on only two such topics briefly here with a promise to return to both later. A controversial tree protection law for the city and its extra-territorial jurisdiction was recently scuttled by the council without so much as a public hearing. As the council in recent weeks has discussed planning issues of import, I think I have yet to hear the phrase “tree protection.” This from a city which proclaims itself “Heart of the Lost Pines” and whose character, appearance and attractiveness are significantly defined by the natural landscape? Hello! Anybody home?

And I can’t see how to divorce the tree issue from the broader topic of how the city needs to manage its giant and crucial ETJ for future generations. Now that Bastrop has been named a destination of distinction by the National Truse for Historic Preservation, can any council reasonably ignore the opportunity afforded by its (limited) control over areas between the city and Austin to enhance Bastrop’s allure?

Anyone not concerned about future unpleasant possibilities should take a fresh look at the four corners of the Texas 95 intersection with Texas 71 in Bastrop. How many more acres of trees should the city allow to be cleared away to be decorated by additional billboards and flashing advertising signs along Texas 71 between Bastrop and Garfield? That landscape and prime development corridor is already heavily degraded, in case anyone didn’t notice.

How the city handles such issues will help define Bastrop for decades. Hello! Anyone home?

Bastrop, Tx–A juror fell ill and was unable to continue after lunch on Tuesday, forcing 423rd District Judge Chris Duggan to declare a mistrial in the murder trial of Bryan Teague for the 2008 beating death of a Cedar Creek man, Larry Jones.

The 12-member jury was selected Jan. 8, and prosecution testimony in the case began the next morning.

A mistrial ruling means that a new trial must be scheduled and a new jury seated to hear the case. Duggan did not immediately set a new trial date.

Bastrop, Tx–Mayor Terry Orr and Council Member Julie Hart both are seeking re-election to a second two-year term in office, City Secretary Teresa Valdez said today. Council Member Joe Beal, also seeking a second term, put his name on the May 8 city ballot on Monday.

So far none of the three, first elected in 2008, has an opponent.

Candidates have until March 8 to file for a place on this year’s ballot, said Valdez.

Bastrop, Tx–Four candidates have put their names on the May ballot for three open seats on the Bastrop school board.

Former school trustee Karen Halladay has signed up to challenge incumbent Glenn Peterson who is seeking re-election to the Place 5 seat.

In Place 6 Linda Apostalo will be on the May ballot.

Incumbent trustee Jim Mills is seeking re-election to Place 7.

Bastrop, Tx–Jury selection began today in the August 2008 beating death of a Cedar Creek man. The accused, homeless 39-year-old Bryan Teague, faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted of murder.

State District Judge Chris Duggan is presiding over the trial in 423rd District Court. Larry Jones died from injuries sustained following a drug-related confrontation, including wounds inflicted by a pick ax, according to sheriff’s department investigators. The dispute began in a rural wooded area west of Bastrop frequented by transients and other homeless persons, officials believe.

Among the panel of potential jurors was Pct. 4 County Commissioner Lee Dildy, who did not attend a meeting of county commissioners Monday as a result of his jury service.

Bastrop, Tx–Bastrop County commissioners today encouraged Sheriff Terry Pickering to negotiate a deal worth almost $600,000 to put more advanced Panasonic video and wireless equipment into 45 patrol cars this year.

The sheriff said his current budget can absorb the first year’s lease or lease/purchase payment of some $170,000, but he told commissioners he needs their agreement to fund the final three years of a payment plan contract. Pct. 2 Commissioner Clara Beckett urged Pickering to work with County Auditor Lisa Smith on current year budget revisions to allow the initial year’s payment.

The sheriff said the new in-car video equipment linked to laptop computers will make patrol operations more efficient and effective. The scanty video equipment now in use is outdated, he said.

Pct. 1 Commissioner Willie Pina and Pct. 4 Commissioner Lee Dildy did not attend Monday’s meeting.

Bastrop, Tx–City council member Joe Beal became the first to put his name on the ballot today for a second two-year term in the office.

The present terms of Mayor Terry Orr and Council Member Julie Hart also end this year unless they win new terms in the May city elections. So far Beal is the only announced candidate.

Bastrop, Tx–This week marks the 26th anniversary of the unsolved murder of Bastrop County environmental activist Vicky Wharton, 31. Her body, with two dozen or so stab wounds, was found beside a rural road off FM 1704 south of Elgin on Feb. 6, 1984. Investigators at the time believed she died sometime the previous night.

Despite a flurry of publicity and investigation over the following weeks, no one has ever been charged, arrested or tried for the crime. Wharton was a leading organizer in efforts to stymie lignite strip mining plans first at Camp Swift, in Fayette County and later at the Steiner Ranch north of Bastrop. She was a founding member of the Central Texas Lignite Watch, the mother or grandmother of subsequent environmental organizations in Bastrop and neighboring counties. She was also a founding member of the Sayersville Historical Association focused on the rural community where she lived between Bastrop and Elgin on the banks of Big Sandy Creek.

The initial investigation into the murder was hampered by inter-agency rivalries during the 1984 primary election race for Bastrop County sheriff. In the late 1980s former sheriff Con Kiersey occasionally talked about reviving the investigation, but nothing occurred as a result. Still later Chief Deputy Sheriff Ronnie Duncan did reopen the case, but the only result was to clear a few possible suspects who had been the subject of early interest.

When Chief Deputy Charlie Littleton replaced Duncan in the sheriff’s department last year, he promised to look into the Wharton murder again. Littleton said recently that the only ongoing effort to solve the case is a regular check of DNA evidence preserved at the time against a growing data base of similar evidence gathered by law enforcement agencies in the years since. A Texas Ranger remains assigned to follow any new information, said Littleton.

Bastrop, Tx–Bastrop County Sheriff’s Department criminal investigators spent part of today seeking a search warrant for a site in Hays County which they believe may reveal the remains of a Paige cook who has not been seen since mid December last year and who may be a murder victim.

However two other men are already in jail for the death of 23-year-old Michael Van Dyke. Investigators believe Van Dyke was beaten to death at his Paige home late last year. Charged in the case are Dustin Dickman, 24, and Dennis Leetch, 25. Apparently Van Dyke has not been seen since about Dec. 15. On Dec. 27 relatives alerted authorities that he was missing.

At first investigators suspected that the victim’s body had been dumped in a stock pond or some similar body of water. However they now believe his body may have been burned at a site in Hays County, according to sources who asked not to be identified. Investigators spent Tuesday morning drafting an application for a warrant to search the suspected site for evidence.
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Bastrop, Tx–A Cedar Creek woman was sentenced to nine years in prison and another 10 years on probation for driving drunk and causing the death of one Irish tourist and severe injuries to another in a traffic accident on Texas 71 just west of Bastrop in September 2007.

Susan Moore, convicted of intoxication manslaughter and intoxication assault last week by a jury in Bastrop, will serve up to nine years in prison and then begin a 10-year term on probation, ruled 423rd District Judge Chris Duggan.

Prosecutors said Moore had a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit for drivers following the accident.

Bastrop, Tx–Tuesday the city council agreed to issue $7.4 million in new construction bonds at an interest rate of 3.856062%. The offer from FTN Financial Capital Markets was the lowest of eight bids received earlier in the day. Six of the eight bids offered interest rates below 4% on the city bonds rated A+ by the agency Standard & Poor’s.

The funds will pay for completion of work on a new 15,000-square-foot city hall and a 26,000-square-foot civic center, utility and landscape improvements along Chestnut Street and some $1.2 million in electric utility upgrades, said City Manager Mike Talbot. In 2008 the council issued some bonds to begin the Chestnut Street, city hall and convention center projects.

Earlier this month the council approved the lowest qualified bids for city hall and convention center construction. The Chestnut Street work is about half done and should be completed this summer, said Talbot. The new city hall should be finished by year’s end and the convention center early in 2011. The electric system upgrades should be completed within a year, said Talbot.

Bastrop Power & Light customers will see any added costs reflected in electric rates. Convention center costs will come from hotel room rental taxes and the Chestnut Street work will be covered by a half cent sales tax which goes to the Bastrop Economic Development Corp. Cost of the new city hall, approved by voters in 2003, will show up in the debt service segment of city property tax bills.

Citing Standard & Poor’s bond rating report, Council Member Joe Beal said the city’s financial management team has “saved us a lot of money” in interest costs over the next 30 years.

Council Member Julie Hart agreed, saying “I’m excited to see these (interest) rates.”

Bastrop, Tx–A jury of nine women and three men heard opening arguments Jan. 26 in the intoxication manslaugher and intoxication assault case against a 59-year-old Cedar Creek waitress in 423rd District Court before District Judge Chris Duggan.

Susan Moore faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on the manslaughter charge. She is also eligible for probation because she has no prior felony convictions. She pleaded not guilty to the charges in court Tuesday.

Evidence will show that Moore had more than twice the legal blood alcohol level in her system when her vehicle slammed into an auto headed in the opposite direction shortly before 5 p.m. on Texas 71 just west of Bastrop on Sept. 20, 2007, killing an Irish tourist and severely maiming another passenger, said Assistant District Attorney Greg Gilleland in his opening statement to the jury Tuesday afternoon. The accident victims “didn’t have a chance,” he said. Moore “wasn’t driving friendly,” Gilleland added.

In his own opening statement, defense attorney Neal Pfeiffer told the jury that other evidence will show reasonable doubt that Moore’s blood alcohol level at the time of the accident was more than the legal limit for intoxication. “Alcohol did not cause or contribute to this accident,” he said. “(Moore) is not guilty.”

According to investigators, Moore had left her job at Hill’s Cafe in Austin about 4 p.m. on the fatal day and was driving home when the accident occurred.

Bastrop, Tx–What may have been the first highway traffic fatality of 2010 in the area took place about 4:48 p.m. Saturday near the intersection of Texas 21/71 and FM 20 just west of Bastrop.

Reported dead at the scene was 47-year-old Bradley Goble who was driving east on Texas 71 when his vehicle crossed the median and struck another auto, according to a Department of Public Safety report.

Elgin, Tx–After four and a half years on the job, Elgin City Manager Jeff Coffee told a staff meeting Jan. 26 that he’s resigning effective June 1, according to independent sources who contacted Bastrop-News.com during the day. Coffee could not be reached for comment.

Coffee reportedly told his staff he is leaving the city’s employ for other opportunities. By day’s end the Elgin Courier web site had posted the text of what it said was Coffee’s letter of resignation to the city council.

Tensions between the city manager, the council and mayor have been growing for more than a year. Some critics have pointed to the city’s allegedly weakened financial position during Coffee’s tenure. Others have questioned his handling of some personnel management issues and administrative changes involving the city’s economic development functions, parks and recreation programs and the controversial purchase of an 80-acre site on Elgin’s west side for future economic development near US 290 and the Capitol Metro rail line between Austin and Giddings.

Coffee came to Elgin under something of a cloud, since his license to practice law in Texas was suspended near the same time by the State Bar of Texas. A dispute over service to a client from whom he had accepted a fee was the source of the complaint, according to public records. Before being hired in Elgin, Coffee had never held a post in municipal government.

One veteran observer of Elgin politics, who asked not to be identified, said conflicts among city council members involving the city manager had become “a tired act” which needed resolution.

Bastrop, Tx–The city council awarded bids Jan. 19 for the best construction offers for a new city hall and Bastrop’s first ever convention center on Chestnut Street. The total cost is almost $1 million less than the most recent estimates last year.

Gaeke Construction Co. of Giddings will undertake the new city hall construction for a base bid of $1,587, 617. Furniture, fixtures, technology equipment and additional off-site utility and drainage requirements will push the final price tag to just over $2.8 million or $500,000 less than planning estimates.

The final cost for a 26,000-square-foot convention center across the street from the new city hall will reach $5.1 million. The bid will go to Collier Construction Co. of Brenham. The total expense, including some $320,000 in street, drainage and utility improvements to Farm Street, will be just over $496,000 below planning estimates.

Bastrop, Tx–The best bids for building a new city hall and Bastrop convention center on Chestnut Street will be awarded Jan. 19, the city council decided Tuesday.

The council saw the final bid tabulations for the first time Jan 12 and asked for a week to review the results and consider which extra bid items it wants to add to the projects. Already agreed are almost $400,000 improvements to Farm Street on the north boundary of the civic center site.

Bids for both projects total roughly $7.8 million, some $1 million less than the original project budget. Apparent low bidders are Gaeke Construction of Giddings (city hall) and Collier Construction of Brenham (convention center). Gaeke offered to complete the work in 270 calendar days. Collier said the convention center will be finished in 365 days.

Bastrop, Tx–With an emotional group of critics of a proposed city tree preservation law watching, Bastrop City Manager Mike Talbot recommended at a meeting Tuesday–and the city council approved–withdrawing the proposed rules indefinitely because the issue had become disruptive to other endeavors.

After the draft regulations were recommended for council approval last month by the Planning and Zoning Commission, City Hall was flooded with phone calls and emails denouncing the measure, and council members began voicing reservations.

One of the critics who addressed the council, Georgia Parmalee, said the rules as proposed were excessive. “We can take care of our own trees with a little (city) guidance,” she said.

New tree preservation rules were proposed after a public outcry last year when commercial lots at three corners of the Texas 71 intersection with Texas 95 in Bastrop were largely stripped of trees and the formerly rolling terrain was leveled.

Council Members Julie Hart and Kay Garcia McAnally praised critics of the proposal for their civic engagement.

Mayor Terry Orr said he supports “some form of tree ordinance” but argued that the time is not right to pursue the issue, especially with the city planning director’s position vacant. Former planning director Stacy Snell resigned last month to accept a position in New Braunfels.

Trees were also the topic of two other items on Tuesday’s city council agenda. In one case the council approved a proposal by the Riverside Grove Homeowners Association to pay for and plant 72 shade trees in public rights of way in the subdivision over the next three years.

On a separate issue the council endorsed Talbot’s suggestion to ask a tree expert to investigate and make recommendations about a concern by downtown building owner Kay Wesson that a tree in the sidewalk near the intersection of Main and Pine Street is damaging her building at 901 Main St. The arborist is already giving advice about tree preservation measures during a landscaping and utility relocation project now underway on
Chestnut Street east of Water Street, said Talbot.

Bastrop, Tx–Without taking a formal vote today, the city council agreed to include some street, drainage and utility improvements on Farm Street as part of the convention center construction project. The likely added cost will be about $430,000 and can mostly be financed with hotel room tax revenue, said Bastrop City Manager Mike Talbot.

Even with the additional work, civic center construction will remain well within its projected budget, Talbot said. Final bid tabulations for building the civic center and a new city hall are still being reviewed, but the total cost will be roughly $1 million less than the $8.8 million planning estimate, Talbot told the council at their Monday session.

The council expects to discuss selecting the winning bid or bids when it meets at 6 p.m. Jan. 12 at City Hall. Bids were opened last week.

A section of Farm Street between Gills Branch and the Union Pacific rail line is slated for the upgrades after residents along the street complained about potholes, narrow pavement, heavy traffic and a lack of sidewalks in the neighborhood. The comments came as the council discussed rezoning the civic center site which faces Chestnut Street. Council Member Bill Peterson, who has been studying the city’s capital improvement needs, called the Farm Street work “a top priority” among possible projects.

Farm Street marks the northern boundary of the convention center project with a parking lot entry/exit. The street is already a main east-west route between Texas 95 and Fisherman’s Park, said Peterson. Mina Elementary School and the Bastrop school district’s central administration offices are also on Farm Street, adding to the traffic load, said Mayor Terry Orr.

Bastrop, Tx–Bastrop County cattle raiser Patti Jacobs will challenge Giddings lawyer Tim Kleinschmidt for re-election this year to the District 17 seat in the Texas House of Representatives.

KIeinschmidt, a Republican, was first elected to the House in 2008. He has no GOP primary opponent this year as he seeks a second term Jacobs put her name on the Democratic primary ballot Jan. 4. She does not have a Democratic opponent in the March 2 party primary.

District 17 includes Bastrop, Lee, Burleson, Fayette and Colorado County.

Jacobs heads Bastrop Cattle Co. which raises and markets organic beef. She was also a lead organizer of the 1832 Farmers Market in Bastrop. She has prior experience in politics and public affairs. She challenged Ronnie McDonald for re-election as Bastrop County Judge but subsequently helped guide one of his priority projects to completion, the Opportunity Bastrop County master plan for economic and community development.

In an interview this week, Jacobs said her campaign themes will include education and job creation, agriculture as “a 21st century industry,” and groundwater conservation for local development needs. Local residents “should be in control of our own future,” she said.

Kleinschmidt has already sold or leased water production rights to his own property in Lee County to water marketing interests looking to export groundwater to growing urban areas, said Jacobs. “We should keep our own water and kids” rather than exporting them to urban centers, she said.

Bastrop, Tx–When the Jan. 4 deadline passed for hopefuls to put their names on party primary election ballots in March, Bastrop County Republican challengers to incumbent office holders had turned out in force. As a result only seven current office holders seeking re-election, including two Republicans, will face no opposition for a new term in office.

Pct. 2 County Commissioner Clara Beckett drew a GOP primary opponent in the person of Adam Meuth. There is no Democratic candidate for the post.

At the same time Lee Dildy, the veteran Pct. 4 county commissioner who is seeking re-election, got a Democratic primary opponent even as two Republicans prepared to face off in the GOP primary for the job. Michael Flowers will challenge Dildy for the Democratic nod.

Also seeking the Pct. 4 commissioner’s post are Ron Jay and David “Rocky” Palmquist in the GOP primary.

And two new Republican candidates stepped forward to seek their party’s favor in the race for the Pct. 1 Justice of the Peace contest. At the filing deadline James “JW” Snell and Sue Ann Fruge joined Donna Van Gilder and Van Pressley as GOP contenders in the primary.

On the Democratic side, incumbent Bill Weddle is seeking re-election. His primary opponent is Donald “Dickie” Henderson.

Republicans also have challengers in races for three other county wide offices where Democrats incumbents are seeking re-election. Sarah Loucks put her name on the GOP ballot to oppose incumbent District Court Clerk Cathy Smith, a Democrat, and Republican Jason Leddie will oppose Democratic incumbent County Clerk Rose Pietsch in the November general election.

Republican Laurie Ingram had previously announced her bid to unseat Kathy Schroeder as county treasurer. Schroeder is seeking re-election as a Democrat.

Two Republicans are unopposed for new terms in county wide elective offices, District Attorney Bryan Goertz and County Surveyor Michael Olson.

On the Democratic side, neither County Judge Ronnie McDonald nor County Court at Law Judge Benton Eskew have opponents for re-election this year. At the same time three Democratic justice court judges are also unopposed for new terms, Raymah Davis in Pct. 2, Katherine Hanna in Pct. 3 and Larry Dunne in Pct. 4.

These are my links for October 16th through January 5th:

• Cool Powerful Women Video – test video
• Coworking / FrontPage –
• We strike water! | Bastrop Builder and Community – Click To Play  Jimmy’s Well Service of Bastrop, Texas brought their water drilling rig to our land at 1191 Shiloh Road, Cedar Creek, TX 78612
• The Spring Virtual Community (new!) discussions and talk about Jane Austen, Colin Firth, movies, tv, sports, politics, news, radio, Austin, Texas – Social networking hub based in Austin, Texas. Web developer, Web host, video production, social network badges, forums or bbs system (one of the nets earliest), Paul Terry Walhus Owner/CEO, coworking facilities in Austin
• TweetGrid Twitter Search Widget – Goal: To make a simple, elegant, highly-flexible, drop-in twitter search widget that anyone can use on their website/blog/profile/whatever.

In its Dec. 12 edition on Page 2A, The Bastrop Advertiser corrected its Dec. 10 report on a Bastrop school board vote to name Steve Murray as sole finalist to become the school district’s next superintendent. The board vote came during a session open to the public following a closed-door executive session on the issue, the newspaper said.

Worthy of Solomon? I’m not sure, but the council action was certainly cool and carefully considered, given the unusual pressure by the local lawmaker’s advocacy.–dmc

These are my links for September 13th through October 12th:

• Become a Producer | channelaustin – Any resident of Austin is eligible to obtain a Producer ID, enroll in low-cost training workshops, become certified to check out equipment and produce programs for television.
• Spanning Sync 3 – Sync iCal with Google Calendar, Sync Address Book with Google Contacts – Spanning Sync 3 is the one app that syncs both iCal with Google Calendar and Address Book with Google Contacts. It gives you even better control over how your information syncs, and is now up to 10x faster!
• Google Sync on your mobile phone – Using your iPhone’s native calendar, you can now access multiple Google calendars, and be alerted for upcoming appointments with sound or vibration.
• Official Google Blog: Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave. – A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
• Austin TX Twestival 2009 – I attended the Austin Twestival and helped Kathy Mandlestein, Director or Worldwide Marketing for IBM, with a live stream athttp://justin.tv/austintexas . . . you can see the interview clips there with some of Austin’s most fascinating peeps/

These are my links for August 13th through August 30th:

• WordPress ? Arras Theme « Free WordPress Themes – Magazine-styled theme with tons of features. Ready for alternate styles. Includes featured posts slideshow, different post layouts, multi-tabbed sidebar, custom single meta fields for reviews and many other customisable features.
• StatusNet ? Open Source microblogging service – # Keep your brand on your own domain
  # Integrate with Twitter and Facebook
  # Promote your own Web presence
• Aardvark – Aardvark’s advice is always current, obtained on the fly from those we trust, like friends, but whose collective expertise far exceeds that of the relatively few people we happen to know personally… a great fountain of hitherto untapped information.
  ? Randall Stross, New York Times
• Spring Blog » Blog Archive » Social Media Breakfast at Statesman video – You can find the full one hour video of the Social Media breakfast at MySpace, Blip.tv and Veoh . . . feel free to use the embed code on these pages if you want to use this on your blog or website, and rate it and review it if you like. You can see the 6 clips starting here: YouTube, Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Blip.tv and Veoh
• Texas Longhorns football practice – Texas Longhorns football practice

These are my links for July 28th through August 11th:

• /SAbackchan – Mark Lightin’ “Rizzn” Hopkins wrote an incredible piece about how wordpress might be the natural successor to twitter, facebook and friendfeed and one of the reasons is this sabackchan theme which his organization uses for their “backchannel”
• What are the people of the NY Times saying on Twitter? – What are the people of the NY Times saying on Twitter?
• denius fields google maps – Google Maps – Where the Longhorns practice early in the morning and other points of interest on a map of the University of Texas
• SocialToo – Your Companion to the Social Web! – SocialToo can help you be a social networking power user. Keep your follower lists in sync across networks, and learn more about your relationships. Send surveys to your followers and more! To get you started or log in, please connect with us through Twitter or Facebook:
• louisgray.com: CrunchPad or Apple Tablet? Why I?m Leaning CrunchPad? – its industrial design mockups are equal to, if not better, than the ones I have seen allegedly from Apple so far. The CrunchPad also promises to be lower cost, and forces a new paradigm of being 100% a Web device

These are my links for June 16th through July 26th:

• Mellow Johnny’s Tour de France watching party – Fans of Lance Armstrong watch the Mt Ventoux stage at Lance’s own Mellow Johnny’s bike shop on Fourth Street in Austin, TX. They applaud his third place finish in the 2009 Tour de France. More at http://touroftexas.com/blog/ and http://spring.net/blog/
• Mellow Johnny’s Tour de France watching party – Fans of Lance Armstrong watch the Mt Ventoux stage at Lance’s own Mellow Johnny’s bike shop on Fourth Street in Austin, TX. They applaud his third place finish in the 2009 Tour de France. More at http://touroftexas.com/blog/ and http://spring.net/blog/ on yahoo video
• Mellow Johnny’s Tour de France watching party – Fans of Lance Armstrong watch the Mt Ventoux stage at Lance’s own Mellow Johnny’s bike shop on Fourth Street in Austin, TX. They applaud his third place finish in the 2009 Tour de France. More at http://touroftexas.com/blog/ and http://spring.net/blog/
• Baffle! inc. » is_tree ? the function WordPress is missing (one of the many) – Thanks to the brilliant mind of Anthony Cole I figured out my own custom function, said ?is_tree($p_id)?. This checks to see if the current page is in the direct tree (child, grandchild, etc) of the post that has the ID of $pid.
• feedly: a magazine-like start page – feedly weaves your favorite content into a fun, magazine-like start page.
  based on Google Reader and Twitter.
• Incoming! for the iPhone – “Incoming!” can operate over Edge, 3G, and WiFi. It works by re-routing the call through the internet, converting your outgoing calls into incoming calls. You can connect other phones together, pick who’s phone will ring first, or if you want everyone’s phone to ring at the same time. You can also do instant 9-way conference calling on your iPhone making business meetings on the go a snap! Features include a visual favourites list, visual call history, built-in address book, and support for both PC and Mac.

These are my links for May 13th through June 10th:

• ICSI Netalyzr – analyze your network connection, very detailed and comprehensive, web based
• How to install the Windows 7 Release Candidate – Windows 7 Release Candidate: Installation instructions
• Twitter Lists – twitter lists, resources and how tos
• 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media – Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They?ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. And they?ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment.
• Live social actions map | im doing my part.org – live twitter map of social actions around the world, a very useful toll for social activists who put on events like twestival

During the week of May 24 through May 31st AustinLifestyles.com, The Spring, BHI, and RegistrationAssistant are hosting a visitor from the Netherlands, Paul Geurts of MyNameisE.com. He is bringing the first prototypes of a social networking and business card connector to Austin, Texas.  If you’re around Austin next week and want a demo, call Paul at 512–699–4000 or email terry at spring dot net.

My Name is E

The E device can be used at conventions, trade shows, and meetings, in metropolitian areas like Austin and on college campuses like the University of Texas.  There are over 1.2 million conventions, trade shows and events in the US every year.

What is the E device? In its current incarnation, E is small white, sleek looking device much like an ipod nano or USB storage device. With E, you can share your contact information and social networks in one simple gesture.

Connector allows you to safely transfer an online business card and your set of social networks in a simple gesture like a fist pump or a high five. Tap two Connectors together and you’re connected. Synchonize Connector by using the built-in USB plug with your PC or Mac. It is ideal for networking at large events and conferences.

During the week that Paul Geurts is visiting Austin, we will be meeting with venture investors, potential partners, customers and forming a team to distribute and promote E throught the US and North America.

There is no setup with connector, it can be used immediately out of the box. It’s equipped with a lithium polymer battery which allows you to use it for 72 hours on a 2 hour charge. It holds two of your E Business Cards (one for personal and one for professional) and connects to RFID tags as well as other Connectors and iphones. It gives you intuitive feedback through LED lighting.  The RFID tag feature opens it up the world of “choice based advertising” and integrates these connections in to your social network activity stream.  It connects you to objects and to the environment as well as to people.

These are my links for February 22nd through April 11th:

• 8 Steps For Building Community On Twitter: Tips For Membership Organizations – Here?s a quick eight-step rundown of how to set up a Twitter account for your ?.org?. This isn?t the only way, of course. But if you are starting from scratch, this is what we?re finding works the best.
• TwitterForBusyPeople – Friends At a Glance – twitter at a glance for busy people … great mouseover action
• Texas Social Media Award Winners – I won an award! I made it in to the top 25 Social Media Award winners in Texas
• Free Twitter Designer – great tool to design your twitter background, I need this!
• Super Screenshot! – web app that makes a screen shot of any web page you choose and it can be any size

How in the world did I get on the same list as Cali Lewis? I don’t know but it’s amazing to be on a list of the “top 25 Texas Social Networkers” with her and 23 other amazing people. To whoever nominated me, thank you! It’s an honor to be on the same list as all these incredible social networkers.

The list was pared down from 125 nominees. The actual awards show where all the award winners will get *trophies* is on March 15 from 6 to 9 pm at Ballet Austin, 501 W 3rd St, with tickets going for $15.00.

These are the Texas Social Media Award Winners.

They winners are:

HENRY ADASO

• http://therapup.net
• http://twitter.com/rizoh
• http://digg.com/users/rizoh

JOSHUA BAER

• http://twitter.com/joshuabaer
• http://twitter.com/otherinbox
• http://austinpreneur.com/

PERRY BELCHER

• http://www.perrybelcher.com
• http://www.winningatsocialmedia.com
• http://twitter.com/perrybelcher

MIKE CHAPMAN

• http://twitter.com/MikeChapman
• http://budurl.com/aryu
• http://www.mlfnow.org/site/PageServer

J.R. COHEN

• http://www.thecoffeegroundz.com/
• http://twitter.com/coffeegroundz
• http://budurl.com/v5f7

MICHAEL COTE

• http://www.twitter.com/cote/
• http://www.peopleoverprocess.com/
• http://www.drunkandretired.com/

JENN DEERING DAVIS

• http://cheaptweet.com/
• http://appozitegeist.appozite.com/
• http://twitter.com/jdeeringdavis

SAM DECKER

• http://decker.typepad.com
• http://www.bazaarblog.com
• http://twitter.com/samdecker

LORI FALCON

• http://acowboyswife.com
• http://mywoodenspoon.com
• http://twitter.com/acowboyswife

KYLE FLAHERTY

• http://www.engageinpr.com
• http://www.breakingpointlabs.com
• http://twitter.com/kyleflaherty

MATT GLAZER

• http://www.BurntOrangeReport.com
• http://www.TexBlogPAC.org
• http://twitter.com/MattGlazer

LISA GODDARD

• http://twitter.com/lisa_goddard
• http://austinfoodbank.wordpress.com/
• http://budurl.com/znxe

MICHELLE GREER

• http://nerdaboutaustin.com
• http://www.michellesblog.net
• http://www.claimid.com/michellegreer

DAVID GUENTHNER

• http://budurl.com/l36q
• http://www.texaspolicy.com/policycast.php
• http://twitter.com/DavidGuenthner

KAMI HUYSE

• http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com
• http://twitter.com/kamichat
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/myprpro

CALI LEWIS

• http://www.geekbrief.tv
• http://www.twitter.com/calilewis
• http://facebook.calilewis.me

DAVID J. NEFF

• http://www.fispace.org
• http://www.sharinghope.tv
• http://www.daveiam.com

ERICA O’GRADY

• http://reinventingerica.com/
• http://twitter.com/ericaogrady
• http://peanutbuttermedia.com/

BRYAN PERSON

• http://BryanPerson.com/
• http://www.SocialMediaBreakfast.com/
• http://twitter.com/BryanPerson

CONNIE REECE

• http://budurl.com/wapo
• http://everydotconnects.com
• http://budurl.com/gpsv

BENN AND LANI ROSALES

• http://nmlab.com
• http://twitter.com/agentgenius
• http://twitter.com/laniar

DWIGHT SILVERMAN

• http://blogs.chron.com/techblog
• http://twitter.com/dsilverman
• http://www.chron.com/computing

AARON STROUT

• http://blog.stroutmeister.com
• http://twitter.com/aaronstrout
• http://brightkite.com/people/aaronstrout

PAUL TERRY WALHUS

• http://spring.net
• http://austincast.com/blog
• http://twitter.com/springnet

MICHAEL WILLIAMS

• http://williamsfortexas.blip.tv/
• http://twitter.com/michaelwilliams
• http://budurl.com/8y54

It’s a great list and I’m honored to be listed on it.  Michelle Greer has been really helpful to me and I hope I’ve been helpful to her.  She recently had the major role in pulling off the “Twestival” that raised 10 grand for world water causes.    I had the privilege of interviewing Cali Lewis as she breezed in and out of last year’s SXSW.  Below is that interview with Cali.

Michael Cote made the list, he really was the person that got me going on twitter and his “DrunkandRetired” podcast rocks, it’s the best podcast coming out of Austin, Texas.  Erica O’Grady is super, she really did an awesome job at the recent Mashable event in Austin and the Camp connected with it.  Last summer I got to co-moderate a session with Connie Reece at the SEMforSMB conference and did an hour long video with her on Youtube and all over with her on social networking.   Lani Rosales has given me a lot of great advice and she’s a riot.  I hope to get to know all the other award winners better, they’re an awesome group of people.

Resources

OrgSync, Inc

Charity: Water

Austin Twestival

Related Links

online communication

co-curricular management

Here’s the schedule of events for Twestival 2009 at Ace’s in Austin, TX on Feb 12
8:00 Meet and mingle
8:50 A word from sponsors
9:00 Twestival Sumo Smackdown (see video below)
10:00 Presentation by Glimmer of Hope, a non-profit that drills wells in Africa
10:45 Performance by T-Bird and the Breaks, one of Austin’s most highly regarded up-and-coming bands. This 11 piece band won accolades from both ACL’s “Sound and the Jury” Awards as well as the Austin Music Awards. They’ve sold out their past two shows and just released a new album. See video below.

A donation of just $10 can provide someone in Africa clean drinking water for 12 years. Collectively, we can initiate substantial change for developing nations. Here are are a variety of ways you can make this happen:

- Get Tickets: http://www.amiando.com/twestivalaustin.html
- Donate: http://www.charitywater.org/twestival (Select Austin)
- Update your Facebook and Twitter statuses: Include a link to http://www.austintwestival.com
- Sponsor the event: Companies can learn about opportunities here – http://tinyurl.com/aom2hp
- Donate an item for the silent auction: Email snaxxx@gmail.com

Join over 100 cities across the globe and take part in this unprecedented event.

Twestival is going to be held around the world on Thursday, March 12.  It is the biggest twitter festival ever and has been set up to support the billion plus people in the world without clean drinking water.  It’s a fundamental cause that needs your support.  The Austin event will be at Ace’s on 6^th Street at 8 pm on March 12.

Twestival resources are downloadable below, for the media and websites to spread the word about the event and charity: water, where all proceeds are being donated.

Please use the tag #twestival in blogs and other social media, so we can find your posts more easily, which will be tracked on Delicious – head here to see the latest coverage and what global sources are saying

Contact twestival@googlemail.com or @jazcummins for interviews, further quotes, etc.

Twestival is 100% volunteer organised, but we will try and get back to you as soon as we can.

Downloads

• About Twestival [42k pdf]
• charity: water media pack [110.2M zip] – charity: water videos, logos and pictures.
• Twestival badges [265k zip] – Badges in png format for websites to link to the Twestival site.
• Twestival global press release [67k pdf]
• Twestival media pack [3.2M zip] – Twestival logos in eps format and in a pdf document.

Resources

• charity: water event kit.

Twestival is going to be held around the world on Thursday, March 12.  It is the biggest twitter festival ever and has been set up to support the billion plus people in the world without clean drinking water.  It’s a fundamental cause that needs your support.  The Austin event will be at Ace’s on 6^th Street at 8 pm on March 12.

Twestival resources are downloadable below, for the media and websites to spread the word about the event and charity: water, where all proceeds are being donated.

Please use the tag #twestival in blogs and other social media, so we can find your posts more easily, which will be tracked on Delicious – head here to see the latest coverage and what global sources are saying

Contact twestival@googlemail.com or @jazcummins for interviews, further quotes, etc.

Twestival is 100% volunteer organised, but we will try and get back to you as soon as we can.

Downloads

• About Twestival [42k pdf]
• charity: water media pack [110.2M zip] – charity: water videos, logos and pictures.
• Twestival badges [265k zip] – Badges in png format for websites to link to the Twestival site.
• Twestival global press release [67k pdf]
• Twestival media pack [3.2M zip] – Twestival logos in eps format and in a pdf document.

Resources

• charity: water event kit.

