TechTease Top 2K11 highlights in music, media, and technology

(???) If you’re not totally over all of the year-end retrospectives...a few more highlights from 2011. The #SATX hashtag For a moment we almost lost our hometown Twitter category to South Austin, Texas tweets. Thankfully, San Antonio microbloggers out-tweeted the Austin based accounts enough to keep the #SATX hashtag homesliced. When you get a chance, do an online search of #SATX to stay updated on SA's trending topics. The death and rebirth of community radio On January 7, 2011 President Obama signed the Local Community Radio Act into law. A small punk-ethic group, the Prometheus Radio Project, was instrumental in the passage of the Local Community Radio Act. The FCC will be handing out more than 1,000 licenses beginning in 2012. Sadly, San Antonio lost one of the nations oldest community radio transmissions after KEDA-AM Radio Jalapeño signed off. The #purosananto favorite was sold to Claro Communications. On the other side of town, a hybrid digital radio station went on air filling a void for SA’s African American community. KROV-HD became San Antonio’s first 24-hour, noncommercial, and urban-contemporary HD radio station. It's currently broadcasting on 91.7-HD2 FM. The loss of Gil Scott-Heron and Steve Jobs Sadly, this year many of us found out about those loved and lost via the Internet. Gil Scott-Heron, April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011, said "The revolution will not be televised, brother." In 2011 Apple released a new iPhone, iPad, Mac OS, and lost their co-founder CEO Steve Jobs.. Gil-Scott Heron was right. But, thanks to the communication system visions of Jobs it definitely will be retweeted. The preservation of Internet Freedoms AT&T dropped it’s $39 billion bid to acquire T-Mobile. It marked the first time in nearly three decades that the federal government publicly articulated that industry consolidation wasn’t the only way to fix America’s connectivity problems. Back in October, US House of Representatives members introduced the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” or SOPA. PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo. "These bills threaten to rip apart the fabric of the open Internet. It’s for that reason that more than a million people have urged Congress to find a more reasonable solution to the problem of online piracy. Congress must not let the rights of innocent Internet users be trampled by entertainment industry lobbyists determined to ram SOPA and PIPA past lawmakers." - Joel Kelsey, FreePress Current laws in the U.S mandate us to take a song or movie down at the request of the company who owns the copyright. With SOPA, companies could directly contact web hosting companies and require that they take down an entire website. SOPA, like the Protect IP Act, would trample the open internet access rights of independent musicians and media makers. Even the cats over at ICanHasCheezburger are against it. A more evolved and grown up San Antonio (kinda) There’s a lot of love and hate in San Antonio. This year we saw our hometown, the seventh-largest city in the U.S., make it’s way out of puberty. Sort of. Dsitrict 1 elected a hip DJ/civil rights lawyer, the city extended benefits to domestic partners of both gay and straight employees, and SA’s new smoking ordinance was enacted. It's a start. San Antonio’s love/hate relationship with local music The local music scene sadly lost two venues this year. Long time favorite Casbeers closed, and the Pedicab Bar was destroyed by a nasty fire. Our city nightlife perpetually underrated, overshadowed by Austin, is still ever evolving. The life as an artist-entrepreneur is on the rise. This year I couldn’t ignore how hard local bands, and SA music bloggers, worked to amplify the music community. In addition to their efforts, if you kept up with any of the SACurrent.com comment threads you couldn’t overlook how devoted fans are to defending their favorite local bands. You'd think we were slaying baby panda bears with the comments we read this year.