The South By Southwest ("South-by" for insiders) festival draws thousands of creative people to Austin, Texas every spring for two weeks of interactive web stuff, music and film.  In fact, SXSW celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2011.

By now you've heard that Apple is shelling out $175 million to send iPhone 4.0 users bumpers for their phones. (More on that here.) 

Most of us think of Steve Jobs as a sort of geeky Willy Wonka, emerging a few times each year with the latest high-tech gobstopper to throngs of adoring fans. (Even if said gobstopper has a major antenna issue.) But this Apple wasn't always so polished.

By now you've probably heard rumors about Google's rival to Facebook, Google Me. It started with Digg CEO Kevin Rose sending out a tweet and spiraled from there. Adam D'Angelo, who used to be Facebook's Chief Technology Officer, also offered up details in the past few days.

Five years ago, Google unveiled Google Maps API, which has enabled hundreds of thousands of websites to harness the power of location-based data.  Keir Clarke from Google Maps Mania is celebrating with a mega-mashup of Google Maps.

If you have a mashup, pin yours to the map!

Mac users! Vuze is out and ready for download. It was formerly known as Azureus and is a Java-based BitTorrent client that's favored by hackers and developers.  You can download it here for free. (Warning: automatic download will start when you click.)

This is a slightly off-the-wall digital tool, but one that some of you may find helpful.  It's called Manikin, and it's an open-source program that simulates the human body. You can create digital people, rotate them 360 degrees, move limbs and joints and lots more.

Click on the button below to download Manikin for free.

So you've no doubt heard all the fuss this week about Apple vs. Google and Flash vs. HTML5.  We all know who Apple and Google are, and we've used Flash. But what's with HTML5?

We've just happened upon a new site called ChallengePost, where entrepreneurs can post the projects they're working on to seek funding and support.  Potential investors can pledge a few bucks, and the return on investment can range from a simple reimbursement to a percentage of the profits to a number of creative prizes.

From the site: