Fancy's fanciest fan. (Photo: wikipedia.org)

Ceci N'est Pas Une Sandy The affordable-art-dealing website 20 x 200 is now selling a print of a NASA satellite image of Hurricane Sandy. All proceeds from the sale will go to the Red Cross to help relief efforts. The striking image was taken at 9:02 a.m on Sunday, approximately 10 hours before NYC’s MTA shut transport service down throughout the tristate area. Hang it above your couch of a constant reminder of the grander universe and just how much you appreciate your wifi.

More Money, More Fancy Fancy, Pinterest's cooler older brother, has raised just over $26 million in additional funding. New investors include Celtics owner Jim Pallotta, Twitter and Square cofounder Jack Dorsey and Edward Gilligan, the vice chairman of American Express. This also ruins rumors that Apple was planning to acquire the company. No word yet on what their favorite user, Kanye West, thinks of the new influx of cash.

Santa Set to Make a Lot Of Web Boxes This Year Boxee, the New York rival to Apple TV and Roku, is planning to sell its $98 Boxee TV in Walmarts all across the U.S. The new device will be sold in 3,000 Walmarts. This is obviously a huge boost for the company, which sold 120,000 units last year. And unlimited DVR is about as American as Apple pie.

Zynga, What? Zynga may have picked some slightly unpronounceable Gibraltar-based startup to launch its foray into real-money gaming. But that hasn't hurt Betable's chances of becoming the Spotify of online social gambling. The platform, which is backed by investors like Path's David Morin and TechStars' David Tisch, lets developers build real-money games on its platform. Today, Betable announced that it will be lending its services to Slingo, Digital Chocolate and Murka. The company also just helped Big Fish launch a casino app called Big Fish Casino that lets U.K. users gamble with actual money.

NYC vs. SF, Finally Settled If you're ever stuck trying to decide whether to decamp to the Valley, then Versus IO is the site for you. It uses an algorithm to compare two alike things and show you points and counterpoints in a sparse layout. It currently can compare cities and a variety of tech products (think iPhone 4 vs. iPhone 5). But what about the immortal conundrum of pizza vs. Chinese?

Shiny New Doors Glassdoor, a California-based jobs site, has raised $20 million in a new financing round led by DAG Ventures. The round also included Benchmark Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Battery Ventures. The company told GigaOm that traffic to Glassdoor has reached 13 million monthly uniques and that revenue has increased 175 percent.

Get Your Game on GitHub has just announced a monthlong gaming hackathon on its blog. The GitHub Game Off will take place during November, and entrants will have to create a game looselybased on the concepts of forking (or forks), branching (or branches), cloning (or clones), pushing or pulling. There are five new iPads with Retina displays (64GB wifi models) available as prizes.

Big Conductor Conductor, an SEO platform, has just announced a big raise that it's calling "the largest venture capital round of funding in SEO technology." The company managed to scoop up $20 million, led by Investor Growth Capital. FirstMark Capital and Matrix Partners also participated.

Vimeo Workout Plan Reece Pacheco's video startup Shelby.tv, which is still in beta mode, has teamed up with workout site Nerd Fitness to create Nerdfitness.tv. The new site has a scrolling feed of videos to keep you motivated and to teach you how to work out. Let's hope no one gets caught up watching too many videos and forgets to go to the gym.

Dream It, Do It, Microsoft It Startup accelerator Dreamit Ventures has partnered up with Microsoft to give its startups access to the software development tools and networking of the BizSpark program. DreamIt also is planning to select one company from each of its programs to receive additional benefits as part of the BizSpark Fellow program. Fellows will get access to Microsoft expert engineers and evangelists to help build out their products. Qualifying startups can also access up to $60,000 in Windows Azure services over two years. FlagTap, an online capture the flag game that aims to increase web traffic, has been chosen as the first fellow of the program.

Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia. (Photo: informitv.com)

Loath to open Safari? Wedded to your Windows machine? If so, a bit of good news: TV live-stream provider Aereo is expanding beyond iOS, to provide support for browsers Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

"For us, it's significant because it opens up the universe of people that can experience Aereo," Virginia Lam, Aereo's VP of communications and government relations, told Betabeat.

"We've been telling folks for a while that PC support would be coming, so it's nice to finally put the news out."

The move dramatically expands the pool of people who can sign up. Until today, Aereo was limited to iOS devices (plus Roku boxes). Even Apple owners were forced to use Safari to access the service. Ms. Lam declined to quantify the expected gains in membership, but she noted a recent study suggesting something like 15 percent of the U.S. population uses iOS devices and concluded that "it's pretty significant."

"What we do know is that a lot of people, when we initially announced, at the press launch in February, we had tens of thousands of people raise their hand and sign up and request an invitation, but didn't have a device that was compatible," she added.

"We're excited for those people to come in the door and really get the full Aereo experience."

The announcement also positions the company for its coming rollout outside New York City. The plan, according to Ms. Lam, is to expand to 10 to 15 new cities across the country over the course of the next year, likely by next summer. "In terms of looking at, for lack of a better word, our story arc, this is a significant piece for us moving forward," she added.

Of course, we couldn't help but wonder about how yesterday's announcement of a Boxee TV offering complete with live HDTV broadcast channels and an unlimited DVR option. The most DVR space Aereo offers is 40 hours, available for either $12 a month or $80 a year. That seems likely to take some of the wind out of Aereo's sails.

Mr. Lam said she wasn't up on the specifics of Boxee's offering and so couldn't comment directly on their announcement. But she did offer a spirited defense of her company: "There's no box to install, there's no application to download, there's nothing else that you need to put into your home,"  she said.

"That is a major distinction between us and anyone else that's in that marketplace: Everything happens in the cloud, you use the device that you already own, you use the computer you already own, if you want to use Aereo," she elaborated. "There's none of this ancillary stuff that you need to buy or install in your home."

Pawnee's finest, live. (Photo: Boxee)

Suddenly the days are growing shorter and there's a snap in the air, and you know what that means: Everyone's getting ready to duke it out for the top spot on holiday shopping lists. (Only 69 days left, folks.) Stepping into the ring today: Boxee, with the announcement of the Boxee TV--and the specs sound pretty promising for any aspiring cord-cutters out there.

The new device--which The Verge first leaked pics of last week--combines apps like Netflix, live broadcast TV, and an unlimited DVR offering all in one device. A dual tuner will allow you to watch live television from either a basic cable connection or antenna, as well as recording up to two channels at once. The price: $99. The device hits shelves November 1.

"There'll be one place where you can watch live television, you can watch your recordings and you can watch video from the key over-the-top services," Boxee CEO Avner Ronen told Betabeat. "We've streamlined the experience so it's familiar grounds for anybody that has used the TV before."

He called Boxee TV's new streamlined interface "very different than existing connected TV experiences," though the device will come with Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, Pandora and the like pre-installed.

Boxee's company blog trumpeting the announcement helps explain Mr. Ronen's excitement yesterday over the FCC's new rulemaking on cable encryption, which prompted him to take to the Boxee blog and write: "we are happy to see that the FCC’s rulemaking does indeed provide a path forward that’s good for consumers, the cable industry, and startups." Says the blog:

With Boxee TV you’ll be able watch live TV broadcasts in beautiful HD from channels like ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS, Univision and many others.  It works with antennas and unencrypted basic Cable that deliver the channels listed above, and has 2 tuners so you can watch one thing... and record another. 

Mr. Ronen emphasized the similarity to the TV-watching experience, which even your luddite great-aunt will recognize: "You turn it on, and there's live TV playing and you can go up and down and switch channels, and you can see what's coming up, what's being played right now, and you're always a click away from watching something."

The device comes with "a very small, basic antenna." However, your results with that may depend on your television's proximity to the window. If you're still not getting the reception you want, "what we recommend is that they call their cable company and get the broadcast basic tier, which can cost you, if you live in New York it's probably $15 a month," said Mr. Ronen. So it's not a total ax to the cord, but it's certainly getting closer.

