Thursday, March 12, 2009

Must-have mobile resources

Here are a few sites to consider bookmarking for your smartphone or other web-capable mobile device to help plan or navigate your SXSW experience.

• my.sxsw.com: If you’ve used the official planning application from SXSW to set up a schedule for yourself, the recently-launched mobile version will let you tote it around without keeping track of a fistful of paper. SXSW also offers a second mobile app, rate.sxsw.com, which is a bit vexing. It, too, lets you put together a schedule of panels and other events and, once they’re underway, to “rate” them. (Presumably, the folks at SXSW get this info. Maybe it is intended to replace or augment the panel feedback cards distributed after each session.) However, rate.sxsw doesn’t tie into the schedule you’ve created with my.sxsw, so you should stick with one or the other unless you want to construct your itinerary twice. my.sxsw has a richer feature set; of the two, it seems by far more useful.
• SCHED.org: The unofficial planning app from SCHED has one principal advantage over its SXSW-issued counterpart, in that it includes most, if not all, of the unofficial events and parties swirling around the festivals and conferences. The mobile interface is a bit spare and, on my iPhone at least, feels a little creaky. As SCHED grows and matures, though, I’d wager its on-the-go version becomes just as nifty as its web counterpart.
• B-Side Festival Genius: The new kid on the SXSW planning application block is Festival Genius, a step up from previous offerings from B-Side. Their mobile site is an easy-to-use reduction of the web version, although it lacks the feature that gives the application its name; it doesn’t appear you can use the mobile version to automagically search for and resolve conflicts among events happening at the same time.
• The Unofficial Pocket Guide: Offering schedules of panels and parties for quick reference, this application doesn’t allow you to create a personal schedule but does allow you to add public events not already included. The latter is accomplished by editing a publicly-accessible Google Spreadsheet, which ups the opportunities for mayhem but, hey, we’re all friends here, right?
• Razorfish SXSW Guide: A combination schedule reference (again, no facility for making a personal schedule) and city guide, this contains a nice variety of information, from panels and parties to news sources to shopping and survival tips to pointers about what makes Austin truly unique.
• MobileATX: Here’s one mobile site that doesn’t include a SXSW schedule, although it does have a nice quick reference to SXSW venues along with Google Maps links that’s easy to navigate and could be a vital resource when you’re rushing from party to party come the Music festival. There are quick links to mobile versions of other local sites too—including Show List Austin—plus social tools such as Flickr, Yelp, Upcoming and more. For the Music attendee, this is a winner.

Do you have a favorite SXSW or Austin-related mobile site we’ve left out? Or a favorite tip for using one of the above to its best advantage? Let us know in the comments!