While I'm still on a SXSW high, here are a few memorable items from this year in Austin:

• I couldn't agree more with Alex King: "Pick your panels, discussions, presentations, etc. by presenter rather than by topic. Some topics sound great but don't deliver." Most of the sessions I went to this year weren't fantastic. A good portion were horrible.
• Always Be Charging: I took a Mophie Juice Pack with me and it came in very handy. Next year, I'll probably bring two.
• This SXSW was perhaps the best test of Location Based Services like Foursquare and Gowalla. While it was handy to see where friends were at, I'm not sure these services will be useful once I get back to a less-densly populated area (in terms of users).
• The sushi at Piranha Killer Sushi was some of the best I've ever had.
• Mad props to AT&T for providing mostly decent wireless coverage during the event.
• The Courtyard by Marriott across from the ACC had miserable internet speed. Next year, I'll avoid staying there if another hotel can provide better service.
• I forgot to bring business cards, which wasn't a huge issue. Instead of Bump'ing my digits to others, I found emailing my vcard right from the iPhone was the best method of exchanging info.

We're building a house in Stapleton, a neighborhood in Denver. Here's the hole where the house will eventually go.

Like so many many others, I was shocked by the death of Brad Graham. I was fortunate to imbibe with him three times (three different bars in three different cities) since we first met online in 2001. Each time, Brad made me feel like the center of the universe. He had a way of doing that -- with thousands and thousands of people.

You'll be missed, Brad.

I created this screencast in less than a few minutes using nothing but my browser. Sure, the production could be improved (microphone, better script, smaller window to show only what matters, etc.) but for capturing quick screencasts, Screenr.com looks like a winner.

I remember growing up watching live breaking news on broadcast TV by Tom Aspell from Baghdad as the first Gulf War began and Tom Brokaw live from the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was live and exciting and made for fascinating television.

This week, during the historic events in Iran and North Korea, the news networks and CNN seem like they're focusing more time on Jon and Kate than real news. Instead, the story is being shared by Twitter, YouTube and blogs.

Broadcast media organizations have gotten lazy on real news gathering. They must change or they'll suffer the same fate as newspapers.

I hate depending on third-party web services that could go dark at any minute. I've used great services like TinyURL, bit.ly and is.gd to post links to Twitter and other social media sites, but wanted to roll my own tiny URL generator so I could "own" these in-bound links.

My Movable Type-powered blog links are like so: http://apb.me/YYYY/MM/title-of-post/. Depending on the length of the entry title, these URLs can get quite long, so I've turned them into http://apb.me/###.

Here's how:

1. Find your .htaccess file via FTP. Likely, Movable Type has generated this file for you and it contains important code, so make a copy of it in a safe place.

You'll probably see code that starts with

## %%%%%%% Movable Type generated this part; don't remove this line! %%%%%%%

2. Copy the entire file and make a Movable Type index template, outputting to .htaccess.

3. Above MT's own code, add the following:

<mt:Entries lastn="99999">
Redirect 301 /<mt:EntryID> <$mt:EntryLink$>
</mt:Entries>

4. Save and republish the index template.

That's all that you need to do! Now, you have a shortened URL that takes the MT entry ID and redirects to the full post.

To find MT's entry ID for a post, go to the "Manage" - "Entries" screen and scroll over an entry. MT's link will be something like http://domain.com/cgi-bin/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=19&blog_id=6. In this case, the entry ID is 19, so http://domain.com/19 should redirect to the full post.

For example, this entry is at http://mt.apb.me/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=19&blog_id=6, so http://apb.me/19 will redirect to http://apb.me/2009/06/short-urls-with-movable-type/.

I still keep my permalinks at the full long URL for SEO purposes, but having a short URL that I can pass around can be very helpful. You could also add this URL to your permalink pages so others can benefit from the short link.

Bonus Points: If your domain is long to begin with (my old was http://www.aaronbailey.com), buy a short domain (check .me, .ly, .at, .in registrars) and point it at another directory on your webhost. Then have MT output another htaccess file to that location.

In a follow up post, I'll explain other methods for doing this same thing and how use your short domain to post links that aren't yours.

My three-year anniversary on Twitter is nearing. In the beginning, I would follow everyone who followed me. Then the hoards and spammers showed up and I now have a new simple rule for who I will follow:

Engage me in a conversation (even send a simple @aaronbailey hello!) and I'll likely follow you back.