The company is particularly keen to emphasize the DVR offering, which is unlimited. "We actually are going to be the first to introduce the cloud-based DVR," said Mr. Ronen. "The Boxee TV device is going to upload your recordings to the cloud, and it's stored in there for you." That means users can record as much as they want and watch it through either their TV or their PC or tablet.

The company is comparing its offering to the advent of digital cameras. "Today, when you hit record, you have to take into consideration that whatever you're recording is, the DVR is going to run out of space and that's going to get deleted. By removing that restriction, it just makes it so it's a no-brainer to click record." Mr. Ronen added that he's now recording every episode of Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

We're sure that true television junkies will appreciate no longer having to agonize over whether to record the umpteenth Law and Order episode or the new Dancing with the Stars.

Boxee is confident in its offering: "The product is going to be very unique in the marketplace--nobody else has built the cloud DVR, and we believe that this is going to be extremely differentiated," Mr. Ronen said.

Of coures, there are some limits, or at least additional considerations, to the No Limits DVR. For one thing, it's an optional service and will set you back an additional $14.99. Nor will it be universally available on November 1 to all Boxee TV buyers. It's rolling out in the top eight TV markets--New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and D.C. That covers about 30 percent of the total TV households in the U.S., so "we feel we're in a good place for the start," said Mr. Ronen. Everyone else should keep an eye out for the service's appearance "later in 2013," though the timing is likely to depend on what Boxee learns in its first eight markets.

"That enables us to scale the launch of our cloud DVR,"  which isn't cheap from either an operational or financial perspective, Mr. Ronen explained.

Mayor Bloomberg and Mr. Dorsey. (Photo: nycgov.tumblr.com)

Earlier today, Betabeat ventured downtown for a tech-world double whammy: Not just Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but also Google chairman Eric Schmidt were scheduled to speak. The pair were stopping by the joint headquarters of Boxee and Sidetour for a quick check-up on the state of New York tech.

After a barrage of stats illustrating New York's rise to tech superstardom--for example, between 2007 and 2010, the number of employees at New York City digital media companies has grown 74 percent--Mayor Bloomberg segued into the news, such as it was.

On the heels of a nighttime cab ride testing Square technology with CEO Jack Dorsey, he'd just come from a morning meeting where he'd convened leaders--from Valley heavy hitters like Twitter CEO Dick Costolo to Alley stalwarts like Union Square Ventures ringleader Fred Wilson--for a roundtable dubbed "Keeping the Edge," focused on the areas of infrastructure, education, and innovation.

"But we know that leadership can't be taken for granted--we made that mistake before and we're not going to make that again." Hence the necessity of the conference. "If we want to keep our competitive advantage in both New York City and in America, we have to bring together  the best ideas from the people who know the industry best."

That also explained the presence of Mr. Schmidt, who spent much of the press conference leaning against the wall next to the mayor, Arthur Fonzarelli-style, and drinking a fully caloric Coca Cola classic. Tut tut, Mr. Schmidt--don't you know we're in the midst of a war on obesity?

"It was a vibrant discussion," Bloomberg informed us all. And while he's the number-one cheerleader of the New York tech scene, he admitted that "from the East Coast to the West Coast, tech companies are facing similar challenges and opportunities, and we're all in this together." In short, everybody's got to pull together if Team America is going to remain on top.

Then out came the barbs: "Now, unfortunately, not much is being done in Washington to ensure that." There are things that can be done at the local level, however--"We know it because we've done it," said Mayor Bloomberg.

But he wasn't done negging Washington, later going on to elaborate, "Washington is spending all their time talking about tax rates. Here in New York City, we are spending all our time trying to help people get businesses started."

Nonetheless, "every day brings more good news," he added, mentioning this morning's announcement from Square that the company is acquiring Soho-based design firm 80/20. As for that cab ride, "the driver was happy--the driver pointed out that with this technology he seems to get bigger tips."

