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These start-ups could steal the spotlight at Austin's big tech show.

March brings South by Southwest Interactive, which means that some 25,000 entrepreneurs, marketers, journalists, and engineers will make their annual pilgrimage to Austin. Because the conference draws so many tech types together under one roof--and because both Twitter and Foursquare took off at previous festivals--SXSW has become the go-to destination for tech start-ups looking to make it big.

But conference buzz doesn't always lead to instant success. For instance, Highlight, a mobile app that lets you connect with people nearby, was one of the most hyped start-ups at SXSW last year. It failed to attract a large following after the event.

In other words, predicting the winners of SXSW is more art than science, but we'll hazard a few guesses. Here are four of the coolest start-ups heading south this year:

Leap Motion
Leap Motion might just have the must-see product demo at SXSW this year. The start-up developed a device, about the size of a flash drive, that lets you control your computer with hand gestures. Think Minority Report meets the Xbox Kinect--only cheaper, smaller, and more precise. The $70 controller--available for presale online--can track finger movements to up to one-hundredth of a millimeter. The San Francisco company, which launched in 2010, raised about $30 million in January, bringing its total funding to about $45 million. The company will begin shipping its first sensor in March--lining up nicely with SXSW.

Where to go: Leap Motion co-founder David Holz is set to speak at the Austin Convention Center on March 9. It's the featured session in that time slot, so get there early if you want a good seat.

Memoto
Memoto may be one of the most curious start-ups at SXSW this year. The Swedish company created a tiny "life-logging" camera, designed to be worn all day, every day to document the wearer's experiences. The device, which clips to a shirt collar or a lapel, takes two geotagged photos a minute. The photos can then be uploaded to a computer via a USB cable for sharing online. Memoto was one of 48 companies selected as finalists for this year's SXSW Innovative Accelerator awards.

Where to go: Memoto's CEO, Martin Källström, and his co-founders will demonstrate the product on March 11 at the SXSW Startup Village (a.k.a. the fourth floor of the Hilton across the street from the conference).

Eevzdrop
Eevzdrop is a bit like Instagram, but for sharing audio. The app lets users record a sound bite; add a location, text, and a photo; and share it with friends. Rommel Paraiso, CEO and co-founder of the Chicago-based company, is hoping to gain real traction among music bloggers and reviewers at the music portion of the festival.

Where to go: Check out Eevzdrop at the Startup Village, or email Paraiso for a private demo: rommel@eevzdrop.com.

OUYA
OUYA, a yet-to-be-launched video-game system, is expected to make its official debut at SXSW this year. An open-source competitor to Xbox and PlayStation, OUYA got its start on Kickstarter last year. Founder Julie Uhrman, a video-game industry veteran, reached her $950,000 funding goal in eight hours. The project fetched a total of $8.6 million, the second-highest amount ever raised on Kickstarter. Uhrman hired design guru Yves Behar, founder of fuseproject, to develop the console.

Where to go: Uhrman is a bound-to-be-talked-about keynote speaker. Catch her on March 11 at the Convention Center.

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The SXSW Launching Pad

Twitter: It took off at SXSW 2007. Tweets tripled to 60,000 a day.

Foursquare: It launched at SXSW 2009. Months later, it had 60,000 users and $1.4 million in funding.

A number of apps promise to translate text over the Web. But a new one goes a step further: It puts live interpreters only a click away.

Online translation services, such as Google Translate, have a come a long way. Even so, when you're traveling and get into a pickle or working with international customers and can't afford even a hint of miscommunication, humans still beat machines hands down--or at least so say the guys running VerbalizeIt.

The company, which is a TechStars Boulder alumnus, pairs folks who need translation help with live multilingual people around the world via a smartphone app. It's slick--after downloading the app you just create an account, tell VerbalizeIt what language you want translated into another and it gives you a phone number to call. Call it, and an automated voice will tell you it's connecting you with a translator. Voilà--the next thing you know, you're on the line with someone.

What's cool is VerbalizeIt gives every user five free minutes to try it out. I told the app I needed English to Spanish translation and the woman who took my call told me most people put her on speaker so she can interact with whomever the user is trying to communicate with.

