After nearly a month of playing it, my son and I just finished “The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.” My son got his Nintendo DS and Zelda for Christmas. The family got a Wii. I know a lot of attention is (rightfully) placed on the Wii. However, in the nearly month we’ve had the two systems, the Nintendo DS has been played far more–bar none–than the Wii. Part of this can be attributed to the DS’ portability. Zelda is the other part. This game is great. It’s a classic. It used every part of the DS’ unique design–the stylus (for character movement), the multi-directional pad (for accessing item menus), and–I love this–the mic (for blowing out candles and powering windmills)–to great effect.

With games and systems like Zelda, the DS, and the Wii, it’s hard not to be a Nintendo fanboy. Nintendo is to video gaming as Apple is to consumer electronics/computing. Both companies have creativity ingrained within their respective company’s ethos. Their competitors’ stocks and sales continue to drop. Why? They don’t innovate. Nintendo and Apple do. I don’t own their stock (I should have bought in 2000), but as a consumer, I’m happy to contribute to their bottom-line as long as they create stuff like Zelda.

After nearly ten years of working on this thing we call the “information super-highway”, I finally got a chance to go to one of the pre-eminent conference events in the industry–South by Southwest.

I gotta say, too much build up is a bad thing. I call it the “Forest Gump” effect. Or the “Sixth Sense” effect. Or a more contemporary example, “The Prestige” effect. With all three of those movies, there was so much build-up–you know, “This-is-the-best-movie-ever-and-I-bought-a-copy-of-the-DVD-so-I-can-watch-it-over-and-over” kind of thing–that it never lives up to it. I guess after attending some pretty innovative and informative conferences over my career (UIE is great, btw), I was expecting more. There were a few really great sessions, but too many panels-without-any-direction sessions. Perhaps next year’s SXSW will switch up the format a bit. For more on the conference, check out my friend Paul’s blog.

On the plus side, there was some good swag I picked up–a few Google shirts, a Firefox shirt and hat, and a shirt from Lucky Oliver (which, btw, seems to have a pretty good selection of low-cost, high-quality stock images).

If you haven’t subscribed to TED’s podcast, do it. It’s a great cross-section of talented leaders talking about everything from visualizing data to inner-city rejuvenation efforts. I can’t say I agree with everything TED’s presenters say, but it is always worth the listen.