"I can't tell you how easy it was," Mayor Bloomberg added.

Square's New York office is going to be awfully convenient when the city's existing contract with Verifone expires in a few months--a legal barrier which the mayor as good as admitted was the last thing standing between seeing some new technologies in the back of yellow cabs.

After Boxee CEO Avner Ronen briefly thanked the mayor for stopping by "our modest office," Mr. Schmidt stepped up to the podium and turned the urban boosterism on high: "In order to believe in the future of America you have to believe in innovation, and when you study innovation now, you understand that innovation occurs in cities." That, however, typically requires the right alchemical elements: money, the right people and the right leader--we're sure you can guess who he was referring to there.

"What we see over and over again is a commitment to make New York City a viable alternative to Silicon Valley and a place where true innovation occurs for the global good," he added. Here's hoping, anyway. And with that, Mr. Schmidt returned to his station at the wall.

But he wasn't entirely done--a cheeky CNET reporter attempted to sneak in a question regarding the state of Google Maps and its uncertain future on the iPhone. Mr. Schmidt, however, demurred. "This is the mayor's forum," he said.

Pieratt. (Photo: Brooklyn Beta)

eBay announced on its blog today that it has acquired Svpply, the NYC-based social shopping site that curates personalized collections of clothing and products. Located on Broome Street in Soho, Svpply raised $550,000 in seed funding back in 2010 from investors like Founders Collective, Spark Capital, SV Angel, Dennis Crowley and Jason Hirschhorn. Since then, Svpply has been bootstrapping itself to 620,000 product views per week and 140,000 registered members (as of May).

Last May, founder Ben Pieratt offered a candid perspective on first-time entrepreneurship, admitting his vulnerability. "I have zero experience or expertise in building a company," he wrote in a 2011 blog post. "So I'm learning on the fly."

Mr. Pierrat summed up a list of things he'd need to learn how to do, or Svpply would fail. Hey, in startup parlance, we'd say an acqui-hire counts as quite a success.

At least Svpply's other cofounder, parallel entrepreneur extraordinaire Zach Klein, brought some experience to the team. Mr. Klein is a partner at Founders Collective, and has had a hand in a plethora of successful startups. He cofounded Vimeo and BustedTees, helped launch CollegeHumor, worked as chief product officer at Boxee and serves as a director for both Skillshare and Svpply. According to AllThingsD, Mr. Klein linked up with Svpply in the spring of 2010 when he "connected with Ben Pieratt, a Boston-based designer who started Svpply in late 2009."

eBay's blog post suggests that the move to purchase Svpply is largely an acqui-hire:

With Svpply.com, eBay gains access to technology talent to further improve the shopping and selling experience for its customers. Svpply.com assets – including a talented team of six designers and developers – are well-suited to help eBay advance more personalized experiences and merchandising options on eBay.com.

Based in New York (see the office, above), the Svpply.com employees will work on merchandising, non-search discovery and browsing.

eBay has been aggressively ramping up its presence in New York as of late. Back in November, the online auction platform acquired NYC-based Hunch, a personalized recommendation engine. Then in April, eBay snapped up a massive 350,000 square foot office in the Flatiron. Guess they needed a few more devs to fill up those desks.

Svpply insists in a blog post that the site's not going anywhere anytime soon. "Svpply is not going away," it reads. "We’ll continue to bring our users new products each day—allowing our loyal fans to explore beautiful products and stores, all of them hand selected by the community."

Greg Leppert, Svpply's third cofounder, said the Svpply team would work on both eBay and the Svpply site. "We'll continue to build Svpply and our community and apply what we learn to eBay," he told Betabeat by email. Mr. Leppert also said that Svpply will not be rolled into eBay, but that both sites will remain distinct from each other.

"We’re excited to join the eBay and Hunch teams in the new state-of-the-art technology development center in New York City!" Svpply added in a blog post. Shake them pom-poms, y'all.

Additional reporting contributed by Nitasha Tiku.

Only it’s not true, as those numbers are apparently outdated. Upon reaching out for a comment, Betabeat was informed by Boxee’s Liz Dellheim via email that it was all the intern’s fault:

“We don't release numbers for Boxee Box sales - it was an intern handling our Twitter feed who quoted an outdated number. Since it's a D-Link product, we let them quote sales numbers. This year we surpassed 2 million users worldwide and while at this time the PC represents a bigger user base than the box, we expect that to shift by the end of this year.”

Of course, that dumps us back at square one. We're not sure just how "outdated" that number is, which leaves us without a real sense of total active Boxee Box users.

Regarding the PC client, Ms. Dellheim added that while they’re not actively distributing it, there are still plenty of people downloading it from other sources. “So it lives on,” she told us.

Guys: We all love interns, but let’s please remember that they are poorly paid for a very simple reason, and that is that they aren’t ready for primetime. Proceed accordingly.

Hook 'em! | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Wikipedia)

HILL COUNTRY. Made in NY: Austin will celebrate New York based tech startups at South by Southwest on March 11 from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. at the Fast Company Grill at Cedar Door in the Texas Capital. The event will be hosted by Gust, and the New York Tech Meetup and will be attended by over 250 NYC based startups. RSVP here. You might even be able to get there in a real NYC yellow taxi.

GroupMe is also heading to Austin for SXSW to keep you connected to your fellow conference-goers. Start a group on the GroupMe SXSW landing page and get exclusive updates, news and a chance to win prizes.

Be sure to RSVP for the GroupMe Major Rager end-of-the-weekend celebration at Cedar Street Courtyard featuring DJ sets from the likes of COMA and Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem.

Pixable is going to SXSW with a special section dedicated to the interactive conference based on what's happening, where you should be and what's most popular "#SXSW Live Feed" is a real time stream of all #SXSW tagged photos on Instagram and Twitter and "#SXSW Popular" is a showcase of the most shared and liked pics.

PIIIIIING. Sonar, the mobile app that shows hidden connections to the people around you based on the information you publicly post online, is going to SXSW with an Android App in beta. And that's not all—new features are also live including a people tab, to show users whose around no matter what the venue may be, Facebook and Twitter location data integration to show more people with more context and the entire app has been reengineered under the hood for improved speed and power.

GIRLS. GirlDevelopIt now has over 2,300 members and will be on hand at SXSW celebrating women in tech with a totally unofficial All Girl* Dev Brunch. The nerdettes also announced that classes in San Francisco are open for enrollment.

*Boys allowed.

ISPs 4 U AND ME. KeyWifi, the disruptive little startup spearheading the effort to bring Internet access to all by sharing hotspots, came out on top at the Silicon Alley Battlefield event at the New York Entrepreneurs Business Network. Betabeat believes uninhibited access to information is a good thing, so it's nice to see KeyWifi win with a refined pitch after struggling to connect with judges at last month's Common Pitch.

TESTING 1-2-3. After over a year of beta testing, Broadcastr 2.0 is available in the iOS app store and in the Android Market. Broadcastr allows users to " find memories, insights, and enriching information about eclectic and everyday places on every continent on Earth." New features include imprived filtering options, a gallery view, curated story collections and more intuitive map browsing.

ADITUDE. Solve Media heard our prayers and has come up with a way around 30 second ads for online videos that are sometimes only half that length. With Solve Media's solution, viewers will be able to type a sponsor's message in a text box to bypass the commercial. Users will be less frustrated and sponsors will know that their message was heard instead of playing to nobody while the intended target is making a sandwich.

CHA-CHING. Covestor, an investment management company that basically lets users see the transactions of pro traders and copy their moves, is joining forces with SlashDeclare, a cooperative movement of financial services companies calling for fairness and transparency in financial markets.

Covestor’s Next Invest, a virtual conference, is set for March 20 and 21 where Charles Lewis Sizemore, of the Sizemore Investment Letter, will talk about "using content to build a money management practice."

