SXSW 2010 
What’s the Big Idea? 
Texas.100.best
Take a cybertour of San Antonio. Look inside Phil Gramm’s skeleton closet. Check with the Aggies for the latest weather. E-mail a friend a virtual beer. A guide to our favorite places on the World Wide Web.
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Houston Grand Opera The HGO’s site is considerably less avant-garde than its productions, but it is a useful guide to the current season’s productions—with story synopses and cast lineups. And it has links to other opera companies, including New York City and Santa Fe. http://www.hgo.com/home.html
Casa Mañana The Fort Worth theater site has plenty of information and some extra features, including snippets of audio from forthcoming stars, which can be played with RealAudio software. Speak to the Producer lets you send comments and instant reviews to Van Kaplan, the theater’s producer and general manager. There’s a newsgroup too for questions and gossip and a guide to eateries in the vicinity. http://www.iminet.com/casamanana/
Capital City Men’s Chorus The site has an eye-catching design with a “marquee” section that showcases upcoming events, the chorus, and its mission (including an open “no audition” policy). Also, you can read the gay chorus’ newsletters and link to other choral groups around the state and country. http://www.io.com/~ccmcaus/
Media
Austin 360 Nearly every big-city daily in Texas has a Web site, and they’re all good; the most engaging is the newest. The Austin American-Statesman’s site (maintained by Cox Newspapers, its parent company) bills itself as “a true reflection of what Austin’s all about,” and for the most part it delivers, with the latest on the music scene, UT sports features, bat information, and news from the burgeoning high-tech industry. The Green Zone has environmental news, discussions, and lists of environmental groups. State, local, and national news, classifieds, and columns fill out the package. The site also has the archive of the Statesman back to 1989. http://www.austin360.com
The Austin Chronicle Austin again gets the nod for the best alternative weekly site. The Chronicle has thorough arts, books, food, music, and other entertainment listings; articles and columns from each week’s issue; and useful links to other pages run by alternative papers. http://www.auschron.com/
Round Top Register Texas’ quirkiest Web publication is “The On-line Newspaper From the Biggest Little Town in Texas,” which offers a sampling of goings-on in and around Round Top (population: 81), local shopping information, and a serialized novel, Children of the Sunrise. http://www.rtis.com/reg/ roundtop
The Big Bend Quarterly A beautiful site with striking photos of Big Bend along with listings, a general store that sells Big Bend—themed products online, and articles on everything from the Marfa lights to James Dean and the making of Giant. http://www.webcasting.com/bigbend/
Toasted Posties At the disillusioned end of the journalism spectrum is “The first-ever dead newspaper online,” which is devoted to the memory of the Houston Post, the city’s dear, departed daily; it offers where-are-they-now items about former staffers, along with job possibilities at other publications. It’s wistful and informative. http://rampages. onramp.net/~basses/toast2.htm/
KEOS-FM Most Texas radio sites settle for the predictable—weather and traffic and sometimes downloadable music. Campus and noncommercial stations are the liveliest and most innovative; the best so far is KEOS-FM, a nonprofit, community-oriented station based in Bryan—College Station. Its site offers the CMJ (College Music Journal) Top 35, the albums being played most at KEOS, and interesting links to alternative media resources. The station also stays on top of news and events in the Bryan—College Station community. http://www.ipt.com/ keos/whatsnew.html
CompuTalk Tom King’s CompuTalk is the best source for news about the computing world. Naturally, the site touts King’s syndicated radio and television call-in talk shows, programmed from Houston (the listeners’ line is 888-NO GEEKS) with celeb guests from the online world like Matt Firme, the publisher of PC Gamer, and Michael Zisman, the CEO of Lotus. It has business news and stock quotes too. http://www.computalk.com
