The Beat Goes On

From the SF Chronicle story about the South by Southwest Interactive Festival:


During SXSW, as the festival is known, bloggers copiously wrote synopses of the talks, often with their own take. Podcasters performed a similar service with audio. Vloggers, shorthand for video bloggers, made increasingly sophisticated news episodes for a range of Web sites.

Everyone with a camera -- or even a cell phone -- uploaded pictures to photo sharing sites like Flickr and Photobucket. The Internet crackled with posts, commentary, stories and episodes, delivered to people's
inboxes via RSS readers.

"I walked into the conference and saw the press suite and said, 'Forget that.' The press suite is the entire place," said panelist Jose Castillo of Johnson City, Tenn. "We're in an age when anybody can be a journalist. I take pictures, and suddenly I become an outlet."

And later in the story:

A range of newer tools even added to the experience. People could go to news aggregators like Digg to see what the top stories were. They could check blog aggregators like Technorati to read the latest comments in the blogosphere. They could send instant messages to large groups via Twitter, a new technology that allows people to make instant networks with friends via their cell phones.

Digg, Technorati and Twitter are based in San Francisco, along with Flickr, Photobucket and scores of others, helping to cement the city's status as the home of new media. It seemed this week that all the coffeehouses in San Francisco must have emptied out, sending their patrons to the Texas capital.