In the mean time, here are a few that I’ve managed to shoot with my iPhone. Some of these turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. As always, I love it when you comment on my stuff, so let me know what you think, and enjoy!

You can, as always, see all of the photos I share on Flickr.

Yesterday was “Day 0″ of the event – badge pickup, etc., but no real events scheduled. I took the opportunity to escape my hotel, and do a little walkabout exploration of my surroundings in Shanghai. I’ve been shooting tons of pictures and video, and I could write thousands and thousands of words about how cool Shanghai is. For now, enjoy this little video I put together of my “walkabout” in Shanghai.

Features include: about 100 people offering to sell me a “Rolex”, some of the great Shanghai architecture, exploration of the “Super Brand Mall”, including the Chinese versions of McDonalds and Toys R Us, a supermarket, and more.

Later that evening, my ISN China colleagues (and Shanghai natives) Richard and Welles basically showed me the town. They took me to PC Mall, which is a 5 story mall full of nothing but computers, electronics, cameras, and games. It’s like Fry’s on crack, and I’m DEFINITELY going back there before I come home. There’s a bonus clip of PC Mall at the end of the video.

I also ran into my first “blocked in China” site while trying to upload this video – blip.tv. I love Blip, for lots of reason – video quality being one of the top. So I was bummed to not be able to use it for this video. Instead, it’s on YouTube (strange that Blip is blocked but YouTube isn’t – what’s up with that?), with the accompanying quality loss. But at least you can see it. And the quality isn’t super high anyway – it was all shot handheld in HD on my Aiptek Go-HD, then reencoded to 640×360 on my trusty Elgato Turbo.264. I’ll put up a high quality version when I get home.

Here’s the video – enjoy!

Slightly off topic, I had an amazing view of Mt. Hood as we flew out of Portland yesterday. Sadly, my D40 was stowed, and I couldn’t get to it in time, but I did have the little Aiptek Go-HD, so I shot some HD video and a couple of the 5MP stills that it can do. Not the greatest quality, but hope it communicates how amazing the view was:

The actual SXSW event hasn’t even started yet – I’ll head over to the Austin Convention Center across the street in a little bit to pick up my badge, and attend one or two of the opening panels. There’s so much stuff going on at any given time that it’s kind of intimidating to decide where I should be at any given time. Not only are there actually three components to the SXSW festival going on at the same time (Interactive, Film, and Music), but each timeslot has like ten panels, all of them sound great, and there are tons of “extracurricular” events going on, like the Screenburn gaming festival, film premiers and screenings (I want to go see “Nerdcore Rising” and MC Frontalot!). Oh, and BarCampAustin. And lots and lots of friends that I haven’t seen for a long time. And tons of parties (which I probably won’t go to – I’m not much of a party person. Downside of being a true geek, I guess.) It’s so hard to plan ahead that I simply decided not to. There are a few things that I want to be sure to see, but I’m mostly playing it by ear.

I’ll be taking photos and shooting video, and posting real blog posts, but mainly, you can expect to keep up with what I’m doing via my Twitter microposts. You’ll find a daily summary posted here to the blog (but not in the feed), or you can see it all as it happens in my lifestream at www.joshbancroft.com, or follow me on Twitter. And if you’re in Austin and want to get together, just D me on Twitter, or email me (jabancroft@gmail.com). You can call me at 503-334-1889, but you’ll probably get my voicemail.

I’m going to head out, get some lunch, then go over and pick up my badge, check the place out, and sit in on a panel or two. Catch you later!