So we thought (as we often do), wouldn't it be cool to combine the random meeting of people with the lessons learned from SXSW presentations? After some quick emails back to SWHQ to discuss, the idea for SXSWLesson.com was born.

We think that SL is on to something here - the reason so many people go to SXSW Interactive in the first place is to bump into other people, have inspiring discussions about stuff, make new friends and overall learn a lot. The panels only go so far, and this tool elegantly captures the gestalt of the conference, random topics, spontaneous conversations, and new stuff to learn.

This is one of the very few really good uses for Twitter hashtags that we have seen. Take a suggestion from us and bookmark SXSW Lesson; we think it has a lot of potential. Just wait, you will see increasing activity and new submissions coming in all the time. Plus, it acts as yet another way to generate a list of really awesome people to follow on Twitter, and that's a definite value-add in our book.

OtherInbox attempts to have as light a touch as possible when it comes to your Gmail account. Mainly, all you will see after it has done its initial pass through your mail is a new otherinbox label that you can use to archive or delete that mail. If you happen to have more than one incoming email address pointing to Gmail, OtherInbox will also automatically create labels for them as well.

Once in your OIB mailbox, the story is different. Here, all the mail that you agreed that OIB could import is listed by category (or what OIB calls mailboxes), which you can quickly step through and perform mass actions on, such as marking as read or deleting. The mailboxes can be created manually (there is a new mailbox button at the bottom of the page) or automatically, simply by sending email directly to your custom OtherInbox email domain directly. For example, if your OIB account name was johndoe, you could fill out an online form for some free stuff with the email address freestuff@johndoe.otherinbox.com. This would create the new mailbox freestuff in your OIB inbox containing any mail that is sent to you from that site. If a spammer gets ahold of that address, simply click on the block mailbox button and you will never see any email in that mailbox again.

We have been using OIB for a few days now, just trying to get a feel for the product as a whole. Some folks may only be interested in using the service primarily for its disposable email address ability, but we think that OIB is looking further and is trying to become the primary repository for all your other mail. You know -- the stuff you don't want but can't quite get rid of. To that end, OIB is also planning to support other online mail services such as Yahoo! Mail.

Finally we should mention that the free service, while offering everything that OtherInbox features without limitation, is restricted to only showing the last 30 days of email that has been introduced into your OIB account. If you stay on top of your OtherInbox mail, this should be no problem. However, if you do want to see everything, you can sign up for the premium service for $19.99 a year.

From the panel, Marshall and Louis had new sources and gathering tips, Gabe and Melanie weighed in heavily on how to manage information and Micah had some great suggestions on discovery of new information sources.

Marshall Kirkpatrick

Twitter - FriendFeed

• Marshall focused on using tools like FriendFeed, combined RSS feeds and Google Custom Search Engines (CSEs) to find the news he needs.
• He highlighted a post he wrote entitled How to Find the Weirdest Stuff on the Internet that describes how to use free tools to create a mashup that finds unique content.  It uses tag clouds in Delicious, finds culture blogs, filters that output through PostRank, then finally pushes it through Feedburner.
• Finally, Marshall returned to how CSEs can work in conjunction with drag and drop zones to quickly search for content online.

Louis Gray

Twitter - FriendFeed

• He uses Google Reader as his primary info-gathering tool. 
• He shares his content from Google Reader to other resource sites such as Delicious, Friendfeed, and Twitter.
• Louis uses FriendFeed to find trusted sources for news and content.
• He pointed out the DailyRadar network of sites like MacBlips and GadgetBlips that aggregate more niche content for discovery.
• Finally, Louis mentioned that in order to blog about new content, often the top priority is good old fashioned networking.

Gabe Rivera

Twitter - FriendFeed

• Gabe Rivera uses Techmeme for selecting the best of what is out there.
• He described that Techmeme is based on an automated system that relies primarily on links between clustered stories to determine how much a story should be ranked, but has recently introduced a 'human element' in the form of Megan McCarthy, the new editor for the site.
• Marshall added that Gabe has some non-tech Techeme-style link blogs, like Memeorandum and Ballbug.
• Gabe says entering new content areas is often difficult because an aggregator needs both fresh content and good metadata to be able to aggregate effectively.

Micah Baldwin

Twitter - FriendFeed

• Micah says he often starts searching for new content by going to one of his favorite, most trusted bloggers, and then searching outward from there. He mentioned that there are a lot of tools to help with this, and Lijit is just one of them.
• As an example, he highlighted a Lijit-powered blog aggregator called Securitybloggers, but he also stresses that influence of a blogger is important. Take recommendation + expertise and you will find new content.
• He said that the I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC) folks are always looking for the next big meme. A natural place to find new memes is applications like Friendfeed.
• Micah mentioned that ICHC just acquired Twittypic to create Son of a Tweet, a tool that leverages Twitter for finding funny pictures.

Melanie Baker

Work Twitter - Personal Twitter - FriendFeed

• Melanie, in her role as community manager, gets her information from many sources but uses her company's product PostRank to filter stories by buzz and popularity.
• PostRank (formerly called AideRSS) is a system that measures engagement surrounding blog posts by tracking references on over 15 different social media sites, including site comments, Digg, FriendFeed, Furl, Twitter and more.
• Melanie says there are plenty of communities out there to draw from, from her perspective of blogs that use PostRank and Lijit.

Wrap Up

The audience asked what this process of discovering and collecting new sources of content online might be called. After a bit of discussion, the panelists decided the term curation works well, followed by trusted discovery and trusted recommendations.

Overall, we thought the panel exposed those listening to tips and techniques that, while part of a seasoned social media worker's toolkit, may not be leveraged as effectively by newcomers or light social media users.

There's more you can do with your MyAlltop page too. First, you can re-arrange the web sites on your home page to your liking using a simple drag-and-drop interface. This will come in very handy when you grow your page with new sites that you discover through Alltop. Also, your page has a public URL that you can share with any of your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or the Web.

Taking that a step further, you can become the 'content manager' for members of your family who you think would benefit from Alltop. Once they register, you can log in and manage the placement and sites that they see. In the future, Guy hinted that more customization was on the way that would make this process easier.

Finally, we pressed Guy about additional features, and he said they plan on adding an RSS feed for your primary MyAlltop page, but it will be a bit before that feature appears.

Intro

Werner Vogels opened, covering EC2 and Cloud Computing. He mentioned article "Amazon's Risky Bet" and now a few years later, EC2 is a huge business with many new businesses and startups running on the platform.

Kevin Gibbs opened with information on Google App Engine; he said it's different in that it focuses entirely on web applications. App Engine scales transparently as the application grows. He said it is perfectly horizontally scalable, so there's no worry about running into a wall. The big difference with the App Engine is that you get a local set of development tools, which give you an exact representation of what you would get online. Pushing your changes is as easy as hitting 'publish.'

Yousef told us Windows Azure is an operating system in the cloud. At the bottom level you have support services and storage, and above that you have the programming environment. This supports writing all sorts of applications in the cloud. The idea is to leverage the investment in the cloud. Announced last October, it is currently free, but they will have an SLA soon. Planned expansion commercially and more offerings in terms of new programming languages and more versatility in working with the stack and other components is coming.

EC2 has a US and European segment currently; no new information about other regions. Google App Engine uses Python currently, but they will announce a new language soon.

Werner said Amazon Web Services was initially designed and built for internal projects and was later opened up for other people to use. Werner said that Amazon still uses AWS for its primary services.

Scalability

Google had similar services internally, but built the App Engine to coalesce all of the Google cloud offerings in one package that is easy to use. App Engine uses BigTable and most of the other Google resources that are available. Mentioned: Jaiku was recently ported to App Engine.

It used to be, you had to build to handle spikes like being "Digged" but now, planning for scalability is different. Now you may have huge, sustained traffic at any time. App Engine does not support 'joins' with this in mind -- the platform is optimized to facilitate scalability.

Windows Azure was to handle the long tail of projects built on Windows technologies, without all the infrastructure costs of adding and managing servers and other hardware as they grow.

Security

Werner does not have any announcements regarding this, but he did mention that it is important. On the level of Amazon services being provided, they consider it important that the right tools are offered to help customers manage security. They also offer a vertical space in the cloud for secure data such as HIPAA compliant medical data, etc.

Kevin with Google recognizes that security is also important. He said Google does conform to various security certifications. However, he wanted to touch on how Google approaches data security in the cloud. They take security very seriously.

Yousef said that security questions are asked very frequently by enterprise customers. He said there is an idea of 'public lots' versus 'private lots' in the cloud to meet security considerations. He couldn't go into more detail but was willing to talk offline on it.

