Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

At SXSW, the founder of one of America's favorite online shoe stores lets Fast Company in on his newest idea, a lifestyle and business brand with partner Jenn Lim named after his bestselling business book, "Delivering Happiness." Delivering Happiness is no longer merely the bestselling business book by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh.

1. Facebook 's leaping aboard the daily deals/coupon bandwagon, and will be testing out its own Groupon-like service in a limited list of U.S.

The threat of cyber-war--and of a catastrophic hacker attack to Germany's industrial or military infrastructure--is spurring the creation of two new high-level government organizations. The Federal Republic of Germany has just released a comprehensive cyber-security strategy that will create two high-level government agencies devoted exclusively to cyber-war

As applications for the 2011 Inc. 500 | 5000 pour into our offices, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of the companies that are vying to appear on our ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. (For more information and to apply, go to http://www.inc.com/inc5000apply/2011/ .) One that caught our eye was Cotati, California-based KG Technologies .

"What's the short code for American Idol?" asks Joseph Gillespie, CEO of mobile marketing company Zoove, referring to the show's text-message voting system. "It's the largest use-case in history, but no one can remember it because the number doesn't make any sense." How brands connect to consumers is a huge headache for marketers--not just Idol fans--who've now tried almost every trick in the book to get your attention. SMS messages ("Text YES to 45938993"), QR codes, Facebook profiles, website addresses--you can't find an advertisement today that doesn't feature at least one of these marketing tactics

The founder of the Web message board 4Chan took the stage at SXSW to explain how his new project, Canvas, could far exceed 4Chan's 12-million-user popularity with Facebook-friendly appeal. Like your daughter bringing home an ex-convict for dinner and saying that he's actually a "really good guy," Christopher "moot" Poole explained how the virtue of 4Chan--instantaneous collaborative creativity--could overshadow its darker, dirtier proclivities by gaining new life in a project called Canvas .

Sunday's Groupon panel on the Fast Company and PepsiCo stage took an unexpected turn when Travis Kalanick , a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur who runs online car service Uber , spoke frankly about his negative experiences as a client of Groupon --and several Groupon staffers in the audience took issue with the story he told.

This is a promotional blog post. I was asked to cover the SXSW Film Festival screening of Morgan Spurlock's new documentary, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold , which attempts to take a meta-look at the concept of product placement via a documentary funded entirely by product placement, because of promotional considerations: Fast Company, my employer, is featuring Spurlock, his movie, and his take on the concept of "selling out vs. buying in" as a story in the April issue

Early adopters of the iPad 2 have only had the weekend to play with their new toy. That was enough time for the first reports of possible defects to come to the surface

Christopher "moot" Poole, the founder of 4chan, has been busily re-imagining the online community forum with his new venture, Canvas .

Someone might want to tell the SXSW -attending web designers still queuing up for iPad2s outside a pop-up Apple store a few blocks away from the Austin Convention Center: The iPad itself is not going to transform the way we read online. Or so said Khoi Vinh, former design director for NYTimes.com , during a one-on-one with me on the PepsiCo Plugged-In Stage at SXSW yesterday. Apps don't yet deliver when it comes to two critical reader needs: the desire to customize, and the desire to share content.

This afternoon from the stage at South by Southwest , Architecture for Humanity's Cameron Sinclair will announce a $75,000 commitment from donors to rebuilding from the Japanese earthquake, along with a personal pledge: If the donation link bit.ly/sxsw4JP is reTweeted 100,000 times, he'll donate 10% of his own salary. The rebuilding effort will unfold in stages, depending on how much money is ultimately raised.

The Boston startup plans to disrupt Groupon and Foursquare by making a game that combines the genius of both, and imagines how the benefits of games can extend beyond business. Thousands of SXSW -goers packed like dominoes onto the escalators of the Austin Convention Center on Saturday, waiting to hear Seth Priebatsch, the 22-year-old founder and "chief ninja" of Scvngr , proclaim the future of location-based apps

TED data could power apps, visualizations, and more. TED announced today at SXSW that it is opening all of its online talks to the public. An application programming interface (API) will allow open access to all talks and associated data (topic, location, speaker, etc.) for developers who might use that info to build all sorts of tools and applications.

"Canceling ALL SXSW parties to launch #SXSW4JP tomorrow." That was Cameron Sinclair's Saturday night announcement, via Twitter. He's expected to announce the details of Architecture for Humanity 's Sendai earthquake reconstruction plan Sunday afternoon from the stage during his South by Southwest keynote.