In anticipation of the WhoLinksToMe.com Pro launch at SXSW we’ve put together Austin Texas travel guides to help those attending the festival make the most of their few days in Austin. It’s a local’s look at what makes Austin a truly one-of-a-kind city that keeps people coming back for more.

Check out the video to get a glimpse of the city then delve into the details with our full guide and maps that help you find your way around town.

What to See During South by Southwest

A big THANK YOU goes out to local band Uncle Lucius for supplying us with the awesome soundtrack ‘Everybody Got Soul’ to accompany the video.

For years, Amazon has had practically no competition online, but this year Walmart made significant progress in becoming a possible head-on competitor. Walmart has increased its investments in online advertising and spawned an online marketplace similar to Amazon’s. Their online store also has an increased merchandise selection and with deep discounts on books and DVD’s, Walmart is starting to close the gap with Amazon. This past October, 29% of Amazon.com customers also shopped at Walmart.com, a figure that is up from 25% last year.

Over the course of 2009, Amazon.com held the most number of shoppers, with over twice that of Walmart.com, its closest competitor. As Black Friday approached, however, this gap began to close. Much to Walmart’s credit, primarily via online deals offered specifically on Thanksgiving Day, Walmart.com actually had more shoppers than Amazon.com.

On Black Friday, though Walmart.com continued to fare very well, Amazon.com was back on top. Walmart.com had about 20% fewer shoppers that day than Amazon.com. On Cyber Monday, however, Amazon showed its online supremacy in overt fashion, being favored 2:1 over Walmart.com and its own numbers were actually higher than on Black Friday.

So is Amazon.com in trouble? If Walmart can keep the pressure on, they may continue to close the gap, but it seems unlikely that Walmart will ever regularly be ahead of Amazon. For Walmart, having customers come to the stores themselves will continue to be their most effective means of retail, but the Internet could become more interesting with another somewhat prominent online market in addition to Amazon.

Check out the move our CEO Ryan caught the other day.

bait and switch

2 years ago Ryan bought a sofa that he planned on paying off over a 60 month period at 0% APR financing.  Just the other day he got a standard piece of bank mail – a piece of mail that’s so often just thrown out- saying that they were jacking up his APR rate to 27.99% if he didn’t opt out of the change by January 31.

citi statement showing 0% - always check promotional dates!

It’s a classic bait-and-switch move, one that you’d expect from a less respected provider than Citi, but it looks like the norm these days. Banks are doing all they can to get ahead before stricter policies go into effect in February.

Fortunately he caught the change before it started, but we’re  betting there will be a fair amount of people who overlook letters of this sort and end up being subjected to higher interest rates in a couple of months because they didn’t take the time to read over the mail sent from their bank. Be on the lookout, folks!

Bing goes the Internet.  Perhaps only slightly more awkward than Uncle Morty at a cocktail party,  Bing’s tagline weirdness is only matched by its commercials.

We caught a glimpse of a new Bing commercial over at the Tribble Agency Blog by way of JWT.  We’re still trying to figure out how this makes people know anything about Bing, least of all being a search engine:

Um, we know that viral videos can spread like wildfire, but what do dancing kids have to do with any of this?

Considering many people are confused enough on what a browser is, perhaps its time to KISS:

There's No Love for the Old-School Reporter Anymore

So the verdict seems to be that print is on its way out. All those old flagship papers like the Chicago Tribune, New York Times and Boston Globe are going down like the Titanic. The old-time hard-drinking, two-fisted warhorse reporter has been sent out to pasture.

Not only that, but the middlebrow news magazines like Time and Newsweek have devolved to slim little rags full of news-lite. Other mags like U.S. News and World Report and Christian Science Monitor have forsaken print completely and are now available strictly online. Niche magazines? Forget it. Just in the last six months or so, music mags like Blender, Vibe and No Depression have gone off to the great newsstand in the sky, never to return.

Even more astonishing is the way that 24 hr cable news has been shaken up by the immediacy of blogs and social networking sites like Twitter, with CNN reporting on Tweets and calling them “unverified sources” (crazy!).

