This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and 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 reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Sooooo...it's that time of the year again. SXSW (a.k.a. Spring Break for Geeks) is right around the corner, running March 8 to 12 in Austin, Texas. And you know what that means: Parties, parties 'n more parties!! :) So, once again, we're putting together what we hope will be THE definitive guide to all this year's SXSW Interactive parties. We'll be updating this list regularly, so check back often. And email me if you're organizing an event or a party.

Of course, I'll be at SXSW ... attending all (or as many as humanly possible) of the amazing parties, mixers, networking events, lounges, panels, keynotes, BBQs, nuclear taco nights, concerts, happy hours, karaokes, food trucks, block parties and what-have-you.

So if you can't make it down to Austin this year but still wanna get the word out about your amazing startup / company / firm / service / app / project, you can do so. How, you ask? Well, by sponsoring my Red Tie of course, and covering it in your company's awesome logo stickers and giving me your company's elevator pitch. If you're interested, shoot me an email at gary@garysguide.com for more details.

In the meantime, here's my blog post / highlights from last year's SXSW to give you a little taste of what to expect.

FYI, next week is probably the most exclusive hackathon of the year. Google's Project Glass will be holding a two-day hackathon (February 1 to 2) in New York City that'll allow developers to get an early look at Glass so they can start developing for the platform. Google engineers will be on site to help at any point in the process, and developers will have the opportunity to show off what they’ve been working on.

So, how to score an invite: Your guess is as good as mine! If you were one of the smart ones who shelled out $1,500 for the early access to Google Glass you're on the list. Or you could try pinging Googler Aygul Zagidullina and hope you get lucky! Well, for those of you who don't make it, here's a pic of Sergey Brin sporting his Google Glasses on the subway.

In other news, the NYC EDC is partnering with the Lawrence Field Center for Entrepreneurship at Baruch College to create Competition THRIVE, and they're seeking original, innovative strategies and programs that help immigrant entrepreneurs succeed in business. In Round 1, $25,000 will be awarded to five semi-finalists to pilot their program and create a business plan. And in Round 2, $100,000 will be awarded to one grand prize winner to further scale their program. Submission period is February 1 to March 7. For more information, check out the website or email competitionthrive@baruch.cuny.edu.

On January 30, my buddy Haithem is organizing the Lemonade Heroes Yacht Party. It's gonna be a crazy night of dancing, drinking, mixing and mingling--on a yacht.
You'll be getting photographed on a red carpet, and you'll have a shot at an audition for an entrepreneurship TV series and book.

More stuff you don't wanna miss this week: AppNexus Speaker Series (with Fab.com CEO Jason Goldberg) on the 23rd, PandoMonthly Presents (with Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson) on the 24th and Amusemi's 1 Year Anniversary Party+Dinner on the 26th.

Last week my buddy Charlie Todd & the folks at Improv Everywhere organized their twelfth Annual No Pants Subway Ride. Over 4,000 participants showed up. Here's the recap and video. And my friends Jen and Allison are back with another hilarious edition of Blogologues, playing this week on the 24th, 25th and 26th at Under St Marks (and yes, there will be giveaways!).

And now let's see what's going down in the Alley this week...

DUMBO Improvement District Annual Meeting
All members of the DUMBO community are invited to hear the latest on hurricane recovery efforts and learn what's in store for the neighborhood in 2013. The coveted DUMBO "Magic Feather" awards will be given to Rachel Haot (New York's chief digital officer), Susan Feldman (artistic director, St. Ann's Warehouse) and Jerry Hultin (president, NYU-Poly).
Tuesday (Jan. 22), 5 p.m. @ Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street

Next Top Makers: The Business of Design
Join the creators of New York’s Next Top Makers for an evening of education, guidance, and networking. Hear from IDEO storytelling gurus why good design doesn’t always speak for itself, and learn about the role of a designer in a world of 3D printers.
Tuesday (Jan. 22), 7 p.m. @ 3DEA Pop-Up Store @ Eventi Hotel, 835 6th Avenue

The Future of Education #1: New Models for 21st Century Learning
Panelists include Brad Hargreaves (founding partner, General Assembly), Kane Sarhan (cofounder, Enstitute), Juliette LaMontagne (founder & director, Breaker) and Abigail Besdin (head of Skillshare's education team).
Wednesday (Jan. 23), 6:30 p.m. @ Centre For Social Innovation Pop-Up Space, 601 W. 26th Street, #360

AppNexus Speaker Series
Brian O'Kelley (CEO, AppNexus) will host a fireside chat with Jason Goldberg (CEO, Fab.com) and Jared Cluff (VP Marketing, Fab.com).
Wednesday (Jan. 23), 6:30 p.m. @ AppNexus, 28 W. 23rd Street

How to Build Great Communities: Lets Collaborate!
With Sheila Karaszewski (community manager, Airbnb), Tony Bacigalupo (cofounder, New Work City), Andrew Wagner (director & editor-in-chief, Krrb) and James Wahba (cofounder, Projective Space). Moderated by Melissa Young (founder, Let's Collaborate!)
Wednesday (Jan. 23), 7 p.m. @ Projective Space L.E.S., 72 Allen Street

