Andrew Weber

South By Southwest brings a lot of things to Austin: film premieres, start-ups, newsmakers, bands, traffic and tech savvy out-of-towners.

It's that last group that might take umbrage with the city's ride-sharing policy, which outlaws apps like Uber, Lyft, SideCar and since-shuttered Austin-based Hey Ride. 

The city contends these services have unregulated – and potentially unsafe – drivers.

He's everyone's favorite cardio-loving community activist — a relatively new emissary of Austin weird.

His name is Broderick James, but he's better known as the Rundberg Running Man, a local fixture you can find dancing, running and freestyle rapping on the corner of Lamar and Rundberg on a daily basis. While many Austinites know him for his daily exploits, most people outside the city would simply peg him as a typical fitness freak.

James wants to change that, only there's a problem: money. 

These days, "cedar fever" is nothing to sneeze at. The severity of the cedar allergy season we’re in right now is near record-highs, with a count of over 21,400 parts per million on Wednesday – the second highest reading in history. In Austin, it’s common to experience a bout of cedar fever in winter months. But  allergist Dr. Seth Hollander says the weather over the past few years has made it even worse.

Obama is expected to announce changes to the NSA after revelations of a massive domestic surveillance program on US citizens and others around the globe. Obama's been fielding critics since the first of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks last June.

You can watch livestream of the announcement below: 

For some, the combination of student debt and the post-grad blues is a crushing weight – one that comes swiftly, and without warning. But now, for prospective Texas college students, a forecast of post-grad life is a click away.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will speak via satellite at SXSW Interactive in March. In a rare public interview, Assange will discuss the "pervasive spread of surveillance, advantages and abuses of the digital age, and the future of democracy," according to a statement from the festival. 

Assange will speak with Benjamin Palmer of New York-based web marketer The Barbarian Group at 11 a.m. on Mar. 8, the second day of the Interactive portion of the festival. 

Palmer told KUT that his conversation with Assange at South By will be more of a conversation about the future of the Internet and international communication, and less of a formal interview. 

"This is where everyone that's inventing all the next platforms goes to kind of hear thought leadership, you know?" Palmer said. "And I feel like Julian's point of view — where the Internet has come from, where it's going and what's generally happening — is a really important conversation to have at a place like South By Southwest."

Transmission Events announced their annual Fun Fun Fun Fest will stay at Auditorium Shores this year, despite the city's ongoing renovation of the park that initially put the fest's location up in the air. 

The ninth annual fest will be held Nov. 7 to Nov. 9 this year.  

It's official: University of Texas Regents approved Charlie Strong's contract today. Strong will be paid $25.4 million over 5 years — $5 million per year with a $100,000 bonus available after every year. 

The City of Austin will host a walking tour of the south shore of Lady Bird Lake tomorrow to get public input on future development along the shore from Auditorium Shores to the area near I-35. The tour of the roughly 100-acre strip is open to the public and will feature a dozen experts on development, cultural and environmental issues that could arise over the next 20 to 30 years of development.

Alan Holt, a planner with the Planning and Development Review Department, says the tour will begin a long process of public outreach as the area develops, but that it will also highlight connectivity issues that won't necessarily be mitigated by the boardwalk project, which is nearing completion. 

"Right now, if you would walk down to the shore, or to the lake or to the boardwalk, you have to hop fences to get into gated communities to do that, or walk through acres and acres of parking lots," Holt says. 

In 1974, a group calling themselves the Austintatious Artists wanted to express themselves. So, they found a wall in West Campus and painted what would become a venerated piece of Austin public art. Since then, that mural has lived on. They even painted another one in 2003 on the south wall of the same building.

Now, younger graffiti artists are laying claim to the same walls in droves. While it's something that's happened a lot over 40 years, the University Co-Op and the artists say the murals desperately need repair or they could be lost. 

The federal government and the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education released guidelines encouraging school to use fairness and equity in their discipline policies and warning of potential punishment, if they don't.

The U.S. Department of Education says African-American students make up 15 percent of the nation’s population but account for more than one-third of those who have been suspended from school at least once.

Education advocate Deborah Fowler, with Texas Appleseed, says minority students, especially African-American students, are more likely to experience discipline more frequently, both from administrators and from school resource officers.

Austin's got another music festival. 

Today, iHeartRadio announced a one-day country festival, featuring Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean and Lady Antebellum, among others. 

The Clear Channel-sponsored, Bobby Bones-hosted festival will descend upon the Frank Erwin Center on March 29th, making it the second country music fest planned for May 2014, after Jeff Foxworthy's Natty Light-sponsored Red Fest at Circuit of the Americas. 

The Longhorns welcomed new head football coach Charlie Strong today in a press conference at Darrell K. Royal Stadium. And if the presser had a theme, it was simple: Integrity. 

Strong told reporters he respected the foundation of Mack Brown's tenure, that the coach was a man with integrity, and that players must perform, both on and off the field, with integrity and accountability. Ultimately, Strong says his goal is to bring the Longhorns back into the national title conversation.

"The bricks are there," Strong said. "And I just need to put another brick on top of it." 

Well-known Austin attorney and activist Andi Sloan has died of complications from pneumonia, after a 7-year battle with cancer. 

While Sloan worked as an attorney and executive director of the Texas Advocacy Project, she was best known for her work lobbying California-based pharmaceutical company BioMarin to release an experimental drug to treat breast and ovarian cancer with her group Andi's Army.

What do twerking, Sharknado and the government shutdown have in common? 

They're all some of the top trends in Google searches in Austin this year, according to the search giant's 2013 Zeitgeist report. Austin's searches didn't do much to keep it weird. For the most part, the searches were fairly nationalized, unlike previous years, with one exception.

With that in mind, here's the list of Austin's 2013 top Google searches: