Day 5 of this mish mash of culture here in Austin and SXSW left me experiencing a true intermission.  The Ineractive portion winded down while the Music portion is winding up.  I took the opportunity to head out the lobby and get myself a drink.  Speaking of drink, the early morning rain scared us from walking to SXSW and we ended up taking a cab to catch the afternoon's events.  Even though I had a small number of panels, it ended up being very beneficial and marked a great transition to the Music portion of the show.   Oh, and the closing party rocked.

The previously mentioned rain held us up big time in the morning.  Combined with the wickedly awesome Computer Blip Blop Bull@#$% party we were rained on from last night, and this guy had the beginning of a small chest cold.  So we piled into the car and now I'm currently rocking the Zicam and Airborne.  Works every time.  So, after an hour or so of blogging and recovery, we hailed a taxi via phone and headed to the convention center.

The first stop of the day marked my first keynote address.  Me and my lovely girlfriend got a prime seat to watch Daniel Ek talk about his UK only music app, Spotify.  Not many people knew of this service before and when the demo went through, the oohs and ahhs confirmed it.  Ek talked about the liquidy of music and developing a platform that handles the fragmented liquidy of the music industry.  We also got a chance to check out a live demo of the new Spotify running on an Android phone that Sony was putting out.  The keynote informed and entertained and I'm glad we had a chance to get an overview of an app that will definitely give iTunes a run.

Next up was a quick panel on mobile advertising.  Now, I'm not the advertising guru, but being that I'm here to check out all thinhs mobile app development, I needed to see some business views revolving around it.   So Dennis Crowley from Foursquare fame and a representative from Mocospace (the original guy couldn't make it) talked about strategies they employ to get business to do ad buys for their phone apps.  What I got from Mocospace's talk was how traditional mobile apps work with companies to do targeted ads based on demographics for mobile phone users and using the platform to do some media promotions as well.

Crowley's side of it was fascinating.  Foursquare created a new platform that behaves its own way.  So they sell ads, while they are in the middle of figuring out their business model, in a non traditional way.  Crowley also talked about how they have very little in terms of resources going toward sales reps.  The reason is that the users of the app are pushing the local business to do the Foursquare based specials.  So one hand, I got a view of advertising on a traditional model and on the other I got to peer into how a new platform evolves its advertising model.

The final panel for my Interactive portion was perfect for transitioning to the Music.  I sat on the Remixing for the Masses panel ran by Paul Lamere from EchoNest.  If you don't know who he or the company is, go chekc out the More Cowbell app and come back.  So Lamere started out the panel talking about the differences between remixing, sampling, and mashups.  Girl Talk was the apex of these methods and we got to see a quick video of how he does it.  He then asks, how can that be made easier?  With the stuff he showed off from EchoNest, I believe that it will be.

Lamere demoed what EchoNest software can do in terms of combining Digital Signal Processing and Natural Language Processing and producing new ways to cut up software.  He showed off using some Python code to select the first bar of a song and cutting it out without degradation.  He showed that they can take each beat and flip it in reverse piecewise.  I saw him combing audio and video to select the vocals of a Nickleback song and place them in the same song to make it sound the same.  I could go on with the rest but I gotta say you have to check it out for yourself.  And, yes, they have a live performance version in their labs.

After the panel, we had the opportunity to check out a real movie for the Film portion.  Skeletons is the Scottish version of Being John Malkovich.  It had an endearing quality while not being to goofy or silly.  Check it out when it comes out in your town.  Then we headed out to the Mohawk for the Media Temple and SXSW Interactive closing party.  Hey, when you have free PBR tall boys and some kick ass Alt-Mariachi music, you know it's a good time.

So that's it.  That was the Interactive portion.  What did I come away with?  Well, discovery was the goal and I laid my eyeballs on so much that I more than fulfilled that requirement.  I have tons more work to do when I get back because of it.  Awesome!  So now comes the time to celebrate by hitting up the Music portion.  I'll talk about some of the days events here, but I will also hit up music information on my music blog.  Keep tuned.

