The key for an app to use SXSW as a launchpad to success is for it to be an app that helps attendees make more of the festival. Your new iPhone game may be cool, but if it doesn’t make people’s SXSW better, then it isn’t going to get the sort of buy-in you’re seeking. I think nothing proves this better than looking at the hot apps of last SXSW, buoyed by all the pre-SXSW hype, Beluga was acquired by Facebook before the event even began. Heytell has reached such a level of fanaticism that the oft-mocked “push-to-talk” functionality is now being considered by AT&T.

I love discovering new apps at SXSW, I’m sure to allot a whole chunk of memory on my iPhone for downloading new ones. But what I really want to know, and what I’m betting you do too, is what apps will actually help you get your $800+ investment out of SXSW. There a few new and trendy apps on here, but this isn’t a list of novelty, it’s a list of utility. These are the apps that are going to make my SXSW 2012 the best ever.

Oh, and if you’ll be at SXSW, come say hi to me at my core conversation about NFC (the title has an allusion to the F word!), or follow me on Twitter at @rachelyouens.

Highlight
Location-based tracking apps have been huge over the last few years….mostly for gay hookups. Grindr is great, but for those not interested in a quickie behind the Driskill, consider Highlight. Highlight seems to be one of the first location-based introduction apps that has picked up with the mainstream without completely creeping them out. The app uses a combination of common friends and like interests to let you know when relevant people are around you. I’m not sure how truly creeper foolproof this app is, but much like Quora, it seems to not yet have been infiltrated by skeezes. This app has already introduced me in real life to web friends I’d only liked and commented with, and I expect that it will facilitate more than a few SXSW intros. Highlight’s only weakness is the fact that it eats through Battery like Paula Deen with butter, and battery power is like the unobtanium of SXSW…however the latest update, which I’m downloading as I type, is supposed to dramatically change this.

Sonar
Unfortunately, Sonar’s loss was Highlight’s gain. Sonar missed last SXSW by a mere two months and instead launched at TechCrunch Disrupt, whereas Highlight’s entry has been well-timed to surf the buzz right into SXSW. The two apps really aren’t dramatically different, and I’ve used them both, but thus far I’ve only had success with surfacing connections on Highlight, and I’m not sure what to attribute that to – but I’m clearly not the only one experiencing it. Perhaps it’s that Highlight seems to be much more edited down, and thus less..creepy. I look forward to using the two side by side and seeing what happens.

Hello
Over the past year, Evernote has really expanded its service and the expectations for what you should upload, and some of the company’s peripheral apps, such as Peek and Food, are teaching us new ways to use the app in ways we may not have previously thought of. Hello acts like sort of a CRM for friend management…imagine something like Hashable meets Bump. It allows you to pass your iPhone to a person you’ve just met, let them take a photo and enter in their contact info, and then it immediately send them a followup email from you with a custom message and your contact info. Two of the coolest parts of the app are the slightly animated photos on the friend home screen and the google map photo that appears of the place you were when you met them. Unfortunately, nowhere but SXSW is handing someone your phone and asking them to take a photo of themself a natural action. This app is cool in principle and I’m curious to give it a try during SXSW, but I fear this may be the only environment it can really exist in.

CardMunch
In spite of all these digital networking options, the old school business card still prevails. But keeping track of business cards at SXSW is a pain..you’ve got bags full of swag, you’ve been drinking since 11am, your crap is spread across your hotel room floor, and half the cards you get will be lost, damaged beyond belief, or never followed up on. If there was one way that Linkedin could add immediate value to its service with all its fat new stock cash, this is it. Take a business card, scan it, it’s immediately processed and the person’s Linkedin profile is pulled up with the option to email them immediately and connect with them…it’s beautiful. I’m not kidding, it’s profoundly changed how I network and I expect to see the number of LinkedIn requests I get this year during SXSW skyrocket.

Find Friends
If you didn’t already close this article due to the creepiness of Highlight and Sonar, then this one may do it. Find friend isn’t the product of a startup, in fact it’s one of Apple’s own apps, and it’s the pinnacle of stalkiness. Find Friends lets you, at any given time, GPS track a person, going so far as to let them name those locations they are most commonly at as gym, home, work, church, etc. I’ll tell you I let only a very, very, very, few of my friends follow me, and the ability to turn the feature on and off per person means that you can let your friends follow you from party to party in Austin, but shut them down when the festival is over. Checking in is really only as reliable as a person is and this app picks up the slack for you.

