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

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.

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.

This week I received a sad bit of news in my inbox. The team behind Flook, a contender in the early days of the check-in fad that once was a candidate for a SXSW Interactive award, announced the app would be closing its doors and that users needed to pack up their shit. It’s sad to see any startup go ( Plancast, RIP yo), but this one was particularly sad since I had actually met co-founder Tristan Brotherton at SXSW on the eve of the SXSW awards.

But Flook’s goodbye letter got me to thinking about a process I’ve had to do far too many times lately, and that’s collecting all my digital detritus from an app in the wake of its acquisition or closure. Look, having to do this sucks. Nothing makes all the time, and effort, and drunken one-eyed pecking that has gone into all your three years of checking in than to have to see it download onto your desktop in a tidy zip file merely a few mbs big. Gives me a sad.

This was the experience I had when Whrrl went down the drain…and after an acquisition by the dubious Groupon no less. I was happy for their acquisition but saddened that only a month or so after I’d been fervently checking in through SXSW, I was already being booted.

So the most recent application giving me this particular grief is Gowalla. To put it into perspectives, Whrrl and Flook were only mere hookups – Gowalla was like my boyfriend. When people at App Dev Con thumbed their nose at Gowalla, I stood up in their defense. They were with me in Australia for months before Foursquare even arrived. I wore that damn kangaroo shirt like a badge of honor. They were a hometown hero in Austin. When Gowalla goes down, even if it’s as a result of being plucked by Facebook, I take it personally.

Maybe a little too personally….After several weeks of my less than subtle comments on CTO Scott Raymond’s Facebook posts, he finally fired back:

“(what) would you like to see? ..If not a simple download-the-zip-file thing, what would make you happiest, as a user?.”

Now I don’t know if my reply back to him in the early hours of January 5th was truly cracked or if he’s just been busy moving into some adorable Victorian in NOPA, but to this day I’ve not heard back from Scott. So I let you decide. Here’s a paraphrase of my response:

On a.. tangible level ( and I know you guys like the tangible pins and passports ) I had a vision the other day of you partnering with one of the online self publishing companies to let people export a book of all their checkins. Make it a custom gowalla run. It would also be epic if you partnered with an infographic company like Jess3 to create infographic versions of a person’s feeds….Give them something to celebrate that excites them about what Gowalla will do now at Facebook. Even if you just made sort of cool embeddable graphics people could post on their tumblr, post on their wall, or print on a poster..that would be proper.

I realized that in most cases, when a startup is on its last legs, its not the time to make grand gestures honoring the life of your company..particularly since at that point the fat venture cash has all run out. But for Gowalla, that isn’t exactly the case. I just wish they would honor their users with a piece of memorabilia that’s a nod to the company’s uniqueness.

Plus, how amazing to have a coffetable book of your checkins, am I right?!

You’re telling me Blurb couldn’t make this happen? If OKCupid can give me a flowchart of whether you should date me, Gowalla can’t have an infographic of my journeys around the world?

There’s never an easy way to say goodbye, and this week I think Flook’s touching letter did the job, but in a case like Gowalla, where the end is really just the beginning of something new, wouldn’t it be nice if things closed on a high note rather than sadly sputtering to a stop?

There once was a time when owning an Apple product made you feel a part of an elite exclusive club. Your friends would look on enviously with their sensible HPs and Samsungs, because even when there was complete feature parity, there was always a certain cache. Maybe it was that cool kid vibe a macbook or iPod threw off that said “hey man, I don’t care that I paid twice as much for this product than I had too.”

But sadly my friends, the cult of mac has officailly thrown its doors open to the riff raff. First it was iPads at Wal-Mart, now its apps at Starbucks. Gone are the days of the graphic designer sliding his iPhone into his messenger bag. Say hello to slanket-wearing suburbanites getting cheeto fingers on touch screens.

The international coffee giant has swapped its free music download program with a new free app program that will be putting new apps onto the phones of hummer-driving suburbanites everywhere. The first app that will be given away will be Shazam, which will be super awesome for all those soccer moms to tag the latest Michael Buble single.

All jokes aside, if you need another sign of the app store’s growing legitimacy (here’s one if you do need it) this is it, and this is an excellent way to get programmed into the idea of bulk app buying. If Starbucks truly replaces the iTunes music program with this one it will greatly cut the number of users that can participate. Sends a rather strong branding message there? It’s also going to be interesting to see which apps Apple and Starbucks choose to present and how it affects developers.

