That changed at Comic Con, however, as he announced that he’s planning sequels to not only Sin City, but also cult hit Machete.

In all honesty, it’s not really news that he was planning these, but it’s good to hear him bring them back up. It signals that there might actually still be hope that they’re moving forward. In fact, he is even reported to have said the script for Sin City 2 is being refined. He’s been working on it with Sin City creator Frank Miller.

Rodriguez evidently discussed Sin City 2 in a Facebook live chat. ScreenRant reports:

One name that Rodriguez mentioned during the FB chat as a possible returning player forSin City 2 was that of Hartigan, Bruce Willis’ cop-with-a-bum-ticker. There were rumblings from Miller quite awhile back about how he had written a story for Sin City 2 that involved Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) dealing with the aftermath of the events that occurred in “That Yellow Bastard” – the Hartigan storyline in the Sin City movie – but, if Willis does return, that might not be the case after all.

At SXSW, Rodriguez reminisced about seeing the script for Sin City in the early 90s, and recalled saying, “Whoever does that is going to screw that up.” He said that he was always a big fan of the Sin City visual style, and that he always knew he would “follow the visual” if he made a Sin City movie.

Later, Rodriguez found himself working with digital photography and 3D technology, with Spy Kids 3D in particular. “Spy kids 3D is why you all have to wear 3D glasses at the movies these days,” he laughed.

He discussed meeting Miller at a bar to show him some test shoots of actors using green screen and visual effects created with Photoshop. Miller was “blown away,” he said.

“I made it very easy for him,” he says, noting that artists often don’t want to get involved in all of the Hollywood stuff.

He just used the source material as the script. “No one got a screenplay credit on it,” he added.

It’s good to know that the two are working together again on the follow-up.

Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 4 comes out in August.

Do you like the idea of a social networking user bill of rights? Tell us why or why not.

A group of people representing various constituencies began to pen the Bill of Rights at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference last year. Christina Gagnier, Partner with Gagnier Margossian LLP, is among the advocates of the proposal and said that they thought the rights would be an effective way to communicate the message since Americans are accustomed their own federal Bill of Rights.

The rights cover areas such as the amount of information that can be collected and shared with others, the act of deleting or modifying data without policy, data portability, and other challenging issues in the online social space. Another part of the debate around the Bill of Rights is whether or not it should be a government mandate.

Although some people believe that the government would better enforce it, others believe that it would only lead to more regulation, which is the same reaction that some people had regarding the “Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011.”

Privacy is tricky because many privacy laws in place today are specific to individual industries, such as HIPAA for the health industry. The online sector is especially difficult because it would be hard to determine whom the legislation directly impacts. For example, would it strictly be for social networks, or would corporations be included as well?

At this point, there are 14 Social Networking User Bill of Rights. Users can visit its site and vote in favor of them or against them. Additionally, they can propose new rights for review.

“I think we’ve jumpstarted the conversation, and so we just want everyone else to be involved,” said Gagnier.

How would such a Bill of Rights impact users?

What have you found to be the most challenging part of creating mobile apps? Please share.

Aaron Forth, the VP of Product at Mint/Intuit, admits that building mobile apps is no “light endeavor” and pointed out that the mobile platform is completely different from desktop computers.

“It’s building a whole new set of functionality for a whole other platform, and in many cases, for entirely different use cases,” he said.

He went on to say that businesses that try to use their current website on mobile devices are really just setting themselves up to fail. Businesses need to understand that the interaction, the form factor, the use cases, and the screen are all very different on the mobile platform.

As he explained, businesses can take some of what they already have, but they need to re-create a lot of aspects to make it compatible with mobile. Designers often enjoy creating the new features because it means that are able to get rid of a lot of old processes that aren’t necessary.

Mint, in particular, has been very successful with its own mobile app. The app allows users to be in touch with their financing while they are on the go, which is an element that Forth believes “makes more sense” on mobile than it does on the desktop.

Although the mobile app would continue to be an extension of the desktop version of Mint, he said that it would also have its own individual features.