The Backstory

VerbalizeIt founders Ryan Frankel and Kunal Sarda actually came up with the idea after harrowing experiences abroad. Frankel was in China when he became ill and couldn't make a pharmacist understand what medication he needed. And Sarda was pick pocketed and couldn't pay for a cab ride resulting in an irate Parisian cabbie who kicked him to the curb.

The New York-based start-up closed $1.5 million in seed financing last fall and says it has created more than 3,000 jobs around the world and has established partnerships with Skype and TripLingo.

"Machine translation works fairly well for text-to-text translation, but anytime you introduce voice into the mix, machines are still light years away from delivering a reliable solution," Frankel says. "Machines rarely get it right in a perfect scenario, let alone when you introduce different dialects, background noise, and the unspoken, such as emotion, customers, and local terminology."

Plans start at $5 for five minutes of translation up to $99 for 200 minutes.

For businesses that have ongoing translation needs VerbalizeIt offers rates according to volume and the type of solution. You can get live interpretation for $1.00 to $1.50 a minute, non-live document translation for $.07 to $.09 a minute, as well as audio translation for $2.50 to $3.50 a minute and video translation and subtitling for $1.30 to $2.50 a minute, depending on the language.

As for quality, Frankel tells me anybody who wants to do translation work for VerbalizeIt has to pass an exam not only based on language proficiency but also within functional areas of expertise. Not only that, every time you use a translator you're asked to give feedback regarding how well he or she performed. The highest rated translators receive the most opportunities to translate.

The Competition

One thing is certain, crowdsourced translation services are burgeoning. Gengo is another app that puts people in touch with translators who will convert written text into various languages--it boasts companies such as YouTube, Alibaba and Path as its customers.

You might also check out Babelverse, which last year was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist and received funding from 500 Startups, among other awards.

"While there sure is a huge unmet need to break the language barrier in simple day-to-day situations where a bilingual can be very helpful, there are also many more critical or business cases where a professional linguist is essential," says Babelverse co-founder Josef Dunne.

Dunne says he's most proud of the fact that the multilingual translators receive a 70 percent revenue share. "Our mission, besides making interpretation affordable to more people, is for interpreters to receive a fair source of income," he says.

It might be a big differentiator, at least in the long haul when it comes to attracting talent. VerbalizeIt only pays novice translators $0.12 a minute for live over-the-phone interpretation. Top-performing translators with functional expertise make $19.80 per hour for live interpretation, which is only $0.33 a minute or $1.65 for five minutes.

In contrast, Babelverse pays its interpreters according to the tier of service, languages involved, and average cost of living in the countries where they are most spoken.

As an example, Dunne says an experienced bilingual interpreting a 10-minute informal conversation over the phone would receive approximately $5.80 with the user paying about $8.30. A professional interpreter would receive about $10 of the $14.30 the user would pay.

That said, Babelverse only has two solutions available now, both in public beta--simultaneous interpretation of conferences or live video. As examples, Dunne says the company's members have served the U.S. Senate as well as interpreted President Obama's State of the Union address last year.

The company, which has 5,000 members that speak 150 languages, has other products in the works, including a mobile app currently in private beta that puts people in touch with interpreters on-demand.

Good to Know

Want to know the difference between translation and interpretation? Dunne says it's an important distinction: "Interpreters listen to spoken language and translate orally, while translators work on written text," according to the Babelverse website.

From garages to grocery stores, here's a look at the quirky spaces where some of the biggest dot-com brands got started.

Tech start-ups are known for thinking outside the box--especially when it comes to office space. From garages to grocery stores, here's a look at the quirky spaces where some of the biggest dot-com brands got started.--Francesa Louise Fenzi

Where it started: A garage Nest Labs re-designed what the home thermostat could look like and do, so it should come as no surprise that the company grew out of re-designed garage space in Palo Alto. During the warm summer months, the Nest team would open the garage door to let in some sun--and a few early admirers. Squirrels used to run in and disrupt the hardware engineers soldering, giving the term "nest" a literal significance. One software engineer put up a sign to deter the furry invaders. Unfortunately, squirrels can’t read. But the sign became an office icon, and the team’s favorite conference room in the new office still bears the warning: "No Squirrels."

Where it started: The cafés of Buenos Aires Brothers and co-founders John and Patrick Collison took a trip to Argentina where they began work on their start-up Stripe, an online payment platform that makes it easy to for websites to start accepting credit card payments. Tthe brothers spent three weeks working around the clock, wrangling their first customer, and befriending baristas in cafés throughout Buenos Aires.

