Our Project Manager Rainy Day is attending most of the business and technology panels this week at SXSW. We will have an article on what she learned in an upcoming issue of our monthly e-newsletter, but we thought you might like to catch some of the takeaways she's jotted down so far at SXSW.

Emerging Social and Technology Trends

These emerging trends:

• Reconnect online data to where we live
• Offer a real shift in tech, transformation in self understanding, more comfortable with public online personas.
• Compel a need for evolving standards that support these projects.
• Amplify the influence of microtrends.
• Offer more cooperation between consumers and designers.

Global South

• Infrastructure growing in Africa, India, China.
• Outside the US/Europe most access Internet thru the phone.
• email's here to stay
• Video conferencing expected to grow

Bluffing Your Way in Web 2.0

Speakers from ClearLeft.com discuss:

4 Pillars that:

• Support social interaction
• encourage user participation
• enhance user experience
• provide open data

Buzzwords to know:

• tagging
• apis
• ajax
• widgets
• long tail
• folksonomy
• tipping point
• microformats
• leverage- utilize
• RIA
• RSS
• Mashup
• community

Popular apps to know:

• twitter- the new IM- join it
• flickr
• technorati
• linkedin
• digg
• youtube
• odeo
• del.icio.us
• basecamp
• lastfm
• facebook
• tailrank
• eventful
• skype
• standpoint

For a comprehensive directory of Web 2.0 apps, check out: http://www.go2web20.net/

Technology to know:

• RSS- put all your events, news, etc. into a feed for others to
• APIs- gotta provide them.
• Simple: REST: URL based.
• SOAP: (more difficult)
• Mashups define web 2.0, e.g., maps are a great mashup: google + yahoo

Web 2.0 is powered by community ratings. Examples:

• tagging: - folksonomy
• bookmarking: - bookmark tags, articles-on delicious, magnolia, newsvine
• tagging & rating
• technorati- add tags to your own sites. your own blog can be a web 2.0 app.

Key takeaways

• Mashup as much as you possibly can.
• Accessibility is a 1.0 thing... web 2.0 isn't really considering accessibility.