There are plenty of reasons why…print obviously has a very high fixed cost, just in terms of newsprint, presses, layout, labor, shipping and everything else you can think of. And when you read a newspaper, you’re obviously reading about something that happened 12 to 24 hours ago. Cable news?  How 1980s of you.  “Citizen journalists” have the edge on that.  And lots of cable-TV viewers are rethinking their cable subscriptions (or even owning a TV), when all that content is available on Hulu.

So it’s all changing, for the better, right?  Not so fast.

The hot device that’s supposed to replace print is the Kindle.  I don’t own a Kindle, nobody I know has one, and I have yet to even get my bacon-greasy paws on one, yet they’re supposed to be the savior of newspapers.  But then I hear that, from all accounts, the Kindle is not a good way to navigate the content that’s in a newspaper.  It forces you to scan the entire length of an article, where if you had it in newsprint form in front of you, you could easily follow the familiar old inverted-pyramid form of news writing and skip ahead to the bottom of the story if you wanted to….and then just move on to the next one without having to touch a screen, press buttons or do anything else.  Plus you can’t lay a Kindle out in front of you, spread across the kitchen table on a Sunday morning, and take your time reading it while trying to shoo the cats off of it.

And as for “citizen journalists…”

Remember Matt Drudge, and the way that the Drudge Report and supermarket tabloids set the tone for the Clinton presidency?  That gave rise to a whole class of “citizen journalists” who don’t have to adhere to any sort of  journalistic standards of veracity or impartiality, preaching to their choirs and pandering to the intellectually incurious.

There may be some 21st Century Edward R. Murrows in the ranks, but there’s also the loads of hogwash on the Internets that suggest that, say, JFK was assassinated by a German shepherd.

And it’s not just print and cable news.  Lots of times older tech is still just better.  Better made, works better, sounds better, and it’s better liked by users.

Here in my office I’ve got a big ol’ 1970s Marantz 2235B receiver.  It’s analog, it weighs 40 lbs, it’s got a big blue dial and a flywheel that you spin to tune in stations mechanically.  It looks like this:

photo credit: classic-audio.com

It’s a dinosaur piece of audio gear.  But it sounds light-years better than the Denon 7.1 home theater rig out in the living room, with its Dolby decoding and all-digital amplification, and it doesn’t take an audiophile’s discerning ear to hear the difference.  Feh.

Also here in the office I’m surrounded by a few silverface Fender guitar amps.  They look like this:

All vacuum tubes, hand-wired point-to-point chassis and military-style build quality.  That’s why a 70s-era silverface Fender Deluxe Reverb sells for $1000 or so, but a Deluxe reissue with a printed-circuit chassis and particle-board cabinet only goes for about $600.  And even though vacuum tubes are stone-age technology, there are enough purists to keep the trade in them alive (even if the only remaining tube plants in the world are in China and Eastern Europe).  And that’s not even touching on the musicians who’d still rather record on an old Ampex 1-inch 8-track recorder (the size and weight of a washing machine) hooked up to a good board and solid preamps…rather than a pitch-corrected ProTools rig with all the plugins.

Remember vinyl?

photo credit: terracycle.net

Complete with clicks, pops, scratches?  And the elaborate cover art and layout? And the gatefold cardboard covers that were so popular for cleaning the stems and seeds out of a batch of weed?  Vinyl still sells.  Vinyl sounds warmer and more real than the CD’s that we were sold on back in the Eighties.  Yeah, the CD’s that we were told were “indestructible,” that you could throw out in the street and let city buses run over ‘em all day, then just throw ‘em in the dishwasher and they’d be fine.  And don’t even get me started on the jewel case, one of the most abominable product-packaging ideas of the last 100 years.  CD’s kill vinyl? Don’t think so.

