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United States
Most recently a data visualization and communications lead at the Andy Roddick Foundation, Matt Salter is a journalist, blogger, and nonprofit communications expert. A professional writer since 2009, Matt has been a full-time freelance writer since 2016, writing everything from breaking national news to gaming content, screenplays and comedy. Areas of expertise include tech and gaming, the arts, business, finance, and automotive news.
Based in South Austin, Matt has a global clientele but can generally be found somewhere in Texas with good WiFi and all-day breakfast.
Educational tipsheet for addressing student anxiety in afterschool programs by the Andy Roddick Foundation, which provides financial, logistical, and educational support for 40+ Out-of-School-Time (OST) programs across Greater Austin.
Award for LATT Network yearly partner recognition event. LATT Network is a program at the Andy Roddick Foundation, supporting 40+ Out-of-School Time (OST) partner organizations across Greater Austin.
Educational tipsheet for empowering students by the Andy Roddick Foundation, which provides financial, logistical, and educational support for 40+ Out-of-School Time (OST) programs across Greater Austin.
Fundraising letter for RaveSafe, a program providing safe spaces and medical care in the rave community.
Demographic analysis supporting a grant application for Faith in Texas, an advocacy group supporting interfaith dialogue.
Story created, with client permission, from an interview with a former patient (and current treatment counselor) at LIGHT. LIGHT is an inpatient addiction treatment program for women in the criminal justice system.
Flyer to promote Adopt-a-Kid, a money/in-kind drive by Cornerstone Assistance Network, which provides financial support, material donations, affordable housing and free/low-cost healthcare for underprivileged families in Fort Worth.
Grant narrative submitted to Niagara Water for Volunteers of America Texas.
Nonprofit
Tech
Slack will be leveraging OpenAI's large-language models to deliver an intuitive conversational interface for the app.
Apple's war on buttons and analog control may have claimed another victim.
Struggling Metaverse could learn from the immersive success of Fortnite.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock Can Matter change the IoT game? Probably! Based on what's been released to the press, the technology seems solid and the development tools are both clear and user-friendly. Will it? Good question. Close observers of the smart home market, or frankly any competitive market, might have doubts.
The cloud isn't forever, and may not last as long as businesses are betting. What's next?
Drones have several valuable applications in real estate. Don't miss your flight!
Even if you have your computer and phone locked down tight, there may be a hole in your data security. Follow our guide to secure the biggest, easiest hack in your home - the TV.
Gaming
If you lose with this one, that's on you.
Here are some moments at the 2022 Game Awards you might have missed, including release dates, updates, and some surprising newcomers.
Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images The EU brief lays out several areas of concern, all valid, though some do seem a little late. For instance, EU watchdogs would like to investigate whether Microsoft holds an effective monopoly over PC operating systems, a question that was answered ("yes, but customers seem content to live with it") before the EU existed.
Peter Summers/Getty Images In a talk with Sarah Needleman at WSJ Tech Live, Spencer addressed the Keystone's future: "Keystone was the codename of something we were incubating internally, which was, think of it as a streaming console, so there's no local gameplay, low cost, plug it into your television and you'd be able to stream to your television the Xbox games that are available."
For diehard fans of Konami's psychological horror series, the biggest news of the transmission might have been the announcement, complete with trailer, of a ground-up remake of "Silent Hill 2." Widely regarded as the best "Silent Hill" game and one of the best horror games of all time, "Silent Hill 2" holds a special place in horror fans' shriveled black hearts.
The world's most popular roleplaying game can be fun for the whole family. Here's how.
New to Wordscapes? No worries! Our resident word nerd walks you through the game.
Crosseyed over crosswords? These four steps will take you to mastery.
Business
Toyota and the NFL are already two of the most recognizable brands in the country. What are they hoping to get out of a partnership?
Silicon Valley Bank has collapsed, spurring a flood of questions and concerns as officials scramble to keep the fallout contained. What happened to the bank?
AI technology has quietly made itself indispensable to the real estate business, despite its failures elsewhere.
Apple may be skirting legality in a secret arrangement with a major competitor.
Per new information from the Texas Department of Licensing, it appears Tesla will continue its investment in the state's manufacturing infrastructure.
Musk's first Twitter blog strategically ignores organizational chaos.
Biden administration's crackdown on Chinese-made electronics may take major phone manufacturers off the American market.
Horacio Villalobos/Getty Images This last will-they-won't-they deal between Binance and FTX is in many ways a product of longstanding issues between the two cryptocurrency exchanges. At the heart is a culture conflict between the exchanges and their CEOs. The two companies began in radically different settings.
Whenever it seems like the media marketplace has hit some kind of cosmic limitation on complicated business pertaining to Elon Musk, somehow reality provides. For instance, it turns out Sam Bankman-Fried of the collapsing, possibly felonious FTX cryptocurrency exchange, could have owned a sizable chunk of Musk's mess had events turned out just a little bit differently.
Blockchain is the generic term for a particular decentralized approach to storing and accessing information online. The process is complex and requires a network of computers (via IBM), but, in the most basic sense, blockchain scatters information across a network, then encrypts it so that only the whole network working together can read it.
According to a new study, a chemical treatment from the world's largest seed and pesticide supplier may be destroying competing crops.
With help straight from SpaceX, a new cryptocurrency wants to go global - and beyond.
Culture
One theory says expanding highways by adding lanes actually makes traffic worse. Others call it nonsense. We examine the two sides of the debate.
Once Loab had been created, there was no stopping her, and elaborations consistently created new images in increasingly nightmarish circumstances.