Future Challenges

Werner said future challenges included increased use of automation, such as automated management of applications, and also taking a closer look at how the apps scale, and only paying for the resources that their apps need to scale.

Kevin said it is an interesting challenge to think about moving to the cloud. He said as a programmer, there are a lot of new concepts to know about, like latency and consistency that will have to be thought about as they apply to cloud apps. He is hopeful that, as more knowledge about these challenges is revealed, we'll have more of a consensus about those challenges and how to overcome them.

Azure invested in automation. You get an API and SDK, but automation is also built-in. In a way, they are between EC2 and App Engine at the moment.

Vendor Lock-In

Werner doesn't have anything proprietary; they constructed their services to be tools instead of a framework to minimize having to write proprietary code that only runs on one cloud service. He is always asking customers what exactly they want in terms of standardization, but a lot of that is, admittedly, in the future.

App Engine is very concerned about lock-in. They think that as Google cloud apps succeed, it's better for Google and better for the world. He said they want to be as portable as possible and adopt standards as much as possible. However, he gave the example that if you are not using SQL for a database, you move into an area that may not have any 'standards.'

Portability

Yousef said the question has many layers. Azure wants to run any stack that can be run anywhere else. Currently, .net is supported, but they definitely want to support LAMP and other 'legacy' stacks for easy portability from other cloud services. He also mentioned that support for secure cloud data is important. Finally, he says that data portability (import/export) is very important and something they support. He said though, that developers have to have an eye toward writing 'portable code' to facilitate moving to another service if necessary.

Green Computing

Werner said that efficiency and green computing go hand in hand. Since they are priced very competitively, they are very focused on efficiency. This also helps their offerings be as green as can be. There are seven metrics for efficiency that cloud providers should share to allow customers to make the right choice.

Google is built around using the absolute minimal resources it needs.. apps do not use resources if there aren't any requests for the application.

Azure said they are actively looking at revamping the way their servers in the cloud are utilized to improve efficiency, but they don't have any official announcements at the current time.

Hybrid Platforms

Werner said it's still early to determine the roadmap here; there's potential for a lot of combinations of different hosting options leveraging the cloud, but they can't really say what will be directly supported in the future.

Yousef spoke in a general way about how enterprise customers move from their traditional models to the cloud, and he says that it is going to be a space to watch in the next year. He said for these customers, ease of migration to the cloud is going to be of primary importance.

Wrap-Up

Is cloud computing focused on high-performance computing?

Werner: Many big customers are also HPC customers. He said the cloud is good for that.

Kevin: Actively looking in to it, but app engine isn't for HPC.

Okay, now run along to the next event. And bring your camera... the rest of us will be waiting.

See also: ReadWriteWeb's Guide to the SXSW Web Awards Finalists. Also look out for RWW's Marshall Kirkpatrick and Phil Glockner, who will be representing us at SXSW this year.

More Noise to Signal

At this point, you can feel free to browse the information. We found lots of new related news sources and interesting byways to follow as we explored, but we must admit to a bit of confusion at times. The Cruxlux window is fairly busy and clicking certain items (like the topical slides the run along the top) cause different actions to happen.  Also, once we clicked on a topic button, we weren't sure how to return to the original set of results.

This is a relatively new app that is still in active development and we see a lot of potential with the way Cruxlux works. We are looking forward to how it evolves and grows in to its full potential.

Many people will likely come to the SXSW Web Awards at the Hilton on Sunday night hoping to discover the next big thing. The fact is, though, that the annual Web Awards are all about design - not social functionality a la Twitter. In years past, most of us have ended up leaving the room afterward scratching our heads and saying "I've never even heard of those websites." But not this year. Check out the RWW Guide to the SXSW Web Awards Finalists below, where you'll find brief scannable explanations of who and what is behind the 80+ companies and projects that have been named as finalists for the awards.

This year the award ceremony will be hosted by The Onion's Baratunde Thurston. Baratunde is a must-know dude and says about the Web Awards finalists: "I look forward to making one of the companies in each category very happy."

The bulk of the research below was done by ReadWriteWeb Research Intern Nisha Chittal, who will also be at SXSW - so friend her up on Twitter!

We hope to see you in Austin. We're really looking forward to it! If you are going too, you might enjoy attending the Monday morning panel Beyond Aggregation - Finding the Web's Best Content. I'll be on that one, along with Techmeme co-founder Gabe Rivera, PostRank community manager Melanie Baker, Micah Baldwin, Biz Dev VP at Lijit and ultra-early-adopter Louis Gray.