But back to making stabs at yuppies, here’s my suggestion for the next apps they should look at considering:

Lose it: How about you counteract all those drive ins you installed into America’s strip malls and help people burn off a few calories. Don’t think I missed this infographic on just how many calories that PTA mom is slurping down in her frappucino on her way to Zumba.

Barista: America I hate to be the one that tells you this, but Starbucks is NOT what the rest of the world considers GOOD coffee. Don’t be fooled by all those Italian names like “Venti” into thinking that you are enjoying an authentic European cafe experience. You can learn to make coffee from the comfort of your own McMansion and if that proves too hard, you can always buy some of Starbucks “delicious” instant offerings.

Wi-Fi Finder: To be fair, not EVERYONE who goes to Starbucks is a Juicy Couture-wearing, Arbor Mist-drinking mom. However the rest of Starbucks patrons are composed of Wi-Fi grifters. Those talented folk who know how to make one iced tea last an 8 hour work day. We all see you’ve got nothing but ice left, so get out of here and find some web to steal elsewhere….some of us have OKcupid coffee dates to fuck up.

Ah America, the land of the entrepreneurial, where a snuggie and a dream can equal billion dollar empire of slobiness. Unfortunately, not all of these dreams are good, or even adequate. Some of them are just terrible.

The iOS environment seems to pull in bad ideas like a damn gravitational pull. People have mistakenly been lured into thinking anything made for an iPhone is going to result in mountains of cash, but in practice, the business plan equation looks like this:

Step 1: Idea for an app that lets your cat use emojis
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit

Actually, on second thought, cat targeted apps are doing pretty well right now, maybe I’ll actually use this idea. Anyhow, Kickstarter is the place where bad dreams go to be born. If you can get enough people to believe in your product, it becomes real, sort of a pinnochio story. So, let’s look at the best and the worst of Kickstarter for iPhone, starting with the awesome and ending in the awful.

Kickstars: The Best of Kickstarter for iPhone

1. Dot 360 Video
It still boggles my mind the leaps and bounds that iPhoneography has made. It boggles my mind that iPhoneography is actually a word. But the advances being made in this area are rad, and this is one of the raddest I’ve seen in a long time. 360 degree video – it’s not just a device but it’s an app and you can spin your way for a real view of the scene. I’m curious about how this exports and how you can fully use the technology but for the time being…awesomeness.

2. iPhone Holster
Dorks aren’t tough but we sure like to pretend we are…sure we’re a computer programmer by day, but by night we’re a Level 10 Orc. RESPECT. This is a simple product, but it is one that speaks to the tough guy in any geek. It could only be improved by also coming with Gun’s Sounds .

3. The iBottle Opener
When iPhone first came out there were two apps we used to impress our friends. The first was Shazam, which allowed us to exhibit the tiny musical elves that lived inside our phones, and the second was iBeer . This product takes it to the next level – instead of drinking and pouring fake beers we can start using real ones.

Sickstarter: The Worst of Kickstarter for iPhone

1. The Dry Erase iPhone Cover
At first reaction, I actually put this on my awesome list. Dorks and white boards go together like peanut butter and jelly. But then I started digging a little deeper. A) No one, not even the leanest, IPO-dreaming serial startup veteran needs a whiteboard so bad that they’ll need to use a 4 inch one on their phone back. B) The iPhone has fucking drawing apps that do it better. C) your brilliant idea is going to be smudged and erased faster than you can say “brainstorm.” D) this is much more than a shoddy piece of sticky material on the phone back and how it could possibly need $1000 boggles my mind.

2. Man Chair iPhone App
Apple has made itself a walled garden, safe from porno and drugs, but it’s still a safe haven for the incredibly sexist – this douchenozzle is ready to join the ranks. Seriously, this app sounds like some 80s comedian’s terrible sketch about how his wife never fucks him, he has to listen to her talk about her soaps, and she drags him to the Macy’s. It wasn’t funny then, it’s not funny now, but this app sucks in more ways than one. The use case alone is just ridiculous – the amount of time men are even going to be spending on these dreaded trips is minimal and do you think these men would really rather chat with other random dudes versus playing some Angry Birds? I’m sure creator Len Kendall will indeed need $10,000, but it’s more likely help fund his future divorce than his ill conceived app.

3. The Real Weather Girls
App ideas are like assholes, everyone has got one and most of them stink. To be fair, most of the app store’s big wins are ones I never could have predicted, in fact I still can’t understand Zombie Farm, but I can pretty safely predict that the overhead costs and sheer dumbness of this app seal its fate. People create apps for a lot of different reason, but one of the saddest reasons I frequently see is middle aged men who are cashed up and think it’s a ticket to cool. I wonder just a little bit if that’s what this is..if Steve Dworman didn’t wonder if this would be a good way to get close to some hot young aspirational starlets. Weather reports and women have gone hand in hand for a long time, the hot weather girl is not a new phenomenon. But throwing in reality TV is like inviting a hunchback for a menage a trois with weather and sexy chicks. What is this monster?

But in a world filled with Navi that practically tickle you with their tails, and 3DSs that are rotting kids eyeballs, what place does the lowly View-Master have? Would it even wow today’s children or would they jadedly laugh at this pint-sized version of a slide projector?

I guess we’ll find out since Hasbro is throwing money into My3D, a View-Master toy that replaces slides with your iPhone and comes with interactive 3D apps . Now I was pants peeingly excited about this toy, but I worry what the response will be. The effect is great, no problems there, and I love the idea of being able to take 3D photos with one of the many 3D photos apps (even though they don’t REEEALLY work) and show them off to friends, but the usability is still strange and I question where this toy’s place is in relation to competitors. First of all, to play games, you have to slide your thumbs into slots on the underside. It’s an awkward position and doesn’t readily facilitate play. Hasbro is actively courting developers and it’s really time, and sales figures, that will determine the My3D’s success. One intriguing point is that Hasbro left the back camera uncovered, possibly alluding to some future AR abilities. Squeee.

Now as a children’s toy, the View-Master concerns me, but for nostalgic hipster adults it fit like a Cabbage Patch slide in view slow. Case in point – Retrollect . This app taps the same nostalgic crowd who are all over Hipstamatic and lets them build slides of their tweets, messages and photos. There’s no real 3D aspect, and frankly I find the fact that it’s developed on Phone Gap intolerable, but it’s a product that clearly will be lapped up like so much PBR.

Both these products are up my alley, but the ultimate question on my mind is the future of 3D on iPhone. With Android phones jumping on the 3D bandwagon, I wonder if iPhone will be a holdout?

I know. It’s sad news, you’ve barely had time to show off your white iPhone 4 and you’ll never know what they’re working on for iPhone 5, but like it or not, the rapture is coming. Ok, so the rapture has been predicted before, but only in 1994, 1993, 1992, 1989, 1988, 1981, 1975 and like six other times, but this time folks, IT’S FOR REALS. Now on Saturday, some of us will be ascending to that glowing white place (and I don’t mean the Apple store) and the rest of us will be left here to fend for ourselves. The time of tribulations is going to suck, no doubt, but it can’t be worse than the time before 3G access, and at least we’ll have this collection of apps to guide us along the way. Click any of the apps above to see a full list of the apps you’ll need for the end of days.

And hell, if Saturday isn’t the rapture, I’m sure this list won’t be too stale by 2012.

But of course, when I RSVPd my looting intentions on the Facebook event, someone just had to go shooting down my plans and pointing out we have already all sold our souls to Steve.

Man, you thought it was a long wait for your white iPhone 4, imagine having to wait an eternity for iPad 2. Apparently the gadget is so popular even dead folks can’t get one. I’ll tell you, there are going to be some geeky ghosts haunting some Chinese homes.

Apparently our dead relatives are just as big Apple fanboys as those of us who are still corporeal beings. In China, it’s tradition during the Qinming festival to burn all your dead relative’s favorite stuff like paper mansions and fake money. And apparently some dead folks are really needing to access their iTunes in heaven because cardboard sacrificial replicas of the iPad 2 are selling out and, according to this article, there are some stressed out living worried about the Mac-obsessed dead.

I don’t know, maybe you can just burn some money for them and hope Apple opens a store in the underworld. I mean..if there’s enough demand, heck they opened one during SXSW.