South by Southwest (SXSW: web, twitter) is like a rave party for tech, music and film but startups are the real stars (in particular of the “interactive” segment of SXSW). Twitter (2007) and Foursquare (2009) rose to fame there, as several other startups did over the last few years.

The SXSW Accelerator is a competition that can open the door to stardom and investment for YOUR tech or music startup!

IMPORTANT: Entry Deadline Is Friday, November 18

The SXSW Accelerator in brief:

Take advantage of the opportunity to showcase your emerging technology product or service in front of industry leaders by participating in the 2012 SXSW Accelerator. This event takes place on March 12 and 13 as a part of the SXSW Interactive Festival, during which you can improve your product launch, attract venture capitalists, polish your elevator pitch, receive media exposure, build brand awareness, network, socialize and experience all that SXSW Interactive has to offer. The deadline to register is Friday, November 18, less than a few months away, so visit http://sxsw.com/interactive/accelerator/enter.

The dynamics of the competition are quite simple. The SXSW Accelerator happens on March 12-14 , when the finalist startups will pitch their tech products to a roster of selected judges. Past judges have included Chris Hughes of Facebook and Jumo, Paul Graham of Y Combinator, Craig Newmark of Craiglist, Robert Scoble of Rackspace and Scobleizer, Jeff Pulver of 140 Conference and other tech starts.

There are a few conditions to apply being the main ones the following:

1. A company’s product / service must have launched no earlier than March, 13, 2011.
2. A company’s product / service must not be launched after June 13, 2012.
3. Companies will be allowed to submit only one product / services to the SXSW Accelerator event. Companies who submit more than one product / services will not be eligible to participate in the SXSW Accelerator event.
4. Founders of the applying startup must retain some portion of ownership in the company to be eligible to participate.
5. Must not have raised over five million in funds from combined funding sources.

Now, there is a non-refundable application fee of $175, which is required from all applicants who would like to be considered for participation in the event (applying does not make you a finalist of the competition).

Applicants must be within one of the six categories:

1. Entertainment Technologies – This category pertains to applications and technologies for film, music, television, and gaming, as well as new and hybrid forms of entertainment that are reinventing the ways in which we relax, unwind, and have fun
2. Mobile Technologies – This category pertains to applications and those technologies related to that which allows users to connect by portable devices such as tablets, phones and other connected devices.
3. Innovative Web Technologies – This category pertains to applications and technologies that have the ambition to change the Web as we know it. Right now we’re seeing lots of innovation in real-time search, augmented reality, the “Web Wide World”, artificial intelligence and the Semantic Web, recommendations technologies, personalization technologies, and “big data”. But that’s just the beginning
4. Social Media and Social Networking Technologies – This category pertains to applications and technologies that help people connect. With this category we’re looking for new and interesting uses, cases, as well as technologies that push the boundaries of how we find, follow and share information with others
5. Health Technologies - This category is about patient-centric health applications and technologies that connect patients, families, physicians, pharmacists, care providers (hospital, clinics) and benefit providers-aka the care team-to share timely, relevant health data and drive better outcomes at affordable and sustainable cost levels.
6. News-Related Technologies – This category pertains to applications and technologies to support the dissemination of news and information for communities, both on the content side or on the underlying business model side (for example advertising). This could include technologies related to data, text, documents, mapping, engagement, among other areas.

Disclaimer: I’m an advisor of the 2012 SXSW Accelerator. I do get a complimentary ticket to participate of SXSW 2012 but I receive no other kind of economic compensation and I don’t have any role in the selection or voting of the finalists. Contact me if you need more information about the competition.

SlideShare is now completely in HTML5

Almost one year ago Slideshare was announcing the development of iPad and Iphone apps and just today it sort of backtracked on that decision by announcing that the whole website has been ported away from Flash and to HTML5, so that it will be usable from desktops and ANY mobile device alike (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, etc). The website is active now and all the backlog of presentations already available on SlideShare should have been automatically updated to be compatible with HTML5 by the end of the year.

For more details on SlideShare’s move to HTML5 you can read about it on GigaOm, TechCrunch and many others.

The reason? Easy, they realized that producing apps for all available platforms is a no go, especially if you have limited engineering resources (and who hasn’t?). This decision comes hand in hand with a general view in tech circles that proprietary Apps will not be the future of mobile (although it will still have a healthy life for a few more years). For a well argumented essay on why companies should/will move out of Apps and into mobile sites you can read this article by frog‘s Creative Director Scott Jenson: Mobile Apps Must Die

The Conference Basics Tribune is a free newsletter specifically made for event organizers -> It includes a selection of articles, tips, recommended mobile apps, books and featured event organizers. Want to see how the newsletter looks like? Here’s an example. Sing-up for the newsletter.

F8 (web), Facebook’s developer conference, took place today in San Francisco but also all over the world through live streaming… which accounted for 100,000+ simultaneous viewers. Now if you compare that with TV, it does not seem that much but for a tech conference (or any kind of conference for that matter)… that’s huge!

I’m not sure how many people followed Steve Job’s Apple keynotes and in any case, Apple does not do live streaming but distribute the video hours later it has actually happend.

More than 100,000 following Facebook's live streaming

On a side note, and talking about Apple, Mark Zuckerberg borrowed several pages from Steve Job’s presentation skill. Though Zuckerberg’s delivery as a speaker was very good, at points it felt a bit embarrassing to hear the same expressions and see the same modisms as Apple’s ex CEO. On Twitter there was a recurring joke saying something like “and now Zuck is going to announce… one more thing.”

Later this week the first edition of The Conference Basics Tribune (A.K.A. the newsletter) will see the light of day.

You can sign up for the newsletter here.

It will share on a regular basis (but not more than once a month, I promise) a selection of the most relevant articles and resources for conference organizers such as:

• selected articles from Conference Basics and relevant articles from around the web
• apps (mobile, web, software) to make make your event related work run smoother
• a list of upcoming and noteworthy events
• a featured event organizer and why he/she matters
• book recommendations
• links to great speaker videos

Sign up now to the newsletter!

This feature has been a big request from event organizers to Foursquare: let us create events within a venue! (It’s been a basic feature in other geolocation services like Gowalla). Users have found workarounds which were far from perfect like creating an event as a venue, but some attendees would check-in to the “event-venue” and others to the real venue which, apart from being far from ideal, it also littered Foursquare’s database with temporary gigs that never again would be used.

Now, when you check in to a place with one of those things happening, you’ll be able to check in to the event, too. It’s a great way to include big events and save the shout-typing time, without creating too much clutter in our UI.

It seems that for the time being only a few companies will be able to create events within Foursquare (ESPN for sports events, MovieTickets.com for movies, and Songkick for concerts), though an update on their blog says that they’re “thinking about venues and users creating events, but want to make sure we do it right.”

For more details on events at Foursquare, read this article on their blog: For when a place is more than just a place, we now have events

The team behind the presentation software Prezi published today a free App to view Prezis on the iPad (iTunes link). While the application does not allow you to edit your files (they say it’s coming), you can download the ones stored  in your online account to show them on Apple’s tablet.

I’m a long time user (and fan) of Prezi and I tried it as soon as it was available. Unfortunately in the 2 presentatios I tried, the layout was all scrambled and the movements didn’t center on the frames correctly. Hopefully they’ll fix that soon.

Screen capture from the Prezi iPad App

From the official announcement on Prezi’s blog:

We’ll regularly update the Prezi for the iPad app. When using the current version please consider the following:

1. Prezi for the iPad app allows you to show prezis that were previously created on your computer. The app does not have editor features.
2. YouTube videos, PDF and SWF files does not work in the current version of Prezi for the iPad.
3. When you open a prezi for the first time on your iPad, it can take a while to load depending on the size of your prezi. Even big prezis load super quick for the second run.

From TechCrunch’s post:

Right off the bat: we all know the iPad doesn’t support Flash, so not all existing presentations can be viewed in full if they contain Flash material such as videos. Apart from that, all presentations that were made in the past should be flawlessly viewable on the iPad.

When you open a prezi for the first time on your iPad, it can take a while to load depending on the size of your prezi. Even big prezis load super quick for the second run.

YouTube videos, PDF and SWF files does not work in the current version of Prezi for the iPad.

Too often the Facebook pages of conferences don’t offer much value apart from being a repeater of the news being published somewhere else. At the same time, Facebook holds a big potential as a place where followers can gather and extend (think viral) what your conference is doing by easily sharing with their friends.

Now Livestream offers you the possibility of doing the live streaming of your event directly inside your conference’s Facebook page. The service is free and it allows you to customize the page.

The good thing: you can add more value to your Facebook page and probably increase the number of followers.

The bad thing: one more reason NOT to visit your conference’s website (and go to the Facebook page instead).

I think it’s a very useful feature for those brands with a well populated Facebook page or those events that don’t have a website of their own (or lack social media functions in it). If instead you have a strong community visiting your website or want your followers to visit your website in order to expose them to collateral items (show your sponsors, invite them to signup to a newsletter, complete their user profile in your network, etc), then you should probably think twice before embedding the live stream on Facebook.

