Refresh Roundup: Tips, fave editors, BarCampAustin, and design carousels

This week’s Refresh Roundup is a little late because I was in the Houston area over the weekend enjoying time with the family, especially my ridiculously cute niece.

That’s it for this week.

Refresh Roundup: Mixers, coworking, names, and ugly spec-work

  • Lots of folks, including many Austin Refreshers, came out for the SXSW Mixer at Mohawk. Short recap here.
  • On Tuesday, Grant Hutchins led a presentation titled “Grids in Depth” and David Humphreys led an Introduction to Rails and shared his 10 favorite things about the framework at our February Refresh Austin Meeting. Excellent presentations from both, as well as a great turnout!
  • Julie Gomoll finally answered the questions, “When can we start coworking in Austin already?” Turns out we can start coworking in downtown Austin on July 1st. Launchpad Coworking’s space will be located at 800 Brazos Street. Be sure to head over to the Launchpad site to learn more!
  • Justin Perkins has announced that he has a new site coming in a week. Or two. His site always takes a creative approach to blogging/bookmarking/lifestreaming/whatever, so it’s exciting to see what’s next.
  • On a serious note, Alex Jones takes Pixish to task for fomenting an environment where “clients will view the talent pool as relatively equal, opting for a crap shoot instead of finding the right match for their needs”. As Alex notes in his blog post, this constitutes spec-work and should be guarded against. Derek Powazek did take the time to respond to some of the issues brought up, but only time will tell on this one. Many creatives in in the industry remain unconvinced.
  • Christian Watson takes us on a whimisical Journey Through Web Design & Usability Domain Names. Sadly, it appears that the majority of semantically named web/dev/design domains are just parked.
  • Do you googlebate? Ryan Joy sure does.
  • GeekAustin announced that their May happy hour would be a special WordPress edition. RSVP here if you enjoy socializing with geeks in a libacious environments.

That’s it for this week, folks!

Refresh Roundup: Open Source Politics, Zuckerberg animosity(?), and Austin’s businesses coming together

That’s it for this week! If I’ve missed anything, post it in the comments.

Austin’s Best: Recommendations from local geeks

Nobody knows Austin better than the locals. Here are some tips from Refresh Austin to help you enjoy our fair city to the fullest.


WiFi

To the delight of geeks hailing from accross the world, Austin is pretty much saturated with free wireless Internet. The convention center offers free wifi so you’ll be able to live-blog and check out what’s going on outside of the conference walls. Just know that the network can become bogged down at points during the conference.

Check out the Austin Wireless City Project’s website or visit any of the following local establishments:

  • Little City coffee house – 916 Congress Ave
  • The Hideout Coffee bar & Theatre – 617 Congress Ave
  • Jo’s Coffee – 242 W. 2nd St. and 1300 S. Congress Ave

Getting Around Town

Luckily, Austin has a relatively easy, grid-based downtown (the same cannot be said for the rest of the city though) and you’ll be visiting places which are all nearby for the most part. You should be able to walk, catch a ‘Dillo, or taxicab easily. The ‘Dillos are free and serve downtown, UT, and South Congress, among other destinations. There’s also a Downtown Austin website.

  • Capital Metro – 512.474.1200
  • Google Transit – Google maps plus public transit!!!
  • Yellow Cab – 512.452.9999
  • Lonestar Cab – 512.836.4900

Dining

  • Casino El Camino – Best burgers in town? Almost definitely. – 517 E. 6th (2 blocks from the convention center)
  • Torchy’s Damn Good Tacos – Fan Site – Locations on South First, West 6th, and East 6th (next to Casino el Camino)

Nightlife & Libations

  • The Gingerman -  With around 150 beers on tap, you should be able to find a few you like

What would you recommend to out-of-towners visiting Austin for SXSW? Add your suggestions for dining, activities, and night-life in the comments below.

Refresh Roundup: It’s conference season!

That’s all I’ve got for this week, folks! Of course there could be a lot more posted, but you’ll have to read our group archives and twitter stream to get it all.

Don’t forget about next week’s SXSW Mixer @ Mohawk on February, 11th. and our power-packed February meeting with presentations on Grids and RoR.

Refresh Roundup: Future Proofing the Web

This week we saw a firestorm erupt out of the A List Apart articles on browser version targeting and future-proofing websites. If you’ve not had a chance to read them yet, check out Aaron Gustafson’s Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8 and Eric Meyer’s From Switches to Targets: A Standardista’s Journey.

Much has been written in the days following these articles, but I want to focus on Refresh Austin’s reactions as part of a new, weekly roundup.

  • Alex Jones liked the idea at first glance. Especially if “we can get Firefox, Safari and Opera to implement the same method as recommended in Aaron’s article, the Web development industry … would benefit”. However, Alex revised his thoughts after further consideration because it would allow websites to stick with an IE6 web application for years with no real incentive to upgrade their code.
  • Andrew Dupont gives the proposal a “tentative thumbs-up” after breaking down the issues and the flipsides, especially as they concern Javascript support.
  • On a lighter note, Alex shared this take on the matter via Twitter.

What are your thoughts?

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