These are my links for January 7th through February 1st:

• SOCIAL NETWORKING GOD: 350+ Social Networking Sites – collection of over 350 social networking sites
• How to Make an Animated Avatar on Twitter | Tiffany Dow?s Internet Marketing Blog – It’s pretty cool, for about 10 seconds then it becomes tiresome. Sure fire way to lose a lot of twitter followers.
• Reply Notifier – sends your twitter @ replies to your email inbox
• TechFuga – All the top Tech news – Techfuga – Techmeme Digg HackerNews Reddit TechCrunch Arstechnica Slashdot GoogleNews YahooNews CNET News
• My Team Is Better Than Your Team – The Transitive Property of College Football – Why Texas would beat Florida.

These are my links for December 20th through January 4th:

• 70 top tips to generate blog traffic – 75 traffic generation techniques that I learned while blogging
• Display RSS Feeds – everything you need to display rss on your web page. Just plug in an rss feed and most of these will gen up code you can use on your web page or blog
• Tweetree – Home – Tweetree, a site that takes your Twitter account and tweaks it, just might be the reason you close that desktop client and return to the browser for your Twitter cravings. – mashable
• austinlifestyles’ favorites – Slideshow of my favorite pictures of Austin, Texas on flickr
• Austin Texas favorites on Flickr – My Austin, Texas favorite pictures from flickr . . . some pretty amazing stuff… recommended: run this as a slide show

These are my links for December 13th through December 17th:

• The Daily Beast – Tina Brown (formerly New Yorker editor) daily politics, culture and media
• CMS Showcase: 31 Remarkable Drupal Powered Websites – Six Revisions – From personal blogs and brochure sites, to fully-featured social networking sites, portals, news sites, and e-commerce websites, Drupal has proven itself as the most robust platform currently available in the content management system market.
• tweetworks – With groups and discussions, TweetWorks helps you get the most out of Twitter. How it works?
• iTweet 2 : Web – web interface to twitter, nice job
• 10 Great Thunderbird Addons You Must Have | MakeUseOf.com – More than a year back, Aibek wrote a great list of 35 must-have thunderbird addons. Since then, a lot of great addons have been created and some of the older addons have also evolved to become better ones.

I’ve been twittering for a bit.  I tweeted @dvorak about his great podcasts and columns.  Have you seen http://channeldvorak.com?  If John get his son Arick to open source this, I’ll use it.  I’m already rocking and rolling with Arick’s other open source project which has something to do with Craigslist.  Sssshhh!

Lyn Bender just sent me a cryptic email about some kind of cryptic event Saturday morning.  If I can talk Dot in to going to Nia Saturday morning and do the ride share thing we might have a go.  It would be nice, Lynn, to have a localtion and maybe a couple of details.

Just got off the skype with rjnagy and he’s still resistant to twitter.  Doesn’t he know this is futile?

We had a great wordpress meetup recently at http://conjunctured.com with Any Skelton or skeltoac everywhere.

While I am typing this I am talking to a delightful Spring rep, Josey, from the Phillipines who just set up my pda phone which I’m going to use for a backup for my iphone.  She was really, really nice.  I wish all support calls were like this!

I’m building a “social network” for Austin, Texas and also working on a green home site.  If you want to beta test or have input on the Austin Social Network, go to http://austinlifestyles.com and sign up for the beta.  If you’re actually in Austin, Texas we’re going to have some cool events coming up for our beta testers like pizza parties, basketball games, guest speakers, presentations, etc. It’s going to be a hoot!

ptw out

These are my links for December 8th through December 9th:

• Going Green – Environmental Issues and Global Warming News – Green Living Tips – consumers guide to the green revolution
• Salon.com – Breaking news, opinion, politics, entertainment, sports and culture. – news source and cultural commentary, affiliated with the WELL
• Digg – All News, Videos, & Images – Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by users
• Daily Kos: State of the Nation – Daily Kos has grown in those five years to the premier political community in the United States, with daily traffic between 2-4 million visits. Markos Moulitsas — a.k.a. “kos” — created Daily Kos on May 26, 2002
• Balsamiq Mockups Examples | Balsamiq – cool little mockup program to sketch out websites
• Profilactic.com – springnet’s lifestream – profilactic collects all your social network content, blog posts, etc in one place

These are my links for November 24th through December 7th:

• Whatever – interesting, funny daily blog – Whatever – Taunting the Tauntable since 1998 John Scalzi, Proprietor
• Gmail – Inbox- walhus@gmail.com – my gmail inbox
• Delicious – delicious main page
• near:”Austin, Texas” within:50mi – Twitter Search – Austin, Texas realtime twitter search within 50 miles of Austin, Texas 50 results
• Facebook | Home – facebooks live realtime feed, watch it refresh continually in realtime
• Home – FriendFeed – Real-time – friendfeed on steroids, real time view of your friends updates
• Plaxo – Home – plaxo would get a good review from me if it didn’t continually scramble up my contacts. Plaxo is a mess. It could be great if they fixed it.
• springnet’s daily Bookmarks on Delicious – sites to look at on a daily basis … for a more narrow selection see http://del.icio.us/springnet/primo for the best daily sites
• Facebook | Home – number one social network with tons of cool apps, you could almost make it your blog if it were more public
• iGoogle – google’s start page you can personalize with widgets and content
• Twitter Search – best twitter search, let’s you search by geographic area in advanced search
• Reva Bhalla on CNN –
• Reva Bhalla – This Austin international security expert has made some of the most intelligent comments on the situation in Mumbai India with the terror attacks on the Taj Mahal Hotel and other sites
• Swaine’s World – Michael Swaine added me as a friend on facebook and I was amazed to find that he lives in Grants Pass, Oregon and has written some remarkable books like “Fire in the Valley”

These are my links for November 16th through November 23rd:

• Goodreads | people online now – goodreads is a social networking community for readers of good books, this page shows you who’s online
• Tweet Grid – neat twitter search, create your own search grid or matrix and then you can watch multiple searches
• SystemExplorer Homepage – great monitoring and diagnostic tool for Windows XP or Windows Vista machine
• TouchGraph | Products: Facebook Browser – incredible facebook visualization, really amazing
• PrimePress Theme for WordPress – This is quickly becoming my favorite wordpress theme, I used it on http://austen. com/blog and just now on http://touroftexas.com/blog/ . . . it’s truly awesome!

These are my links for October 22nd through October 31st:

• 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals and Journalists – 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals and Journalists
• My Creative Team Wiki / Media People Using Twitter – most complete list of media people using twitter
• Where is Your Username registered – Lets you check a potential user name for social network sites
• Being Peter Kim: A List of Social Media Marketing Examples – applying game mechanics to understand participation, thinking about users vs. customers, and deconstructing ego traps in PR campaigns. This analysis makes me wonder if social media marketing matters and if so, does it scale.
• Social Media / Business Marketing Links | The Global Social Media Network – Social Media Marketing – business marketing and social media marketing links

These are my links for September 2nd through September 15th:

• Irssi – Community Ubuntu Documentation – Irssi is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client. It is a text-based client as it lacks a graphical user interface (gui) such as XChat, Chatzilla and others.
• Fitbit – Automatically Track Your Fitness and Sleep – Did I get enough exercise today? How many calories did I burn? Am I getting good quality sleep? How many steps and miles did I walk today? The Fitbit Tracker helps you answer these questions.
• Gnip API v1.3 – The Gnip API provides notification of activities (events) occurring in a variety of services and, whenever possible, a guid that identifies the activity itself vis a vis the service it was created on. Activity examples include a user “tweet” (twitter), a user “dugg” (digg), a user creating a blog post, etc.
• CrunchBase, The Free Tech Company Database – CrunchBase is the free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.
• ONLINE BUSINESS TOOLBOX: 230+ Tools for Running a Business Online – A great roundup of business tools for running a business, all web based. I found some good stuff here.

These are my links for November 8th through November 12th:

• How to Change the World: Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter – Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter
• Op-Ed Columnist – How to Fix a Flat – NYTimes.com – Any car company that gets taxpayer money must demonstrate a plan for transforming every vehicle in its fleet to a hybrid-electric engine with flex-fuel capability, so its entire fleet can also run on next generation cellulosic ethanol.
• monitter : real time, live twitter monitor | free live twitter embed widget – monitter? what is it? Simple. It’s a twitter monitor, it lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of 3 keywords and watch what people are saying. Cool huh?
• 30+ Great Web Tools You Might not Know Yet but Should | SEOptimise – social media, web design & development, search, SEO and analytics, e-commerce, blogging and Internet tools are not yet widely known main stream tools
• Social Networking Sites | Social Networks Directory – search engine for finding social networks, impressed with results I got

These are my links for September 20th through October 9th:

• Tweetmeme – 15:20 PM, October 9th, 2008 GB – less structured way to keep track of what links are buzzing on twitter categories links in to blog, image, video and audio posts
• Twitscoop – Search twitter, see what’s hot right now – What’s hot on twitter right now
• Twitturly – Real-time Link Tracking on Twitter – top trends on twitter, use this to stay ahead of the curve and tracks links
• Twubble – suggests new twitter friends based on your current twitter friends
• Tweet Scan – Tweet Scan is a real-time search engine for Twitter and identi.ca. Tweet Scan indexes all public messages on both services so you can find the conversations, people, and tweets/dents you want. You can search by keyword or author with results available via email(Twitter only for now), RSS, and Twhirl.
• GroupTweet – GroupTweet allows Malcolm and the gang to send messages via Twitter that are instantly broadcasted privately to only the team members.
• Rogue Amoeba – Nicecast: Broadcast any audio on Mac OS X – Nicecast is the easiest way to broadcast music from OS X. Broadcast to the world, or just across your house. Nicecast can help you create your own internet radio station or allow you to listen to your iTunes Music Library from anywhere in the world!
• 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine – some excellent wordpress themes

These are my links for August 1st through August 31st:

• Eventbrite – TechCrunch Austin Ventures Meet-Up – TechCrunch is heading South for a Meet-Up in Austin, Texas with the team from Austin Ventures (http://www.austinventures.com/). We are landing in town on Thursday, September 25 just in time for the Austin City Limits (http://www.aclfestival.com/default.aspx) music festival. We do have a handful of three day ACL passes to give away to sponsors and attendees, and will be announcing details of music festival give aways in the coming weeks.
• Rudder – The New Free Online Money Management, Budget Planning And Personal Finance Software – product that looks forward and determines how much you can spend today and still pay all your bills
• Gustav Information Center – good social network resource along with http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Gustav for tracking Gustav news and resources
• Schedule Future-Dated Twitter Tweets » TweetLater.com – Keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you’re not in front of your computer. Or, use it as your personal reminder system. Send automated thank you notes to new followers, automatically follow new followers,
  if you choose to do so.
• (6) near:”Austin, Texas” within:50mi – Twitter Search – realtime search results for twitter tweets near Austin, Texas. Twitters official advanced search.
• SocialGO – Social Network Maker – Create your own Social Network for FREE
• Mashable Summermash Austin interview with Will Pate – spring.net – Spring.net interviewed Will Pate. Will cohosts CommandN a very popular video podcast with Amber Macarthur out of Toronto, Canada. He founded Raincity Studios which recently bought Bryte. Will ?can?t talk? about some upcoming ventures, but he does talk broadly about his future direction.

  Spring.net did over 30 interviews at the Summermash Party in Austin at Buffalo Billiards on the night of July 30, 2008 and also videod the entire daytime Socialmedia Camp at the Thistle Cafe on West Sixth Street in Austin. The evening party featured an open bar, food, and a packed second floor. Brian Massey said ?It took a bunch of people from San Franciso to round up some of Austin?s best bloggers and developers in one place.?

  We?ll be releasing the full 5 hour session of the Mashable Social Media Camp on one hour installments and we?ll also be releasing all of the 30 plus interviews over the next 2-3 weeks.

These are my links for July 27th through July 28th:

• chrisbrogan.com – one of the best social media and marketing sites on the web. It’s a must daily read if you’re a social network addict, like me.
• Social media camp at the Thistle Cafe 300 W 6th street in Austin – social media camp at the Thistle Cafe on 6th street the same day as the Mashable event.
• Austin 3.0 – If one were to look at the slew of Tech events happening this week, you?d think we were gearing up for SXSWi. Instead, it?s 104 degrees outside, and it?s just another eventful week in Texas; it?s time for our mid-summer stretching exercise.
• AgencyTool Web Design Dashboard – best web design, development, marketing and website maintenance resource I’ve every seen. Excellent! Five Stars. *****
• Web 2.0 Mashup: Best of the Internet Today –

These are my links for July 21st through July 25th:

• Ad Revenue Sharing Communities & Forums | Social Web Tools – social communitys that share revenue with their users
• Leveraging Social Media by springnet – Connie Reece and Paul Terry Walhus present “Leveraging Social Media” at SEOforSMB in Austin Texas on July 17, 2008.
• Deanna Zandt randomdeanna / Linkwad – Short-n-sweet Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and consultant to key progressive media organizations including AlterNet and the Hightower Lowdown, and hosts TechGrrl Tips on GRITtv with Laura Flanders. Interview at http://austincast.com/blog/
• | LivingSocial – recommended by MichelleMMM on del.icio.us
• 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing | chrisbrogan.com – 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
• How to Be Interesting | Copyblogger – Be wrong: The world is full of people trying to do the right things. It?s become so common that many of us are bored by it. We long for someone that is willing to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, be the wrong thing

These are my links for July 13th through July 16th:

• Five Ways to Build Your SMB Via Social Media Marketing : Online Marketing for Marketers – 5 primary strategies for building small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) via social media marketing. This post is a summary of my presentation, for those that couldn?t make it to Austin.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Services Portland Oregon | Anvil Media, Inc. – Search Engine Marketing for High Performance Companies Anvil Media, Inc. (Anvil) is a search engine marketing (SEM) agency specializing in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) management, search engine marketing public relations (SEM PR)
• http://seesmic.com/#/video/iXR1hYyDEF/watch – boiling down the basics of SEO
• The Definition of Social Media Marketing: How to Find the Best Social Media Consultant » techipedia | tamar weinberg – The main characteristic [social media marketers] need to have is a genuine curiosity/interest in social media, particularly on how it influences human relationships and business practices.
• Search Engine Optimization for Small Business – SEO Blog: Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing :: Get Page One – And the co-founder of our humble SEO company, Brian Rutledge, will be talking about search engine optimization for small business at the SEM for SMB conference in Austin, TX. More on that later!
• Video SEO for SMB?s: What Does Standing Out Online Really Mean? – consumers typically visit an average of nearly five Web sites (4.8 actually) before deciding which attorney to select. When lawyers added video to their respective Web sites, however, this number decreased fairly substantially, to 1.8.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – seo blog aggregation. Guy Kawasaki’s alltop seo page. SEOmoz, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, SEO Book, Search Engine Journal, Matt Cutts, SEO Noobs, Google News Inside, SEO Blackhat, SEO by the Sea, Search Engine Watch, Stepforth SEO, etc

These are my links for June 28th through July 9th:

• ContentRobot | Blogging & WordPress Experts – awesome wordpress site with plugins and themes
• FlyCamOne2 Micro Video Camera for RC Aircraft from Hobby Lobby! – FlyCamOne2 Micro Video Camera for RC Aircraft from Hobby Lobby!
• Josh Highland : Internet Superstar – classic social lifestream webpage, a guy who lives in Redlands, CA
• TweetDumpr – This is a hideous tool that can be used to export your entire Twitter timeline to a CSV file, readable by any spreadsheet application (Excel, Numbers, etc.). Exported data includes the tweet plus a timestamp of when it was sent.
• Technology Review: Social Networking Is Not a Business* – In less than two years it has created the underlying structure for more than 20,000 social-networking sites–”mini-Facebooks” with an aggregate of 300 million page views per month. You’ve probably never heard of it.

Starting today, I’m going to start a series of reviews, accompanied by screencasts, of reviews of social networks, social bookmarking services and social media sites on the Spring.  You can see my initial list there which I’ll be modifying as this series goes along.

Listal is a social networking site where you can find people who share your tastes in movies, books, music or games.  Lists and collections are shared via a simple url like (in my case) http://springnet.listal.com and they give you widgets to plug in to your blog or website.

The site stands out for it’s tight integration of tagging, friends, finding others, forums and messaging.  The “explore” feature is hot, it lets you scan through reviews of movies, tv shows, books, games, dvds, and music. 

These are my links for June 16th through June 27th:

• bub.blicio.us – social networking blog, really smart content
• Summize Conversational Search – another killer app du jour for twitter, conversational search
• All I Ate Today – clever little food app somehow connected to twitter
• austinlifestyles’ bookmarks on del.icio.us –
• Derbyshire Writer?s Guild - – Crysty Shih is now heading this major fanfic site for jane Austen aficianados
• Social Media Club Austin – You’ll find a number of social media types hanging out at Cafe Caffeine as part of the Jelly! Austin co-working scene. Come join us.

These are my links for June 15th:

• Qik On IPhone: Qik Video Streaming Finally Comes to iPhone – Wow! When I was interviewing the geekalicious Cali Lewis at SXSW I asked her what she was most excited about and she started bouncing up and down and shouting to Neail. Qik! Qik! Bring me Qik. Quick!
• Summarized SEO Tips from SMX Advanced – Part 2 – Search Engine Guide Blog – The SEO panel provided a few examples of the great widgets and applications they use to make their life easier. Here are a few, including my own favorites: * SERPH: track the ?buzz? of yourself and your competitors using this handy social search
• Future Jets Owner Gary Vaynerchuk Brings Thunder to Austin ? Damon Clinkscales – @damon Fortunately, I brought my Flip Ultra and I captured 60 minutes of pure Gary for your viewing pleasure. Keeping with the tradition of WineLibrary TV, these videos are unedited.
• Not An MBA » fiercely independent – InnovationCamp #1 is two weeks from today! Being a first, there will inevitably be loose ends, chaos, and some pesky problems on the day. Without risk, though, there is no reward? @juliegomoll
• Austin Coworking – An interview with Drew Jones – LaunchPad Coworking Blog – Drew: Austin is the perfect community, and GSD&M Idea City is an awesome space for Innovation Camp. Julie and I share a GenX/Boomer fascination with the creative energy that is out there among designers young and old. June 28 @juliegomoll

These are my links for June 4th through June 12th:

• Themes – Tumble-hybrid Deuce is a cleaned up version of the original Tumble-hybrid theme. Please follow the directions outlined in the original Tumble-hybrid post to install and use this theme.
• The Life of an Internet Bedouin ? Damon Clinkscales – Future Jets Owner Gary Vaynerchuk Brings Thunder to Austin “I?ve been tracking Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary TV ever since the day that Dan Benjamin told me about the sale of Corkd to this sorta zany character with a wine show on the web.” – Damon Clin
• springnet > Tweeterboard : Conversation Analytics for Twitter – dashboard, gets love, gives love, box score, links
• LaunchPad Coworking ? Coworking in Austin, Texas – Austin Launchpad coworking gets green light from the City to build. Sept 2008 is start date. @juliegomoll
• Alltop, all the top stories – Guy Kawasakis daily news aggregator

These are my links for May 27th through June 2nd:

• PR 2.0 – As much as media and blogger relations drive traffic and increase your user base, we can?t overlook the importance of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, DIGG, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Diigo, FriendFeed, Ning, Mixx, Bebo, Ge
• Uniting Austin’s Startup Community | Startup District – Austin’s startup district forming and creating a coworking space in East Austin, Texas
• One Egg, One Hundred Baskets: Social Media Leverage – Social Leveraging squeeze goodness out of the tools that are free strategy acts as platform wrangler drags big names of social media, networking and aggregation together. create one page/blog post that hits on social aggregator ften different directions.
• WiiiZZZ – What has been listened to and shared today no Twitter . . .
• Tim’s Quicktime VR Panoramas : QTVR – @timpatterson picked a digital camera, an inexpensive Fuji FinePix A205, and decided to get back to creating Quicktime VR panoramas for fun and he has a Google Map of all my QTVR locations in Austin!

These are my links for May 26th:

• Movavi Online Video Converter – Free Online Video Converter No software to install. No ads to interrupt.
• Pixel Qi – About Us – Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen was previously the founding chief technology officer of One Laptop Per Child. Notably Mary Lou invented the laptop’s sunlight-readable display
• Xo Laptop 2.0: OLPC XO Laptop 2.0 Has Dual Touchscreens, Looks Amazing and Future-y – At OLPC’s Global Country workshop today, founder Nick Negroponte unveiled the next-gen XO Laptop, and it totally blows the original away. Wow! Dual touch screen!
• Tag Galaxy – Holy Cow! This is such a cool flickr visualization, a spinning globe that shows whatever tag you pick
• Internet Marketing and Social Media: Dosh Dosh – One of the best ways to promote your website or business is to work together with others . . . twitter @doshdosh
• Bare Bones Software : PRODUCTS : YOJIMBO – Yojimbo makes keeping all the small (or even large) bits of information that pour in every day organized and accessible. It?s so simple, there is no learning curve. Yojimbo?s mechanism for collecting, storing and finding information is so natural and

These are my links for May 21st through May 25th:

• MediaWiki – MediaWiki – MediaWiki is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis, including this website, the home of MediaWiki.
• Tweet Clouds – # 78612 # add # american # amp # app # application # apps # april # archive # austin # austincast.com/blog # austintexas # belmont # best # big # bike # blog # bookmarks # broadcasting # catching # cedar # channel # chat # check # coffee # come # communit
• optimal experience – This guy has some great ideas like an “Austin startup district and a wordpress fest in the park. And he walks to Will Wynn randomly.
• End of Silence – Austin blog with a great Austin linkroll
• http://yesyes.penalicio.us/ – really inspiring “about me” page @yesyes on twitter
• Digital Voodoo — Social Media strategy and intelligence applied to marketing. – Strategy + Tactics – Dave Evans network of best-of-class partners helps define and implement new applications built around a socially-aware launch strategy that you can measure. twitter @evansdave
• Do-it-yourself SEO and SEO Project Management | SoloSEO – @mdjensen ’s seo page. Michael is from St George Utah and is an entrepreneur and twitter tool maker. SoloSEO.com CityMarketer.com AppliedContent.com TweetBeep.com LiveTwitting.com for events like SXSW and TweetAnswers.com
• Bare Feet Studios – @roxannedarling Bare Feet Studios LLC is a small, curious, tech-savvy company based in Honolulu, Hawai?i, owned by Roxanne Darling and Shane Robinson. We participate in and advise on New Media and the Social Web to connect people and solve problems.

These are my links for May 19th through May 20th:

• Disqus | Hello, springnet! – Boost your blog community by installing the DISQUS comment system Disqus makes your comments more interactive for readers and easier to manage for you ? all while connecting your community with other blogs. “no one needs you” – Leo
• Blogging 2.0 and Professional Blogging – The reality is that Web 2.0 is finally catching up to blogging. The walled gardens of singular blogs are making way to social interaction across multiple platforms. @shey thanks to tim shey for the pointer to this on his blog
• Remote Access and Desktop Control Software for Your Computer – Over 40 million devices connected worldwide for remote support, access & backup. cross platform remote access. recommended.
• The 70 coolest free applications in existence – Seopher.com – some of the best free apps and online services on the net for web developers. great list. recommended. from Steven York’s blog about making money online, blogging, marketing, seo and web development
• Read The Words – My Recordings – most text to speech is awkward, this web app is really natural sounding and lets you make recordings, save them and embed them on your website. Really cool. Recommended

These are my links for May 18th:

• how to grab all the free media publicity you could ever want. Thousands of media email addresses here at All the Secrets newsletter’s free publicity resource centre – websites that help mail out your press releases
• ShowYourself Widget – ShowYourself is a simple to make, easy, free and fun utility to help establish your identity across the web. Have a Flickr account and a Facebook and AIM? Combine all your profiles on the web into one attractive widget that you can put on your blog, your
• Work Happy Now! – Maximizing your work happiness should be the theme of your working life. Happiness creates success. When you stop putting in the hours and start extracting joy from work, you’ll be successful.
• Web Site Design and Marketing | hosting, domain names, e-commerce, pay-per-click – You have come to the right place to learn about web site design, domain names, Internet marketing, custom programming and social media.
• Battlestar Wiki – Battlestar Wiki, An encyclopedia of the Battlestar Galactica sagas. ? 3,273 articles in English ? Warning: Spoilers are to be expected. See our Spoiler Policy for details. Ridiculously detailed and thorough!