Nobody likes Word ‘07.  It’s harder to use and less intuitive than previous versions.  And then I got a Kyocera Wild Card phone recently…it looks like this:

It replaced my battered Nokia, which was about four years old (60 years old in cell-phone years):

photo credit: propertyroom.com

The Kyocera has full web access! A qwerty keyboard! A Camera! Flashlight! Wow!  Of course that’s a couple of years behind the time, and it’s like a Fisher-Price product compared to an iPhone, but I was astonished at what-all this Swiss Army Knife of a phone could do.

Not so pleased, though, with the fact that it regularly freezes up while trying to type out text messages.  Not so pleased with the tiny keyboard buttons that thwart my clumsy thumbs. Not pleased with the fact that the ringtone is never loud enough for me to hear it when it’s in my pocket.   Definitely not pleased with the fact that the back of the phone is held on with a screw (how 1970s!) for the frequent times that I have to open it up and pop the battery out so it’ll reboot the freezeup problem.

So…nobody wants an old refrigerator.  No one wants a 1960s Magnavox TV that isn’t compatible with anything modern.  No one wants a circa-1984 IBM PC Jr. No one wants a VHS machine (not, at least, until they come full-circle and VHS tapes become ironic and hip again).  And I’m no 21st-century Luddite with his head in the sand, but newer isn’t necessarily better, either, just because it’s new.

And that brings us back to newspapers and the Kindle.  Will the Kindle become the 8-track player of the future?  Hard to say.  It may wind up being superseded by some new media technology, or it may just evolve from its present form.  Consumer spending habits may just make the final call on that.

One thing for sure, though…you can’t cover up with a Kindle when you’re sleeping on a park bench after you’ve lost your home to foreclosure…

We here at WhoLinksToMe.com are especially glad that LBJ was chosen as the league’s MVP this year, as he’s a cookie cutter example of what we’re looking for when it comes to assessing those who are Masters of  Their Domain. Like Alton Brown, Lebron doesn’t have any weaknesses to his game. Most hoops superstars get talked about as having 4 or 5 tools to their game, but -- believe it or not -- Lebron has 9.

Seriously, there’s not a thing King James can’t do when he’s on (and sometimes off) the court. We’ve put together a video sampling of his many skills for you to check out, should you need any more proof that Lebron James is an absolute Master of his Domain:

He Dunks

As Cavaliers assistant coach Chris Jent pointed out to ESPN.com, “We don’t have anyone in the league like [Lebron]. Baseline to baseline he has to be the fastest or one of the fastest guys ever, and he can do it with the ball. And then once he gets there, his jumping is up there – maybe by himself.”

Yes, at 6’8” and 250 lbs there may not be any other player with Lebron’s skill set who’s big enough to take guys off the dribble. When he’s air-bound in the vicinity of the rim, it’s either move or become another page in his visual encyclopedia of posterizations.

How about ten more?

He Chases Down Plays

Everyone’s always known that Lebron can play defense when he wants to, it’s just that for a while it seemed as though he wasn’t too interested in actually doing that. That all changed this year, as Lebron proved to the rest of the league that no play for the other team was a sure thing so long as he was somewhere on the court.

He Can Shoot

So what if it’s not during a game? This was from VERY far away.

He Acts

In his six-year career, Lebron’s made himself into a player so marketable that only Michael Jordan looks more at home in commercials. From State Farm to Coca-Cola to Bubbilicious commercials, King James has made a huge mark on the advertising world.  None though were as iconic as his Nike Ads.

He Passes Like Jason Kidd

Unlike Kobe Bryant, who won the MVP award last year and kiiiiiind of deserved it, Lebron’s a master at making his teammates better. For years he’s drawn comparisons to Magic Johnson for his size (Magic was an inch taller at 6’9”) and ability to thread a no-look pass through the lane.

He Takes Over Games

Because he can rebound, dribble, pass and score, James has never had a problem making his mark on a game. Evidence lies in Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals when Lebron took over against Detroit and scored his team’s final 25 points, including every one of the Cavs’ 18 overtime points.

He Has Fun Playing Basketball

Once again, this is something Kobe Bryant just doesn’t do well enough. Nope, Kobe goes into every game with a death stare that could burn a hole through his opponent’s chest. On the contrary, Lebron knows when to take it easy. So do his teammates, who’ve been taking the rest of the league by surprise all season with the way they’ve bonded together.

He Jumps Really, Really High

And when he does it he’s usually going to bring the crowd to his feet in the process.

He Dances

We know, this isn’t what won the guy the MVP trophy. But come on. Talent is talent, right?

Domain Master #1: Alton Brown – Host of the Food Network’s Good Eats

Ain't that a man!

If you were to successfully cross a Public Access chef with Bill Nye and leave the miracle conglomeration in a closet for three years with nothing but cardboard cutouts of food and poorly drawn sauciers, you might get a bastardized version of Alton Crawford Walter Brown and his all-but-1-man TV series Good Eats.  I mean, this guy is the MAN. His actual job title reads “American Food Personality;” can you imagine the size of the applicant pool for that job opening? Let’s go over the requirements:

• Gotta be American
• Gotta like food
• Gotta have a personality

We just narrowed the field down to about 200 million people and 3 Baldwin Brothers; sounds like a competitive industry.  Not for A.B.

Things tend to get a little out of hand when Alton comes around

I’m not sure when Food Network dropped that dynamite job listing on Monster.com, but I am sure of one thing: none of you stood a chance at stealing this dude’s spotlight.  Yes, little birdies, Alton Brown, notorious “Thef” (Thespian Chef), is a Master of His Domain.

Not fully convinced? Check these facts:

1.    60% of the second-half of Alton Brown’s name is BRO
2.    7 of the 10 letters of his name can be rearranged to spell BRO TOWN
3.    His daughter, Zoey, is referred to on the show as “Alton’s Spawn.” It is believed to be an allusion to A.B.’s affinity for reciting the complete life cycle of a fungus.
4.    He is one of the few known connoisseurs of vinegar.

Take all that in for a few minutes while I crumple my résumé up into a trashball.  Ok…back…and…next paragraph after this gem.

Alton Brown brings it because he knows what avid Food Network viewers want: an actual education. If you’re trying to watch Giada De Laurentiis simultaneously soothe and patronize you with her perfect hair, 5-minute crepes and childhood anecdotes about getting caught with her hands in the cake batter, then you’re watching the wrong kind of afternoon foodtube, my friends.  Every episode of Good Eats aims to lift the veil of culinary science, explaining the nuances of your everyday grub with a logical, step-by-step approach that even Nien Numb could handle.

Oh, did that concept about boiling point depression seem a little elementary and boring to you at first?  Don’t worry about it. There’s a 90% chance that little lesson is going to be followed up by a cheesily-hilarious skit involving a wacky foodie sideshow act with a fake French accent.   Why, you ask?  Because A.B.’s hell-bent on driving his points home.

So, there you have it; the first in the great line of the unequivocally unstoppable -- a middle-aged professor of food with an affinity for cheese and a knack for educational theatrics who has taken the “American Food Personality” industry by storm.  Alton Brown, sir, YOU are certainly a recipe for dominance.

Really, the pirates of today are that of faceless legend. We casual civilians of the western world have little idea as to who these looters and pillagers are. That may change in the very near future, as 17-year old Abduhl Wali-i-Musi – the only surviving pirate from the crew that temporarily hijacked the Maersk Alabama and took the ship’s captain, Vermonter Richard Phillips, captive – has been militarily escorted from the sharp seas off Somalia to the bright lights of New York City and its daunting array of court houses.

Everybody's trying to be a pirate these days

Already we know a few things about Wali-i-Musi: cool last name, oldest of 12 kids, used to frequent Bollywood movies as a child, pretty nasty wound on his hand. But, is that enough to thrust Wali-i-Musi into the realm of Most Revered and Fabled Pirates of All Time? Debatable. Here’s his competition:

Captain James Hook

The first thing every American learns about pirates

The Mac Daddy of ‘em all. Whether played by Gerald du Mauerier, Dustin Hoffman or Cyril Ritchard, Captain Hook has always been the most iconic of pirates, guzzling rum and donning some of the finest puffy shirts the seven seas have ever seen. That he had his hand bitten off by a crocodile and chose a boy who would never grow up as his sworn enemy is just icing on the cake.

Blackbeard

Do not cross this pirate

With one of the most memorable and emulated names in all of piracy, Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch sailed the stormy seas of the Caribbean and western Atlantic during what many consider to be the Golden Age of Piracy, the early 18th century. During that time, he allegedly married 14 times, popularized the tricorn hat, and wreaked absolute havoc on the wealthy people of Charleston, South Carolina, by hijacking a ship of the city’s most prominent and holding each individual ransom for a chest of medicines.

Andy Van Slyke

Not a great pillager, but very useful in the Pirate's outfield

Okay, so he wasn’t realllllly a pirate. Nor was he the most well-known outfielder on those early 1990’s Pittsburgh Pirate teams that challenged the Atlanta Braves nearly every year for the National League Pennant. Van Slyke’s has a much better pirate name than Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla, though, and he was much more likely to steal bases than his power hitting teammates.

Jack Sparrow

Aaarrrrrggggghhhh! Johnny Depp running from his admirers

He’s been Disney-ized so he’s funnier than he is treacherous, but the main character from the Pirates of the Caribbean series certainly finishes in the running for Coolest Pirate Known to Man. I mean, the guy got his look from Keith Richards! Unfortunately, Sparrow doesn’t stand a puncher’s chance against Hook when it comes to fictional pirate legacies, but he’s a surer bet to make the ladies swoon.

Shawn Fanning

Does this look like the face of a court-certified pirate?

Listen, here’s the bottom line: tech geeks and computer whiz-kids had no business even talking about themselves as pirates until this guy came around. I mean, he all but invented music piracy, turning Napster into a high-profile phenomena and inspiring a rash of file sharing and illegal downloads that reshaped the music industry forever.

Anne Bonny

Making a pirates life attractive to the fairer sex

All the ladies in the house say “hayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!” Irish-born Anne Bonny moved to the Bahamas with her husband at some point between 1714 and 1718 and got tied up with Calico Jack Rackham, a well-known pirate with whom Bonny had an affair. Ol’ hubby got angry and demanded that she be returned to him, but Bonny had already fallen to the side of the pirates. She climbed aboard Rackham’s Revenge and spent three years at sea, engaging in combat alongside Rackham and his crew and running amuck between the Caribbean and southern regions of the United States.

Dick Vitale

The most famous pirate in college basketball, Dick Vitale (L)

Not only did the famed college basketball commentator go to Seton Hall (home of the Pirates), he’s only got one good eye; poked the other one with a pencil when he was a kid and lost his vision shortly thereafter. Too bad Dicky V’s never repping an eye-patch when he’s courtside at Duke v. UNC.

Bartholomew Roberts

Roberts: arguably the most regal of the bunch

More accomplished and reviled than Blackbeard in his time, we lose sight of the great Bartholomew Roberts because he was Welsh (come on, who’s Welsh?) and came along before Blackbeard made piracy fashionable. All in all, the man who played Christopher Marlow to Blackbeard’s Shakespeare, captured more ships than any other pirate of the Romantic era (a number estimated at over 470 vessels) while toiling through Caribbean and Brazilian waters. He finally died off the coast of West Africa in February of 1722.

Dread Pirate Roberts

"If you're in such a hurry, you could lower a rope or a tree branch or find something useful to do."

No pirate list would be complete without the inclusion of Dread Pirate Roberts. In the cult classic The Princess Bride, the fair maiden’s love, Westley, is said to be captured by Roberts. Surpisingly though, Pirate Roberts was more than one man. The original pirate had established a lineage of sorts that allowed him a permanent vacation and allowed other suitors the chance to go burnin’ & lootin’ & capturin’. The particular heir who captured Westley took a liking to the man and confessed to him that he was not the true Dread Pirate Roberts, but instead the next in procession. Westley ended up making quite an impression on the stand-in pirate and shortly after “Roberts” term was up, he relinquished his post to young Westley. When Inigo Montoya at the end of the film questions his future, Westly quips, “Have you considered piracy?”

Operation: Clean Up Lady Bird Lake!

Look at all that trash!

If you get some time today, make an effort to get out and do Mother Nature a favor. It’s really amazing how much trash accumulates in places like riverbanks and streets, but we can all do our part to make our communities healthier and more beautiful.

Enjoy the photos!

Two Star Nine Environmentalists

Almost got it!

Havilah does "Cousin It" impression as she cleans up Lady Bird Lake on Earth Day 2009

The good people of Austin, Texas couldn't wait to get to work

We got t-shirts, too!

Austin, you deserve the cleanest riverbanks!

We were pretty heartbroken about him not playing any tracks off The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, but beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to The Boss. It was enough just to see him power slide across the stage, hear The Big Man blow out a perfect sax solo on “Jungleland,” and poke fun at all the fans who showed up wearing their greatest garb from the Garden State.

SERIOUSLY! Is there any other band out there that promotes their home as well as Springsteen’s? I’ve been to New Jersey, and it’s nice. But I’m not moving there. I’d have to be crazy. Put on some Springsteen, though, and I’m singing “Jersey Girl” at the top of my lungs.

Why? Because Springsteen is New Jersey, the same way Guinness Beer is Ireland and Wayne Gretzky is hockey. He’s become so synonymous with that region that he’s the first thing people think of when they think of Jersey. It’s a feat few artists have ever been able to achieve before. Here are 7 who come close:

Seattle – Nirvana

Ah, the dreary face of Kurt Cobain throughout MTV Unplugged; his slightly-out-of-tune Fender Jagstang; the naked baby swimming towards a dollar bill on the cover of Nevermind. Nirvana created iconic artifacts, vivid memories that eerily complemented the fact that all our other thoughts about Seattle center around raw fish and rain clouds.

Upstate New York – The Band

You know what’s funny? Americana music may have been perfected by a bunch of Canadians. Robbie, Rick, Richard, Levon and Garth all moved up to Woodstock when they teamed with Bob Dylan and made such a lasting impression on the sound up there that fellow Upstaters The Felice Brothers are still mimicking The Band forty years later.

Need more convincing? How about this gem from Garth Hudson in The Last Waltz?

“That was just a part of a lifestyle that we got to love in Woodstock. You know, we got to like it, you know, being able to chop wood or hit your thumb with a hammer. We’d be concerned with fixing the tape recorder and fixing the screen door. You know, and stuff like that.”

Perfect.

San Francisco – Grateful Dead

Viva la Haight-Ashbury, man! Along with Ken Kesey and his affinity for giving people acid, the Grateful Dead made the bay area the place for hippyness back in the 1960s. Jerry and the boys were the perfect house band for the scene, noodling around endless versions of “Dark Star” and spinning tales like “Me and My Uncle” to the throngs of allegiants. Even today, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood remains a beacon of flower power for the spawn of the free love era.

Central Texas – Doug Sahm

Willie Nelson may be better known, but to a central Texan there’s no better combination than a Lone Star Beer, a Saturday afternoon, and a healthy dose of Doug Sahm and his Texas Tornados.

Miami – Gloria Estefan
Noooooo, it’s not like that. We’re not jamming out to “Turn the Beat Around” at the office on Friday afternoons and we’re probably right in thinking that a lot of Miami’s good people aren’t either. That said, go down to Little Havana or South Beach, drink a couple piña coladas as the sun’s going down, and that “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You,” whether you like it or not.

The Southeast – Lynyrd Skynrd
Think about it: these Rebels were from Jacksonville, Florida, and still managed to write the iconic song of Alabama. That’s called having a monopoly on a region.

Brooklyn – Jay-Z
Think bright lights and boisterous personalities, three-pieced suits and slick talkers. He’s originally from Brooklyn, we know, but is there anybody out there who would argue that Jay isn’t the perfect choice to hang with the big buildings of the Big Apple?