For more details visit Livestream’s page.

From Mashable:

The Livestream for Facebook application works in conjunction with the Livestream Podcaster software for PC and Mac and gives Page owners the ability to stream live to their Facebook Page with a single click. The application is also fully customizable, supports Facebook chat and has features baked in that encourage Page visitors to share activity on their walls.

Today TED launched a free iPad App (iTunes) that expands their platform for spreading worthy ideas. The app is beautifully and intuitively designed.

The App focuses on just one thing and that is watching talks, but does offer plenty of resources to search and discover new ones. Apart from the “featured” talks, you can search by themes, tags and through the “Inspire Me” button than will allow you to choose between TED’s own keywords (courageous, funny, persuasive, ingenious, jaw-dropping, beautiful, fascinating, informative, inspiring) and how much available time you have.

Beautiful photos + Sponsor logo (Rolex)

“The iPad presents a thrilling new platform for delivering a TED experience,” said June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media. “We rethought the user experience to take advantage of the portability, the touchscreen and the focused media time people have when they travel or settle in for an evening. We think TED fans will particularly love the “Inspire me” button, which creates a custom playlist to fill the exact amount of time they have free.” Via the TED Blog

A feature that I suspect will be very popular amongst commuters and travelers alike is the “Saved Talks” which downloads to your iPad your own selection of talks for offline viewing.

My saved talks for offline viewing

The iPad App is presented by Rolex, creating a new sponsor revenue item.

Content can be enjoyed both in vertical and horizontal format.

Interview with Matt Drance, developer of the app

A version of this app optimized for iPhone/iPod will be released in the first quarter of 2011.

More screenshots:

"Inspire Me" Step 1: Choose keyword

"Inspire Me" Step 2: Time available

"Inspire Me" Step 3: Resulting playlist

Saving a talk for offlinew viewing

Browsing talks by theme

Walt Mossberg (web, twitter) and Kara Swisher (web, twitter) from All Things Digital (and organizers of the conference D: All Things Digital) have just announced a new conference dedicated to mobile technology and devices to be held at the Ritz Carlton, San Francisco from December 6-7, 2010: D: Dive Into Mobile Conference.

From the website:

The new conference represents the very first brand extension of our D: All Things Digital conference, now in its ninth year of grilling the big names in tech and media to sold-out analog audiences and scores more on the Web.

And, as always, there will be no PowerPoints, no panels and definitely no pontificating.

What there will be are unrehearsed, unscripted and unexpected interviews with top players, taking a big-picture view of the broader digital landscape.

But, unlike big D, D: Dive Into Mobile is topic-focused, drilling down deeply into the ubiquity of mobile technology and devices, and its implications for brands, organizations and consumers worldwide.

Why should you attend? What can you expect? The best answer comes from the following exchange of tweets between Walt and one of his followers:

Speakers confirmed so far include:

• Joe Belfiore | VP of Windows Phone Program Management, Microsoft
• Dennis Crowley | CEO and Co-founder, Foursquare
• Dan Hesse | President & CEO, Sprint Nextel
• Mike Lazaridis | Co-CEO, RIM
• Mike McCue | CEO, Flipboard
• Andy Rubin | VP of Mobile Platforms, Google
• Jon Rubinstein | CEO, Palm

Image by Csaba Nagy

It seems that Twitter will be soon giving event organizers and attendees an improved tool to follow and share in real time what’s happening at a conference in a much less invasive than live-streaming or proper live-blogging.

“Twitter will get to a billion members,” Twitter co-founder and recently displaced CEO Evan Williams told the crowd at a San FranciscoINFORUM event yesterday. [...] To get there – or at least to aid in getting there – Twitter is planning a new feature called “Events.” Unlike Trends – which track currently popular words, phrases or hashtags (a keyword preceded by the pound sign) – events would track a number of keywords that auto-associate themselves with the event.

“Twitter electrifies events,” Stone explained, describing the need for the feature. “You’re connected to it, in this matrix. You want to be connected to it, if you’re there.”

He also talked about the flip side of events on Twitter – the negatives of people tweeting from an event and how that impacts other users of the service. “If you’re not there, you don’t want to hear about it,” he said.

If your Twitter stream has all of a sudden been bombarded with tweets from an event, then you know the frustration of dealing with live tweeting. If the event doesn’t interest you, the tweets are just noise. The ability to quickly filter out those tweets from your stream would be a feature many Twitter users would rejoice over.

With these ideas in mind – that events are both incredibly popular for those attending and annoyance for those who aren’t there (or aren’t interested) – Twitter is beginning work on the new Events feature.

Via Read Write Web