pboyd04/FlickrIs there still doubt that we are in troubled economic times? Yesterday two sizable Austin employers announced that they would be laying off staff. Gaming studio NCSoft cut 21 product development positions. This after the announcement earlier this week that Midway Games fired 90 workers from their Austin studio. Locally-based Whole Foods is firing 49 of its corporate staffers as part of cost-cutting measures. This week hasn't been the greatest for the business, as news......

Is there anything the iPhone can't do? The latest useful tool for Austin iPhone-iacs is Me2Bus, which lets you track Austin Capital Metro buses....

Photos of the line at the AT&T at 5th and Lamar early this morning (and the results of the wait) taken by KEB. It seems that if you were able to buy a 3G iPhone today or perhaps attempted to upgrade the apps for your "old" iPhone, you might have come across some issues....

Man who escaped Fayette County jail over the weekend found in Houston. APD chief fired a detective today for insubordination (keeping up financial investigations when he had been told to stop). This sort of thing seems to work better on TV. Three men from Central Texas are sentenced to two years in prison for identity theft after cashing fake checks. Grand jury rules that the Pasadena man who shot the two men robbing his neighbor's house shouldn't be charged. District Judge rules that Democrat Bill Dingus can run against current State Speaker of the House Craddick for his seat....

For the second time in two months, Austin Ventures has committed $50 million toward the creation of an online startup company. ...

Image from WikipediaA New York judge ruled that Dell and its financial services unit falsely advertised financing and warranty terms to customers. In an opinion released Tuesday, State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Teresi said that Dell and Dell Financial Services LP engaged in deceptive business practices, fraud, false advertising and abusive debt collection. "Dell has engaged in repeated misleading, deceptive and unlawful business conduct, including false and deceptive advertising of financing promotions and the terms......

imageafterWhile some Austinites eagerly await the impending arrival of a 3G iPhone, others are merely trying to get online using whatever technology they can find -- take, for example, the kind-hearted students at McCallum High School who are trying to assemble refurbished computers for their classmates. These 'part time students, part time environmentalists' are holding a community-wide electronics recycling drive at the school this Saturday, May 17th. They'll be accepting all electronics, including computers, televisions,......

Photo by tobiaseigen on flickrLocal venture capital firm Austin Ventures is contributing up to $50 million to create a company that will build a social networking platform for corporations. Jeffrey Dachis, who led Razorfish during its reign as one of the original digital services firms, will be the chairman and chief executive officer of the new company, which will be based in Austin. Today's announcement from Austin Ventures says that the newly formed company will......

Though still in the process of axeing nearly 9,000 of its current employees, Dell is rumored to be entertaining thoughts of purchasing RadioShack....

Advanced Micro Devices, the microprocessor maker with about 2,600 employees in Austin, announced today that it will cut 10 percent of its worldwide workforce before the end of the third quarter....

SXSW has announced via official mailing that there are a few bands confirmed for the festival aside from those we've mentioned already: R.E.M., My Morning Jacket, Daniel Lanois, The Black Keys, The Kills, My Brightest Diamond, Pato Banton, Vampire Weekend, Joe Lean + The Jing Jang Jong, Jens Lekman, Sia, $olal, Tech N9ne, and Mala Rodriguez have received the official nod. A couple of those names will look familiar to those of you following our ongoing coverage, but the big names are news to us as well. ...

Woman who had worked as pharmacist for the CVS on Riverside had fake documents. 60 soldiers who had been serving in Iraq for over a year return home to Ft. Hood for the holidays. Look what our city might be gifted: a 60-foot saxophone sculpture!...

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......

Waller Creek Design Workshop. Image from City of Austin News Austin Music Commission's Town Hall Meeting Notes AMD Sued Over Birth Defects Plant a Tree for Freedom Waller Creek Design and Vision Workshop At This Rate, We're Having Our Next Happy Hour in Cancun Pangaea: It's For Real, Y'all UT Biologists Propose Biodiversity Institute Save BookWoman! Austin Music Commission Considering Plan to Stop the Rock They've Got the Lasers... Now All You Need is......

Photo by Ken Mau on flickr#15 Texas (8-2) vs. Texas Tech (7-3) Time: 2:30 pm, Saturday, Nov. 10 Location: Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium TV: ABC Radio: KVET (98.1 FM, 1300 AM) Critics complained early in the season that the Texas Longhorns had no "identity". Were they a passing team that threw it all over the field? A run-first team that ground you into the dirt? A blitzing, hard-hitting defense? Over the last two games,......

Soon, you too could be like these dudesDabblers in diabolical death-ray design and general gadget geeks will soon have another outlet—as though Maker Faire and Dorkbot weren't enough—to satiate their craving for homemade mechanical wizardry. Hailed as a "paradise for tech tinkerers" and created by one of the brains behind MythBusters, TechShop launched in the Silicon Valley a little over a year ago, and now has plans to open a franchise in Austin. The open-access......