Without further ado, here are the Web Awards Finalists!

Activism

Cliff Bar 2 Mile Challenge

The Cliff Bar company encourages bike riding with a Flash site that lets you build or choose between custom bike and gear packages, then tells you where you can buy it all. Track your bike travel and reduce climate impact. Built by San Francisco's Cobra Creative.
On Twitter: 2MileChallenge

IAmSecond

Plano, Texas based e3 Partners Ministry gathered a collection of famous and everyday people offering video commentary about why they put their religious faith first in their lives.
On Twitter: IamSecond

Just in Queso

Just in Queso is a charitable, not-for-profit foundation that provides funds and resources for those in need. The company believes that tragedy rarely gives warning, so they provide funds to those in need after emergencies. They raise funds by selling Just in Queso Hot Sauce, and 100% of all proceeds from every sale go back to communities in the form of aid and donations.

Sunny Side

Run by The Truth campaign, this website aims to provide a satiric look at the truth and the unhealthy side of tobacco and cigarettes.

Tweet Congress

Tweet Congress is a website that allows you to search by location and find out if your Congressman or Senator is on Twitter - and if they aren't, sign a petition asking them to join Twitter.
On Twitter: TweetCongress

Amusement

CrappyCat

CrappyCat is an interactive game where a cat traverses through a gothic backdrop and fights monsters using the power of alcohol.

Addictionary

Addictionary is a website for word lovers that allows people to play with words. Share new and amusing words and words-of-the-day, create new words, and participate in word challenges.
On Twitter: Addictionary

GirlGamer.com

GirlGamer is a community, digital magazine, and video game review site for
female gamers. It is currently in private beta.
On Twitter: GirlGamer

Pixton

Pixton is a website where people all over the world create, share, and remix comics without having to draw. According to their exhibitor profile, they'll be premiering the world's first remixable animated comics at SXSW.
On Twitter: Pixton

UPS Regifter

UPS Regifter is a service that allows to to re-gift when you receive a gift you don't like -- by taking a picture of your ridiculous gift, uploading it, and
sending it to friends.

Art

StreetArtLocator

Street Art Locator is an interactive website featuring a large map of the world that allows you to locate places where you can find cool new street art -- anywhere in the world.

Forward Thinking Museum

The Forward Thinking Museum is an interactive virtual museum that allows visitors to study key issues of the future such as nuclear weapons and global warming.

Remembering Bogle Chandler

Remembering Bogle Chandler is a website combining sounds, images, and text that recreates eyewitness accounts of the tragic and mysterious deaths of Margaret Chandler and Gib Bogle in 1963 in Australia.

The Served

The Served is a website promoting the latest in creative works, with a stream of new projects in fashion, industrial design, photography, motion graphics, and typography

Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far

This website is a community-based project where readers contribute what they have learned in life so far through words, videos, photography, and design.

Blog

The Big Picture

The Big Picture is a Boston news blog told through photographs of the city's recent news and events each day.

Bygone Bureau

Bygone Bureau is a blog of travel writing and cultural criticism that updates three times a week. It describes itself as a "journal of modern thought."

Dumb As a Blog

Dumb as a Blog is a blog sharing tidbits of the dumb stuff people to do every day.

OneRiot.com

OneRiot is a social search engine that allows you to search information on the internet, but prioritizes it according to its popularity in the OneRiot community.

Postcards from My Momma
Postcards from my Momma is a blog that asks readers to share their funniest and most interesting correspondences with their mothers.

Business

CNN Shirt

CNN Shirt is an interactive website that allows you to scan the day's top headlines, pick one, and order a customized t-shirt with your CNN headline of choice.

Jasmax

Jasmax is an architecture firm.

Lowe's "Welcome Back Spring"

This website is an interactive website getting Lowe's shoppers excited about welcoming back spring by allowing them to explore people's gardens and yards and pick out Lowe's products that they like as well as gain gardening tips and advice.

Modernista!

Modernista is a creative advertising firm whose website allows you to "view Modernista! through the eyes of the web." It is very hard to describe and kind of disturbing.
On Twitter: Modernista

Zeus Jones Gift Site

This website is an interactive guide that helps you pick a gift for anyone in your life by inputting your criteria: budget, gender, age/maturity, relationship, and more. Created by Zeus Jones Marketing Firm.

