For sys admins who want to have a life, here’s your life saver. Rackspace, today, released a new version of its Rackspace Cloud iPhone and iPad app, which lets you run your web empire on the Rackspace Cloud. Here I interview the developer who built it, Mike Mayo.

You can do a whole bunch of things, like start up 10 servers all from one server. Or use Chef to build entire systems all from recipes, or templates. There’s a new passcode lock to keep your kids from messing with your web servers if they find your iPad. Plus it adds AirPlay support, so you can show your mom photos or videos you’ve stored on your Rackspace Cloud servers on her Apple TV. It’s OpenSource too.

Oh, and we’re looking for more kickass mobile developers like Mike Mayo. If you’re one, let us know!

Disclaimer: I’m a full-time employee of Rackspace.

Programmers, you should check this out. Cloud9 IDE has the biggest innovation in IDEs since Microsoft brought us Visual Basic: everything runs on the cloud.

It’s “development as a service.”

What does that mean? Well, instead of coding in text files sitting on your computer, you code directly in the browser window. Here Rik Arends, CTO, and Ruben Daniëls, CEO, show me how it works and explains what it’s good for.

“It’s aimed at developers who want to use the new stuff,” they say.

What do you think? Will you build with it?

One of the things I loaded on my iPhone this week in preparation for SXSW is Bizzy, which is a new location-based app that will help you find businesses near you. Sort of like a cross between Foursquare and Yelp. But they have an interesting idea, called “check out” where you review the restaurant or business as you “check out” of a place. Foursquare lets you “check in,” which tells people and the service itself that you’re there.

Anyway, here the founders of Bizzy Ryan Kuder, VP of Marketing, and Gadi Shamia, CEO, show it to us.

Mike McCue has had quite a year. Since launching last year he’s:

1. Won Apple’s best iPad app of the year award.
2. Been on Oprah.
3. Racked up more than a million downloads.
4. Been named to Twitter’s board of directors.

Tonight Flipboard released a new version that adds a few new features:

1. Instagram photo support.
2. Much faster performance (and that’s before the iPad 2 comes along, which will double speed).
3. Make it easier to discover new content via searches.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what will come this year from Flipboard as they start rolling in new filtering and discovery technology that they purchased with the Ellerdale Project acquisition they made.

In the 30-minute interview Mike talks about the new competition that Flipboard is seeing and also explains how they will do advertising and where they are heading.

Toward the end of the interview Mike takes us around the office and introduces us to what everyone is doing.

OK, how many apps do we need to communicate our location with services and each other? Let’s see, these are the apps I’m currently using. You can see links to my accounts most of these things on the recently revamped Google Profiles (make sure you update yours, by the way).

1. Long in advance. Plancast, Lanyrd, Google Calendar, TripIt and Tungle.me to tell people I’m heading to SXSW on Friday (or LeWeb in Paris in December). What does that do? Let my everyone know where they can find me and how to get on my schedule.

2. Short in advance. I’m using Ditto to tell people where I’m planning on going. Say on Saturday morning I might say I’m going to the Iron Works for Lunch. What does that do? Lets people near me know where I’ll be in an hour or two, plus restaurants can start sending me offers to convince me to try them, instead of Iron Works. I also use Bizzy to see if I’m really going to the best place possible (or to find somewhere to go) and I check Foursquare and Yelp or Zagat for ideas too. Foursquare’s new recommendations are quite nice, for instance. It shows me which places are most popular with my friends and with Foursquare users overall.

3. Walking in the door. I pull out Gowalla, which checks me in on Foursquare. Or, usually, I just pull out Foursquare. That sends a few signals. First, it lets everyone know I’ve arrived, but it also makes a great history so that I can see where I visited, or use Memolane later on to see that (which just shipped this week). My wife, who is addicted to Facebook, usually checks us in on that service (she tags me so she can check us in together). Finally, other systems like Yelp also do checkins. We also might send a video to our friends on Path or Facebook and if my dinner guest is really interesting I might ask for an interview to post on CinchCast.

4. During the meal. I’ll take a picture of my guests with Instagram, which goes to the new Flipboard (on my iPad) and also Foursquare, among other places. When our meals arrive I’ll pull out Foodspotting and take a picture of each meal and tag it. I might even write a full review on Yelp or add it as an answer to a Quora question.

5. As we are leaving. I’ll “check out” with the new Bizzy and rate the restaurant, which helps other people who are looking for suggestions. I’ll also tweet, while my wife posts a Facebook status update, letting everyone know whether we enjoyed our meal.

Whew.

Do you see the problem with this?

First, this is only something a douchebag geek blogger would do. Yes, I’m guilty.

Second, it’s too many apps. Many of these things could be consolidated into a single app.

Third, these systems are all silos that don’t work together.

Fourth, if you do do all these you’ll get strange looks. One lady at a meal even admonished me when Maryam was in the bathroom “why don’t you just talk with your wife?”

One thing, I’m noticing I’m not the only one staring into phone screens anymore at even fine restaurants. You all are starting to copy my bad behavior.

That’s sad, even though I’m not going to stop because these do bring me lots of utility. Heck, check out my sushi on Foodspotting, or my Memolane, where you see a history of everything I’ve done on social networks.

More bad behavior ahead!

UPDATE: Did you know there’s an app for learning table manners? Now I’ve seen everything!

So, you arrive at SXSW in Austin, you open View on your iPhone, and it shows you what is going on near you. Restaurants people like. News events that are happening right now. Parties that are hot. Things like that. Watch this video and you’ll learn more about how it works from co-founders Felix Chan and Zac Bowling.

Or read the Techcrunch post about it, but I have video of the founders demoing it.