“We don’t really think of mobile as a different thing, it’s just, it is Mint. It’s an appendage of our service,” he added.

Mint is also working on an iPad app, which Forth said further visualizes Mint’s goal of visualizing finances.

Cutts and Bings’ Harry Shum had gotten into something of a heated exchange on the day that story broke, but things seemed much more civil this time around. Elsewhere at SXSW, however, the subject did come up in a WebProNews interview with Bing Director Stefan Weitz.

“I think it’s pretty much done,” Weitz said of the ordeal. “Here’s the thing. It was a strange day for me, honestly. I’ll be honest. You wake up, and see that you’re copying results.”

“I was down in the bay when it happened, so I talked to my engineers up North, and they were really bummed,” he said. “Really demoralized a little bit. I said…’what’s happening?’ We started looking at it, and really what it was at the end was Google proved something that we said we did do anyway, which is look at user-opted-in clickstream data to figure out how to rank results.”

“It makes tons of sense,” he continued. “We think it’s a great way to do it. To say that we’re copying was prima facie false frankly. It just isn’t academically accurate…but it was a good headline, so good for them.”

“But no, look…I think everyone knows in fact they use clickstream data as well. We all use it for different things. It’s just one of those things that we’re [going] to continue to focus on, ‘how do you make the results better for the user?’ There are a number of ways to do this. Clickstream data is one of the thousand ways we actually do this.”

Google has said bluntly that it “absolutely does not use search activity on other search engines to influence” its search results.

Bing’s “thousand” number is also one that Forrester referenced on the panel with Cutts. This compares to Google’s “over 200″ signals.

“But we’re really focusing on that and not so much focusing on 20 engineers sitting around their houses, submitting false click reports to Microsoft over the course of a month,” Weitz told WebProNews. “Good espionage. It’s a good…I wish I had written a novel. It would’ve been great…I could’ve just retired on my novel royalties, but instead, here I am at SXSW doing search.”

“At the end, we’re all just kind of a bunch of geeks, and everyone across the inudstry actually is just trying to push the envelope as fast and as far, and has responsibly as we can…at the end, we’re just a bunch of dorks.”

It may be “pretty much done,” but Bing has managed to grow its share of the market each month since its launch, and Google still considers Microsoft its main competitor.

Incidentally, BranchOut is a new startup that hopes to provide a solution to these challenges. It is, essentially, a professional network within Facebook. BranchOut allows users to create connections with individuals at top companies, and it gives businesses the opportunity to professionally recruit, find leads, and more.

Rick Marini, BranchOut’s founder and CEO, said, “It is truly your professional profile within Facebook.”

Although BranchOut has been referred to as the LinkedIn for Facebook, Marini said that it is much more. As he explained, the startup offers a different experience since it brings a gaming feature as well as other “fun” features to the career market.

Up to this point, BranchOut has been focused on the consumer experience. However, Marini pointed out that the next phase of the startup would be geared toward enterprises and would include advanced capabilities.

“We’re really going beyond the consumer experience and trying to build true business tools for people to, hopefully, be able to change their lives,” he said.

First of all, Opera released the new version of its browser, Opera 11.10 beta, which is codenamed “Barracuda.” In addition, it introduced into beta a set of debugging tools called Opera Dragonfly. According to McCathieNevile, both of these developments have all the great features that users want out of Opera. He said that Opera 11 users could sync up features such as Opera Unite and links with their mobile browser to allow for bookmarks and other elements to correspond on both platforms.

The company is also making strides in mobile with the introductions of Opera Mobile 11 and Opera Mini. Opera Mobile 11 is a fully powered browser with a new, fast interface that enables APIs. McCathieNevile pointed out that the focus for Opera Mini was the user experience. Both Opera Mobile and Opera Mini are also optimized for tablets.

All of Opera’s new releases have improved support for standards as well.

In terms of what sets Opera apart from the competition, McCathieNevile explained that users could run the browser on anything and that their tools include a lot of functionality.

