News broke yesterday that Yahoo is considering purchasing geo-location start up Foursquare. Foursquare is a location based game played on mobile phones – your competitors are your friends, and your entire city. The idea is that you use foursquare to ‘check in’ to a venue whenever you visit. The more venues you visit per day/week, the more points you get. If you check into a specific venue more than ANYONE then you become ‘mayor’. You also unlock badges as you check into various locations around your city (i.e. checking in on a ferry wins you the ‘I’m on a boat’ badge). It’s a popular mobile game and has seen quite a bit of growth the past year – expanding the number of cities it’s available in, and having a huge presence at nerd conference SXSW.

With acceptance rates of smart phones and other internet-connected devices on a such a steady rise, Yahoo buying Foursqaure would be, as The San Francisco Chronicle points out, a really smart move. Recently, Cisco released a report predicting that by 2014 mobile data traffic will increase 39 times and smartphones, laptops, and other mobile-ready portables will drive 91% of that traffic (9% going to non-smartphones and home gateways). Thus, according to SFC, not only would the acquisition demonstrate Yahoo’s commitment to innovation, but it would prepare them for the subsequent fallout of the “paradigm of web sites”. Read more »

I’m surprised how much discussion Juggalos seem to be generating lately. From being parodied on SNL to having a Law and Order episode reference them, it seems this misunderstood subculture of horror-core music fans are infiltrating pop culture consciousness. It shouldn’t be surprising that grown men in scary clown make up that fantasize about axe murders have become an easy target for ridicule or are being painted by news casts as a potential menace to society. But what is surprising is how long it took the world to take notice. Read more »

My twitter followers must have hated me last week. In five days I managed over 200 updates. While it sounds a bit excessive, I had my reasons: I was in nerd Mecca.

South By Southwest Interactive festival is a conference / party hosted in Austin, Texas. For five days I was amongst my peers in the interactive community, participating in interesting and inspiring conversations about digital media, eating and drinking some of the best food, and partying alongside the who’s who of the internet. I had the opportunity to meet some amazing people and learn a lot about the future of the industry (and it’s current state). And while my tweets covered quite a bit of my experience in Austin, there really is only so much you can say in 140 characters.

So I bring you: Dana’s SXSW Top Ten Read more »

Returning to work on a brisk Halifax morning after 8 days in Austin for SXSW Interactive and Music is like waking up from a dream. Drinks, food and live music are no longer free and all of the amazing characters I met and hung out with have disappeared. And now my coworkers and friends look at me in disbelief when I tell them stories about being a part of Devo’s focus group to name their next album, being handed free bacon on the street by a small child, meeting the dad from David After the Dentist, or being encouraged to ride a mechanical bull by my boss. Read more »

Less than 24 hours until SXSW 2010 kicks off and the Stitch team is really excited for this year.  All of us were hoping to make it out this year but busy lives have meant that we have one pass too many for the Interactive event.

If you’ve been on the fence about whether or not to attend, or planning to pay the walk-up rate this might be your lucky day.  It costs us $100 USD to transfer our unused pass and if you’re willing to pay it, the pass is yours for the week.  That’s an 82% discount on the walk-up rate and it’s the DAY BEFORE.

We have a feeling that the pass will get snatched up at this price since we’ve heard of colleagues still grabbing the walk-up rates.  So instead of first-come, first-served we are going to host a little contest for the next 24 hours to declare the winner and transfer the pass moments before they pay the $550 in person.

Here’s the contest:

Stitch Media’s logo is a button.  We love it because buttons are everywhere – we take them for granted how ubiquitous and useful they are.  We want to see what you see when you think of buttons and we plan to transfer the pass to the most creative entry we receive in the next 24 hours.

Step 1: Take a picture of a button.  It must be your own photo (no submitting stock images).  We’re hoping you’ll be creative with what the photo is – is it an actual button or a craft you made or a sign you saw?  Anything goes as long as it’s an original photo and it has a button in it.

Step 2: Tweet @stitchmedia with the hashtag #sxswcontest and a link to your photo (Twitpic or TinyURL to Flickr or whatever – as long as we can see it)

We will announce the results tomorrow and post up the winning photo on the blog (you can choose to remain anonymous).  We’ll transfer the SXSW 2010 Interactive pass to you and we’ll see you there!

We’re excited to have a great panel for our SXSW talk on Interactive Documentaries March 15.

Dan Gluckman from the BBC produced the interactive for “The Virtual Revolution“, an open source documentary about how 20 years of the web has reshaped our lives. Check out the 3D Documentary Explorer a radical new way to navigate through clips from the first two episodes of the series.

Suzanne Stefanac is the director of the Digital Content Lab for the American Film Institute. The Digital Content Lab has generated more than 90 cutting edge digital media prototypes including The Interview Project from DavidLynch.com. Here is a recent talk Suzanne did about the future of digital media.

Ashley York is a co-founding member of the Los Angeles-based design collective, Take Action Games, where her work in the field of digital activism and games for social change led to the production of “Darfur is Dying“. Darfur is Dying is a heartbreaking video game that teaches users about the genocide in Darfur.

Check out this awesome panel on Monday, March 15 at 09:30 AM at Hilton K and be sure to tweet about it using the tag #iadoc.

Travis Bartel is gearing up for a full day of media discussion in the Big Apple at Crossmedia NYC this week. The event looks like it will be jammed with with great discussion on cross media featuring an impressive group of panelists including: Dr Adam Klein (Media Leader), Alistair C. Mitchell (Research In Motion), Ashley J Swartz (Digitas), Bonnie Fuller (Hollywoodlife.com), David Kruis (Metranome), Jeff Gomez (Starlight Runner Entertainment), Jeremy Caplan, Mathieu Ferland (Ubisoft), Michael Scissons (Syncapse). Petri Martikainen (MultiTouch), Roger Keating (Hearst Television), and Sam Cox (Milabra).

In the wake of Gordon Lightfoot’s death and resurrection via Twitter and Canwest’s newswire, it seems like we should really be grieving for fact-checking. Read more »