KXAS Channel 5 The NBC affiliate for Dallas—Fort Worth is the first commercial TV station in Texas with a Web page. There are the usual weather and road conditions, local news, and the latest from the Dallas Police Department, the Texas Rangers, and the Dallas Cowboys. KXAS also has features such as how the Metroplex rates when it comes to crime (Safe Cities) and unexpected links (you can use the BosniaLINK, an e-mail connection to U.S. troops in Bosnia). http://www.kxas.com
Sex
Greetings From Digitrix Featuring Shelley, the self-appointed Aggie sex queen of the more wholesome side of Web sex (if there is such a thing). Like a lot of sex purveyors on the Web, her entrepreneurial skills are more impressive than her physical attributes. In other words, Shelley doesn’t look like a model in a Versace ad. Shelley’s nude photos are available only between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. (“Due to the ever increasing traffic this site is generating . . .”). Other links direct you to her 1997 calendar—Shelley nude in front of various Texas attractions (the Capitol, the Alamo). Yes, Shelley mousepads and autographed posters are available. There’s a direct link to A&M too. Bet they’re glad. http://www2.cy-net.net/~digitrix/ index.html
Kevin’s Twisted Home Page “No Smut Here,” the homepage declares, and indeed, in the over-the-top world of Web sex, this site is tame, and it’s useful, providing a good listing of Dallas gay and lesbian bars, along with directions to Oak Lawn. (“This is the queer area of town,” the site declares, franker than any guidebook. “Look for all of the pride flags.”) http://www.cyberramp.net/~callahan/
The Ultimate Strip Club List A guide for horny guys and armchair anthropologists who wonder what on earth goes on inside Texas’ famous (or infamous) so-called gentleman’s clubs. Which dancers are the most attractive, which celebrities prefer which clubs (“. . . if you want to see professional athletes, Rick’s is their hangout whenever they play in Houston”), and where you’re likely to get more than the law allows. During one round of illegal contact, the site’s correspondent writes, “I noticed [the owner] watching me . . . He smiled and gave me a thumbs up. I loosened up after that.” http://www.tuscl. com/usa/strip_tx.htm
Safe Sex Inc.The Dallas-based company’s page aims to make safe sex fashionable by promoting a casualwear fashion line with the words “Safe Sex” as the logo. (Since Guess? and No Fear are style buzzwords, why not?) The merchandise, especially the Safe Sex University designs, looks pretty sharp. http://www.safe-sex-inc.com/index.html
Health
MedInfo The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas offers a good mix of basic consumer health information—how to treat a burn, how to preserve a finger, toe, or limb amputated in an accident—and more exotic scientific research. Of special note is a listing of important new clinical trials under way. You can also look at departmental pages (from neurology to otolaryngology to psychiatry), search the center’s massive library, and take a tour of Parkland Hospital. http://www.swmed.edu
The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center The Houston center has an international reputation in cancer research and treatment, and its Web site does nothing to tarnish it. You’ll find a wealth of information on America’s most troubling pathology, including copious data on support groups for patients, loved ones, and survivors. The site also lists clinical trials and keeps close tabs on newly approved medications. http://www.utmdacc.uth.tmc.edu/
Texas Department of Health Stats, stats, stats—the TDH has enough disease and health data to numb the mind. But it also has reprints of its excellent newsletter, Disease Prevention News, which contains reports on everything from hepatitis E to mercury poisoning. Check on just how healthy Texans are through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from the Bureau of Chronic Disease, Prevention, and Control. http://www.tdh.texas.gov
CyberPsychologist Houston psychologist Rob Sarmiento’s site invites visitors to take a lively personality test featuring questions that might be pondered by us all, such as, “Is it necessary to tell the truth if you want to be loved?” And, from the lighter side of self-help, there’s a dandy of a personality inventory, which asks you to agree or disagree with such propositions as “I salivate at the sight of mittens.” http://www.onramp.net/cyberpsych/althome.html
Dallas AIDS Services This site has perhaps the most comprehensive listing of AIDS information, from support groups to advisories on new medications and insurance claims. http://users.aol.com/Ready501/aids.htm
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