ReadWriteWeb

"The landscape has clearly changed," U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle told a hearing into AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom, according to this morning's Wall Street Journal. When the deal was proposed in March, it appeared to be rolling like a juggernaut, and the Justice Dept. sought expedited proceedings to address the urgency. Today, federal attorneys are seeking to slow down the case, after AT&T withdrew its petition for approval of the deal from the Federal Communications Commission, while immediately afterward AT&T said it would continue to pursue the merger.

As of Friday evening, the deal was, as one veteran telecom industry attorney told Reuters, "pretty close to dead." If that's the case, does T-Mobile soldier on? Or is it, to coin a phrase, pretty close to dead? ReadWriteWeb has convened the Panel of Esteemed Grown-ups to discuss no less than the fate of the U.S. wireless industry (left to right):

Ross Rubin, Executive Director and Principal Analyst, NPD Connected Intelligence

Mark Beccue, Senior Analyst for Consumer Mobility, ABI Research

Jan Dawson, Chief Telecoms Analyst, Ovum

Carmi Levy, contributing analyst, CTV News Channel

Now that we've seen Research In Motion's vision for a vivid, rich mobile operating system for some kind of device -- probably a PlayBook, maybe a phone or two -- does BlackBerry have a chance by 2013 to regain the level of relevance it had in 2009? ReadWriteWeb talks at length with the world's best telecom and mobile platform analysts (pictured above, left to right):

Ross Rubin, Executive Director and Principal Analyst, NPD Connected Intelligence

Al Hilwa, Program Director for Applications Development Software, IDC

Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Ovum

Carmi Levy, Technology Analyst, CTV News Channel

In just a couple more days, a healthy section of the RWW team - and a good number of our friends and fans - will be convening in Austin for South by Southwest Interactive. A couple of us have been asked to speak on panels; we wanted to share that information with you and ask you to share your panels and talks with us (and the rest of our readers, too).

Leave a comment telling us - and the rest of the world - about your SXSW Interactive panel. Let us know who's going to be talking and what you're talking about, plus where and when to show up.

One of the best ways to become an industry influencer is to get involved in industry events. They're a great way to surround yourself with respected colleagues and they offer your the opportunity to network with others who share your interests. If you've got the guts to go toe-to-toe with some of the industry's top pundits, get yourself on stage and show the world what you're made of. When you apply for speaking opportunities, here are some of the points to consider.

When you think about South by Southwest Interactive, your memory may serve up warm recollections of open bars, awesome booth swag, and the occasional keynote worth remembering. But amid the festival atmosphere, thousands of would-be entrepreneurs, web developers, and VCs mill around looking for (or pitching) the Next Big Thing.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the SxSW Panel Picker is replete with startup-related panels. Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration (and votes and comments), here are ten could-be-awesome proposed SxSW panels all about the space we love best. Look closely, and you just might see some themes, such as bootstrapping, revenue models, and life outside the Valley.

Yesterday, an all-star panel at the TechWeb/O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit took a closer look at the implications of the current shift towards cloud computing and discussed the possible business models around it. The panel featured Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch, Salesfore.com's CEO Marc Benioff, Google's Dave Girouard, and VMware's CEO Paul Maritz. The panel was moderated by Tim O'Reilly.