“It’s fast, it’s secure, it’s standards compliant, [and] it’s a top-quality, modern browser; and when you dig in it, you find just a whole lot more,” he said.

He indicated that the company was working on a TV offering too. Incidentally, the Inquirer reports that Opera has just announced Opera Devices 3.0, which is the newest version of its Web browser for TVs.

Because privacy concerns are always a big issue in regards to browsers, Opera is also working in this area. McCathieNevile said privacy has been a “key concern for a long time” for Opera. The user experience on Opera is encrypted to ensure that the user is not tracked or followed.

While Opera 11 gives users a clear understanding about what they’re connecting to, the browser is continuing to work on helping them better distinguish between trusted sites and secure sites. McCathieNevile also pointed out that users should have very simple and clear choices when it comes to their browsing experience. In other words, these choices need to be communicated in a way that all users understand.

He said that Opera would continue to work toward this initiative because it could be used to enhance privacy.

As he explained to WebProNews, the company announced Foursquare 3.0. This new version includes a feature called “Explore,” which allows users to know where their friends are, what’s going on around them, and what to do next. It is, essentially, a recommendation engine that is based on the data culminated from 2 years of check-ins.

“We’re finally able to take all that information, take the social graph, take all your friends’ information, and say, these are things that are specific to you… which is a really important paradigm of how and why the data is being used,” said Friedman.

Foursquare also launched a merchant platform called “Foursquare Specials” that applies to businesses of all sizes. It gives businesses opportunities to communicate with their customers. In addition, Foursquare allows merchants to now become verified. Once this process is complete, these businesses gain access to a dashboard that includes customer analytics, the ability to run specials, and a means for seeing how their campaigns are performing.

Another program that Foursquare is recently advocating is its Ambassador Program. Although the program launched last year, the company has recently opened it to a wider audience. The program allows users to become evangelists, or ambassadors, that help their favorite businesses get signed up on Foursquare.  The ambassadors get a customized url that Foursquare uses to track the number of merchants they sign up. As a result, the ambassadors get more specials from their favorite locations.

Although more and more location-based services have emerged, Foursquare has become the leader in the space. In order to maintain this position, the company plans on further developing products such as “Explore” to provide value back to the user.

“We’ve grown leaps and bounds from last year, but we’re still very focused on the product and very focused on the best user experience and user engagement,” Friedman pointed out.

“Whoever are my friends on Qik – I can watch a feed of what they’re doing,” he explains. “So for example, at SXSW, I pull up the feed, and all my friends that have been recording videos and doing things – I can watch them and enjoy them. It provides a complete mobile video solution for you to interact with your friends and family.”

“We started back in 2006 – June – and our premise was how can we make video very interactive – especially over the cell networks, which has its own variability to it, so how can we provide a very compelling video experience to the users of mobile phones, and that’s how we started,” Roy says, recalling the early days of Qik.

They launched a Qik public beta in July 2008.

Qik was then acquired by Skype this past January. As Skype purchased the company, Qik was already available on over 200 different phones running Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS, and Windows Mobile. On many of them, Qik comes preloaded.

“The entire product that we are launching actually leverages the capabilities tha we have built, and this capability is not just on the iPhone (which works today) but we have brought it to all the other phones as well,” says Roy. “It leverages the cloud as a storage capability so it uses cloud to wherever it’s recording in order to provide the best quality of experience.”

“So Qik in essence, is a way for you to share moments with your friends and family, whether it be through live video chat, live video streaming, or just record and share it with your friends on Facebook,” he adds.

If you’ve watched much video on your phone, you probably know that it tends to drain the battery. This is something Qik has considered thoughtfully, according to Roy.

“What we have done is – that’s one of the key things that we have worked very hard on…that’s where the cloud comes in, where we try to put more processing by the cloud servers, rather than try to do it on the handset,” he says. “So if you’re trying to do more on the handset – trying to do more and more here – obviously you’re gong to leverage more CPU, more battery power, so we tried to put all the processing – all the hard processing on the server – let the servers handle that, and so that way the client itself becomes a light client, and so it doesn’t consume as much battery overall.”