Localmind
It took me a little while to wrap my head around local mind (no pun intended.) That was until the day I was sitting in a barber chair at a salon and got a push notification asking how long the wait was. Suddenly I understood the utility. Localmind is crowdsourced answers…it’s a lot like how Twitter used to work before it became a cluttered mess. Imagine being able to ask the people in the keynote session if there are still free seats, or asking the people in the party if they’re checking RSVPs, or asking everyone at the Mashable party if they’ve spotted Cashmore yet. In order to really work well, Localmind needs a deep bench of experts and SXSW can deliver that. The fact that Scoble named it one of his top apps of last SXSW doesn’t really hurt either.

SoundTracking
Last year my recommendation for music tracking was Concert Rat, and while I still love that app, I’ve found Soundtracking to be a far more interactive option. This app doesn’t need SXSW to be awesome, but it’s a fun way to tell the story of the music you were listening to. Instead of just seeing Miike Snow at SXSW (and I WILL SEE MIIKE SNOW AT SXSW) you are seeing him at a certain venue and this was the photo of the scene. I think Sound Tracking’s database will fail to identify many of the festival’s emerging new artists, but for those it does, it will be a rich way to record them.

Tabbedout
There are a few major party fouls you can make at SXSW…one is standing up at a panel to ask a question and bending your entire question to promote your startup, two is forgetting to bring your charger and realizing your battery is flat by 7pm, and third is leaving your credit card at the bar and being penniless the next day. The first of those problems is easily solvable by not being a douche, the second by having some forethought, and the third by downloading TabbedOut. With Tabbedout, you never hand a credit card to the bar, you just show them your code and they run your tab…you can even keep an eye on your phone as you rack up the drinks, and then just close it all out and you stare blearly into your phone from your hotel room at 5am. TabbedOut is a hometown hero in Austin, and they have promoted heavily at SXSW in the past (you may have picked up one of their “dropped credit cards” only to find a Tabbedout ad), but they’re truly a valuable service that Austinites know and love, and that’s already embraced by many Austin bars and restaurants. If you think you need to have square or wait for NFC for mobile payments, meet Tabbedout.

Foreca.st
Last year Hurricane Party brought their free ice cream, and Japan fundraising, and rainbowy branding to SXSW about as hardcore as they could. In a year’s time, the company has evolved its product and introduced a new application that focuses on the future, rather than the present. Foreca.st uses Foursquare to let you name where you’ll be and when, and then share it with your friends. It’s a simple concept, but incredibly useful at events like SXSW. The app’s downfall is that it’s only as reliable as your friends are, if they use it like they use Facebook events or SXSW RSVPS, then a Forecast means very little, but this app could be essential for coordinating and you can bet Forecast will be hitting their hometown streets during SXSW

Car2Go
As SXSW has gotten bigger and bigger, the festival’s bounds have only expanded. The festival that was formerly confined to 6th street now stretches from Airport Blvd to Lamar, and you’re going to wear out some shoe leather getting from place to place. When Pedicabs can’t go far enough, and cabs are difficult to find, Car2Go saves the day. Austin is one of only ten cities where Car2Go is available, and in those ten cities, it is loved and cherished. The pay-as-you-go car service lets you swipe a card, unlock a car and just go. Their app tells you where to find the nearest car and unlock it from afar. You’re cutting it close, but it’s not too late to get an account before the fest.

Read my past SXSW app lists from 2011 and 2010

So Foursquare is now using NFC on its Android app. Not really much of a shocker. Checkin validation has been one of the biggest barriers to LBSN companies making money for offering deals and loyalty points for a long time. I don’t think I have to argue that this is a fantastic advancement for Foursquare – super duper.

But before we pop the champagne and celebrate that we’ve finally cracked the great problem of checkin validation, there’s one more little thing. When checkin can finally be coupled with purchase, similar to the fashion that Google Wallet has adopted, it will just all be lumped into one convenient motion…and the intrigue of the checkin will fade.

What’s the inherent value of the Foursquare checkin anyhow? Is it that your friends can see where you are? Find My Friends and other apps can help you do that now, and almost with a level of GPS accuracy that can pinpoint the exact business and not merely the general coordinates. Is it the mayorships and pride of being a top customer? Big deal, now that there a bajillions of people on Foursquare, becoming a mayor is next to impossible, and no one really wants to admit that they visit the bar enough to be the mayor of it anyhow. Is it the deals? Doubtful, because A) the deals aren’t all that fantastic anyhow (though partnerships with companies like Scoutmob are helping) and B) most companies are only doing it to find some way to be involved in mobile and I doubt they’re pulling a ton of value from it ( I’m happy to be proven wrong on this, by the way, feel free to send case studies.)

Checking in just isn’t a natural motion, especially not now that it requires a four step process of pulling out our phone, opening an app, finding the location and checking in. I just don’t think that finding the NFC tag and tapping it to go to a web page is going to be THAT much more natural, not to mention the fact that they still have the tremendous challenge of trying to get Foursquare NFC tags deployed to…everywhere.

All of this is highly hypothetical and relies on the fact that NFC-enabled mobile commerce will actually sort out all of its numerous issues and come to maturity, but I think it will, and when it does Google is already going to have a tremendous leg up. Google+ is already working to include deals in its checkins, they already have NFC tags deployed in a number of cities including Portland and Austin, and they also have the loyalty system built into their Google wallet.

I’m not saying that loyalty cards and deals are the only reasons that people checkin, perhaps Foursquare is strong enough on its own merits as a social network to keep people coming. Perhaps Google and Foursquare will become chummy enough that Foursquare will be lumped right into Google Wallet, there’s past precedent for it, and the casual fun of Foursquare NFC scanning could fuel the adoption of NFC payments.

I’m also not saying that it will be Google that wins out in this space, I have a feeling that if Apple decides to enter into NFC mobile payments it’s going to be in a big way. But I am saying that before we declare NFC as the long lost answer to Foursquare’s biggest problem, we need to realize that there are other players moving about the field.

Last weekend, I went to the botanical gardens, and they were lovely. In the middle of a bustling city was this carefully curated environment of beauty where I knew I wouldn’t stumble across a cigarette butt on the path or graffiti scratched into a tree trunk.

But I did notice something out of place…there were weeds. I don’t know if the gardeners had missed them or they were just stubbornly growing with the recent rains, but in spite of the work of careful gardeners, they had managed to pop up anyway. This is evolution. Chaos wants to happen, Jeff Goldblum couldn’t have said it better himself, and those gardeners could just go stomping through the entire place with weed killer but you know they would just extinguish half the roses and jade trees along the way.

One day Apple will realize that their walled garden isn’t just keeping the bad out, it’s keeping the good from growing, and those with lots of money and little conscience will always find new ways to cheat the system. Fighting the free market is like fighting nature..in the long run, they won’t win.

This is in response to Apple’s recent post in a TouchArcade forum warning developers about using systems like download bots. Not long ago Apple also went after copycat apps as well as TapJoy, who got users to download apps in exchange for in-game credit. Now I think download bots and copycats are shady as shit and, well I don’t really play games, so I think if you want to download a $4 app so you can get more gold coins to grow carrots in your virtual farm or what have you, more power to you…but the point is, these may indeed be underhanded tactics, but they are the natural evolution of developers struggling through an undefined and over-controlled system.

The app store isn’t a fucking boutique in SOHO, it’s a massive global market that has swollen to hundred of thousands of apps. I appreciate Apple’s efforts to personally screen and give special attention to every little snowflake that passes through its hallowed doors but it just aint scalable. It’s time to crowdsource, automate, and offer more ways for good apps to surface themselves. I’m not claiming to have all the answers, but I do have one:

Look, Ping is retarded. We can all agree on this right?

This isn’t news, I think most of us called it day one, the social sharing of your iTunes purchases just isn’t the same as it is for your MOG or Spotify playlists. People under 30 don’t buy music anyway. But my immediate thought upon hearing about the release of Ping was that when Apple finally released Ping for apps, it was going to change app discovery forever….and then…well it never happened.

We can already see a little microcosm of this with Game Center. A number of apps that only have loose associations with games have found a way to gamify so that they can use this as an avenue for discovery. For non-social apps, the avenues for discovery are limited, I’m simply not going to share my Period Tracker or Lemon financial app on Facebook the same way I am a damn Instagram photo. Apps have limited avenues, and short of shady tactics and a gamble on going viral, even a lot of games don’t have much of a prayer in the vast sea of the app store.

Apple can tow their stupid line of “great apps will just succeed because they’re great” but that’s a load of bullshit. Marketers need more understanding of the algorithms and fair avenues to sell, and users need more of a crowd sourced way to discover apps. Apple, give us the rules and the tools, and we can do half your work for you.

Scientists nowadays say that evolution in the human race has stopped. Keeping any bad germs or diseases from getting to our systems has weakened us and medication and treatment keeps the bad from being weeded out. The same thing is happening in the app store.