Where it started: A bus You know that awful, gut-wrenching feeling you get when you’ve left something crucial behind? Dropbox founder Drew Houston is well acquainted with that feeling--it’s exactly how he felt when he boarded a bus from Boston to New York, intending to work on a specific project, and discovered that he had left a thumb drive containing all of his previous work at home. Houston was so frustrated by the experience that he spent the rest of his bus journey writing code for a file-sharing program that would allow people to share and access files from any location.

Where it started: Living room It’s tough to find a good bra. At least, Michelle Lam thought so. Before launching the online lingerie store True&Co, Lam hosted living room lingerie parties--like Tupperware parties, but for bras--in her apartment. The company has since transitioned to a real office space, but the in-home feel of those early fittings lingers: True&Co sends boxes of lingerie to customers' homes, where women can try on and select items in an intimate and comfortable setting.

Where it started: A co-working space Eventbrite is an online service for event registration and ticket sales that aims to "bring people together." Maybe it's appropriate then, that the company began in a space that brought together entrepreneurs from other tech start-ups like TripIt, Flixter, Boxbee, and Zynga. Eventually, the Eventbrite team outgrew the space and moved into an office of its own that boasts an open floor plan and a communal cooking and dining space.

Where it started: Whole Foods, New York Evan Sharp, co-founder and head of design at Pinterest, began work on the popular pin board site at Whole Foods Market in New York. He spent hours in the health food chain’s café developing, iterating, and coding Pinterest’s now iconic grid platform. The major perks? Free WiFi and an endless supply of coffee.

Where it started: A Tribeca apartment It started as a joke. No really--the video site Vimeo began as a side project of online comedy site College Humor. According to Vimeo CTO Andrew Pile, the company’s early days looked like something out of a 90s movie: skateboards and ping-pong in the office, which was actually a 9th floor apartment above a laundromat in Tribeca. Both College Humor and Vimeo have since moved to Union Square where, unfortunately, employees can no longer develop hilarious videos and wash clothes in the same location. But the current office sports an “art wall” to keep the jokes--and creativity--flowing. Read more: How Bobbi Brown Got Started

Handy rules of thumb can help you make even the most complex decisions more manageable. A former Bain consultant offers a great one.

Being a business owners means making tough decisions. Sometimes the stakes are high, sometimes the information is incomplete, and sometimes the environment is volatile—and sometimes all three—which means making the right choice for your company incredibly challenging and stressful.

Wouldn't be nice if there were simple tricks to take these complicated, insomnia-inducing decisions and boil them down to something more manageable?

That's just what former Bain & Company consultant Daniel Shapiro offered in a recent LinkedIn post. Drawing on his experience at Bain, Shapiro shares a handy trick that can help owners break down and tackle even the most complex issues. He writes:

If you’re faced with a choice of whether or not to do something, just ask yourself, “What would I need to believe for this to be the right decision?” This simple question is incredibly clarifying.

Here’s an example: I’m trying to decide whether or not to prioritize the development of a new product. In order for that to be a great idea, I would need to believe the following assertions:

We have the team capable of building the product

Customers will buy the product at an attractive price if we build it

We have the distribution to reach potential customers at a reasonable cost

None of our competitors can replicate this offering in the next 12 months

There are no higher priority development opportunities for the R&D team

The hardest part of the process is developing the list of assertions. If you’re having a hard time, grab a colleague – two brains are better than one. Once you have your list, begin analyzing each assertion with data. If you can’t get data to help determine whether or not an assertion is true or false, simply make an educated guess. If any of the assertions are false, it’s probably the wrong decision.

By using this technique, Shapiro asserts, you are forced to break down a complicated situation into its constituent parts and also helps you construct enough structure that you can intelligently and productively discuss the issue with colleagues. Interested in more insights from Shapiro? You can follow him on LinkedIn.

But Shapiro isn't the only devotee of simple rules of thumb—also known, more formally, as heuristics—as a means to help guide us through our toughest decisions. Colin Marshal has rounded up ten useful rules of thumb you can put into use in business and in life, including:

"Can I fail at this?" It's like Raymond Chandler said: there is no success without the possibility of failure. Therefore, something I can't fail at is also something I can't succeed at. I can fail at conducting an interview, writing an essay or making a video. I can't fail at meandering around the internet in search of "neat stuff to read." In a recent tweet, I defined procrastination "the temporary displacement of tasks at which it is possible to fail with tasks at which it is not possible to fail." I suspect I'm less far off the mark than ever, especially regarding why procrastination is not a productive tendency.

"What's the hardest thing I can do?" … my hat tips to Paul Graham: "This is a good plan for life in general. If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you're trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you're even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what's the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it."

Meanwhile, author and heuristics enthusiast Ben Casnocha has a wiki of literally hundreds.

What business rule of thumb do you find most valuable?

These common mistakes will ruin your chances of getting just about any job.

Finding reliable, loyal, and competent employees is at the top of most entrepreneurs' minds. You deal with this as a start-up founder, and it continues to plague your management team through the mid-size stage and beyond.

Our company has recently expanded significantly, opening up a number of critical positions. That's pressed us to spend most of our time recruiting--and to learn a lot about the common mistakes that job applicants make.

Using a salary-driven approach to selecting your first job

Opting for a salary-driven approach to the job search--especially when you have little or no experience behind your expectations--is probably not the best long-term strategy. Those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to gain experience in a coveted field come when you're young and fresh, and the reality is that learning jobs don't pay that well. Being aware of this fact will help you gauge the opportunity better.

As an entry-level candidate, you want to show your prospective employer that you value the experience--and the potential opportunity for growth--more than your initial paycheck.

Using unlikely stories to justify past slip-ups

I frequently find myself speaking with applicants that look great on paper and turn out to be quite different during the interview. If you have unexplained breaks in employment, don't use some crazy excuse in an attempt to make yourself look better. Instead of crafting a sad tale portraying you as the martyr, try using a good old-fashioned truth: "I made some mistakes in the past. Now I realize that I didn't have my priorities properly in mind, and I'm clear on where I'd like my journey to go." It sounds better.

Confusing your employer with a misleading resume

If you acted as director of marketing for your previous employer, but you still haven't graduated from college, don't omit the expected graduation date from your resume. Even if it might get you more interviews, it misleads your potential employer into believing you have more experience than you actually do. This will come clear during the interview, by which time you will have changed from being an interesting prospect to a potentially shady candidate.

Employers are looking for candidates that are capable, reliable, and willing to go the extra mile. My advice: Check your ego at the door, and write a kickass cover letter about why you would be great for the job. Explain your capabilities, and why the company interests you. Recruiters and hiring managers are looking for the next hidden treasure. That could be you.

After getting pushed out of the business she loved, this Cisco co-founder learned a valuable lesson about working with VCs.

In 1984, Sandy Lerner co-founded Cisco Systems with her now-ex-husband, Leonard Bosack, to market the technology they co-developed for connecting computer networks. But after making a bad deal with an investor, Lerner found herself pushed out of the company shortly after it went public in 1990.

After funding the company for three years by mortgaging everything we owned and putting everything on credit cards, we made an absolutely bozo no-no.

We decided to take money from a VC, Don Valentine. He got 30-odd percent of the company for $2.6 million. Len and I were very naïve. We used Don's lawyer and agreed to a four-year vesting agreement. We would get 90 percent of the founder's stock after four years. But we didn't get an employment contract.

When I was fired, it was devastating. I spent years crawling out from that. I did not understand an investor could be an adversary. My family had a small business. I always thought that if someone invested in your business, that meant he or she believed in it. I assumed our investor supported us, because his money was tied up in our success. I did not realize he had decoupled the success of the company from that of the founders.

I don't believe all VCs are adversarial, but the first thing I tell everyone is: Get your own lawyer. Don't buy lines like, "You guys are busy; we'll just have someone draw up some papers, and it will be very pro forma." Yeah, right.

My second piece of advice is to separate yourself from the company. What is good for you is not necessarily good for the company, and vice versa. At Cisco, I made every decision based on what was good for the company, and that pretty much ruined my marriage and my health. Len and I believed a company and its founder are the same. They absolutely are not.

Previous job:Director of the computer facilities at Stanford's Graduate School of Business
First paying customer: Ohio State University
Cisco's current market cap: $112.3 billion