by The SXSW Interactive festival in Austin Texas has seen a raft of new technologies seemingly intent on removing the last few productive moments from your working day.
The event is in it’s 12th year, and is seen as the place to be for budding Internet entrepreneurs keen to scrape the last remaining semblance of humanity from your increasingly pitiful existence.
This year is no exception, with a number of new applications and technology destined to grip the weak-willed and those with no genuine social life.
Tech journalist Mike Williams told us, “This is Grabbr, inspired by Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, it tells you if there is anyone close by that you can grab. It’s not based on any element of consent, obviously. We get round the law by saying it’s a cultural thing.”
Another expert told us, “Look out for Twatter, it’s a new micro-blogging application, but instead of asking what you’re doing, it tells you what you should be doing.”
“Just now it told me to go and get a life. Neat eh?”
SXSW Interactive
Event organiser Louis Black told us, “This is an incredibly exciting time to be working in technology. Mobile devices are more powerful than ever, and large numbers of people still have significant parts of their day devoted to things that aren’t on the Internet.”
“That’s a huge opportunity for the many, many time wasting applications which are rife here at SXSW.”
“Look at this one, this is an app that monitors your online activity, and the moment you’ve been doing what it considers ‘work’ for more than five minutes it shows you a Youtube clip of an animal doing something funny.”
“It’s had five million downloads since yesterday.”
