Local Tech News in a compact, digital format....

Happy bissextile day, Houston. If you're reading this from jail — we're actually not even sure if you can use the Internet in jail — well, don't feel alone: According to a new report from the Pew Center on the States, 1 of every 100 American adults are behind bars today. Good lord. The good news: Texas is one of the states that has tried to slow the growth of its inmate population through......

West Texas, specifically Marfa, may be No Country for Old Men, but it certainly seems to be the place for making Academy Award winning films. Speaking of winning, one lucky Houston Fiesta shopper hit it big in the Texas Lotto. >> TSU's president calls for entrance standard: The Chronicle reports that new TSU president John Rudley is moving toward more stringent admissions standards for the embattled university. President Rudley is taking over the helm......

The Chron picked this up a few days ago, but we feel it's worth a second mention. The Rice Design Alliance in conjunction with the Houston Chapter of the AIA announced two Houston architects, Murphy Mears Architects, (Kirby Mears, Walter Murphy, Kyle Humphries, Jamie Miller, and Gina Lyons) and Stephanie Eugster as finalists in the recent 99K House Competition. The finalists were selected out of 182 entrants proposing a sustainable, affordable house that addresses......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Dwight Watch Dwight Silverman, local tech guru, tackles installing the first service pack for Microsoft Vista. Dwight installs it on various platforms with various results. Dwight's also has been blogging about a workaround for Comcast's unethical treatment of bandwidth, he also unboxes the MacBook Air and touches on what could be the nail in the coffin of the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray saga. Local Calendar Feb 19:......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format....

It's a struggle not to talk about how awesome the Super Bowl was last night, but since we're here to talk about Houston teams first and foremost, we'll have to stick to our mission. But how 'bout those commercials, huh? We went and looked at the GoDaddy.com Danica Patrick one online; who knew that she could put both legs behind her head while playing "Smoke On The Water" on kazoo? Here's what the blogosphere has......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Apple Swap Meet Next Weekend It's coming! The Houston Area Apple Users Group semi-annual swap meet is happening next weekend, January 26th at the UH Hilton. Please check the HAAUG site for registration information and fees. Good luck finding that Apple Newton or Lisa you've been looking for! Sprint Nextel To Close 35 Retail Stores In Houston From the Houston Business Journal come this interesting news......

The Rockets kicked a truckload of ass last week before getting a wake-up call against the Hornets. Amazing that they did all of this without Tracy McGrady. Kinda makes you wonder if GM Daryl Morey should listen to all those trade rumors. The T-Mac rumors and more in this week's run-through of what the sports blogs are saying: - Every time we think we're done talking about Roger Clemens, he pulls us back in. It's......

Good morning, Houston. If you've ever been driving around in the 'burbs and wondered who names the streets, well, it just might be someone like Susan Vreeland-Wendt, who the Chronicle's Nancy Sarnoff interviewed yesterday. Vreeland-Wendt, marketing director for The Woodlands Operating Co., has come up with more than 1,600 names for roads, parks and neighborhoods in The Woodlands in the last 20 years. Turns out she gets inspiration from all kinds of places: paint......

The Texans pleasantly surprised us yesterday. Here we were all ready for another defeat, and suddenly Sage "Best Backup QB In The League" Rosenfels makes us feel all better. The picture that accompanies the top link today captures the feelings of many Texans fans today, we'd imagine. But there's more than just football going on this time of year; read on and see! - The lovely and talented Stephanie Stradley at AOL Fanhouse has a......

December always brings some good mini-festivals, and this week is a good example. It starts tonight with the KILT 10-Man Jam, featuring many popular country radio stars. Tomorrow night, the husband/wife team of Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis come into town for their annual Christmas show. Saturday, Chron.com showcases some of the best local talent in their concert at Warehouse Live. Finally, KRBE's annual Jingle Jam brings pop radio's favorite to the Toyota Center......

The tryptophan has worn off, we all trudge back to work, and sit down to surf the web. Between another crushing Texans loss, the Aggies poaching one of the Texans' coaches, and the Rockets finally getting their act together, it was a busy holiday season for Houston sports. Let Houstonist do the surfing for you and bring you up to speed on what the web is saying about our teams: - Ok, this is just......

Good morning, Houston. It's November now, and you know what that means: We're at the beginning of nearly two straight months of Christmas. Retailers put their holiday decorations up early in hopes that shoppers will see them and get in the buying mood — but will it work? Not necessarily, if most shoppers are like Sharon Baker, who the Chron found at Macy's downtown. "I do like Christmas, but I need time to celebrate......

Good morning, Houston. Seriously, what is it with North Texas these days? Yesterday we had the story of the 18-wheeler full of human heads, and today there's the Fort Worth man who accidentally shot himself in both legs in his cubicle at work. According to police, the 47-year-old man put his .45-caliber gun into his jacket pocket Tuesday morning, then draped his jacket over the back of his chair at an insurance office. When......