These are my links for May 17th:

• The Most Popular Twitter Apps According to the Blogosphere – ReadWriteWeb – which Twitter clients are getting the most buzz on blogs. The result is a list of the most popular 3rd-party Twitter-apps according to the blogosphere. @steverubel This is a guest post from Anton Johansson, a business developer at the Swedish startup Twi
• Symbian World – twitter @ewanspence sybian blogs aggreggated on this site
• Miss Geeky – @mseckington on twitter and her blog Melinda Seckington on gmail, twitter, flickr, facebook, youtube, del.icio.us, etc. etc. blog has great links and possibly a Battlestar Galactica fan like me
• Twitter-peoples – welcome to my e-world, dive right in! ? Steve Lawson: Bass 2.0 ? the soundtrack to the day you wish you?d had – @solbassstevethe soundtrack to the day you wish you?d had, great background sound and pretty sure it’s podsafe
• Free Wordpress Themes, Free Wordpress Templates, View & Download – free WordPress theme called ?AdsPress?. The theme is ready to use with Google Adsense and the advertisement blocks are perfectly placed (tested & tried) for giving you the maximum revenue out of your websites.

These are my links for May 13th through May 16th:

• Jennifer Slegg – Search Engine Marketing Consultant – @jenstar jennifer offers tips on SEO marketing and I’m trying to get her to return my follow on twitter
• Whatever – nominated for both Best Novel (for The Last Colony) and Best Fan Writer, which I think is pretty neat. This guy should be nominated for the best blog, if you ask me. – ptw
• NETTUTS – Web development tutorials and links – Spoonfed Web Tutorials – NETTUTS is a blog/tutorial site aimed at web designers. We run tutorials on technologies, skills and techniques to improve how you design and build websites. We cover HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS?s, Simpler Development Examples in PHP and Ruby on Rails, a
• NETTUTS – Web development tutorials and links – How to Build a Maintainable Site using CushyCMS and Twitter – In this tutorial we’re going to build a simple one-page site and then in less than 5 minutes, get it setup with a Twitter feed for daily updates and with CushyCMS for general content. If you haven’t seen it, Cushy is a completely free and extremely simple
• Useful Podcasts For Designers And Developers | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine – collection of podcasts that are either directly about web design, or would be helpful to a web designer
• 100+ Open Courseware Collections for Aspiring Web Devs – Web Hosting Unleashed – free tutorials and collections from top universities and well-respected websites to train you in areas like web design, graphics and imaging, programming and coding, multimedia, connecting with your audience, and even learning freelancing and entrepreneur
• Twitter Friend Adder Firefox Plugin – You will then need to login to your account find the persons friends you would like to communicate with right click on there profile and there should be an option stating ?Grab this Users Friends? hit that and the plugin should start working.
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing – strategy, twitter addict, cms maven, conference hopper
• Create your own crowds :: Crowdstatus.com – Crowdstatus is made up of twitter crowds, each crowd contains people and each twitter person in the crowd has a status. This means that you can see what everyones current status is in a crowd.
• TwitterFone: Send Messages to Twitter with Voice – send messages to twitter with your voice on your cell phone. Sweet.

These are my links for May 7th through May 10th:

• Home | premium wordPress theme, wordpress cms, custom wordpress template, – wordpress cms theme
• Texas Startup Blog – My advice is to become a ?maker?, become a ?builder? or if you can?t make or build find a partner who can. Build something, show it to customers, get some traction and then raise money.
• TwitterSnooze! v0.13 – Hit the snooze button on your “verbose” Twitter friends.
• Searchme Visual Search – Beta – rev. 1.339 – visual search . . . what folks have been waiting for in search
• We Feel Fine / by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar – exploration of human emotion

These are my links for May 5th through May 6th:

• Push My Follow » A podcast about social media and other things – @pushmyfollow Michael Gaines @istarman – Joe Cascio @joec0914 – Eric Rice @spin – Christine Cavalier @purplecar – Sarah Vela @orchid8 – Ann Boccio @banannie7 podcast about twitter and socialnets … recommended
• Tinderbox: The Tool For Notes – Tinderbox stores and organizes your notes, plans, and ideas. It can help you analyze and understand them. And Tinderbox helps you share ideas through Web journals and web logs.
• Pixel Currents » Portfolio – Pixel Currents. It?s a WordPress theme adapted for content management. The power of WordPress is how flexible it is. It can be used for projects from a simple blog to a full-fledged business site, even for e-commerce.
• Real-time Twitter Search – Tweet Scan – best twitter search that I’ve seen so far.
• Perian – The swiss-army knife of QuickTime® components – Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats.

These are my links for April 27th through May 4th:

• optimal experience – John Erik Metcalf is a 24 year old entrepreneur living in Austin. What is he interested in? social media, coworking, identity and reputation systems, social entrepreneurship, semantics, mobile communication, and much more. Cool dude. Worthwhile blog.
• TwitterLocal – Tweets within 20 miles of Austin, Texas – TwitterLocal lets you generate an RSS or XML Feed to filter out Tweets around a certain area.
• @heidimiller Love client meetings on site! – @heidimiller great podcasting site
• Twister Grabber :: Firefox Add-ons – adds twitter friends en mass
• Tantek’s Thoughts ? 2008 April – on open flow – the book I’m currently reading is titled “Flow”, thanks to my new super friend Tara Brown, who somehow knew exactly where my head was at and gave it to me to read just last week. It’s a really good sequel in many ways to David Allen’s Getting Things Done
• Insoshi: open-source social networking platform in Ruby on Rails – Insoshi is a product and a project. The product aims to be the best open-source social networking platform. The project is to make the product!
• Ayman Hourieh’s Blog – thoughts on Open Source software, Computer Science, and various bits from my life and the web.
• springnet : twitter100 – What 100 of my twitter friends are saying
• Twitter Spy – fascinating but not totally useful, just added filtering to this twitter real time display

These are my links for April 23rd through April 26th:

• earlysound’s bookmarks on del.icio.us – Veronica Belmonts bookmarks
• Wp-plugin – Seesmic – The Seesmic-wp-plugin allows you to: * Record one or more Seesmic video’s to a post. * Accept authenticated or anonymous video comments. * Moderate video comments exactly like text comments.
• Loic Le Meur Blog: My social map is totally decentralized but I want it back on my blog – The challenge for Friendfeed and the like is that while I really like all my services gathered in one place, I would rather that these would be centralized on my blog instead of a third party service. Yes you can cross post or add badges, but it’s not rea
• tantek wiki / CommunicationProtocols – communication protocols for the new age from tantek celik “‘m capturing and collecting some notes on my experiences with optimal human to human communication protocols and mediums from my perspective, i.e. when others are trying to communicate with me, wh
• Blogger mentality at SXSW – Los Angeles Times – In the halls of the Austin Convention Center, you couldn’t take three steps without tripping over a blogger, “vlogger,” podcaster or online TV show host of some kind. There was so much recording, photo snapping and keyboard tapping that anyone who wasn’t
• Twapper Groups – create your own twitter groups using twitter names and the plus sign

These are my links for April 21st through April 22nd:

• The Last Podcast – With Alert Thingy and now Twhirl, the market for FriendFeed desktop apps already feel crowded. The development cycles for both apps are extremely fast and the Twhirl developers arerumored to release a new version tonight.
• Technology « // Internet Duct Tape – I?ve written a program that uses Google?s social graph to find the links between Twitter users and Friend Feed users. Download the program, run it, enter your passwords and watch it find and subscribe to all of your Tweeps on Friend Feed.
• Sphinn’s Greatest Hits: The Most Popular News and Discussion Articles – search marketing news and discussion forums, doshdosh contributes
• CURRY.COM – Adam Curry the podfater’s blog.
• Welcome to Zigtag – an intelligent, semantic, social tagging and bookmarking service – Zigtag is a revolutionary new semantic, social tagging service that allows you to save your favorite websites, see what your friends are tagging, and find the sites you’re really looking for!
• TwittEarth :: Live Twitts all over the world – startling 3D view of the twitter planet, when will Starbuck find this place?`
• Internet Marketing and Social Media: Dosh Dosh – My previous post on social networking ROI already talked about the benefits for building a strong social media presence so let?s move on to examine the characteristics which constitute successful social media profiles.
• Alert Thingy: A desktop app for FriendFeed.com – all your friendfeed alerts delivered direct to your desktop. Does for friendfeed what twhirl does for twitter. wow.
• http://jeffnolan.com/wp/ – Just like Thwirl and Snitter totally changed the way I interact with Twitter and drove up my usage as a result, Alert Thingy is doing that for FriendFeed. As Dennis says, who btw I ripped off the title for this post from, the result is that I am evolving

These are my links for April 18th through April 20th:

• News.com’s Blog 100 | CNET News.com – In 2006, CNET News.com introduced you to our first Blog 100 list. With more than 14 million blogs in existence that year and another 80,000 being created each day, we highlighted what we thought were some of the ones worth checking out. Blogs have become
• About JD Lasica – J.D. Lasica is one of the world’s leading authorities on social media and the revolution in user-created media. A writer, strategist, blogger and consultant, he is the co-founder and editorial director of Ourmedia.org, president of the Social Media Group
• Social Media – video, social networks, citizen media, web 2.0, mobile podcast, blog and news channel
• twhirl | a twitter client – connects to multiple Twitter accounts
• Tweet Clouds – my twitter “tweet cloud” springnet
• louisgray.com: Silicon Valley Blog – home for early adopters, tech geeks, RSS addicts, and Mac freaks. TiVo, sports, politics. Good daily read.
• louisgray.com: UPDATED: Elite Bloggers Joining FriendFeed In Droves: Silicon Valley Blog – Update 2: Given how this is now seen as a reference point for the hot bloggers on FriendFeed, we’re going to try and keep it updated. Added in this round includes folks like Allen Stern of CenterNetworks, Tris Hussey, Chris Pirillo and others…

These are my links for April 13th through April 17th:

• About DG « Demo Girl – I started learning how to create screencasts in April of 2006 and since then have created well over 300.
• socialthing! – aggregates twitter, pownce and facebook with a lot more rss feeds to social networking sites coming. See the Vote page for what they’re working on. Contact me for a beta invite
• FriendFeed – social aggregator that ties together twitter, facebook, and other rss feeds. It’s going to eventually aggregate a whole lot.
• iminta – what are you inta? – Iminta has a cool thing going for it: you can put your followers in groups and specify which group sees what… I really like the idea of variable resolution for social feeds. Still in beta as of 3/16/08
• How-to produce an online video Show: Export & compress. The blip.tv Learning Center. – settings for exporting video to blip.tv
• fring ? Free mobile calls, and chat with mobile Skype, mobile MSN Messenger, mobile icq, Twitter, AIM® & Yahoo!? and more – fring? is a mobile internet service & community that enables you to access & interact with your social networks on-the-go, make free calls and live chat with all your fring, Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk?, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!? and AIM
• TechSoup.org – The Technology Place for Nonprofits – good example implementation of drupal, see also http://twit.tv for another great drupal site

These are my links for April 11th through April 12th:

• Singularity Conference – On October 24-26, join 100 of the world?s top web visionaries, developers, designers, thought leaders, and celebrities for three days of talks at this seminal web event. Ian Forrester is the subject of an upcoming interview on austincast.com
• Free Themes – Design Disease – Professional Blog Design – some great wordpress themes
• BlogName – great group of themes, VeronicaBelmont.com uses this theme.
• MoMB’s bookmarks on del.icio.us – Museum of Modern Betas – web 2.0 applications
• Google App Engine Blog: Introducing Google App Engine + our new blog – This preview of Google App Engine is available for the first 10,000 developers who sign up, and we plan to increase that number in near future.

