When my husband and I started The Austinot in our living room at the end of 2011, we had no idea what it would become. The last thing I expected is that I’d be celebrating 1,000 articles after three and a half years, written by an extraordinary collection of volunteer Austinites who caught our vision.

Our vision took time to develop. Like I said, I had no idea what The Austinot would become. Despite our online marketing background, The Austinot started out as more of a personal hobby blog. We published silly articles we never would now, like this one. Even the name of our blog was chosen on a whim, using an online name generator called Wordoid. Yes, Austinot is a play on “astronaut” because we’re exploring the city. But then, why didn’t we spell it Austinaut? (Answer: because [Read more…]

When you see a gentlemen biking through Austin in a beige colored g-string and you don’t do a double take, is when you know you’re a true Austinite. In Austin, we see some crazy things: dogs being pushed in baby strollers, hipster beards for days, festivals for everything and endless tacos. So many tacos….

In the spirit of “a picture’s worth a thousand words,” check out these posts from Twitter and Instagram, all of which sum up Austin beautifully.

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It’s a sleepy Saturday morning during South by Southwest and the city of Austin is not fully awake yet. The sun is minutes away from making its debut when I meet Christopher Sherman, of Over Austin fame, just south of the river next to the Zach Theatre. We have a perfect vantage point to do a little flying and capture beautiful panoramas of the downtown Austin skyline. [Read more…]

As the new year begins, we’re taking a moment to look back on 2014 and celebrate the articles our community loved most. Walk with us down memory lane as we present Austinot.com’s 10 most popular articles of 2014.

#10 Top 7 Grilled Cheese Sandwiches in Austin

You’ll enjoy our list best with a local snack in your hand, and we have just the thing you need. We rounded up the best 7 grilled cheese sandwiches in Austin, from greasy spoon joints to [Read more…]

I miss you when you're not here, I said. My words failed to penetrate as you continued to gaze deep into the small screen in your hand.

— Very Short Story (@VeryShortStory) August 12, 2014

Five years and nearly 200,000 Twitter followers ago, Sean Hill created a Twitter account. He wanted to test out some of his improv skills in a burgeoning format, so @VeryShortStory was born.

At first, Sean tried to craft longer stories with other Twitter users writing back and forth, but it never quite flowed right. “So I started asking my followers to suggest a noun and I kept all of them in a file. I had a batch of nouns ready for whenever inspiration struck,” Sean Hill told me. Two or three nouns were more than sufficient to create a story within 140 characters that left a lasting impression. This was still the early days of Twitter, when a simple and elegant idea was enough to grow a massive following.

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