The Jeff Beckham Weblog

Influential tech blog Lifehacker features a product today from an Austin software company as a Download of the Day. Digby, from 30 Second Software, allows Blackberry users to shop directly from their device at a select number of online vendors.
Blackberry users can access the Web on their phones, but Digby enhances the experience for [...]

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Web newspaper blog traffic triples in December: “Unique visitors to blog sites affiliated with the largest Internet newspapers rose to 3.8 million in December 2006 from 1.2 million viewers a year earlier.” (Reuters)
The Vanishing Point Theory of News: “The future of media is to stop boring us with news that doesn’t relate to [...]

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The February issue of Wired features a new design, driven by Scott Dadich, who left Texas Monthly last spring to become creative director at Wired.
Wired’s new design is terrific, with an increased focus on photography and illustration, along with more readable typefaces. A note in the February issue also says the magazine has moved to [...]

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Cheap Airfare Just Got a Facelift: Sean Madden of frogdesign points out that Southwest Airlines redesigned their homepage, but not the rest of their site.
Owens: J-students should just assume their future is online: Romenesko points to an Innovation in College Media interview with Howard Owens, Gatehouse Media’s director of digital publishing.
Newspapers should own local search [...]

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The January issue of Wired features seven houses from around the country that take advantage of technology to create environmentally friendly buildings. One of the featured homes is in Austin, where architect Heather McKinney used a water-cooled air-conditioning system to boost the energy efficiency.
The Tarrytown house has also been featured in several other publications, which [...]

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Robert Scoble provided a pointer to Matt Kelly’s story on PodTech about the Saturn Aura winning the Car of the Year award at the the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
We rented a Saturn Aura on a recent trip to Georgia, and I was really impressed. It was roomy inside and very sporty-looking outside. [...]

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Two great discoveries this week:
(1) that the Alamo Drafthouse has been blogging for a while. I’m glad to see this feature added to their site (although some of the fundamental challenges of their website remain)
(2) that a recent post points out the numerous Austin references on Veronica Mars, whose creator, Rob Thomas, is from here.

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In news of other folks named Beckham, a certain soccer player is leaving his team in Spain to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy.
The main benefit I’ve received from David Beckham’s fame has been that people tend to pronounce my last name correctly more often. (Beckman, Beckingham, Buckman, Buckram, etc.)

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Apple announced a cell phone today - the iPhone - and on first look, it’s quite amazing. It’s a 4 GB or 8 GB iPod, connects to the Internet with a full web browser, and, oh yeah, it also makes calls.
It’s also surprisingly small. The chart how it compares to my current cell phone (in [...]

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Congress Avenue through a great stretch of downtown Austin was closed this morning after dozens of birds were found dead in the streets. The area was reopened around noon after officials determined to public health threat existed.
Other than determining the cause of the deaths, the story has pretty much come and gone at this point, [...]

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