#ArtsTech 4 Year Anniversary Party!
Open Bar with 3 Pernod Absinthe cocktails from 7-8 pm. Variety of grilled panini appetizers. Photobooth by Styleblaster. Tunes by DJ Winslow Porter. Video art by Sabrina Ratte, Mr. Div, Yoshi Sodeoka and Andreas Nicholas Fischer
Wednesday (Jan. 23), 7 p.m. @ The Counting Room, 44 Berry Street, Brooklyn

PandoMonthly Presents
A fireside chat with Chad Dickerson (CEO, Etsy)
Thursday (Jan. 24), 6 p.m. @ Projective L.E.S., 72 Allen Street

dd:COLLECTIVE - The Changing Retail Environment (Presented by Digital DUMBO)
Featured speakers include Philippe von Borries (Co-Founder, Refinery29), Keith George (General Manager, Gilt Man by Gilt Groupe) and Claire Mazur (Co-Founder, Of a Kind).
Thursday (Jan 24), 6:30 p.m. @ Huge, 45 Main St , Ste 220, Brooklyn

Dinner, Cupcakes, Wine & Technology!
Introducing the inaugural NJ Tech Gals meetup!
Thursday (Jan 24), 7 p.m. @ Hoboken Business Center, 50 Harrison Street (2nd Fl), Hoboken

Nike+ Accelerator (powered by TechStars) Recruiting Tour
Join the team from Nike and TechStars to hear about the Nike+ Accelerator. Some local quantified self demos. And the team from Nike will be bringing along some SWAG, including some Nike+ FuelBands!
Thursday (Jan 24), 7 p.m. @ TechStars NYC HQ , 36 Cooper Square, 6th Fl.

Power Breakfast
With Susan Feldman (cofounder, One Kings Lane)
Friday (Jan. 25), 8 a.m. @ Fordham Graduate School of Business, 113 W. 60th Street, 12th Fl.

NYC Mobile Startup Weekend
Where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and buddying entrepreneurs gather together to share ideas, form teams and spend the weekend building and launching a startup.
Friday (Jan. 25), 6 p.m. @ WeWork Soho Lounge, 154 Grand Street

2013 Brooklyn Inventgenuity Festival: Digital By Hand
A popular annual winter celebration of making things for kids and their parents. With public projects and workshops led by Beam Center’s faculty of artists, engineers and big thinkers. This year’s theme: Digital by Hand.
Saturday (Jan. 26), 11 a.m. @ The Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen Street

Amusemi 1 Year Anniversary Party + Dinner
Celebrate the anniversary of our first startup dining event. Register for Amusemi to get on the guest list.
Saturday (Jan. 26), 7 p.m. @ TBD

More events on the horizon...
TEDxBroadway: Industry leaders envision the future of Broadway on Jan. 28 @ New World Stages
NYC Gaming January: Demo Night on Jan. 29 @ Microsoft
Brooklyn Tech Meetup with Victoria Brown on Jan. 29 @ Feil Hall, Brooklyn Law School
Lemonade Heroes Yacht Party featuring a chance to Audition for a TV Series! on Jan. 30 @ Hornblower Inifinity
Entrepreneurship in the Beer Industry on Jan. 30 @ Professor Thoms
dd:SOCIAL - 4 Year Anniversary & dd:A-LIST Crowdfunding Launch on Jan. 31 @ The DUMBO Loft
Business Insider Presents: Social Commerce Summit on Feb. 06 @ Pier 60
UX Design and User Experience Optimization Trends on Feb. 06 @ Anchin
Hearst Fashion Hackathon 2013 on Feb. 09 @ Hearst
Social Media Week NY 2013 on Feb. 18 @ Metropolitan Pavilion
AIPAC Technology Division: Launch Event w/Dan Senor on Feb. 27 @ Bloomberg Tower

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

Ms. Houston (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

And I Will Always Google You Google just released its year-end zeitgeist list and Whitney Houston was named the most searched person and term of the year. Gangnam Style clocked in as the second most searched thing of the year and the now-pregnant duchess Kate Middleton was the second most searched person in 2012. In terms of New York's search history, Hurricane Sandy took the number one slot and was followed by "MTA" and then "NY Knicks" (The new Brooklyn Nets didn't manage to crack the top 10). In terms of restaurants, Nobu was the most searched place to eat in New York, but Daniel and Chef's Table didn't fall too far behind.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Tumblr Tumblr is instructing its users to tag their favorite posts "#TumblrGiftGuide." The Tumblr team then will troll through the entries and reblog the best entries onto the official Holiday Gift Guide Tumblr. A look on the site shows a knit skull and a case for an iPad with cute typewriters all over it. No GIFs are currently on the site or for sale anywhere in the world.

Just Disrupt It Nike has announced a partnership with TechStars Oregon's branch to create an accelerator called the Nike+ Accelerator. The company plans to host ten companies for a three-month mentor-driven accelerator experience in Portland. The companies have to make products that integrate with Nike’s fitness-tracking Nike+ technology. But how will they get to test any of the equipment if they're coding all day long?

