If you grew up on the West Coast, you may or may not have heard the term “hurricane party” before – it’s a multi-day party held during a hurricane, where guests bring sleeping bags, radios, food and other hurricane supplies. Of course in the chaos of a hurricane, the trick can be finding the party, and [...]

Mark Phillip is an MIT computer science major, the son of a Jamaican immigrant, and a lifelong sports fan. When he accidentally slept through the the second half of what he calls “one of the most exciting games in the history of the NFL” (Jets vs. Dolphins 200) he decided to use technology to prevent [...]

Austin’s unemployment rate fell to 7.3% in August, remaining significantly lower than the rate for Texas (8.5%) and the United States (9.1%). The lower unemployment rate is a sign of robust hiring in Austin’s private sector, offsetting job elimination in the public sector. Statewide, a net 9,400 government jobs were shed during August. During the [...]

Austin-based Whole Foods Markets (WFMI) today became the first national grocery to offer a daily deal through a coupon aggregator. Whole Foods is offering $20 worth of groceries for $10 to visitors to the LivingSocial website. In addition, $5 of the proceeds from the promotion will go to the Whole Kids Foundation, which supports schools [...]

“Eat breakfast because we’re having a late lunch!” These were the words that greeted 200 eager investors and entrepreneurs as they picked up their name tags at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center on the University of Texas campus this morning. They were there for the 3rd annual  Capital Factory Demo Day and some [...]

Google Austin: A first-person, customer update Google.  They are the digital version of General Electric, but for the 21st century.   Both are classic, American-headquartered, global conglomerates, with diverse portfolios.  But, whereas GE’s goods and services have ranged from light bulbs to jet engines to TV networks, Google’s portfolio ranges from mobile operating systems to lunar [...]

Though this month’s job figures for tech employees in Silicon Valley remained fairly constant, a new report claims the area is in for a whopping 15% employment surge over the next couple of years, though mainly for high skilled jobs. Workforce development organization, NOVA, based in Sunnyvale California, even went so far as to say [...]

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said his firm would likely go public over the next year or so but had not yet started the process, as it continues to grow its mobile following. “We haven’t started the process, we haven’t chosen bankers, it’s something we’re going to pass through but we’ve been at this for years,” [...]

Austin is known as the home of the South-by-Southwest (SXSW) festival, which has become one the premier tech culture events in the world.  When you consider that two of the three named components of the festival are “Film” and “Interactive,” then you’d expect to see some pretty interesting things in the greater Austin region happening [...]

The Austin Chamber of Commerce is helping to facilitate an idea to launch a startup district and workplace downtown to rival those seen in Boston and Silicon Valley. The proposed name of the district is “Austin Live,” which would serve as home for tech entrepreneurs and startup companies to spark innovation, collaboration and investment. Preliminary [...]