I went ghost for awhile but now I'm back with what seems like the only thing that's been on my mind this year and that's the cell phone search.  Since the last time I talked about this, details for the Palm Pre were announced, the iPhone OS 3.0 was annoucned, Blackberry is rolling out more product,  the OS that the G1 runs on, otherwise known as Google Android, had an upgrade, and the launch date for the Palm Pre was announced.  A deluge of information produced lays stagnant in my and we're now going to stir things up and see what I finally decide upon.  Keeping the original specs in mind, I'll take a look at where each phone stands and what my final decision will be now that I have the cash to burn.  After that, stay tuned for my series of articles on cellphone accessories......just kidding.

The spur in the saddle for this whole series is the Palm Pre and it's coming out this Friday.  Some of the details that really caught my eye include multitasking, a physical keyboard, and webOS development environment.  The multitasking portion is a big deal for me because I prefer to listen to music while I'm tasking and sometimes I switch between apps while they are working or processing.   A close second is the physical keyboard.  My fingers are massively thick and they need something physical to click.  That said, the reviews point out the keys are kinda small and somewhat hard to hit the right key.  Lastly the webOS and it's young and fertile development ground makes me drool.  All one needs to know is HTML, Javascript, and CSS to build apps for the Pre and there are system specific APIs built into the SDK to allow some tasty interactions.

I'm not completely sold on the Pre however.  The rumor mills are flaring up and the iPhone will be getting a major upgrade to an almost 1.5 times the processor speed and a bump in flash memory to 32 GB.  It also sounds like they are releasing the reigns and allowing cut and paste.  Huzzah! The big controversy for the last couple of the weeks on the iPhone point to the almost Draconian application approval process for the App Store.  It seems there are some crazy examples of questionable content approved whereas some rather tame content gets banned.  For me, the deal is how well I can move my data around in there and how easy it is to build an app on it.  But for the latter I would need to buy a Mac.

Again we're not alone as the T-Mobile's Google Android Phone, the G1, is still out there picking up steam.  The big news on this little device is the new release of the OS to Cupcake or version 1.5.  Among the feature highlights include a soft-keyboard, more UI polish, and video recording and playback.  I'm a confessed Google apologist.  Most of my online apps are run through Google.  They do a great job of keeping things fast and simple. I've yet to really play with either the SDK or the phone as much, but my Google pull tells me that I should at least give this sucker a chance.

I think for me and what I want to do on smartphones for utility and development purposes, any model of Blackberry will probably be out of the running.  I've heard the Storm 2 has better improvements of the Storm 1's interface, but after playing around with my girlfriend's Blackberry Pearl, I'm not too impressed.  There seems to be some slow load time between apps and the web browsing is pretty weak.  They do have a nice camera and the scroll ball is probably the best mobile peripheral implementation since the laptop mouse eraser head, but I'm just not sold.

What will sell me this time around comes down to the plan.  After researching all that I can on smartphones,  I can see that most of the phones pretty much have the same to offer.  Texting, picture/video, phone, data transfer, web browsing, and some sort of new keyboard implementation are all part of the common thread for these phones.  What matters most is how much the companies will charge a month and how it matches with how I want to maximize my usage on their service.  Cell phone carriers traditionally nickle and dime you to death with surchargers and fees.  Can you believe that it cost about three times as much to buy a cell ringer than it is to download the actual song?  So when I think about the phone, its features, and how much up front I will pay, I think about how I can get the best deal on the Sprint Unlimited Plan.

Sprint's Unlimited Plan (well the 450 minute one) gives me unlimited everything, with a 5GB cap mind you, and 450 minutes of daytime talk on the phone.  I double checked my records and discovered that I only came close to the 450 limit once in the last 6 months.  The plan cost about $70 a month.  Compared to the other plans, Sprint wins hands down.  They also advertise best coverage of 3G and may have a leg up on 4G over the carriers.  Sprint's headquarters happens to be in Kansas City, which is also where I live.  When consulting friends, they have nothing but praise for their service.

But I'm not jumping the gun just yet.  I've been talking up some series love on the Palm Pre and I've yet to get to play with the device.  The Pre comes out this Saturday and I plan on hitting up Best Buy to check it out.  Now more than likely I will hit up a T-Mobile store and an Apple or AT&T store to give a final once around on the devices.   I'm also gonna wait until WWDC to see exactly what Apple will unveil.  It's getting real close to new phone time.  Once I get one, the next step will be to see what I can develop for on the phone.  Maybe some cell phone shopping helper app.