“Laid back”. That’s how Mashable top dog Pete Cashmore described Austin, Texas in an interview with AustinLifestyles at the Summermash party at Buffalo Billiards in the heart of Austin’s 6^th Street live music district.  Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins of Mashable described Austin as “comfortable and intimate, you had no problems striking up a conversation.” 

Mashable put together a list of Austin’s most important technology blogs and AustinCast.com – sister site of AustinLifestyles.com – wound up on that list in some pretty great company.

Here’s the list with a few excerpts from the blog entry at Mashable:

1. Austin 3.0 - A website designed to give the “younger Austin Geek a place to see what is going on in Austin.”
2. Austin Startup - Austin Startup is simply a news site that chronicles the goings ons and creation of new tech sector business in the Austin area.
3. AustinCast - This site is a frequently updated hub for video and audio interviews of local area movers and shakers in the technology scene. He’s published over 100 video interviews with the likes of Veronica Belmont, Pete Cashmore, Zadi Diaz, Cali Lewis, Lindsay Campbell, and Leah Culver as well as a number of local heroes to the Austin scene.
   
4. Austin360 - This is the official New Media offering from Austin’s reigning Old Media institution, the Austin-American Statesman.
5. GeekAustin - Probably one of Austin’s oldest tech blogs, LinearB’ and Orion have been chronicling the gaming, business and tech communities of Austin since 2000.
6. Michelle’s Blog - . . . she’s a very active leader and figurehead to the new, young Austin Tech community, and has her hands in just about everything.  Her personal blog reflects all the myriad of ventures she’s involved in there.
7. Josh Dilworth - Josh is over at PR group Porter Novelli, based in their Austin office. Amongst all his many work related projects like SXSW, he has quite visible presence amongst those in the online Semantic and AI community as well as an avid participant in a number of widely used social media tools. I was recently a guest on a podcast of his, Falken’s Maze.
8. John Erik Metcalf - John Erik Metcalf is a major figure in the Austin scene as well, as he’s a co-founder in one of the town’s two co-working spaces: Conjunctured
9. Social Media Club Austin - The site describes itself as “part think tank, part curiosity, all new media” and is a repository for all that is going on in the “business networking event” scene for the Austin area.
10. Some Assembly Required - a self-described “business development and networking blog” authored by Thom Singer.
11. The Jeff Beckham Weblog - Jeff is an Austin area blogger who focuses his posts on the evolution of media, specifically in relationship to how the Internet is forcing transformation on not just media industries but “the word itself.”
12. Door64 Blog - The blog for Door64, the forum and community portal for the Austin-area tech community.

If you an Austin area blogger and want to be added to the OPML file email Mark at Mashable to be included in the next version of the list.

Download Now! (OPML) (import this into your favorite feed reader)

These are my links for July 27th through July 28th:

• chrisbrogan.com - one of the best social media and marketing sites on the web. It’s a must daily read if you’re a social network addict, like me.
• Social media camp at the Thistle Cafe 300 W 6th street in Austin - social media camp at the Thistle Cafe on 6th street the same day as the Mashable event.
• Austin 3.0 - If one were to look at the slew of Tech events happening this week, you?d think we were gearing up for SXSWi. Instead, it?s 104 degrees outside, and it?s just another eventful week in Texas; it?s time for our mid-summer stretching exercise.
• AgencyTool Web Design Dashboard - best web design, development, marketing and website maintenance resource I’ve every seen. Excellent! Five Stars. *****
• Web 2.0 Mashup: Best of the Internet Today -

These are my links for July 21st through July 25th:

• Ad Revenue Sharing Communities & Forums | Social Web Tools - social communitys that share revenue with their users
• Leveraging Social Media by springnet - Connie Reece and Paul Terry Walhus present “Leveraging Social Media” at SEOforSMB in Austin Texas on July 17, 2008.
• Deanna Zandt randomdeanna / Linkwad - Short-n-sweet Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and consultant to key progressive media organizations including AlterNet and the Hightower Lowdown, and hosts TechGrrl Tips on GRITtv with Laura Flanders. Interview at http://austincast.com/blog/
• | LivingSocial - recommended by MichelleMMM on del.icio.us
• 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing | chrisbrogan.com - 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
• How to Be Interesting | Copyblogger - Be wrong: The world is full of people trying to do the right things. It?s become so common that many of us are bored by it. We long for someone that is willing to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, be the wrong thing

These are my links for July 13th through July 16th:

• Five Ways to Build Your SMB Via Social Media Marketing : Online Marketing for Marketers - 5 primary strategies for building small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) via social media marketing. This post is a summary of my presentation, for those that couldn?t make it to Austin.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Services Portland Oregon | Anvil Media, Inc. - Search Engine Marketing for High Performance Companies Anvil Media, Inc. (Anvil) is a search engine marketing (SEM) agency specializing in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) management, search engine marketing public relations (SEM PR)
• http://seesmic.com/#/video/iXR1hYyDEF/watch - boiling down the basics of SEO
• The Definition of Social Media Marketing: How to Find the Best Social Media Consultant » techipedia | tamar weinberg - The main characteristic [social media marketers] need to have is a genuine curiosity/interest in social media, particularly on how it influences human relationships and business practices.
• Search Engine Optimization for Small Business - SEO Blog: Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing :: Get Page One - And the co-founder of our humble SEO company, Brian Rutledge, will be talking about search engine optimization for small business at the SEM for SMB conference in Austin, TX. More on that later!
• Video SEO for SMB?s: What Does Standing Out Online Really Mean? - consumers typically visit an average of nearly five Web sites (4.8 actually) before deciding which attorney to select. When lawyers added video to their respective Web sites, however, this number decreased fairly substantially, to 1.8.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - seo blog aggregation. Guy Kawasaki’s alltop seo page. SEOmoz, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, SEO Book, Search Engine Journal, Matt Cutts, SEO Noobs, Google News Inside, SEO Blackhat, SEO by the Sea, Search Engine Watch, Stepforth SEO, etc

These are my links for June 28th through July 9th:

• ContentRobot | Blogging & WordPress Experts - awesome wordpress site with plugins and themes
• FlyCamOne2 Micro Video Camera for RC Aircraft from Hobby Lobby! - FlyCamOne2 Micro Video Camera for RC Aircraft from Hobby Lobby!
• Josh Highland : Internet Superstar - classic social lifestream webpage, a guy who lives in Redlands, CA
• TweetDumpr - This is a hideous tool that can be used to export your entire Twitter timeline to a CSV file, readable by any spreadsheet application (Excel, Numbers, etc.). Exported data includes the tweet plus a timestamp of when it was sent.
• Technology Review: Social Networking Is Not a Business* - In less than two years it has created the underlying structure for more than 20,000 social-networking sites–”mini-Facebooks” with an aggregate of 300 million page views per month. You’ve probably never heard of it.

Starting today, I’m going to start a series of reviews, accompanied by screencasts, of reviews of social networks, social bookmarking services and social media sites on the Spring.  You can see my initial list there which I’ll be modifying as this series goes along.

Listal is a social networking site where you can find people who share your tastes in movies, books, music or games.  Lists and collections are shared via a simple url like (in my case) http://springnet.listal.com and they give you widgets to plug in to your blog or website.

The site stands out for it’s tight integration of tagging, friends, finding others, forums and messaging.  The “explore” feature is hot, it lets you scan through reviews of movies, tv shows, books, games, dvds, and music. 

These are my links for June 16th through June 27th:

• bub.blicio.us - social networking blog, really smart content
• Summize Conversational Search - another killer app du jour for twitter, conversational search
• All I Ate Today - clever little food app somehow connected to twitter
• austinlifestyles’ bookmarks on del.icio.us -
• Derbyshire Writer?s Guild - - Crysty Shih is now heading this major fanfic site for jane Austen aficianados
• Social Media Club Austin - You’ll find a number of social media types hanging out at Cafe Caffeine as part of the Jelly! Austin co-working scene. Come join us.

These are my links for June 15th:

• Qik On IPhone: Qik Video Streaming Finally Comes to iPhone - Wow! When I was interviewing the geekalicious Cali Lewis at SXSW I asked her what she was most excited about and she started bouncing up and down and shouting to Neail. Qik! Qik! Bring me Qik. Quick!
• Summarized SEO Tips from SMX Advanced - Part 2 - Search Engine Guide Blog - The SEO panel provided a few examples of the great widgets and applications they use to make their life easier. Here are a few, including my own favorites: * SERPH: track the ?buzz? of yourself and your competitors using this handy social search
• Future Jets Owner Gary Vaynerchuk Brings Thunder to Austin ? Damon Clinkscales - @damon Fortunately, I brought my Flip Ultra and I captured 60 minutes of pure Gary for your viewing pleasure. Keeping with the tradition of WineLibrary TV, these videos are unedited.
• Not An MBA » fiercely independent - InnovationCamp #1 is two weeks from today! Being a first, there will inevitably be loose ends, chaos, and some pesky problems on the day. Without risk, though, there is no reward? @juliegomoll
• Austin Coworking - An interview with Drew Jones - LaunchPad Coworking Blog - Drew: Austin is the perfect community, and GSD&M Idea City is an awesome space for Innovation Camp. Julie and I share a GenX/Boomer fascination with the creative energy that is out there among designers young and old. June 28 @juliegomoll

These are my links for June 4th through June 12th:

• Themes - Tumble-hybrid Deuce is a cleaned up version of the original Tumble-hybrid theme. Please follow the directions outlined in the original Tumble-hybrid post to install and use this theme.
• The Life of an Internet Bedouin ? Damon Clinkscales - Future Jets Owner Gary Vaynerchuk Brings Thunder to Austin “I?ve been tracking Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary TV ever since the day that Dan Benjamin told me about the sale of Corkd to this sorta zany character with a wine show on the web.” - Damon Clin
• springnet > Tweeterboard : Conversation Analytics for Twitter - dashboard, gets love, gives love, box score, links
• LaunchPad Coworking ? Coworking in Austin, Texas - Austin Launchpad coworking gets green light from the City to build. Sept 2008 is start date. @juliegomoll
• Alltop, all the top stories - Guy Kawasakis daily news aggregator