20091013

A Sign of The Times | Mission Loc@l

A Sign of The Times | Mission Loc@l: "The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal announcing plans to introduce a San Francisco Bay Area edition. The Times wrote Friday in its business section that it and The Wall Street Journal are planning to introduce Bay Area editions in an effort to win over local readers. The papers appear to be getting into position in case the Chronicle fails."

In case? The Chronicle still has a Food Section, a Pink Section and local sports, but, seems to get thinner by the month. It's so small that I don't even have to separate the sections anymore. And, to muddy the news even more

news venture: "A San Francisco investment banker is teaming up with the University of California’s journalism school and public broadcaster KQED to create a nonprofit news organization that he says will fill a gap in local coverage left by newspaper cutbacks."

Bay Area News Project

The most famous unkindness

The most famous unkindness: "The current raven roster at the Tower of London consists of Gwylum, Thor, Hugin, Munin, Branwen, Bran, Gundulf, Baldrick, Fleur, and Colin. Their diet consists of raw meat, bird formula biscuits soaked in blood, whole rabbit, eggs once a week, and occasional pieces of fried bread."

20090907

The Community Bookcase

decor8 : The Community Bookcase: "a normal, everyday bookcase with glass doors that you can open and contents inside that are 100% free to the public. No library cards, overdue notices or payment required."

Ah, a fine idea. There are a few bars and cafes with open stacks, but, this is even better. Of course, the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library do a similar service ...

Deep Fried Butter to Hit Texas State Fair

Deep Fried Butter to Hit Texas State Fair - Slashfood: "He wraps butter in dough before frying, so the finished product resembles an especially greasy biscuit. Deep-fried butter is available in four varieties: original, garlic, cherry and grape."

Oh, so wrong. Must have!

20090831

Disney snarfs Marvel

Worldwide leader in family entertainment agrees to acquire Marvel and its portfolio of over 5,000 characters. | Marvel.com: "Worldwide leader in family entertainment agrees to acquire Marvel and its portfolio of over 5,000 characters."

Ugg. Family-friendly Wolvernine? Tiny Avengers? The next Kingdom Hearts should be even more surreal ...


At least it wasn't Diamond Comics!

20090827

Starve a Vampire. Donate Blood.

Starve a Vampire. Donate Blood.: "The American Red Cross is excited to partner with The CW and Alloy Media Marketing to promote the network s new show The Vampire Diaries"

Now there's some product placement!

20090815

The Brains of Early Birds and Night Owls

Lab Notes : The Brains of Early Birds and Night Owls: "Early birds wake up at the crack of dawn and struggle to stay alert and productive (especially in the cognitive realm) in the evening. Night owls perform well in the evening but are worthless if you yank them out of bed too early in the morning."

3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late: "Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were "well rested" actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours."

I'll sleep to that!

Brightly Colored FastPass To Be Replaced By TransLink

The End Of An Era: Brightly Colored FastPass To Be Replaced By TransLink: News: SFAppeal: "The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will replace all existing fare gates at its Muni underground stations with TransLink-only fare gates by fall 2010 at the earliest, according to a memo sent to the Board of Supervisors."

Oh, I can smell the meltdown from here. Every onboard has to tag the Twiki box? That's going to make for some ugly scrums at busy stops, much less a busted box making people run up and down the stations/trains.

Coming Soon: MUNI/BART to Track Your Every Move: "And how will this work for out-of-town visitors and other people who don't use Muni? There's also the whole Big Brother aspect of our every move being documented on some database."

20090810

FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request

FriendFeed Blog: "We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle..."

Facebook Press Release: "Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams."

Gack! Doom! There go the neighborhoods.

20090802

Sin bins for worst families

Sunday Express | UK News :: Sin bins for worst families: "the Children’s Secretary set out �400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes. Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far."

Youch. Bad enough that they're all over the streets. They've even become plot points in BBC shows like Torchwood. But in the houses? That's getting the bad end of the reality show!

Table of Hours, anyone?

20090801

The Matrix Online decompiles

Reminder: Check out The Matrix Online before it decompiles - Massively: "The Matrix Online is reminding us all that it's slowing coming undone as the system becomes more and more unstable with each passing day. Ashes raining from the sky, eyes being seen in the clouds, zombies, agents, angels, and demons all appearing out of the system's corruption to wreak havoc across the Mega City."

Oh! What a fine way to go out ... fighting!

Newsgator Shuts Down Its Online Feed Reader

Newsgator Shuts Down Its Online Feed Reader: "NewsGator, the company behind the popular FeedDemon and NetNewsWire feed readers, just announced that it will shut down the NewsGator Online Reader on August 31, 2009. The company will provide users with instructions on how to migrate to Google Reader."

Whoa! Feadreaders are dead? Is it all just a Twitter river of what I had for lunch now?

20090731

Tru Blood is now a true drink

Tru Blood is now a true drink - TV Squad: "Tru Blood (the fictional vampire blood-substitute from the HBO series True Blood) is going to be offered as a novelty drink."

Ew. Oh, well, can't taste much worse than Red Bull. Blood and Vodka anyone? Just be sure to order it with a high-pitched whine just like in the stories ...

20090719

Pon Farr Perfume

Pon Farr Perfume: "Pon Farr Perfume for Women"

"Drive him crazy"

Ah, well, It's gotta smell better than Red Shirt in the morning ...

20090717

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others: "Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price."

"The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”"

Hah! The books disappeared one by one as the clocks struck thirteen.

I love the idea of a passive electronic reader, but hate the form factor of the Kindle ...
Besides the fact that they flash fright-white between pages.

20090708

Riding Muni’s 14 Mission — For 24 Hours

Riding Muni’s 14 Mission — For 24 Hours | Mission Loc@l: "It’s possible riders are accustomed to fare increases. They’ve had three in the last six years, doubling the fare from $1 in 2003. The first went to $1.25, then to $1.50 in September 2005, and today we hit the $2 mark."

"The 14’s route passes through San Francisco’s largest enclaves of Filipinos and Latinos and businesses, picking up more than 36,000 passengers a day."

Hard to believe that they increased the Muni fare instead of the hours of parking meter operation. Next year the Fast Pass will go up to $60 plus $10 if you want Bart in the city. I bet that will mean more cash fares, slower boarding, and even worse on-time performance. Sheesh.

20090707

The Prisoner

The Prisoner will be free to appear at Comic-Con - TV Squad: "The reboot is a gutsy move by AMC as The Prisoner, created by and starring Patrick McGoohan in the late 1960s, is widely considered one of the greatest series in television history.

Friday, July 24 at 11:30 AM on AMC

Ugg. Now there's a dumb idea. And, yea, I'm gonna watch.

20090706

Get ready for even foggier summers

Get ready for even foggier summers: "The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it's about to get even foggier."

"The theory, then and now, is that the hotter the Central Valley gets, the greater the temperature and pressure gradients between the inland and coast will be - therefore forming more fog."

Yay! Dampening down the heat waves would be nice, too.

FWIW, Weather Underground is my fav weather feed ...

20090704

Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest,

Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest was fun to watch. Funny to have frantic ESPN announcing all over the contest.

Glad to see two women in the Horsemen of the Esophagus, Juliet Lee and Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas ...

More than you ever wanted to know about gurgitating at Major League Eating

The Biography Channel has I'm a Competitive Eater on Wednesday.

"Look upon our gurgitators, ye Mighty, and despair. Behold these new super-gluttons, these ambassadors of the American appetite, these Horsemen of the Esophagus"

20090621

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive - Telegraph: "The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature."

"Most are former industrial cities in the 'rust belt' of America s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit Philadelphia Pittsburgh Baltimore and Memphis."

"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said."

That's the spirit! Certainly makes sense to prune services like water, sewage, and trash from areas ...

Also, Life After People on History.Com is really pretty.

Zomblog

Zomblog: "The main difference you’ll see is that the amount of points required for levels has been tuned down, particularly to avoid having large gaps between levels in the middle ranges. As a side effect, many of you may gain levels if your current point total puts you higher on the level curve."

Zomblog : Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves and Slayers apps

Whoa! Shot up stack of levels and splattered notices all over me wall.

Not so sure about the collections, yet, but, they have certainly livened up the forums!

20090523

Ancient Robots


Robot Builder has added Ancient Ones ! I may just have to play it a bit, in spite of the fact that the game seems goalless. Whereas Mad Scientist from the same developers is awesome ...

Facebook | Robot Builder

20090507

No More San Francisco Edition of The Onion - SFist: San Francisco

No More San Francisco Edition of The Onion - SFist: San Francisco: "Today's editions of the The Onion in San Francisco and Los Angeles will be the last."


Unfortunately, despite healthy readership in both Los Angeles and San Francisco (readership has actually risen despite our reduction in copies in recent months) the advertising in both cities has been abysmal.

So, at the end of the day, you have to make a decision whether to pump money into parts of the company that are straining us financially (LA and SF print) or reroute that capital into the areas of the company
that are growing in size and value.


Now that The Onion finally has slots in the stupid pedmounts and you can find it somewhere other than bars, it's gone. The event listings were brilliant when the print version started, but, have steadily declined. I'd hoped that the Decider would improve them ...

Bah!

MyOpenBar.com to Shutdown SF, LA Operations - SFist: San Francisco

MyOpenBar.com to Shutdown SF, LA Operations - SFist: San Francisco: "MyOpenBar, the AWESOME site that informs readers on any and all open-bar/cheap-booze events, will cease operations in Los Angeles and San Francisco. We talked to MyOpenBar, who we hoped would inform us that this was some sort of cruel joke. No suck luck. According MyOpenBar, 'Yes, we're closing both LA and SF websites due to our inability to monetize those branches in all this time."

Arg! The weekly newsletter was good, but, the twitter stream was invaluable. Curses! SF will not support event listings? At this rate we're going to loose the Chronicle Pink Section too ...

20090410

Wines on Tap

The Pour - Are Wines on Tap a Passing Trend or the Wave of the Future? - NYTimes.com: "Wine? On tap? Wine, stored in kegs and served through a method similar to a draft-beer line, may be the glorious future of by-the-glass pours in bars and restaurants."

Replacing Guinness in a bar near you? I always laugh at people getting wine from a box in beer bars ...

20090320

Nokia to Shut Down Mosh

Nokia to Shut Down Mosh: "Nokia, the Finnish cell phone maker and wanna-be web power, will shut down Mosh, its wildly popular service that makes it easy for people to post and share content with others."

Oh! They were out so early that I thought that they would take over the world. Instead it looks like porn already took over the world, and took noika out ...

20090215

Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf: "To celebrate the 21st birthday of Red Dwarf, we're bringing back the original cast for four brand new specials later in April."

Yay! I'm sure that there's a few episodes that I've missed, as well ...

Muzak runs out

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: "Muzak Holdings LLC, the company that made “elevator music” famous, sought bankruptcy protection from creditors as its debt matured and restructuring alternatives fell through due to the economic crisis."

Whoa, Surreal. Now who do you buy your hold music from?

20090211

Live Nation, Ticketmaster Reach $2.5 Billion Deal

Live Nation, Ticketmaster Reach $2.5 Billion Deal: "This merger would give a giant, new entity unrivaled power over concertgoers and the prices they pay to see their favorite artists and bands"

Ugg, and that if you can even find a place to get physical tickets.

20090124

Wife murdered for changing Facebook status

Wife murdered for changing Facebook status - Telegraph: "Richardson became enraged when Sarah changed her marital status on Facebook to single and decided to go and see her as she was not responding to his messages."

Whoa, Gonna have to watch those late-night status updates ...

20090123

Verizon Hub "landline slayer" officially unveiled

Verizon Hub "landline slayer" officially unveiled - Engadget: "The system boasts a 7-inch touchscreen display, and will work with Verizon wireless subscribers handset(s) to eliminate the need for a landline. The idea here is that the hub can sync to your calendar, contacts, maps, traffic and weather reports via broadband."

Whoa! Gonna have to poke at one. Mighty shiny!

20090110

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Official Google Blog: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish: "You may have noticed that Google has a new favicon"

Whoa, how could you miss it?! It's the technicolor yawn of favicons ...

20090108

Gaza aggressors kiss cell phones goodbye

Press TV - Gaza aggressors kiss cell phones goodbye: "Six hours before the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza on Saturday, thousands of infantry and armored forces were ordered to hand over their cell phones, an official has told AFP on condition of anonymity. The order was 'to keep the impending attack secret', an Israeli official was quoted as saying."

The very act of having a cell phone is a security leak! Guess the monkey mind is moving faster than the military can train it ...

Whopper Sacrifice

Whopper Sacrifice Application
Install WHOPPER® Sacrifice on your Facebook profile and we'll reward you with a free flame-broiled WHOPPER® Sandwich when you sacrifice 10 of your friends*

That's the spirit! Unloyalty rewards!

Love the burning human graphic. Do they make burgers from the unfriended?

20090106

LiveJournal on Life Support

Report: LiveJournal on Life Support: "The company has reportedly laid off 20 of 28 employees, “leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers.”"

Even with paid accounts and plenty of advertising? Weird.

Stacey's Demise

Stacey's Demise - SFist: San Francisco: "Venerable Stacey's Books, after celebrating 85 years in business this last fall, announced to staff today that the store will close sometime in late March."

SF can't sustain an excellent bookstore downtown? Bah!