LIFE COACH. "It is time for you to stop stalking your exes and start living your life!" proclaims LifeGunk, a startup that touts itself as "the world's first life-management network." LifeGunk allows you to maintain schedules, take notes, log goals on your calendar, and send yourself reminders. When you accomplish one of your goals you can even give yourself a checkmark. Sort of like Google Calendar—but more patronizing. LifeGunk is currently self funded. Investors—get in while you can.

45 RPM. Turntable.fm is rolling out new features including a private chat function, improved search and a guest list so you can see how else is is jimmying to your jams. Best of all, there's a new free iPhone app—gratuitous guitar solo goes here.

MAXIMIZE. Clickable just made some big expansions to their senior leadership team as they plan to continue their rapid growth as a platform that combines search and social across Facebook, Google, Twitter, Foursquare, Bing and LinkedIn. Dave Fall joins Clickable as COO, David O. Smith as CRO, Sanjay Gupta as senior director of engineering and Brian Tucker as the VP of agency sales.

WORK FOR CHANGE. Gawker is looking for a new creative director with coding proficiency. Apply Here. Hyperpublic needs a web developer who's comfy with MongoDB, Javascript and JQuery. Throw your hat into the ring. Betaworks wants a senior backend engineer and architect for contract or full-time. Expertise in Python, Mongo and AWS is preferred. Tell 'em why it should be you. GetGlue, the social network for entertainment, has an opening for a senior product manager with 3-5 years experience and a social media presence. Apply here. Signpost, the "Google AdSense of local commerce," is on the prowl for a new publisher development manager. Strong business acumen and three years of marketing/sales experience gives you a good shot. Shoot. Work Market, a labor and HR management platform, backed by Union Square Ventures, is looking for a back-end Java developer, operations engineer, community manager and many other positions. Check 'em out here. Foursquare has internships for young, budding techies on the software engineering and community fronts. They've also got more than a few job openings. Check it all out here. And last but not least, Boxee wants to pay an intern on their product team. If you're based in NYC apply here.

They are thinking about parties.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder & CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can follow him at @garysguide and reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

As y'all know, SXSW (a.k.a. "Sundance for the Geek Set") is less than two weeks away. And ya know what that means. Time to put into place a plan of action on how you gonna be partaying and taking Austin by storm! So to make your life easier to gorge on all those tears-of-joy-inducing Nuclear Tacos and drool-generating Salt Lick BBQs I've put together The Definitive Guide to SXSW Interactive 2012 Parties! And of course, it comes with my special commentary & notes to help you make sense of all the madness! You're welcome.

Now of course, as many a battle-hardened SXSW veteran can attest, the seemingly endless parade of parties, panels and people can quickly become overwhelming. So to make your life even easier I've compiled a list of the 15 most-awesome-must-attend-unmissable parties that are bound to give all your stay-at-home-from-SXSW-but-following-the-craziness-on-twitter friends a big, giant, steaming pile of FOMO. ;)

And yes, I'll be at SXSW, attending every last one of those panels 'n parties (or well, as many as humanly possible, even for me). So if you're interested in sponsoring my Red Tie for SXSW and putting your company logo on there, you'd best hurry up and contact me pronto at gary [at] garysguide.com.

And now, without further ado, ladies 'n gentleman, the 15 SXSW parties you really, really, reeeaaallly don't wanna miss...

FreshBooks Ranch Party Catered by Salt Lick
That Saul Colt. Whatever will he think of next?! This is the place to Get-Your-Texas-On with free mouth watering Salt Lick BBQ at a 32 acre ranch and maybe a Clown or two. Yes, a Clown! Freshbooks will be providing free shuttle service to and from the ranch cuz once you've loaded up on all that BBQ, I doubt you'd be able to walk too far! ;)
Thursday (Mar 08), 7 p.m. @ FreshBooks SXSW Ranch, 8515 FM 1826

A Celebration of American Startups at SXSW
Another must-attend SXSW event. Cuz srsly, where else could you be rubbing shoulders with LinkedIn honcho Reid Hoffman, Revolution and AOL founder Steve Case, Lean Startup maestro Steve Blank and others.
Friday (Mar 09), 6:30 p.m. @ ACL Live, 310 2nd Street

TechKaraoke SXSW 2012 - Presented by Blog World & New Media Expo
Live Band Karaoke! With The Dead Motley Sex Maidens and a bevy of hostesses: Ruby Lamb of Satan’s Cheerleaders fame, the luminous Sarah Clark of Pearlescent, Stella from pop-punk legends Cruiserweight, and author/Rollergirl Melicious.
Friday (Mar 09), 8 p.m. @ The Stage on Sixth, 508 East 6th St

Startup Weekend, Zaarly & Twilio SXSWi Party
Dance into the night with fellow startuppers and DJ Christian Barbuto and DJ Remmington Steele. And all the free booze that you can handle!
Friday (Mar 09), 8 p.m. @ Kingdom, 103 E. 5th St, Ste B

SecondMarket House - Parties, Panels and More!
Hang out with Paige Craig (BetterWorks), Naval Ravikant (AngelList), David Tisch (TechStars), Felix Salmon (Reuters), Mike Lazerow (Buddy Media), Barry Silbert (SecondMarket), Roger Ehrenberg (IA Ventures) and others.
Saturday (Mar 10), 9 a.m. @ Thirsty Nickel, 325 East 6th Street

The Foodspotting SXSW Street Food Fest 2012, brought to you by CHOW.com
Austin's FINEST food trucks, yo! ... Arancini, Chi'Lantro, Clem's Hot Diggity Dogs, Good Pops, Hey Cupcake, Lucky J's, One Taco, Peached Tortilla and Yume Burger.
Saturday (Mar 10), 4 p.m. @ 2nd and Congress

The Awesomest Journalism Party. Ever. Redux.
With Hacks/Hackers, Huffington Post, New York Times, NPR, SoundCloud, NewsCred, Paley Center, MailChimp and others.
Saturday (Mar 10), 5 p.m. @ Palm Door, 401 Sabine St

SXSW Pre-Party with Evite
Evite's legendary SXSW pre-party is back. And you know what that means. Endless Cocktails + Apps + Taco Bar = Win Win Win! And to stimulate ur senses even more, here are some pics from last years party.
Saturday (Mar 10), 5 p.m. @ Lanai, 422 Congress Ave, Ste C

Girl+Guy Party SXSW 2012
With the man himself, Guy Kawasaki, and featuring The Tontons, UME, Wild Moccasins, Quiet Company, Dave Wrangler and The Kingston Springs.
Saturday (Mar 10), 8 p.m. @ Stubb's Austin, 801 Red River

Boxee SxSW Kegger 2012 - Sponsored by SlingBox & Turntable
Five kegs + 100 lbs. of Salt Lick BBQ + Moon Bounce + Photo Booth + Slip 'n Slide = Are you ready to partayyy?! :)
Sunday (Mar 11), 1 p.m. @ 96 Red River St

Made in NY: Austin
Mini SideTours, a fake tattoo parlor by Tatt.ly, mind-blowing new 3D from Shapeways, a couple of yellow cabs and much much more. Organized by the NY Tech Meetup. An absolute must-attend!
Sunday (Mar 11), 6 p.m. @ Fast Company Grill at Cedar Door, 201 Brazos Street

PBS Party celebrating @MasterpiecePBS Sherlock
All ya need to know is that the stunning & gorgeous Lara Pulver is going to be there. Don't know who that is? Well, lemme Google that for ya. ;)
Sunday (Mar 11), 8 p.m. @ The Parish, 214 E 6th St

The Crowdtap VIP Party 2012 SXSWs Cant Miss Party Returns
Aerial Dancers + VJ Culture + Food Trucks + Hipster Orchestra translates into one hot, hot, hot party!
Sunday (Mar 11), 9 p.m. @ Haven, 409 Colorado

