Results tagged “internet”

Like every other newspaper trying to stay solvent in the face of declining advertising sales, the Austin American-Statesman is actively thinking outside the proverbial box, today quietly unveiling its latest revenue stream: Twitter ads.

The Wall Street Journal reports that engineers at Dell are developing a mobile device that would access the Web, but doesn't work as a phone.

Many folks on Twitter are reporting that Gmail and assorted Google services are currently down for them. We're pulling up ours ok, but an informal survey shows that many around downtown (@bnl771), on UT campus (@anorwood), or just around town (@mavsmom) are experiencing errors. The problem seems to be hit or miss, as @recoveringlazy and @mavsmom aren't seeing any issues. In other internet news, there's a Woot-Off going on right now.

After much resistance from the four cities where the download cap trials were to take place, Time Warner and NY Sen. Chuck Schumer announced today that the planned trials are off -- for now.

Something to start planning for: Time Warner Cable is going to set up tiered pricing for internet subscribers in Austin and San Antonio very soon. A Time Warner spokesman told the Statesman's Omar Gallaga that this new pricing plan will go into effect this summer. This means that if you watch a lot of streaming video or download a lot of music, your cable bill is going to increase. If you don't, perhaps your bill will remain the same as it is, but you will be charged extra if your data usage goes over your set limit. The only good news here may be for Grande, who will likely get some new business from this. [Digital Savant]

Neil Young sang that "the same thing that makes you live can kill you in the end." It’s a sentiment I return to again and again—most often when reflecting on failed romances, but also regarding stuff like work. Lately, Neil’s quote has been cropping up when I try to wrap my pretty little very popular head around the concept of the big, bad, beautiful, beastly thing we call the Internet, which has brought so many good things but also led to all sorts of fucked-up-edness.

The deadline for submissions is midnight on January 9. [Texas Social Media Awards]

Austin the most "digitally-savvy" city in the nation? At least 12% of residents buy purchases off the internet. Fire at Northwest Austin home leaves a woman critically injured. Someone drove a Jeep into a house off of E. 12th near Pleasant Valley last night. Allstate Insurance will pay its Texas customers $71 million in refunds, credits and rate reductions for homeowner policies after a settlement with the state.

Unicorn’s site will be an ad-supported entertainment site offering “free, unlimited access” to audio and video content, but there’s more to it: Rather than focusing on sheer volume of music, as MySpace seems to intend, it looks like Unicorn will raise the bar by focusing on two primary goals: (1) Offering consistent, high-definition content to customers, and (2) allowing emerging artists to showcase their work in a more attractive, efficient and profitable way.

Now in its sixth week, the Writers Guild of America strike is still going strong. And despite Alec Baldwin's hilarious/bizarre advice and Michael Eisner's name-calling, WGA members show few signs of giving in any time soon. Though the effects of the strike are most evident in places like Los Angeles and New York City, you may be surprised to learn that there are around 100 WGA members living here in Austin.

City Council Member Lee Leffingwell and the City of Austin seek resident and visitor input alike for a major City of Austin website redesign via the Austin Go survey. Up until January 4th, you can tell the gub'ment just how you'd like their new-fangled webhighwaytubes to assist you by filling out the online survey on such topics as how you use the City of Austin site, how you'd like to see it improved, and how you rate redesign areas such as navigation, timeliness and accuracy of the online information the city provides, and security of personal information.

This is a good example of poor judgment.The students of Penn State University should have taken a note from their counterparts at Tarleton State University when picking out this year's Halloween costumes. Even more idiotic than their costume idea was their decision to post the resulting pictures on Facebook. Photos of two Penn State students donning Virginia Tech t-shirts, covered with bullet holes and fake blood, were put up on Facebook and quickly spread over...

It’s list-making season – for children who believe in Santa, music writers, etc – and there are three rap albums that you are bound to see wherever it is that you see lists: Jay-Z’s American Gangster, Kanye West’s Graduate, and Lil’ Wayne’s Da Drought 3. These artists all create good music and lots of people purchased and enjoyed all three of these works. Lil’ Wayne, in particular, may have produced the two most gifted hours...

Between now and January, New Release Tuesday will focus on 2007 reflections and music news related to both this year's releases and 2008's potential. The standard NRT posts will resume in 2008. As 2007 winds down, most of the Internet begins to consider their favorite releases of the last twelve months. Austinist is no different: our top albums of 2007 (a collective list based on all the writers' top picks) is in the works....

*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors Every city goes through its own little evolution. Not always pretty, not always clean, but always in the process of becoming. Our little oasis is no different. There is a change upon us, and it is high time we grabbed the wheel and started to do some stunt steerin’. You know, to...

You wouldn’t necessarily think the squeaky-clean world of power-pop and dirty, dirty metal have a great deal in common, but they do share a few similarities other than loud guitars. Writers and fans of metal often rate metal in terms of its “heaviness,” as if how sludgy, powerful, hard, or just “metal” an artist is works as a sure-fire way to judge their output. Even when picking and choosing between different types of metal, the...

Frank Warren appears to be a typical, soft-spoken family man from Maryland. But on the internet, Warren, like a priest, accepts confessions. Hundreds of anonymous, artistically-rendered secrets are sent to him on postcards every day. He reads each one, carefully selecting and displaying a handful of them on his blog, PostSecret, every Sunday. What was originally intended as a one-off art project has grown into not only a website boasting over a million hits a...