There are free and premium versions of Qik Video Connect. Qik Video Connect Plus costs $2.99 in the App Store, and includes additional features like: video editing, real-time effects, HD Quality video, and video sync.

“It’s based on the site Sketchy Santas, which we purchased last year, and it’s about basically people in bunny suits, and other people – the miniature humans that react to them,” Huh tells us. “I think it’s great for Easter, and it’s basically just a seasonal website for us.”

“So far at the office, everybody has had traumatic nightmares about their childhood, so I think that’s excellent,” he adds.

Huh talked about the venture capital the Cheezburger Network raised, and some of the plans for that money.

“We raised $30 million from for VCs…the reason for it was we wanted the room to experiment,” Huh explains. “We’ve been a profitable company since we started in September of 2007 – we’ve been profitable every quarter. So what we wanted to do was, since we have a model that already works, can we just do something crazy and try to blow it up much bigger, so this money gives us room to hire, try out new ideas, and actually fail, because that’s something that we as humans are very good at.”

“It’s money that we feel good about taking risks with,” he continues. “We want want to go challenge our existing ideas, and challenge existing models about how to do content, and we want to make sure we can provide the right support and tools for our users, and so we’re going to use that money to hire a lot of engineers, and reach out to the community, and continue to build out more features for us.”

Huh hopes to bring more of a gaming element to the Cheezburger properties. “We’re trying some things out with game dynamics, so we see it’s very hot this year, and was last year as well,” he says.

This sounds like a smart move if SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatch is right about this being the decade of games.

“I believe 2 or 3 of the investors in Zynga are also investors in us,” Huh says. “We don’t have a partnership with Zynga or anything like that, and I don’t think we really need to. They’re very different properties, but we want to help people understand humor and user-generated content through the lens of games, because that’s what happens right now. People come to our site, submit a bunch of photos, and hope that they make it to the front page, and that is part of the game.”

According to Zynga, 40-year-old moms are the new hard core gamers. I know from experience that they tend to like funny cat pictures and other areas the Cheezburger Network specialize in as well.

Now, Peter Vesterbacka, business developer lead for Rovio (of Angry Birds fame), has come out to make the bold statement that mobile gaming is causing console gaming to die. He made the statement during the SXSW Conference. Do the numbers back up his statement? Is the 100 million downloads Vesterbacka claims Angry Birds drew in enough to send console gaming the way of the dinosaurs?

Let’s take a look at the cold hard data. For our two samples we’ll look at the immensely popular Angry Birds, and Call of Duty: Black Ops to represent console gaming. Black Ops was the top selling console game of 2010.

We’re going to take the 100 million downloads Rovio is boasting with their title and match it up against the console sales for Black Ops. According to VGChartz, Black Ops sold 11.95 millions copies on the Xbox 360, and 9.6 million copies on the PS3.

According to my handy computer calculator, here’s how the numbers stand against one another (Black Ops sells for $59.99).

Angry Birds revenue – $100 million

Call of Duty: Black Ops revenue – $1.29 billion

Of course the real tell-of-the-tape is with their profit, but unfortunately we don’t have production and publishing costs for both games. However, I would be extremely surprised to learn that Black Op’s production cost so much it earned less than $100 million.

As a gamer for going on two decades, I would have to call Vesterbacka’s words at the very least, reaching, at the most, hyperbole. There’s a good chance Vesterbacka was simply posturing to the crowd, and wanted to create some controversy to attract attention to his game. If so, it worked, I am writing about what he said.

Mobile gaming has definitely changed the landscape of not only gaming but the way we value media. However, the mobile gaming platform isn’t going to cause anything to “die“. It has simply provided us with another way in which to enjoy gaming, and to allow more people to join in on the action.

Different forms of technology will be around as long as they’re useful; after all, I can still go out to my car and listen to the radio.