Anelovski/Shutterstock As we consign Google Hangouts to digital posterity, we see two lessons in its successes and ultimate failure. The first is that Hangouts - and Google+ as a whole - simply never got buy-in on the scale it needed to be sustainable.
Neilson Barnard/Getty Images It might seem strange to mention a free-to-play video game in the same digital breath as something meant to reinvent the entire concept of interacting online. However, Nick Statt at Protocol rightly points out that "Fortnite" has hit goals Meta is nowhere near.
Saudi Arabia gave a robot citizenship. What happens if she gets hacked?
Without major changes, the legal marijuana market is risks recreating the same racial, class and cultural prejudice that plagues drug enforcement.
Music
Written by Matt Salter On March 16, Tokyo-based singer/songwriter and rapper, Haru Nemuri, made her debut appearance at the Mohawk, one of the venues for South by Southwest, the Austin, TX festival of art, technology, and culture. Austin's reputation as the Live Music Capital of the World (that's our trademarked motto.
Seven Spires' This God Is Dead feat. Roy Khan properly puts "symphonic" in "symphonic metal." In places the 10 minute track is almost theatrical, showing as much DNA from Andrew Lloyd Webber and neoclassical experiments like Trans-Siberian Orchestra as Nightwish and Maiden, particularly in the harmonies early in the song.
Written by Matt Salter Pom Pom Squad had already grabbed the attention of the great and the good when they played their first SXSW show on March 16. By the time we caught their Channel 3 show, word had gotten around about the sweetly sinister, proudly queer pop/grunge act.
Kevin McKeown and Eric Owen may have grown up in North Toronto, but the work they've done as duo Black Pistol Fire does honor to their adopted home. Their latest video, "Look Alive," is pure Austin -- a little bit hick, a little bit hipster, plenty of punk.
Texas Textbooks' "Birds" is a warm, twangy, surprisingly smart album just right for summer 2021. The band's staunch localism, which might have been off putting in a less welcoming package, instead provides a solid roadmap for songs to please listeners in and out of Bat City.
Bbymutha, brought everything she had to a killer set at SXSW. Her heavy-as-Hell mashup of rap, R&B and electric blues hit a hot, packed room just right. Austin may have a hipster reputation, but it's still Texas. Serve up thick, heavy Southern heat in those beats, lay down those brilliant too-real lyrics about love, death, sex and God, and we will shout out.
Right from the title, Mobley's new release is a mouthful. "Young and Dying in the Occident Supreme" has a great deal to say about America, capitalism, religion and sundry Big Ideas™. It doesn't always hit. Mobley apparently recorded "Occident Supreme" sojourning in Thailand. You can kinda tell.
Let's get right to it -- the first song on this album features the line "All this crazy border madness/That makes a country create laws/without looking at the faces of the children." Earnest, we're saying. If that's your jam, allow us to recommend Leti Garza's latest, "Borderland." Musically, "Borderland"'s Spanish-language tracks hit hardest.
Funny fact - as of writing, Google lists Austin indie rockers Thanks Light as "classical." And y'know what? They're not wrong. That's not to say Thanks Light, who recently dropped a new video for their single "I Get High (Off You)," are in danger of adding contrabass or harpsichord to their current four-piece featuring lap steel and Moog.
Graham Wilkinson has never been shy about exploring the antecedents and outer fringes of the AOR idiom. Wilkinson's 2009 "YEARBOOK" memorably ranged from ballads to heavy riffs to ska, snagging appearances from local luminaries Alejandro Escovedo and Hayes Carll for even more variety. 2016's effort "Because of You'' brought as much reggae to the table as rock.
In the Spotify Age, musicians looking to sell hardcopy releases are well-advised to bring extra assets to play. "L'Aventura," the latest box set from songwriter and composer Tyson Swindell comes correct for lovers of musical minutiae, with a bound book of poetry and an honest to Memorex mixtape of pre-release material alongside his sweet, new lo-fi lament "Binary Stars."
Furman's performance, it may have been that the music didn't quite fit the room. Lustre Pearl was classic Austin on the 15th, a freewheeling, slightly vague crowd pointing their collective attention at everything from dates to drinks to several games of ping pong in front of the outdoor stage.
Danilo's "All I Want" EP is classic late-night makeout music, and there's not a damn thing wrong with that. Bedroom R&B in all senses of the term, every track is carefully constructed, showcases Danilo Riggs's lovely tenor and righteous songwriting chops, and has every intention of getting in your pants.
Automotive
What makes the 2023 Yamaha Bolt R-Spec such a desirable motorcycle model? Here's a look at two particular areas where the bike shines!
After futzing with the formula for over a century, the motorized world has figured out gasoline, so what's the deal with the Grand Canyon State?
Hyundai and Kia have been dealing with rising thefts for awhile now. One city has had enough with the issues and brought a lawsuit against the companies.
Alongside its ambitious electrification plans, VW is resurrecting the Scout brand to bring potent, all-electric off-roaders to the U.S. market by 2026.
The General Motors brand many customers associate with old-school indulgence expects to debut three new electric Caddies over the course of 2023.
false/Shutterstock At the heart of this problem was the yellow sac spider, a particularly common variety of spiders in the Americas. Yellow sac spiders are nocturnal and prefer tube-shaped sites for their nests, where they weave silk shelters to wait out the day (via AnimalDiversity.org).
Smile Fight/Shutterstock Seattle City Light was well ahead of the marketplace when it came to electric-powered cars. As Seattle's public power utility, City Light has consistently been well-funded and well regarded, giving it time and resources to experiment. One notable innovation hit the streets in 1968.