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

A gallery of photos from Houstonist Flickr Photo Group user Jason Tinder....

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......

Good morning, Houston. Have you ever wondered why our freeways have multiple names — for example, I-45 south of downtown is also called the Gulf Freeway, the section through downtown is the Pierce Elevated and the part north of downtown is the North Freeway? Yeah, we have, too — and it seems we're not alone: The Chronicle's Tex-Arcana column tackled that question this weekend. The answer? In Houston, at least, the names tell where......

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......

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,......

Really, it's a typical story: guy and girl go to bar with their various friends, looking to mingle. Guy and girl meet. Guy and girl have drinks. Girl invites guy home to her place to check out her bootleg Top Chef DV--wait, is that part just us? Anyway. When the guy and girl wake up the next morning, it lately seems as if they should get checked for syphilis. The Chronicle reports that Houston's trying......

Antonya Nelson, one of our resident writer geniuses here in town, recently placed *another* story in the New Yorker, and it takes place in Houston! Get a load of that! The story is called "Shauntrelle." Here are the opening lines: "It isn’t just a husband you divorce but a life. A credit rating. Certain friends—sadly, some of them small children. A mother-in-law, that innocent bystander. And sometimes it seemed to Constance that she had divorced......

Good morning, Houston. Noticed a sharp increase in the number of mosquitoes this summer? You will, observers say — and now, Harris County's first confirmed 2007 human case of West Nile virus has been reported. Break out the insect repellent, check up on the West Nile symptoms and do your best not to get stung — although, these days, we guess that's about like saying "stay out of the humidity." >>A break in Gearen......

Even as the TAKS could be on its way out, state education officials announced Monday that measures will be put in place next year to curb cheating on the standardized test. The anti-cheating measures come after allegations of cheating and concerns over students not graduating because they failed the test — and we can't help but think that those problems go hand in hand. "As the stakes surrounding testing have become higher, some have questioned......

Well, here's something to be proud of: Houston's homicide rate is now the second-highest among large American cities, according to FBI figures released Monday. Keep in mind that this is the homicide rate we're talking about — Houston's was 18.2 per 100,000 residents last year, putting us second only to Philadelphia and ahead of Dallas (fifth place), which has had a higher homicide rate than Houston for each of the last 11 years. The numbers......

As best described by www.yurisnight.net, "Yuri's Night is like the St Patricks Day or Cinco de Mayo for space." We couldn't have said it better ourselves. Another holiday giving us an excuse to drink ourselves into oblivion (or the Milky Way). Count us in. Yuri Gagarin was the first human to go into space on April 12th, 1961. "Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship I marveled at the beauty of our planet. People......

Good morning, Houston. If the thought of teeing off atop a downtown skyscraper gets you going, here's some excellent news: For the next week, you'll have the chance! It's part of The Glenlivet City Links, a 9-hole golf course and clubhouse that's touring seven U.S. cities. In Houston, the City Links — which includes a free course, a virtual driving range and a lounge — is set up on the 50th floor of Three......

In celebration of the upcoming Oscars, AMC Theatres will host an "AMC Best Picture Showcase" event Saturday, Feb. 24, at 79 select AMC theatres nationwide. In Houston, the marathon will take place at AMC Gulf Pointe 30, AMC Willowbrook 24, AMC Deerbrook 24, AMC Studio 30, AMC First Colony 24. The day-long event will showcase the five films nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for "Best Picture." Guests are invited to......

So here's something you probably didn't know: In Houston, it's illegal to carry a sign or poster on a public street. The law was passed in 1970, when a lot of people were carrying signs, but it's not so relevant today — which is why police officers have been told to ignore it. But one cop apparently didn't remember: In October 2004, he ticketed Christopher Kelly for carrying a homemade sign covered with slogans critical......

Bank robbery, threatening note, getaway vehicle — yeah, we've heard it all before. But what made a robbery at the Wachovia branch at 235 W. 20th St. unusual was that the bandit arrived and fled on a bicycle. Yesterday afternoon, the man reportedly rode up to the bank on a bike, walked in, approached a teller and handed over a note demanding money and saying he was carrying a bomb. According to KHOU, "the robber......

After seeing pictures of how crowded the malls were this weekend, Houstonist is thinking of embracing this Interweb thing and doing a lot of our holiday shopping online — and we're not alone: According to a recent poll, Houston ranks sixth in the U.S. in online shopping spending for this holiday season. The AOL Shopping/Zogby International Poll shows that the average Houstonian expects to spend $527.96 online in the next four weeks — a fairly......

With voter turnout generally decreasing each year, some government bodies are looking for incentives to get people to vote. In Arizona, they’re trying a million-dollar lottery for voters. In Houston, we had the free flu-shots at some locations for the elderly, until that was shot down. Houstonist doesn’t need an incentive to vote – we educate ourselves on the issues and then go to the polling station to cast our vote. However, we like Under......

About a week after Houston janitors walked off the job to protest their average $5.30 hourly pay, the janitors have taken their show on the road, hoping to stir up their brethren in Chicago, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Washington. Organizers call it a "national escalation plan," and Cornell University labor studies professor Richard Hurd said the move is meant to send a message to janitorial companies elsewhere: "It's a way of sending a message to......

The Homeland Security Department has put officials and NFL stadium owners in seven U.S. cities, including Houston, on alert after a warning was posted online claiming that the cities' stadiums would be destroyed by dirty bombs this weekend — but the government says it's looking at the threat "with strong skepticism." The threat was posted Oct. 12 as part of an ongoing online conversation. It warned of attacks on NFL stadiums in Houston, Atlanta, New......

City Council yesterday approved a flat rate for all taxi rides within the downtown freeway loop and the creation of at least eight new taxi stands downtown, all part of an effort to make downtown more accessible to visitors, people without cars and downtown office workers. The flat rate, $6 for any trip inside the loop bounded by I-10, I-45 and Highway 59, applies no matter how many people share the cab. We fully expect......

Surely you've heard of the national spinach scare caused by some apparently tainted greens from California that have made more than a hundred people sick with E. coli and killed one elderly woman. But this weekend, KHOU reported on a new local twist in the story: A truck driver was arrested in Fort Bend County for allegedly dumping a load of spinach and pre-packaged salad greens in the San Bernard River. Whereas this would usually......

A year after Houston welcomed more than a quarter million Katrina refugees, more than 100,000 are still here, and Houstonians aren't happy. West Houston residents who gathered Wednesday at Grace Presbyterian Church to talk about the increased violent crime rate in their part of town blamed evacuees for the problem, reports the Chronicle. Police Chief Harold Hurtt came to the church to discuss a new patrol division aimed at bringing the violence to an end,......

The mid-decade census estimates are in, and they show that Hispanics make up the majority of Houston's young population. According to the findings of the American Community Survey, 55 percent of Houstonians age 15 and younger are Hispanic, while just 17 percent of people age 75 and older are. By contrast, 55 percent of Houstonians over 75 are Anglo. The numbers aren't a surprise, but UH sociology chairman Nestor Rodriguez told the Chronicle they present......

If you've been anywhere around a news outlet this morning, we're sure you've heard about the foiled plot to blow up several U.S.-bound jets And if you haven't, go ahead and take a few minutes to check the story out — we have the feeling air travel is about to get more complicated again. In short, the national aviation threat level has jumped to red, meaning people traveling by plane anytime soon will need to......

The defense in the Andrea Yates trial rested this afternoon; the state will now begin rebuttal and the case could go to the jury sometime next week Fort Bend detectives say they've made progress in their investigation of the death of Ashton Glover, the 16-year-old Sugar Land girl whose body was found in a field yesterday In Houston, the police officers' union is gathering the last responses to a survey it issued about HPD Chief......

Here's some advice: Unless you're attending the Essence Music Festival this weekend, you might want to avoid the Essence Music Festival. That's because more than 200,000 people may come to the three-day festival, being held in Houston for the first time this year. We just don't think Reliant Park-area traffic will be any fun. The EMF started in New Orleans in 1994 to mark the 25th anniversary of Essence magazine. Since then, it's grown into......

San Antonio and Ft. Worth were the second- and third-fastest growing big cities in the U.S. in the year ending in July 2005, according to the Census Bureau's latest statistics — but that doesn't include the population shift from last fall's hurricanes, which hit a couple of months later. San Antonio and Ft. Worth both added about 21,000 people between July 2004 and July 2005, meaning San Antonio overtook San Diego as the seventh-largest American......

So you've probably heard about the recent spate of alligator attacks in Florida, right? Yeah, nasty stuff. Fortunately, if you should find yourself be-bopping through some wetlands in the near future, KHOU has some tips on how to keep yourself from becoming gator food. After what we're sure was hours of research, Channel 11 offers the following advice based on a visit to Brazos Bend State Park, which has some gators of its own:......

After eight straight weeks of incrases, gas prices in Texas finally fell a little this week — though the decrease in Houston wasn't all that great. The AAA Texas Gas Watch found the average price for a gallon of gas in Texas is $2.862, down 3 cents from last week. In Houston, the average price is $2.913, a drop of 1.4 cents from last week. Houston is just a half-cent behind this week's national average.......