What Tongues are Wagging About Now:

• SouthWest Airlines Twitter PR Crisis: Kevin Smith, a chubby comedian with 3,000+ Twitter followers caused a huge news event when SouthWest booted him off his plane for “endangering the flight” (euphemism for not fitting into his seat). He tweeted incessantly and most major tv stations picked up the story. SouthWest Air had to issue three formal apologies.
• Tragic Tesla flight crashes, killing three execs and wiping out all power in Palo Alto today. It crashed into a power line and a house that was also a daycare! Nobody on the ground was hurt but everyone is really stunned.
• “Secret London” stunt — Greg Marsh, Tiffany and an army of engineering volunteers pulled off the launch in a single weekend!
• iPad Developers scared to talk: Rumor is that the iPad is not a strong device, and Apple is strong-arming developers even more than usual.
• Sarah Silverman got in a little battle with Chris Anderson over her raunchy TED comments and ultimately Steve Case got into the fray. Funny.

VC and Portfolio Cos

• SXSW MSFT BizSpark Startup Winners listed here
• Mimecast podcast ran on the Cloud Computing Show as part of their announcement outreach

Notes from Mobile World Congress and Barcelona

• MWC is off the charts this year. Apps have arrived, there is a whole hall dedicated to it and the whole mobile advertising community is out in force
• Introduced Waze CEO to Juha Christensen who is on board of VirtualLogix. Meeting lots of app bloggers.
• The INQ booth is just gorgeous! Like an art gallery! They have a “pop shop” which is on the avenues and the full bar/cafe as a stand so two major booths. INQ is also sponsoring the Duran Duran concert
• Symbian was cracked on hard, as usual.

Conferences on our Radar

• PaidContent Conference– watch the livestream here
• CTIA Speakers delayer due to the snow but the lineup was announced today
• Official Pre-GDC conference 3/8 aty Bloodhound hosted by Spark

• Feb 21- Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University includes Europe in the Global Entrepreneuship Scene panel and Reverse VC Pitch Party
• Feb 22 O’Reilly Tools of Change in Publishing
• Feb 22 Wikipedia: A New Model for Global Collaboration by the World Affairs Council
• Feb 124 Founders Institute Investor Summit getting buzz on Plancast
• March 2 Ignite Bay Area for the empassioned and the DIY crowd
• March 2 BootStrap Heroes – Building a Company Without Venture Capital
• March 3 FailChat #1: The Pivot
• March 8 Flash Gaming Summit 2010
• March 25 TwestivalSF
• March 26 Freemium Summit
• May 13-16 Summit Series DC 10 – recognizing the most inspiring entrepreneurs in the US