CSS

Eden Sessions

This interactive website, home to the band The Eden Project, promotes the Eden Sessions -- the Eden project's series of one-day summer music festivals. Website designed by Richard Quick Designs.

Trevor Exter

This website is the homepage to musician Trevor Exter. Designed by This Design Studio.

Mint.com

Mint.com is a popular web-based financial software that allows people to organize their finances, create budgets, and track spending.
On Twitter: Mintdotcom

Noisefreak.com

Noisefreak is an audio production company that does commercials, promos, and
radio production.

ProjectMiso

ProjectMiso is interactive studio that designs and develops interactive media and custom applications. Their clients include Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Pfizer USP, and the NYC Teaching Fellows.

Classic

ArsTechnica

Ars Technica is a website dedicated to tech industry news and analysis, reviews, reporting, and commentary.
On Twitter: Arstechnica

Flickr

Flickr is a photo-sharing website and community. Users can upload and share photos with friends, participate in the "Creative Commons," explore photography from around the world, and more.

Instructables

Instructables is a how-to website where users document what they do and how they do it, using pictures, video, audio, and text. Popular projects are then featured for other users to learn from.
On Twitter: Instructables

Picnik

Picnik is a web-based free photo editor that lets users upload their photos and creatively edit them with their photo editing tools.
On Twitter: Picnik

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site that allows users to submit and share what they're reading and enjoying right now, and vote on what content is most popular. It uses a recommendation algorithm to create a seemingly serendipitous experience wandering through related content.

Delicious 2.0

Delicious is a social bookmarking site where users bookmark links they like, tag them, and share them with each other. It's a Yahoo! property and underwent a dramatic redesign last year.

Community

Lost Zombies

Lost Zombies is a community-generated zombie documentary. The website aims to collect 10,000 user-submitted photos and 1,000 user-submitted videos about zombies, which will be put together in a documentary.
On Twitter:LostZombies

Fluther

Fluther is a community website where users ask questions, get answers, and discuss them with the rest of the community. It is a community of people and ordinary experts sharing knowledge.
On Twitter: Fluther

Protagonize

Protagonize is a fiction writing community website where users share, discuss, collaborate on, and learn from fiction stories that they have created. Designed by Taunt Media.
On Twitter: Protagonize

Trusera

Trusera is an online community centered around health. Users submit health questions for discussion, get answers from each other, get personalized health advice, and connect with users with similar health experiences.
On Twitter: Trusera_health

Education

The Cycle

The Cycle is an interactive video website that features short videos that simulate how the recycling process really works, behind the scenes.

Discovery Earth Live

Created by the Discovery Channel, this interactive website allows users to learn about the earth's ocean's and tides.

From Ellis Island to OrchardStreet

This website from the Tenement Museum takes visitors through a classic-film style tour of life as an immigrant in early 20th-century America, then allows you to create your own immigrant story.

HowStuffWorks

Here you can learn exactly what the title says -- how stuff works. The website features a plethora of articles about almost every topic under the sun, and explanations of how things really work behind the scenes.

OneHen

This Flash website uses stories, pictures, and videos to teach children all about microfinance and how it works. There are also sections for parents and educators to learn about microfinance and how they might spread awareness, donate, or get otherwise involved.

Experimental

Foul Owl Karaoke

Foul Owl is a interactive music visualization tool that uses animals and cartoon creatures.

Popego

Popego is a website that helps filter content to see what videos, music, and content match the user's interested based on what interests they list and what their friends are enjoying.
On Twitter: Popego

Sweemo

Sweemo is an online auction and retail service that allows users to buy and sell experiences, knowledge, or skills instead of products -- think Ebay for experiences.
On Twitter: Sweemodotcom

Ten Thousand Cents

Ten Thousand Cents is a piece of artwork; it is a digital representation of a one-hundred dollar bill, created by 10,000 Amazon mechanical Turk workers who were each paid one cent for their task. Workers from 51 countries were involved in the project. The final project shows a video piece with all 10,000 parts being drawn simultaneously.

We Tell Stories

We Tell Stories is a project launched by publisher Penguin UK, where six authors
will write six stories each over the course of six weeks -- stories that relate to the immediacy and connectivity of the internet today. There is also a mysterious "secret" seventh story involved in the project, which will give readers the chance to win prizes from Penguin UK.

Film/ Television

Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub

In this HBO TV show website, users download music videos, videotape themselves
lip-synching the songs, and then upload them to the website for everyone to watch. The contest is now over, and a final winner is going to be chosen soon.

The Flight of the Conchords is not on Twitter, which is a shame.

Hulu

Hulu is an online video service offering free movies and TV shows from major
companies such as NBC, FOX, MGM Studios, Sony, and Warner Brothers. There are
over 1000 primetime TV shows available.
On Twitter: HuluDotCom

In Plain Sight: WITSEC Confidential

This website was created for USA Network's TV show "In Plain Sight," a show about the Federal Witness Protection Program. The website allows users to play an interactive game where they protect witnesses from criminals and find clues to solve crimes.

Jinni

Jinni is a movie search-and-recommendation engine that allows users to search the internet for movies that match their interests. It allows users to search for films based on specific features like plot elements, genre, characters, etc. It is currently in private beta.

On Twitter: JinniMedia

The Secret Location

The Secret Location is an interactive media company specializing in entertainment properties combining interactive, film, animation, and motion design. Their website is set up in the form of an interactive video about a mysterious secret location.

Games

Adult Swim Games

This website, home of Adult Swim TV shows, features a host of interactive games and episodes of your favorite Adult Swim shows.

Globulos

Globulos is a French multi-player flash game featuring little "globs" as the main characters. It was launched in 2003 and is available on the web, on mobile and the Nintendo DS.

PMOG

PMOG stands for the "Passively Multiplayer Online Game." Users install the game into their browser and it turns the whole internet into one game as you go from website to website.

On Twitter: Pmog

PlayCrafter

PlayCrafter features an online game maker that allows the user to create their own flash game and then share it with their friends. They can also enter contests to see who can create the best game.

Why So Serious? The Dark Knight Alternate Reality Game

This game is based off of the hit 2008 film "The Dark Knight." The game allows you to live in the world of the Dark Night, play out events, and create your own alternate reality.

Mobile

AP Mobile News Network

The AP Mobile News Network (MNN) allows you to get all news, all the time, on your mobile phone through a special application for iPhones, BlackBerrys, and other smartphones. It's powered by Transpera.
On Twitter: AP_Mobile

Brightkite

Brightkite is a location-based social networking website where you input your location from your phone and see who else is nearby. You can see our extensive coverage of Brightkite here.
On Twitter: Brightkite

Gigotron

Gigotron is a location-based iPhone app that helps you locate where local bands are playing live shows wherever you are. Seth Jacobs of video production shop EQAL (makers of Lonelygirl15) calls Gigotron on of his "top 5 iPhone geek apps."

On Twitter: Gigotron

Pikchur

Pikchur is a photo-based website that lets you take pictures and share them on the go through your phone and a host of social networking applications. The company also offers an image preview script for Twitter.

On Twitter:Pikchur

Please Fix the iPhone

This website is a place where iPhone users list their complaints that they want to see fixed about the iPhone, and then users vote for their most favorite complaints in hopes that Apple will fix them. It's fun to see the many things people say about the site on Twitter.

Motion Graphics

ADE Creative Studios

ADE is a creative studio specializing in graphic design, motion design, 3-d animation, and more. They have a very busy website.

Corona Beach

The Corona Beach lets you take a break from your day on an interactive beach with a (interactive) Corona. It was the work of New York's Big Spaceship and Chicago's Cramer-Krasselt.

NVIDIA Speak Visual

NVIDIA is a company that produces high-quality graphics processors for computers. Their website features a gallery of stories from customers who have NVIDIA graphics processors.

Synergy - ThyssenKrupp Elevator Corporation

ThysenKrupp is an elevator company and Synergy is their first global elevator system. It comes with a model design that can be custom-fit to meet local codes around the globe.

What's Your Lighting Style?

This website, from GE, allows users to determine the lighting style that's right for them, with a set of lighting tips, videos, an interactive quiz to find your lighting style, and information about all of GE's lightbulb products.

Music

Tracy Chapman

Tracy Chapman is a folk music artist, who has just released the new album "Our bright future." She is a multi-platinum and four-time Grammy award-winning artist.

The Finetune Family

The Finetune Family is an online music service that allows users to discover new music, create playlists, and organize favorite artists and albums. Users can get Finetune online, on their desktop, embedded in their browser, on their mobile device, in a Facebook app, on their Wii, on their TV, or in a widget.

Soundcloud

Soundcloud is a tool for artists, record labels, and other music professionals to easily send, receive, and distribute music files online. We wrote a well received review of Soundcloud here in December.