#14 Texas (7-2) vs. Oklahoma State (5-3) Time: 2:30 pm, Saturday, Nov. 3 Location: Boone Pickens Stadium, Stillwater, Oklahoma TV: ABC Radio: KVET (98.1 FM, 1300 AM) With three games remaining in the regular season, the Texas Longhorns are as much as a mystery as they were before the season started. Currently ranked No. 14 in the country with games remaining against unranked teams (Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M), the Longhorns seem......

The Texas Tech vs. Texas A&M football game has been a heated rivalry in recent years. This year's game now has taken on an added fervor after a Tech student started selling a T-shirt with the likeness of Michael Vick hanging A&M's dog mascot. A take-off on the Aggies' slogan "Gig 'em", the shirts say "Vick 'Em" and show a cartoon of football player wearing Michael Vick's No. 7 jersey holding a rope with......

The University of Texas raised $26 million in athletic donations in 2006, putting it 16th among all U.S. universities. A study by The Chronicle of Higher Education found that money for athletics accounts for more than one-quarter of all contributions to some universities. The Chronicle survey reported that the country's largest athletic departments and booster clubs raised more than $1.2 billion in 2006 and 2007. The University of Texas wasn't the top athletic fund-raiser in......

A former lawyer at the Texas Secretary of State's Office sues after being fired in 2005 for making "embarrassing" statements about Karl Rove's Texas residency status In yet another sign of Austin's ongoing transformation, the Statesman debuts its own gossip/society column, helmed by entertainment editor Michael Barnes Things in Crawford, Texas quiet down now that no one cares to visit (or protest) TxDOT is rolling out a fancy new $9 million ad campaign to......

They think they won't find those miners in Utah. Historical irony?: Israel rejects hundreds of African refugees, some from Darfur, calling their flight "economically" motivated. Virginia Tech just can't catch a break. Corporate PR sticks its long scalpel into Wikipedia. At 2:37 pm, we systematically curl up underneath our desks for ten minutes. Now we come to find out that, dammit, that's only natcheral. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is going to appear in the......

ACL Previews Austinist Launches Dedicated ACL Page! Preview: Manchester Orchestra and Patterson Hood Preview: Ian Ball and the Little Ones Interview: Paolo Nutini ACL Band Clash, Round 2: The Killers Vs. Björk Weekly Features Tales Of Mere Existence Hots On #9: Sound Off New Release Tuesday: Frisell's Floratone The Argyle Academy New Movie Releases: The Invasion, Superbad, Death at a Funeral, and More Truesday: Friesday The Laurie Show News, Features, and More Travis County......

Students at Trimble Tech High School in Fort Worth picketed their school district headquarters yesterday, in protest of a decision to prevent seniors who'd failed the TAKS exam from participating in commencement exercises. Screen capture from WFAA-TV......

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we reported that Tom "The Bugman" Delay had gone on the Charlie Rose Show and stated categorically that students should be allowed to carry guns on college campuses to protect themselves from Virginia Tech-esque scenarios? Remember how most of us laughed and laughed, writing off Mr. Delay's suggestion as just "more of the same" from another silly extremist? Well, stop laughing and put on your thinking caps; this......

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay......

Despite being removed from office, Tom DeLay is up to his old tricks: comparing Democrats to Nazis; comparing himself to the Duke students falsely accused of rape; proclaiming that if the liberals can take down Don Imus, the conservatives can get Rosie O’Donnell off the air; and now this, the most egregious of his statements. In what is one of the most disturbing things we have heard in the wake of the shootings at Virginia......

In response to yesterday's killings on the campus of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, The Univeristy of Texas will darken its tower starting tonight through Thursday, April 19. All flags on campus will also be lowered to half-staff through Sunday, April 22. In addition, UT Student Government is currently planning a candle-light vigil to take place on Monday, April 23. Although the time is yet to be determined, plan on it starting sometime......

Despite lackluster sales growth and a stock price that plummeted nearly 40% last year, Whole Foods Market was again rated highly among Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For. The annual rankings puts the organic food mecca in fifth place overall, and number two among large companies. Tech firm National Instruments was the only other Austin-based company making it onto Fortune's list, coming in at 86th place. Meanwhile, you have until this Sunday to......

The first-ever Fun Fun Fun Fest is this Friday, December 1st, at Waterloo Park. Over two dozen great acts are on the bill, including Spoon, Peaches, The Black Angels, Prefuse 73, and DJ Mel. Tickets are $20, and can be purchased online. Quintron and Miss Pussycat perform on the Austin Fuzion Stage/Tent at 6:50 p.m. -- The Editors How is the tour going for you so far? Great... even though we have broken our......

No one has had their fame stripped away from them in such short order as UT quarterback, Colt McCoy. The red-shirt freshman out of Tuscola, Texas had the enormously unfortunate job of replacing the most famous (and entertaining) Texas football athlete of the modern era--Vince Young. As that January 4th hangover started to wear off, Texas fans were uncertain as to who would replace VY during the preseason, McCoy or true freshman Jevan Snead.......