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Apple to open temporary store at SXSW

Chris Oldroyd — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:23:39 +0000

Apple is set to open a temporary store this Friday in the Scarbrough Building at the SXSW (South by Southwest Interactive Conference) in Austin.

Earlier this week construction workers started retrofitting a 5,000 square foot area of the building which Apple has leased for two weeks only.

Rance Wilemon, a partner in Plat.Form Real Estate said, “Apple real estate representative notified him Monday that the company had settled on Sixth and Congress for the location. "They came in town on Monday, did a quick tour, found a spot, and they're in there working and will open by Friday."

The store, classed as a popup store is interesting to retailers due to the low setup costs and short term commitment. This allows a retailer to test the water prior to making a large investment. In this case however, it is more about having a brand recognition presence at the SXSW event and to coincide with the release of iPad 2.

[Statesman]

iPhone SMASH Puny AT&T Network at SXSW in Austin, TX

Rene Ritchie — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:44:27 +0000

What's causing all the commotion down in Austin, Texas right now? Turns out it's not only iPhone news at South by Southwest 2009 (SXSW), but it's everyone using iPhone 3Gs as well! It's SMASHING AT&T's network.

We've joked before that AT&T had basically gone out and strapped rabbit ears on their EDGE antennas and called it 3G, well if that's the case, they're rapidly strapping even more ears on round Austin way right now, according to Business Insider:

AT&T (T) tells us it's adding wireless capacity in downtown Austin to deal with "unprecedented" demand (that's resulted in service that's flaky at best). This, of course, a result of thousands (tens of thousands?) of South by Southwest attendees bringing 3G iPhones into this part of Austin for the first time. The telco expects service to improve tonight and throughout the rest of the show.

Good news to most techies, however: while AT&T was down, at least Twitter was mostly up...

[via Daring Fireball]

iPhone at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2009 Roundup

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:39:44 +0000

South by Southwest (SXSW) 2009 is trendy, twitter-filling, and the source of increasingly social iPhone news releases. What's going on this year?

FaceBook connect comes to the iPhone. Sure, they may just have redesigned their home pages to basically become Twitter with invitations to apps you don't want and events on continents you can't attend, but behind the scenes:

You can now use Facebook Connect on your iPhone in the same way you can for a website. Simply download any application featuring Facebook Connect and log in using your Facebook account from your iPhone. Then, you'll be able to easily find your Facebook friends. They will be able to see the same profile information as they can on the site, controlled by your privacy settings. You can also share what you're doing with your iPhone applications with all of your Facebook friends by publishing stories back to your profile.

Pelago has launched Whrrl 2.0:

an application for the iPhone that enables people to capture and share the moments of their lives, as they happen, as a story. Through location, photos and text updates, users can easily turn everyday life experiences into lasting stories that can be remembered, organized and shared. Each user controls exactly who can view their story, ranging from public to private, and includes the option to broadcast status updates on Facebook and Twitter.

SGN Launched Agency Wars, a game tied into -- you guessed it! -- social networking and Facebook connect!

Agency Wars is capitalizing on the classic spy genre and offeres massively multiplayer game play so you can become the most deadly spy around.

TUAW is also live and on location at SXSW 2009, and have posted up coverage of the iPhone Gaming Panel.