I received a beta invite to Bitstrips today, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to break into the web comic world. I’m kidding, of course (we’ll leave that to the people who actually have talent, like Scott) but this new social network and comic drawing site is a lot of fun to play around with. You can create characters (the customization is really good) and save and share your strips for other users. I don’t actually have any friends on there yet, but it seems as though people can also edit your comic (instant collaboration!).

I wish there were more ways to embed the comic, but maybe I just haven’t found that option yet. I’d like to be able to show all three panels at once instead of scrolling through panes. You can save a jpeg version of it, and then post that image, but that’s kind of a workaround. The site is in private beta right now, but they’ll be going live during SXSW (and also “comic blogging” the event, which should be hilarious).

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If you missed my Rock Band skills at the Jonathan Coulton show, fear not! Casey McKinnon has assembled a super group of female talent to rock SXSW this year! Here are the details:

Vocals - Casey McKinnon
Bass - Leah Culver
Drums - Bonny Pierzina
Guitar - Me

Location: Next New Networks/Tumblr Party (Facebook link)
Date - Monday, March 10, 2008
Time - 9pm
Location - Cedar Street Courtyard, 208 W. 4th Street, Austin, TX 78701

Oh, and while you’re at SXSW, come check out the panel I’m moderating:
How to Rawk SXSW: Achieving Geekgasm
Room 19AB
Saturday, March 8th
11:30 am
w/ Ariel Waldman, Casey McKinnon, Ryan King and Glenda Bautista

Image courtesy of Casey’s Flickr

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Man, I feel like crap tonight. I guess it’s good that I wasn’t sick at SXSW, but I think it hit me today. It’s just a cold, I hope, but it needs to go away before Friday. Ryan and I are going to Disney World, and then I’ll be covering CTIA for work until Wednesday. Should be fun, but no traveling is fun when you’re sick.

Anyway, I’m happy to be home from Austin. SXSW had it’s ups and downs, but I’m not sure that our audience is really into the things that were covered there, at least not the people that are on CNET TV. Maybe they’re more gadget-oriented, and SXSW Interactive is more… bloggey? Web 2.0? Too industry? I don’t know. And the music stuff didn’t really seem to strike a chord (You like that? Heh!) with people either. Well, it was a good experiment, but maybe next year I’ll just go check out the panels.

I spent the night making TivoToGo work on the MacBook Pro, and trying to figure how to make Nabaztag connect to the WiFi again. But for now, I’m going to eat these Oreos, drink some WalFlu, watch more back episodes of AskANinja and call it a night.

Oh, Ryan and I have been talking for a while now about doing a podcast together… I’m guessing the subject matter would probably center around, oh I don’t know, technology, but if anyone has any ideas let me know!

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On Sunday night, Chow.com, Webshots and Consumating had a party at the Mohawk. It was unbelievably crowded (and intensified by the fact that it was thunderstorming, and so the outdoor sections weren’t being used) but the bands that I saw play there were awesome. One of those bands were The Lemurs, and Jesse and I talked to them a little bit after their set about being an unsigned band and how the Internet has made it possible for them to promote themselves.

Click To Play

The other band that I saw was called What Made Milwaukee Famous, and they were phenomenal. I’ve seen so many good bands since I’ve been here, I don’t even know where to start! Yesterday I hung out with Kurt Woolf from Download.com, and we were to a few different venues on 6th Street. We saw a band called Office (I saw James Iha in the crowd and I totally freaked out), and then we went to go see The Silos play down the street.

Later, I met up with Cameron, Tantek, Ryan K. and Sarah, and we headed over to Zona Rosa for another show. The Pipettes were playing when we got there, and I think we all fell in love with them a little. Go check out their site, and you’ll see why. Then as we were getting a drink, I heard that The Rapture were playing next, who I love! That was a nice surprise.

OK, gotta head back downtown. More later.
CNET TV Report Day One
CNET TV Report Day Two
LonelyGirl15 Interview

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