These are my links for April 8th through April 10th:

• CivicSpace Home | CivicSpace – cms community management software probably running on drupal and civicrs.org
• Revision3 – Great news, world! I?m very pleased to announce that Veronica Belmont has joined the Revision3 family as Patrick Norton?s co-host on our tech-centric show Tekzilla, and we couldn?t be happier to have her on board.
• Twinkle – New iPhone Twitter Client Uses Locate Me Features! | Just Another iPhone Blog – Twinkle is a shiny (cough, excuse bad pun) new native Twitter client for the iPhone, that adds location-aware features to your Twittering. It has a very nice and easy to use interface and works very well so far in my testing of it.
• Dashboard | Shoeboxed.com – a new way to track all your receipts.
• :: Vídeos de sxsw2008 :: videos gratis – hey, a few of my sxsw videos got linked up on this French site os melhores videos de sxsw2008 with Leah Culver and Daniel Burka, Majorie Kase, and Electric Pulp (Guy Kawasaki’s guys)
• PR 2.0 – Solis blogs at PR2.0, bub.blicio.us, and regularly contributes PR & tech insight to industry publications. Solis is among the original thought leaders who paved the way for Social Media

These are my links for April 4th through April 7th:

• CERN creates a new super-fast internet, invites tons of people to a deathmatch – Engadget – Apparently, when CERN isn’t colliding particles (and ripping massive holes in the space-time continuum), it’s busy working on a new “internet” which will be 10,000 times faster than our current version.
• http://sandbox.sourcelabs.com/tagdigest/ – * Tag Digest ? a page in blog form of the most popular bookmarks seen * The original blog post introducing LiveMarks Homepage: sandbox.sourcelabs.com Author: Alex Bosworth License: GPL
• Aaron Mentele, Charisma 18 » south by – SXSW was awesome. Nowhere else in the entire field of geek can you plug in so easily. There are so many conversations, so many connections. It just feels good to be there. Hummel asked for a transcript of the conference, so here goes?
• Twitter / stevewoolf – Steve has a bunch of great links in his twitter stream
• NTV Rerun: EPIC-FU to TV? « NewTeeVee – The show now sees 2 million views per month across its archive, said Woolf, with new episodes receiving about 250,000 views. At this time last year, episodes were getting 30,000 to 40,000 views.

These are my links for March 27th through April 3rd:

• Magento – Home – Open Source eCommerce Evolved – Magento was designed with the notion that each eCommerce implementation has to be unique since no two businesses are alike. Magento’s modular architecture puts the control back in the hands of the online merchant and places no constraints on business proc
• Twitter Friend Adder – Have you ever wanted more friends on your Twitter account? Now you can. Just enter your Twitter login details below and we’ll add 20 random friends to your account.
• Magento – Store Demo – Open Source eCommerce Evolved – In the demo’s frontend, explore how a Magento-driven store might look to your customer and test some of the features. Get a feel for it by going through the checkout process, tagging a product or leaving a review.
• Twitter Tools, Tweaks and Theories: TypePad Hacks – reviews of 26 powerful tools you can use to make Twitter do all kinds of groovy things
• Casey Mckinnon, Veronica Belmont, Leah Culver rock SXSW 2008 – Bonnie Pierzina on drums, Leah Culver (pownce.com) on bass, Veronica Belmont (Mahalo Daily) on guitar, and Casey Mckinnon (Galacticast) belting out vocals at SXSW 2008. Technical difficulties couldn’t stop tech’s hottest video bloggers from rocking.

These are my links for March 26th:

• My Blog – my springnet stumbleupon blog
• TipLine – Gates’ Computer Tips – Each day during the school year I try to send out a computer tip or two. It’s usually a website, but sometimes it’s a news item or an Excel tip, etc. You can also find the archive of my tips going back to May of 2005. Please leave a comment to let me know
• WP Themes at ElegantDirectory.com – WP themes and related resources. – A new Word Press theme has been launched recently, made free by Elegant Directory & AllinfoDir Web Directory. Theme has been called as Trendy; highlighting property of this theme is its decent and elegant look with 3 columns view and with integrated Adsen
• 45+ Must See WordPress themes – This is the second article in the four-part series, “Powerful guide to master Your WordPress”. We are taking a look at some quality outstanding Free and premium WordPress themes, which have been released over the last few months.
• Follow Twitter Conversations – Quotably.com – twitter search engine
• Viddler.com – Your videos – Currently Viewing “Waking up in Amsterdam – Todd L Gilbert” – Todd L Gilbert is an American expat and blogger living in Amsterdam and seems to be having a blast living there. He’s agitproper on twitter and he’s big on the hyves.net which he adopted early on (big in Amsterdam and Peru).
• aNobii – community around books you’re reading. clever and well done

These are my links for March 25th:

• SourceForge.net: Jahshaka – Jahshaka is a video and film compositing, editing and special fx system that uses OpenGL & OpenML hardware rendering to give operators real time interactivity. The system is cross platform, and also includes full CG, paint and image processing modules.
• TwitPic – Share photos on twitter – share your photos on twitter with twitpic
• Who Are The Austin 80? – The situation in Burma has been getting out of control. People are dying as they fight for peace. Some of the monks have been beaten, arrested, and killed.
• Digital Craig – First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drankwhile they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue-cheesedressing, and tuna from a can. They didn?t get tested for Diabetes and there are no Ultrasound photos of us in the womb.
• Web Links – Metacafe – Studio – If you are familiar with names like Adobe, Alias, Apple, Avid, Discreet, Eyeon, Media100, Newtek, Pinnacle, Sony and Quantel, you will be surprised to find out that there is an open source video editing and post-production program that is freely available

These are my links for March 24th:

• Christine – Mashups for social change? Apparently, you’re not the only one that thinks this is a good idea. Last week, 122 project ideas were submitted to the annual NetSquared Mashup Challenge. http://twitter.com/christine
• Fluid – Free Site Specific Browser for Mac OS X Leopard – Use Fluid to run YouTube, GTalk, Flickr, Basecamp, Delicious, .Mac webmail, or any other WebApp as a separate Mac desktop application.
• Dimdim: Free Live Meeting, Web Conference, Net Meeting, Online Meetings, Online Training, Desktop Sharing, Web Meeting, Free Web conferencing, eLearning, Presentation Software, Web x collaboration, Collaboration software – Dimdim is the world´s first free web meeting service based on the open source platform. Dimdim is a browser-based web 2.0 service that allows anybody to share their desktop, show slides, as well as talk, listen, chat, and broadcast via webcam. Dimdim´s
• AskMen.com – Hottest women in tech – 10. Wendy Cheng 9. Blair Butler 8. Kristen Holt 7. Amanda Congdon 6. Veronica Belmont 5. Cali Lewis 4. Olivia Munn 3. Jessica Chobot 2. Morgan Webb 1. Amber MacArthur
• Welcome to GeekyMomma’s Blog: I’d Like To Thank My Producers, Mom & Dad! – In a follow-up post, I encouraged others outside our Twitter edtech network to join and today, Paul Terry Walhus (twitter @springnet) contacted me because he not only wanted to duplicate the concept for his SXSW network but he wanted to interview me (ME!,
• Tasty Blog Snack – Justine Ezarik’s blog. submitted on springnet’s bookmarks on del.icio.us on her birthday. March 23, 2008 she turned 24.
• gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards” – When I was last in San Francisco a few weeks ago, my good friend, Shel Israel interviewed me, as part of his new FastCompany.com gig. We talked about “Social Objects”, with a heavy emphasis on “Social Markers”.
• Global Neighbourhoods – People everywhere, equipped with cameras and access are posting what they see, for a few friends or the entire world. It is the reporting of everday people and places and incidents that will never be ready for prime time, but are useful and interesting to
• Free Video Chat and Video Conferencing from ooVoo – ooVoo is the next evolution in online communication ? a remarkably easy way to have a face-to-face video chat with friends, family or colleagues, no matter where they are in the world.

These are my links for March 23rd:

• SEO for your Wordpress Blog – This plugin is streamlined for some best practices for Wordpress SEO. While it gives you many options the defaults reflect the settings I recommend using.
• Twitter / zefrank – organizing colorwars on twitter
• Tabs Open Relative :: Firefox Add-ons – open tab next to current tab like in Internet Explorer
• Waking up in Amsterdam! – Friday, March 21st is Good Friday for Christians, but it?s also a sacred date for many other religions. People are celebrating Good Friday, Purim, Narouz, Eid Milad an Nabi, Small Holi, and Magha Puja. That doesn?t happen often.
• SheGeeks – SheGeeks is a social network and social media discussion blog. Here, you can find the latest news on new social networks and media tools, technology, twitter, friendfeed, rssmeme, linkriver, web applications, web services and more.
• Blog : LOL: The Life of Leo – To begin with we?re going to stream everything we do at TWiT, including the production of all our shows, live and interactive. To that end we?re adding considerable bandwidth: a T1 line and a cable modem to our existing DSL connectivity. We?ll Skype

These are my links for March 21st through March 22nd:

• Colorwar 2008 – boredom has set in after sxsw 2008
• Kiki?s Korner – Home for my rants, raves and general sharing of ‘insytes’. Some of you will enjoy this gathering of text – others will wonder how I tricked them into giving me a Blogger’s license…
• SXSWhere 2008 – BricaBox – where the sxsw parties are on a google map
• ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon — a blog by Tara Hunt – This 2.5 minute video is a result of feedback from our fans. We?ve received a number of requests from people who want their friends to use the micro-blogging service Twitter, but can?t seem to explain it well. We hope this video helps.
• Home > Tweeterboard : Conversation Analytics for Twitter – Conversation analytics, links and feeds from Twitter. filters out the sxsw related twitter feeds or “tweets”
• Item : How to Ramp Up (Or Filter Out) the SXSW Twitter Experience – First, how can new users tune in to the hottest conversations on Twitter quickly? Second, how can all the people not participating in the week long event still enjoy their beloved Twitter if it’s overrun with SXSW references?
• mDialog – Easy Hi-Res video sharing for iPhone, iPod, AppleTV, Mac and PC. – fast delivery of Hi-Res Video… has cc chapman interview of Robert Scoble at sxsw 2008
• Entrepreneur.com – Blog Network – Creating a Community – Once you?ve been, it?s almost as if you are part of a tribe. You are let in on secrets that not everyone knows about. Events that are off the grid suddenly open their doors to you. The events happening that are not listed on the official schedule have
• Socialthing! – Socialthing! is in private beta at the moment, but you can always request an invite by signing up for our mailing list!
• GoYoDeo! – GoYoDeo is a free video player that allows anyone to publish their personal video content ON TOP of their blogs, social networks and websites.
• Print I Think You’re Fat – Radical Honesty. The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough — a world without
• Technology News – BusinessWeek – BusinessWeek’s tech news, Sarah Lacy has a column here.
• PR 2.0 – Sarah Lacy on Sarah Lacy and the SXSW Mark Zuckerberg Keynote
• Darren Hoyt Dot Com » Blog – Premium Themes Should Advance the Wordpress Community
• Deep Blue Wordpress Theme Released – elegant theme created by Nathan Rice. Easy adsense integration
• Theres a Blog in my Soup! ? All about blogs, technical toys, video games, social media, and making money online. – feed your blog 39 ways
• TubeMogul.com – Online Video Distribution and Analytics – TubeMogul is a free service that provides a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed.
• Hak5.org – Darren Kitchen – Hak.5 is a video podcast for the hacker, modder and do-it-yourselfer. Hosted by Darren Kitchen and Wess Tobler on the 5th of each month, the show is a hybrid of technology and geek humor.

