There are lots of next-big-things at South by Southwest Interactive, the tech-tinged festival that is consuming Austin this weekend. But several stood out in a whirlwind of parties, panels, meets-and-greets, barbecue joints, beer halls and luxury buses that doubled as portable video studios. And that was the just the first day.
Peeling open my dependable notebook — a paper one, not an iPad — I furiously jotted down the attention-grabbing apps and ideas that made me stop in my tracks, albeit temporarily.
In no particular order, what tickled my fancy at SXSWi after a wild Saturday (and early Sunday morning):
— Thanks to Bizzy , a snazzy new iPhone and Android app, I ended up at a mouth-watering lunch at Artz Rib House. The app is a check-out service that gives you a personalized rundown of local restaurants that meet your particular tastes.
"We organize tons of data around you," says Gadi Shamia, founder and president of Bizzy. "We do leg work for the user."
With the tap of an icon, Bizzy let our group of four find the rib house in about 20 seconds, based on the recommendations of other users with similar tastes to Ryan Kuder, Bizzy's vice president of marketing.
The free app is part discovery tool, part geo-location, and it requires a handful of answers to questions about one's preferences in foods.
— Group texting was all the buzz heading into SXSW, and the companies generating the most noise were GroupMe and a long line of competitors: Beluga (recently acquired by Facebook), Yobongo , PingChat and Kik .
This new wave of startups let multiple people participate in the same conversation — be it chat or conference call — on a mobile phone. At its party at the funky Belmont bar late Friday, Caleb Elston, one of the founders of Yobongo, said the emergence of so many services underscores the hunger for real-time group chat, as more smartphone users rely on their hand-held devices to work, play, shop and do transactions.
"You want to know what your friends and others are up to, if you make so many of these decisions," he said. "It's a natural extension of human interaction."
— Off the beaten track: In our chance encounters with interesting folks, we came across two quirky but practical sites. Lingo24 , based in Edinburgh, offers translation and localization services for foreign language content on the Internet. Your Garden Show , we are not kidding, is a social network for gardeners.
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