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Enlarge / The room where five major Muppet players meet isn't much to look at. But boy, the conversation it hosted is a treat for Muppet fans. (credit: Muppet Guys Talking)

AUSTIN, Texas—Recent films about Jim Henson's famed Muppets have focused on single stars, incluidng Carol "Big Bird" Spinney and Kevin "we don't talk about him anymore" Clash, but Henson always manages to steal the story spotlight. You might think that Muppet Guys Talking, a documentary starring a whopping five Muppet-eers, might prove an exception to the rule.

Not a chance. If anything, this new film, directed by and co-starring the legendary Frank Oz, puts five times the focus on the man who made the Muppets—and may very well be the most touching and fully fledged tribute to the man since his 1990 memorial service in New York City.

Unlocking the door for Fozzie

Of the assembled actors, Oz will probably be most familiar to Muppet fans, thanks to his range of popular characters (Yoda, Cookie Monster, Miss Piggy, Bert, etc., etc.). The rest of the assembled group represents a ton of Muppets, including Jerry Nelson (The Count, Mr. Snuffleupagus), Dave Goelz (Gonzo, Bunsen Honeydew), Fran Brill (Zoe, Prairie Girl), and Bill Barretta (Pepe, many of Henson's original creations).

AUSTIN, Texas—"The tech couldn't be seen as slapped on the garment," Ivan Poupyrev, technical program lead at Google’s Advanced Technology And Products (ATAP) group, told the crowd during his weekend South by Southwest panel. "So we started from the core—the yarn—we built starting there and went from the ground up. The first yarn we brought, I remember Levi’s looked at us funny and said, 'you know that’s going to break right?'"

"It's called singing denim," responded Paul Dillinger, vice president for global innovation at Levi's. "You expose the cloth to an open flame which burns excess cotton. So we said, 'You have this great tech, but you understand we’re going to blow torch this right? We’re going to do this to an open flame.' Frankly, I was doing it to scare them off, but then Ivan's response was 'what’s the fuel source for this flame?' He wanted to learn how to solve this problem."

You read that correctly: at SXSW this weekend, Google visionaries sat hobnobbing with style icons from Levi's as they discussed thread and production techniques. That's because this fall, the companies will release what can crudely be referred to as a smart jacket. Named Project Jacquard, this is by no means a new entity. Google first announced its intentions to make smart textiles back at Google I/O 2015, and last year the idea of debuting the technology in a commuter jacket form factor became public. But with Jacquard inching closer to an actual release, SXSW gave these two collaborators another opportunity to explain. More importantly, the event presented these companies with the first high-profile opportunity to let the attending public reach out and wear the thing.

Enlarge / Donald Trump's sons, Donald Trump Jr. (L) and Eric Trump, walk in Trump Tower on November 14, 2016 in New York City. They will be in charge of the Trump Organization's myriad businesses while Donald Trump is president. (credit: Getty Images)

Before President Donald Trump took the oath of office in January, he handed off management of the Trump Organization's business interests to his two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. The family-owned company has been in various lines of business over the years—most famously, there are hotels, casinos, and golf resorts, some owned and others licensed. Ties, steaks, and a controversial seminar business have also borne the Trump name.

But Donald Trump Jr. has also been involved with one particular business with real implications for the technology sector: patent enforcement. Beginning in 2011, Trump Jr. worked for—and owned part of—a company called MacroSolve. While MacroSolve had supported itself selling software for more than a decade, by 2011 its focus had shifted to patent lawsuits as the company's main source of profit.

MacroSolve's actions soon made it part of a longstanding debate in the tech industry over "patent trolls," companies that do little or no business other than filing patent lawsuits. But MacroSolve management never accepted the idea that the company was a "troll," and it said so in interviews.