The Barbarian Group & Tumblr present: #RobotripSXSW
It’s gonna be big. Like, two venues big. At The Mohawk and Club DeVille with Tim Sweeney, Mathew Dear (live band), Bear In Heaven, Orthy, DJ Mike Simonetti, WAVVES, Kool Keith, Japandroids, Sleep Over, Beach Fossils, Oberhofer, The Young, Grape St, The Sour Notes and more. And for a little preview, here is the Spotify playlist.
Monday (Mar 12), 6 p.m. @ The Mohawk, 912 Red River St and Club DeVille, 900 Red River St

3rd Annual GeekyBeach Party SXSW12
Open bar, swag.
Monday (Mar 12), 9 p.m. @ Roial Austin, 120 W. Fifth Street

Happy SouthBySouthWesting, folks. And don't forget: Whatever happens at SXSW... is on Twitter within 5 seconds. ;)

You want to know what I'm watching

If you don't have to make a conscious decision to share something, shouldn't it be called something else? The effort to share something is what separates it from daily life and lets your network know its worth their time. Otherwise its just sort of exhibitionist spam.

In any case, Boxee is joining the party, adding its name along Spotify and The Washington Post as part of Facebook's new "frictionless sharing" initiative. Watch an episode of The Colbert Report and without even the click of a button this info is shared with your Facebook network.

The new feature is opt-in, which should save Boxee the inevitable headache of users who suddenly find their taste exposed. But we're going to wager that folks who turn this on will quickly forget about it, that is until a drunken late night viewing spews something to their public feed they wish grandma hadn't seen.

A lot of people also use Boxee for watching content they downloaded illegally from pirate sites. It's unclear whether Boxee will share information about whatever it is that users are watching, or just when it finds a clearly identifiable piece of content from an approved source.

Below is a short video Boxee released on their blog giving users a sense of how the new feature will work. It does integrate with Boxee's latest release, a dongle that allows users to watch live TV.

Boxee Facebook Live TV Integration from boxee on Vimeo.

Screenshot of Boxee 1.5

Yesterday Boxee announced that version 1.5 of it's Boxee Box is currently being tested by a select group of users and will roll out to everyone in January. The update also went out to Boxee users who access the service through their PC. But in the same post Andrew Kippen, Boxee's VP of marketing, also announced that this would be the last time Boxee would offer updates or support for their PC users. In a section entitled "Growing Past the PC" he wrote:

We believe the future of TV will be driven by devices such as the Boxee Box, Connected TVs / Blu-Rays and 2nd screen devices such as tablets and phones. While there are still many users who have computers connected to their TVs, we believe this use case is likely to decline as users find better alternatives. People will continue to watch a lot of video on their computer, but it is more likely to be a laptop than a home-theater PC and probably through a browser rather than downloaded software.

To our computer users… to those who have come out to our NYC and SF meetups, talked with us at Engadget, GDGT, and Giz Gallery events, or enjoyed Austin BBQ with us during SxSW, or simply messaged with us on Facebook, Twitter, and our forums… thank you for all your support – we would not be where we are today without you. But we can’t stay here.

Hundreds of users replied in the comments. "Yeah, Merry Christmas from Boxee… Leaving all your PC users out in the cold," wrote Matthew Hall. "Seriously, you should just charge for a premium PC app, I would gladly pay for this. Definitely want be getting a Boxee box. Very disappointed."

For some long time users, the end of the PC was a slap in the face. "So to sum up the article: If you helped spread awareness of Boxee and tested it and provided feedback years before there was a Boxee Box product and helped make the service and software a success, you're being shown the door. In exchange for our time working through a products bugs and helping to get it ready for prime-time (which it still isn't) you get nothing," wrote R. Reed.

It might make sense for Boxee to focus on its hardware product, where it generates real revenue. It also allows them to stay closer to the integrated experience of Apple, and avoid the fragmentation plaguing Google's Android operating system. But it has clearly cost them a lot of passionate users who contributed to improving the product.