Austinites are at the forefront of the blogging community, according to a new report published by a leading market research firm. Scarborough Research's new survey found that Austin tops other tech-heavy cities—Portland, San Francisco and Seattle rounded out the top four—when it comes to folks who either read or contribute to a blog. Fully fifteen percent of adults in Austin interact with blogs in some fashion; the research firm attributes this to both the tech...

Contrary to popular opinion, feminism and romance are not incompatible and feminism may actually improve the quality of heterosexual relationships. The Statesman reports that the ACLU and LULAC have complained about the location of the new municipal court. US House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly to renew the ban on taxing Internet access — but only for 4 years, not permanently. MySpace will offer members of its popular social network free Internet phone calls...

First things first: we must differentiate between the chutzpah of a band at Radiohead's level of critical distinction and popularity initially releasing their album for donation and making the most revolutionary music industry statement since the dawn of the Internet Age... (big breath) ...and the chutzpah it takes to make truly ground-breaking musical statements. In Rainbows does not employ the latter. Still, one leaves with the impression that the boys from Oxford are convinced that,...

Admit it: sometimes you have those random Tuesday nights when you might be perfectly happy knocking back a few rounds with Mister 6'3" 18-to-89-year-old White/Asian/Hispanic Full-Figured Agnostic Non-Smoker. With a high school diploma.One of the internet's biggest dating sites is taking its free matchmaking services somewhere you wouldn't expect: offline. The creators of OkCupid, which published those surprising survey results about Austin singles back in August, today unveiled a new website called CrazyBlindDate.com. The idea's...

What, exactly, is postmodernism? We ask ourselves this question whenever the work of a postmodern playwright makes the stage in Austin. Charles L. Mee is one such playwright. Did you know that he encourages writers to "pillage [my] plays as I have pillaged the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet, and build your own, entirely new, piece..."?...

The Austin Museum of Digital Art (AMODA) is bringing back its monthly Digital Showcase tomorrow night at Club DeVille, and, as usual, they've managed to assemble an impressive roster of electronic musicians and visual artists. Saturday's headliner is New York City's DJ /rupture, aka Jace Clayton. A gifted musician and producer, Rupture has enjoyed a prolific career that's run the gamut from releasing mix albums and performing with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (as a turntable...

Some of the city’s underexposed and underappreciated artists have come together for a special show opening Saturday at Gallery Lombardi. The offbeat Surprise Me includes a mixed bag of contemporary drawings, photos, sounds, videos, mixed media paintings and fiber art. Local artist Josh Rios helped organize the show and called on a few of friends to join him — Ryan Lauderdale, Rachel Cook and Corkey Sinks. Rios recently answered a few questions for Austinist about...

[This review courtesy of new Austinist contributor Anna Hanks! -Ed.] As much as we'd like to change a few things about our first time, we regret we’ll never be able to repeat the experience. We also can’t change history, so catching the currently playing, slick incarnation of the Rude Mechanicals' Get Your War On also wasn't our first time. (We reviewed the show last January as well.) Directed by Shawn Sides, Get Your War...

Narrowing down the vast selection of tacos found in Austin is a near-impossible feat … and claiming to be experts on the Tex-Mex folds is an assertion worthy of an internet ass-kicking. But we have eaten our fair share of breakfast tacos, sport tongues trained for tortilla-tasting, and feel pretty much obligated to share our worthy opinions with alla y’all. (And we’re ready for whatever verbal lashings come our way.) With that, we give...

In 2005, Bloc Party released their debut album Silent Alarm, a glorious highlight of the postpunk revival that the New York Times described as "angsty and urgent, with jagged guitars and sexy dance-punk drums." Unlike many of their British rock contemporaries, the band have aggressively toured America in the interim, stopping in Austin for both SXSW and ACL Fest in 2005 and 2007 and at Stubb's in 2006. This approach may help explain why...

Big surprise: Obama doesn't care much for "Obama Girl". Hurricane Dean was a category 5 when it hit Mexico, but settled down to a category 3. The "Daily Show" tries to recapture its cultural relevance by really and truly sending a correspondent to Iraq. Gaddafi's son wants a free media (among other reforms) in Libya. The gal who works on your nails definitely deserves a bigger tip. Rumor is Google is investing in Chinese...

What's that, you say? DJs don't release albums? Uh, have you ever heard of Girl Talk? The DJ Kicks series? The prolific DJ Shadow? It happens. A lot. And tomorrow night, it's happening at Beauty Bar: Austin's Car Stereo (Wars) will release its first ever LP, The Bandit, to the accompanying sounds of cacophonous rockers White Denim, found-sounds rockers Single Frame, and guest DJ sets by Team Fabrication, Josh Mills (of Clap! Clap!), and Terry...

Last week, Paige sent me a link to this story in Spin magazine, which parses the subject of leaked recordings and their effect on album sales (verdict--noncommittal). The story recounts Jack White's infamous tirade toward a Chicago DJ over the broadcast of White's album prior to the album's release, including his priceless appraisal of early album listens as "messing up the entire music business." It's a good article with lots of fascinating industry details, but...