These are my links for March 20th:

• Mahalo Daily – Mahalo-Hahai – Mahalo Daily wiki with all of Veronica Belmont’s episodes in one place
• TerminArtors – Homepage – purports to be the largest online fine arts gallery with almost 30,000 paintings
• Social Media – they’ve got all the social media covered, Scoble, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, chrisbrogan.com, pr2.0, tantek, emily chang, horsepigcow and more
• Dropbox – Home – Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy. – Effortless sync Changes to your files are instantly synced across your computers.
• Alltop, all the top stories – These folks have everything covered. All the news. All the time. Blows away news.google.com said http://twitter.com/peterbrooke
• Bitstrips: How to Rawk SXSW – Veronica Belmonts panel at sxsw via bitstrips

These are my links for March 18th through March 19th:

• Ping.fm | Home – Ping.fm is a simple service that cuts out the middle man when it comes to posting to your social services such as Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr and Pownce with more being added soon.
• Bitstrips: ‘austincast has sxsw videos’ – my first bitstrip about sxsw videos I’m working on
• SXSW 2008 | IFC.com: film and music reviews, interviews, podcasts and coverage – The real deal at SXSW from Jim Shearer. For example – who had the best Bjorn Borg imitation? And the worst pizza? Independent Film Channel live coverage of SXSW
• Austin | groups.drupal.org – Welcome to the Austin Drupal Users Group! Our goal is to help each other, make new friends, pass along referrals, and learn new and interesting things about Drupal that will ensure our web sites are what we want them to be. Be sure to introduce yourself t
• NoodleScar.com – Bonny – or is it Bonnie – Pierzina played drums in the rock band performance with Veronica Belmont, Casey Mckinnon, and Leah Culver at Cedar Street Courtyard on 4th street, Austin, TX. Video at http://austincast.com/blog/
• Utterz – Get Started – With Utterz, you can instantly share your news by creating a multi-media posting in voice, video, picture and text, right from your mobile phone, or online. It’s fast and simple, free, and works with every phone, on every carrier.
• The Omni Group – OmniFocus – OmniFocus, from the creator?s of OmniOutliner and built with the input of leading GTD advocates. And love bloomed anew! Literally it does everything perfectly for me. I can view tasks by project or context. It has a clear processing mechanism. Tasks can
• Rudy Jahchan – Casey Mckinnon’s show producer and videographer writer, directory, coder, hack and a “walking media production house” shows include Galacticast, a Comicbook Orange, and Kitkast
• next new networks: our networks – barely political, viropop, fast lane, epic-fu with Zadi Diaz, and ultra kawaii

These are my links for March 13th through March 17th:

• PaidbyPixels.com – get paid advertising on a pixel map on your site
• SXSW on the ground – mobile experiment with pulver.tv … mobile personal broadcasting . . . you choose the questions and you pick the people to talk to
• FastCompany.TV – Scoble’s new venture after podtech… great time at sxsw in Austin w Scoble and friends at Salt Lick BBQ
• Twitter / Scobleizer – I am interviewing Amazon’s Werner Vogels on Thursday at under the radar conference. Scoble minute by minute on twitter
• DIY, lifehack, wondercon ? The gals play with fire! ? popSiren ? Revision3 – ReadyMade’s Jen Trolio shows Jessica how to make comic book stationary from scratch! Sarah gets organized online and Dr. Kiki teaches you how to make fire with sound waves. Neha Tiwari investigates what turned nerd into the cool kid at WonderCon and Heath
• Office Live Workspace vs Google Docs: Feature-by-Feature Comparison – ReadWriteWeb – Office Live Workspace vs Google Docs: Feature-by-Feature Comparison
• Common Craft – Explanations In Plain English – twitter for dumies
• Spence – This is the video diary and stand-up comedy show of Ewan Spence.

These are my links for March 11th through March 12th:

• YouTube – Casey Mckinnon, Veronic Belmont, Leah Culver rock sxsw – Casey Mckinnon, Veronica Belmont, Leah Culver rock sxsw
• QIK | Streaming video right from your phone – live streaming from Nokia n series phones
• SXSW Breakout App of 2008: What Will it Be? – ReadWriteWeb – SXSW extravaganza in Austin has been an application king maker for the last two years at least; Google’s Dodgeball blew up there in 2006 and Twitter went from elite-chic to massively popular there in 2007. Who’s it going to be in 2008?
• The Social – CNET News.com – Caroline McCarthy’s sxsw blog . . . see also my video of Caroline performing as a rock star at Austin’s Cedar Street Courtyard along with Leah Culver, Zadi Diaz, Veronica Belmont and Casey Mckinnon
• Expo TV | video product reviews and consumer reports from buying experts like you! – I interviewed Daphne Kwon, CEO at sxsw after her panel. 15 W 18th St, 10th floor, NY, NY 10011 dkown@expotv.com

These are my links for March 7th through March 8th:

• QIK | Streaming video right from your phone – ijustine turned me on to this last night at sxsw interactive in ausitn… she’s been raving about it
• Our Work | Elevator Up – Recent Projects * Ascribe – Collaborative Portfolio Manager NEW * Roov NEW * Holland Area Arts Council – Secure member sign up * Holland Sentinel – Drupal Training * DBSA – Facing Us * Mast Heating & Cooling * Metro Health – D
• Radiant CMS – very basic cms with nice user interface recommded by Aaron Schaap.
• Interview with Dan ? Dan Fost – short interview
• Ensight – Jeremy Wright?s Personal Blog – personal blog

These are my links for March 6th:

• A Photo A Day – is a personal project of mine to keep me motivated over the next year to shoot more and publish more. Not everything here will be new but it will all be shot by me. More of my work can be found at JPG Magazine or my SmugMug Galleries.
• WWTelescope – The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe.
• A Spoonful of Hip-Hop Helps The Guilt Go Down « Scott Robbin – Scott Robbin is a web developer, musician, photographer, bicyclist and general tinkerer. He currently lives in Chicago, Illinois where he is self-unemployed as a freelance programmer for the Internets.
• Scott Robbin – Songza.com is a side-project that I worked on with friend and Humanized co-worker, Aza Raskin. Songza lets you search for a song that’s stuck in your head, play it, and even share with your friends.
• walkah | striving towards mediocrity – drupal user blog
• www.kribaby.com – I think that there are still other opportunities for marketing companies to leverage Social Media. It isn’t just to use social media as a feedback tool – that is but one of the many marketing objectives that may cause a company to engage in a social media
• Politweets – When Twitter gets political – when twitter gets political … looks like Obama won the Texas caucuses and Hillary raised $4 mil today
• Doug March » Design, Development and Music Intelligence – With today being Super Tuesday, two days after Super Sunday and the same day as Mardi Gras we thought it would be good to make some updates to politweets.
• Tables Turned – Audibot? is an Linux-based audio device that Tables Turned distributes to radio stations and music venues. Connect it to an audio source and it automatically records, formats, and uploads MP3 recordings to any website.
• Wordpress Themes – wordpress themes
• Surf*Mind*Musings – industry is abuzz with a new Google Split test that offers a site search box underneath the first result, for a small set of navigational queries. The blogdom analysis has been rather shallow of this feature, so let me break it down for you.
• me.dm – my centralized webmedium / philip “dm” campbell. – heading to sxsw in austin,tx. Be sure to hook up to chat. I want to interview you. whoever you are.
• SCHED: SXSW 2008: springnet’s schedule – my schedule for sxsw
• SCHED: SXSW 2008: melkirk’s schedule – melkirk’s sxsw schedule
• Perfect Porridge ? Music, Minneapolis, Mutiny – Here?s Tristan Prettyman?s cover of the song ?New Soul.? You?ll probably recognize it from the Macbook Air commercial.
• Pandora Radio – Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music – plays only the music you like…. new kind of web radio station
• ELASTRA – The Infinite Database – ELASTRA is the world’s first infinitely scalable solution for running standard relational databases in an on-demand computing cloud. ELASTRA’s exclusive, high-performance S3DFS storage technologies enable a standard RDBMS to be deployed on Amazon’s Elasti
• Qipit Documents – Qipit capture it. share it. qipit. * My Docs * Let Us Know * Help * Sign Out
• Tom Conrad – And then the blogosphere picked it up. The first accounts I read sounded like ?HUGE BLOWUP AT GNOMEDEX!!!? Strange, I thought ? my experience of the event was quite different: it was a non-event for me.
• Todd Earwood – guy who likes snailmail and is on twitter
• Daily Idea – There are many schools of thought when it comes to getting rich. And our cracked staff of researchers at The Daily Idea flunked out of four of them. But they?re still qualified to survey the landscape of trust fund babies, over-paid celebs and lotto win
• Make Money Blogging – The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last three years from blogging. I?ve ranked them from highest to lowest.
• Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging – ProBlogger – Here?s a quick AdSense tip that could make you some good money. AdSense offers two rectangle ad unit sizes – 300×250 pixels and 336×280 pixels.
• Russell Wilson – Dexo Design – Interface Design, Interaction Design, and Usability – this guy has more social networks that anyone I know. Austin guy.
• Daniel Morrison – I founded Collective Idea to build intriguing software. I can usually be found working in a local coffee shop, or on my front porch.
• mezzoblue § Home – So here’s a not-so-hypothetical question I’d like to put out there: as a designer what are the saleable products one might go about creating?
• Vara Software : ScreenFlow – excellent screencasting software for Mac that combines video and screen capture
• Apple Mail 3.0 (Leopard) – how to set up gmail imap on mac leopard mail

These are my links for March 5th:

• Veronica Belmont – daily blog of the mahalo daily rock star
• Overheard, rocking out at SXSW – Veronica Belmont – If you missed my Rock Band skills at the Jonathan Coulton show, fear not! Casey McKinnon has assembled a super group of female talent to rock SXSW this year! Here are the details: Vocals – Casey McKinnon Bass – Leah Culver Drums – Bonny Pierzina Guitar -
• Chris Brogan – MyBlogLog – What percentage of your day is email, phone, and msgng? SXSW: what are you most looking forward to doing there? Who are you hoping to see?
• chrisbrogan’s bookmarks on del.icio.us – remarkably relevant bookmarks on business, software, art, design, learning, linux, web 2.0, gtd, howto, research, acme, illustration, entrepreneur, podcasting, dly, bsmin, podcast, graphics, bizinbox, blogs, wordpress, blog, mp3, photos, rss, free, etc.
• [chrisbrogan.com] – The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests.
• Voodoo Ventures – Idea Fuel Blog – ?ve got 99 friends on Facebook but I hear from Jason Calacanis more than anyone. He has turned Facebook into a marketing platform for his human-powered search engine, Mahalo. And he doesn?t pay Facebook a dime for this primo branding opportunity.
• Blueroot Studios An Experiment – Mashable has a great roundup of online calendars and calendar resources that are available right now. The usual suspects are there along with some lesser-known calendars. Of course we all know who the leader is still (at least until Yahoo releases their
• Pete Hopkins, Grogmaster – Just a quick note that the same principals I used a few weeks ago to add XFN support to Blogger?s Link List work just fine when applied to the new Blog List blogroll page element, available on Blogger in draft. I?ve just done this, so everyone in ther
• Future of Real Estate Marketing – Say what you like about their business model, Redfin?s real estate search tools are world class and only keep getting better.It?s why it was the only national real estate broker (I defined ?national? as anyone having operations that spanned both c
• Rohdesign Podcast 03 – SXSW Interactive Edition – podcast about sxsw
• SMtv: INFO – sxsw participant
• Geek Entertainment TV – It?s a hard life being most excellent at most video games, but Johnathan Wendel aka Fatal1ty doesn?t shy away from the challenge. So what does happen in a typical day of a professional video game player?
• velda.org 2.0 – one of the best contact pages I’ve seen on the web. sxsw’er
• Blog : Texas Startup Blog – Techcrunch is reporting Demand Media bought Austin-based Pluck for $75MM cash. Frankly, I am fairly surprised. I first wrote about Pluck after sitting on a panel at the McCombs School of Business (UT @ Austin)