Cooler To Look At Than Macy's Christmas Windows NYU's winter ITP show takes place this weekend. Projects made by students in the two-year graduate program will be on display. Some of this year's entries include an app that lets you find hungry friends to eat with and a site that lets you capture a friend's reaction to a YouTube video. Cue up all of those videos where something jumps out and scares you.

Zuck Saves The Children Citizen Schools, a NYC nonprofit, has partnered with low-performing middle schools and volunteers from companies like Google and Facebook, to organize an after school program that encourages kids to learn more than just what goes on in the classroom. This Friday at Bronx Writing Academy, a middle school, the students will show off projects that include solar-powered cars and video games they programmed themselves. Software engineers, designers, and programmers from Facebook who’ve been teaching all semester will be there to watch their proud pupils.

And It's Just Like Honey We could all use a couple discounts this holiday season, so thank God for Honey, a Chrome extension that automatically scans the web for discount codes and then instantly deducts money from your total bill at checkout. It works with a ton of websites including Amazon, Nike, and Sephora. After a big boost from Reddit, the extension has been downloaded about 60,000 times. Honey said in a press release sent to Betabeat that "at just 7,000+ installs, Honey had saved consumers $30,000." That's a lot of extra gifts that you can buy for your mom.

I'm Feeling Very Lucky The search technology startup Q-Sensei Corp just announced the end of a Series A-2 funding round led by Verizon Ventures. $1.175M was raised which raises the total of its seed and Series A funding to over $5 million. Richard N. Nottenburg, the former CEO of Sonus Networks and graduate of NYU Poly, also now joins Q-Sensei's board.

Be My Benefactor Recent college graduates who want to achieve their dreams while still battling their impossible mountains of debt now have a new solution. Pave, a company that matches up the young and hopeless with backers who want to help the youth achieve their dreams through mentoring and/or cash sponsorship. In turn, when prospects turn a profit, they reward their backers with a percentage of earnings. It's like turning your poor post-grad life into a Kickstarter project.

Have your heard of this new contraption by Nike, the Fuelband? It's the company's latest attempt to capitalize on the techno-fitness craze, and you can't get in on it.

A limited quantity of Nike Fuelbands went on sale yesterday at 5PM for $149 a pop. A tipster, who was in the market for a Fuelband, explains his experience trying to score one:

They opened it up for preorder with a tweeted link at 5pm just now, sold out by 5:04 and people got screwed because the site crashed.

Fucking insanity. Can't wait for the homicides to start

Runner's rage, perhaps?

So, what is this insanity-inducing so-called Fuelband thingermjigger? Basically, it's a watch that seals around your wrist with a USB port. It then counts your physical activity for the day not by calories, but by "oxygen kinetics," which is then translated into a metric Nike came up called Nikefuel, which is the number assigned to your physical activity for the day. It then shares your Nikefuel output with your iPhone/iPod, which it then does a bunch of things with: Broadcasts it socially, measures it with your day-to-day, compares it with your emotions that day, etc. It's kind of compelling. It goes in line with the continued Gamification of Fitness Craze and the Self-Quantified Life. It's also currently totally sold out.

Try to get one, and you're probably gonna see this:

Nike first started to get into the techno fitness watch craze with the Nike+ Apple system, wherein, you put a button under your Nike shoes, and it syncs up to your iPod/iPhone. It gave rise to a bunch of technofitness gizmos since then: the Jawbone, Fitbit, etc. But a bunch them aren't that great. And Gizmodo says the Fuelband is "awesome." It's supposed to be the best one of these things yet, for those obsessed with this kind of thing.

Since the debut of the Fuelband in January—and of course, Jeremy Lin's effect on the athletic apparel market—Nike stock's been on the-up-and-up:

One of the crucial features of the Fuelband is the way it participates in social networks: If it works, and people begin advertising their "Nikefuel" outputs on Twitter, they'll have a device on their hands that creates and advertises its own viral element through its users. Which, for any company retailing anything, is the Magical Gobstopper of retail that everyone's trying to get right.

For further evidence, see the New York Times' own Twitter-savvy media reporter Brian Stelter's interview about losing weight publicly, on Twitter:

I had tried in the past — in very slight ways, without a real goal — to eat better and I would fail every time because no one around me knew I was trying. This time, by having it on Twitter, both my friends and family — as well as strangers — would hold me accountable. So if I did screw up and if I did have too many cookies, I’d hear about it from people on Twitter, and I needed that constant reinforcement because you really are fighting against both yourself and also society when you’re trying to lose weight, and I needed that reinforcement all the time.”

The Nike Fuelband could just be a (literal) product of retail hype and Shiny New Thing qualities that doesn't do much for the entire market of products merging technology and good old fashioned fitness. Or it could revolutionize it.

There's also the possibility that this exciting new diet pill will just do the work for us and make everyone forget about how important exercise is. So, who knows. But it'll be interesting to watch, considering all the mostly-failed attempts of the past for this kind of thing to catch on.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek