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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