How Austin Is Improving The iPod

Austin Fit Magazine - April 2005

WHILE WE'VE BEEN LIVING IN A WORLD of ever-shrinking machines holding ever-expanding quantities of information, none of the magic gizmos on the market today has enjoyed as successful a following as the now-ubiquitous iPod. Beyond being a portable music player and tacit fashion statement, for many individuals, the iPod has become a way of life. As a friend recently explained about his much beloved white rectangular wonder, "I call it the source of my happiness.  No, seriously, the SOURCE OF MY HAPPINESS." Likewise, from pedestrians to cyclists to commuters stuck in traffic, myriads of Austinites are plugged into inexhaustible, searchable catalogs, brought to them courtesy of iPod's sleek portability and user-friendly platform.

Although we've gradually become accustomed to an assortment of PDAs, they seem, at best, unavoidably business-oriented, and at worst, indisputably nerdy. IPods, on the other hand, have managed to escape such stereotypes and ultimately transcend into the world of "cool," making the portability of information and media anything but dweeby. Due to their incredible popularity, entrepreneurs and innovators are now focusing on ways to springload the iPod platform, ensuring that the world's best little machine gets even better.

And that's exactly what music-crazed Austinites, Keith Byrd, Rob Phillips and T.J. O'Leary did in the weeks before the SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Festival. As faithful festival-goers themselves, they realized having a searchable schedule available via iPod could dramatically improve the experience for attendees, many of whom face an overwhelming number of options, be it thousands of performing artists, hundreds of films or scores of conference panels and speeches.

Byrd, who had been downloading articles and news feeds from National Public Radio onto his iPod for months, originally hatched the idea. Over a coffee pow-wow with O'Leary at Joe's on South Congress, he proposed that with the right interface they could leverage iPod's prime function as a portable music player, and with the built-in "Notes" function create an ultimately searchable listing for SXSW music offerings, complete with sample songs for each performer. Days later they met with members of the SXSW Information Technology department who quickly saw real value in the idea. Translating the massive SXSW database into a browsing format was key to the project's success.

The ability to access and store data through the "Notes" section is, as O'Leary explains, "an accident of the iPod.it's not about inputting data; it's about taking the data home wherever you are." More than taking it home, the guide4Pod service, currently the main offering of Phillips, Byrd and O'Leary's newly formed company, CitizenPod, is about taking usable data wherever someone wants to go, for however long the individual would like to access and search it. Which means, instead of flipping through a worn-out festival guide or a tattered and highlighted Austin Chronicle, even the most technologically unsavvy SXSW-ers can whip out their iPods and browse by band, genre, showcase and venue.

Considering the nearly infinite applications for the service, not surprisingly, CitizenPod is fielding inquiries from a number of organizations eager to hop on the mobile media bandwagon. CitizenPod, which prioritizes providing useful information and education for the end-user, plans on expanding and tailoring their services from music festivals to other types of venues, such as museums, trade shows and conferences. Whether an individual would like to tote around blurbs about Austin's nightclub scene or review curatorial notes for the latest museum exhibit, CitizenPod wants to make a new world of information accessible to them.

Not that you needed another excuse to buy an iPod, but three Austin locals are now giving us not one, but an infinite number of reasons to get one.