On Twitter: Soundcloud

Spiritualized Harmonies

Spiritualized Harmonies is the high-tech new website of the band Spiritualized, a psychedelic/experimental/rock band.Their latest album, now out, is called "Songs in A&E."

James Zabiela

James Zabiela is a recording artist specializing in house, breakbeat, and techno music. His new album, "Renaissance: the Masters Series," will be out February 23.

Personal Portfolio

Ali Felski

Ali Felski is a Washington, DC-based independent graphic designer. She previously worked for the federal government and now works for the Sunlight Foundation, promoting transparency in government. The Sunlight Foundation's work is fabulous. See our reviews of their sites OpenCongress and Capitol Words.

On Twitter: Felskia

Pericycle

Pericycle is the personal portfolio of designer Gabriel Bach, housing a collection of his work in print, websites, postcards, flyers, and more.

Eric Piasecki Stocksearch

Eric Piasecki is a travel photographer whose "Stocksearch" website lets you easily search through all his work, save and download images, and order prints.

Revyver

Revyver is a two-person web design company run by an engaged couple. Revyver
specializes in designing web applications and games. Revyver was acquired in
November 2008 by SpectrumDNA.

On Twitter: Revyver

Lynn Marie Smith

Lynn Marie Smith is an author, speaker, and activist who is a former ecstasy addict and now speaks out about addiction. She uses her website to communicate with teens, young adults, and parents around the world about drug addiction, and will be turning these communications into a book.

Student

Business of Detention

Business of Detention is an online publication made by journalism students that covers the "business of detention" -- privatized immigration detention in the United States.

Michael Dick

This website is the homepage and portfolio of web designer and programmer Michael Dick.

On Twitter: MichaelDick

Modernity Spirit of Experimentation

Modernity Spirit of Experimentation is a website showcasing innovate designs in furniture, glass, ceramic, and accessory design, by various designers.

Think Artificial

Think Artificial is the blog of a computer science student in Iceland, where he writes about the "science of artificial" -- the world of technology from a semi-technical perspective.

Weekend Pictures

Weekend Pictures is a project that explores the topics of the internet, user-generated content, and privacy. It aims to help visitors maximize their use of the internet as a creative outlet while safeguarding privacy.

Technical Achievement

Absolut Machines

Absolut Machines, created by Absolut, aims to explore the intersection of art and technology by inviting renowned designers and engineers to create machines that website visitors could then interact with over the internet. Make Magazine's Phillip Torrone took a tour and got some great photos and video of the project last February.

Aviary

Aviary is a multi-tool suite of collaborative image editing web applications. We've written about Aviary a number of times, most recently in October.

jQuery UI ThemeRoller

This website from jQuery allows you to "roll" your own website theme using a simple theme-creator tool. Input your criteria for colors, fonts, design, content, and more.

On Twitter: JQueryUI

SkyDeck

Skydeck is an application that lets you see your cell phone, online. It displays all your calls, texts, voicemails, call notes, connections, and more, and then lets you search, read, and respond to communications online. We reviewed Skydeck here last month.

On Twitter: Skydeck

Tarpipe

Tarpipe is an online tool that streamlines all your social media communications, and then lets you publish content across the web from one easy place. Check out our coverage of Tarpipe here.

On Twitter: Tarpipe

Ever made a website that requires a file to be uploaded? Then you know how much that file upload control sucks. Why does it suck? Because there's no drag-and-drop; Flash or server-side hacking is required to provide any kind of progress indication; you can't upload multiple files; if you know what you want to attach you have to navigate there again with the OS file picker; you can't even enter a path into the widget because of security issues; and the list goes on.

Fair enough, what we currently have is slow and painful and could stand a lot of improvement. So how can you submit your idea? Easy, post it on the Web and tweet the location to Twitter account @mozconcept anytime before the afternoon of March 16, 2009. At that time, Mozilla Labs will be hosting a SXSW party where they will review the submissions and dig up the real gems.

If you can make it out to the Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill in Austin on the 16th, besides the beer and food, there will also be some interesting people to meet, such as Brendan Eich, javascript creator and Mozilla CTO, Atul Varma (@toolness) and/or Aza Raskin (@azaaza), Ubiquity co-lead developers, and John Resig (@jeresig), jQuery creator. We are thinking this is one SXSW gathering we can't miss. Plus, Moonshine has an awesome atmosphere and great grub.