Somewhere, Marvin Zindler is rolling over in what is no doubt a very lavish coffin. While this article in the Chron todaylooks into the health inspections at sports venues makes no particular mention of slime or its proximity relative to the ice machine, you can be sure that Marvin would've known and would've shouted it from the rooftops. Or at least from somewhere near Dave Ward's elbow. The stadiums reviewed under the auspices of the......

In spite of what may have simultaneously been the best and worst game in Texans franchise history, we do have a lot of good stuff to share with you this week from the sports blogosphere. Pay particular attention to the gem at the bottom of the list. - Stevie Franchise may not really earn that nickname anymore, but he is back in Houston and he is wearing number 3 again. Just like 2002. Maybe we......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Socially Speaking The Chron picks up this article about Houston web based startups and their Houston connections. If you've been reading Houstonist and Tech Buzz, you've already heard about most of them! Phone + Podcast = Phonecast Found over at abc13.com is this story about listening to podcasts on your phone. It's Houston based phonecasting.com and by visiting their site you can get phone numbers to......

Good morning, Houston. Looks like there's another tropical disturbance out in the Gulf of Mexico — this one is called Invest 90L, and it looks like it could be headed for the upper Texas coast. The Chron's Eric Berger is keeping an eye on the system, which is located west of Florida and is headed in a general northwesterly direction; Berger reports that it could become a tropical storm by tomorrow, but isn't likely......

"Biggio" is the word on many bloggers minds this week, so this'll be a pretty Astros-heavy week here at the blog roundup. - Orange Whoopass is putting together some of the most poignant tributes to number 7. Here are a couple of them. - Biggio didn't break the all-time hit-by-pitch record (he came two short, but still holds the modern-era record). Plunk Biggio breaks it down with a great tribute, and some finger pointing. -......

Good morning, Houston. If you've ever been to Rich's, the dance club in midtown, you probably won't be surprised to hear that the crowd there Saturday was sporting "feather boas, glittering hair accessories, sparkling dresses and tutus." But exactly who was in the crowd might take you by surprise: It was a bunch of kids there for Baby Loves Disco, part of a national series of dance events that benefit childhood cancer research. (In......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. StartUp Weekend Houston "Startup Weekend is an idea, an experiment, a chance to gather the tech community and create a company over one jam packed weekend." If that interests you, head over to houston.startupweekend.com and get your reservation. StartupWeekend Houston is limited to the first 100 participants and space is limited. Andrew Hyde, Startup Weekend founder will be on hand along with Gwen Bell of Blogger,......

Good morning, Houston. Did you watch last night's Emmy Awards show with bated breath? Yeah, neither did we. If you want to check out the winners, the Chron has a nice cheat sheet that will bring you up to speed for today's water cooler conversation. We did get to wondering where the name "Emmy" came from though, and turned to Wikipedia to ease our minds. Turns out it's a feminization of the word "immy,"......

Good morning, Houston. These days, when everyone and their dog has a computer, it's getting harder to remember the days when all "official" writing was done on typewriters. The practical modern typewriter was invented in 1868 by an engineer named Christopher Latham Sholes, but it wasn't until 121 years ago today — Sept. 14, 1886 — that George K. Anderson of Memphis got a patent for the typewriter ribbon. They were originally made of......

Good morning, Houston. As you might have noticed, we passed the night sans Humberto — but our friends in the Beaumont area weren't so lucky. The sudden hurricane made landfall early this morning and battered Beaumont with winds up to 62 mph and Orange with gusts of up to 85 mph, the Chron's Eric Berger reports. From across Southeast Texas came reports of knee-deep water, downed power lines and damaged buildings, including an apartment......

Good morning, Houston. The Chron's Eric Gerber points out something interesting: a Washington Post story that says people hold onto utterly untrue myths even when they're faced with factual information that disproves them. An example: A University of Michigan psychologist showed people a CDC flyer stating that myths about the flu vaccine aren't true — such as the story that the side effects of the vaccine are worse than the flu itself — and......

Lucy, the hottest old lady in the whole entire world, is getting written up everywhere: Forbes, Time, The Washington Post and of course The Chron. The 3.2 million year old hominid from Ethiopia is about to go on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science on Friday with much fanfare and attention. The fossil is so very old and rare that paleoanthropologists are concerned about the damage that international travel, display and a potential......

Good morning, Houston. Yeah, we remember how (relatively) mild the first part of the summer was, and we're grateful for that. But now, after weeks of oppressive heat, we're sick of the weather — so you can imagine how excited we were when we checked out the long-range forecast and saw highs in the low 80s and lows in the low 60s coming in early September. But it might not come as early as......

Good morning, Houston. We've always wondered about our lady friends' uncanny ability to find food — particularly food they claim they shouldn't be eating — and now there's scientific evidence that women may actually have a built-in talent for locating grub. The news comes from The Daily Telegraph in the UK, which reports that women at a farmers' market were much better at finding a stall where they had bought a certain food than......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. City WiFi Still On Hold It's been a few months since Mayor Bill White approved a multi-million dollar deal with EarthLink to provide over 640 square miles of wireless service to Houston and we are still waiting. Earthlink should have already started installing wireless nodes on light poles around the city but has failed to do so. EarthLink is still within time constraints set by the......