blog posts in lifestyle
05/22/2009 • comments ()
d-nice documents the homeless emcee
Posted by Steve Woolf

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A sad story about a clearly intelligent and thoughtful human being who has suffered a great deal and made many mistakes. D-Nice, yes, that D-Nice, is a talented videographer and editor who has over a dozen videos posted on Vimeo as part of his "True Hip-Hop Stories series." For any fan of hip-hop, it's a nice journey. Also, I'd like to know what camera/lens he is using, because I absolutely love it.

Update: Just noticed that the camera is indicated on the Vimeo video page. It's a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, same camera we just used to shoot a tv commercial (yes, it's an SLR!).

05/07/2009 • comments ()
xeni jardin is online culture personified
Posted by Steve Woolf

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We had the privilege to hang out and talk to Xeni Jardin, and I have to admit I was a little nervous. I'd talked to her at industry events and social gatherings, but it's not often that Zadi and I spend time with people who, like us, have such a vast knowledge of the web and its culture going back ten or more years. There is something special about the people who came of age with the first Internet boom and worked online during the transformation of the web from a tech curiosity into a mainstream cultural force. Luckily for us, she is completely charming and down to earth, and considering her efforts over the past two years with Boing Boing video, we had tons of common experiences.

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04/29/2009 • comments ()
why piracy is winning against the studios
Posted by Steve Woolf

On this week's show we talked at some length about the firestorm of coverage and conjecture surrounding the conviction of the Pirate Bay founders on charges of aiding copyright infringement in a Swedish court. Warners, Fox, Sony, and EMI led the fight and hailed it as a great victory.

They couldn't be more wrong.

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04/21/2009 • comments ()
is twitter losing its intimacy?
Posted by Steve Woolf

Ashton Kutcher's Twitter page, with over 1.3MM followers

With all the recent hubbub around Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN in the race to a million Twitter followers, a lot of people are getting self-conscious about follower numbers. We've been using Twitter since Fall 2006, when only a handful of our friends were active on it. Over the years, and especially in the last six months, we have seen an explosion of Twitter users, to the point where I think we can safely say that Twitter has gone completely mainstream. If the Ashton vs. CNN thing wasn't it, then Oprah joining up a day later certainly sealed the deal.

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04/10/2009 • comments ()
my transition from apple mail to the gmail cloud, part 2
Posted by Steve Woolf

I decided to write a series of blog posts about moving the tens of thousands of emails from years of life online in my local email into Google's cloud. This is Part 2. Read Part 1.

In the last blog post, I was just getting started and formulating a strategy to migrate tens of thousands of old email messages from Apple Mail into Gmail. I'm far from finished, but I did get off to a good start so I wanted to post an update.

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04/08/2009 • comments ()
my transition from apple mail to the gmail cloud, part 1
Posted by Steve Woolf

I decided to write a series of blog posts about moving the tens of thousands of emails from years of life online in my local email into Google's cloud. This is Part 1. Read Part 2.

Quick Background

I've been working on the web since 1994. In that time, I've used just about every major email client available for the Mac at one point or another, as well as a few for Windows when needed. I can't posit an accurate guess as to how many emails I've received and sent over the years, but it is certainly in the tens of thousands. For a long time I tried to keep an organized archive of all of it, but time simply doesn't allow that kind of indulgence anymore.

For the past few weeks I've been considering making the break from a local application and moving everything to Gmail's cloud. We're paying customers of Google Apps, so I have plenty of room, and the Gmail web application is very mature at this point and it has a great mobile version that was just updated yesterday.

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11/28/2008 • comments ()
zadi: on my way to south africa!
Posted by Steve Woolf

Steve's note: this was originally posted on Zadi's blog, but I'm re-posting here since it sounds like this is going to be an awesome trip! So jealous I couldn't go!!!!

Virgin Atlantic Lounge

Right now I’m sitting in the Virgin Atlantic lounge at Heathrow airport - funny that I’ve been to this airport three times but haven’t actually walked the streets of London yet. I have a five hour layover, which on paper seems awful, but this lounge is kick-ass and I think I could live here for a while if prompted. Complimentary drinks, food, wifi, massages, fluffy hairdos and haircuts — can we make it a ten hour layover, please?

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[ Via: Zadi's blog ]

11/26/2008 • comments ()
hermes smart car
Posted by Angela Sauceda
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To celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Smart Car, Paris design house Hermes created 10 stylish models. Each running about $48,560, the interior offers unique shades of pinks, oranges, and blues.

It's kinda snazzy if you're into the whole 'saving the environment' thing, but gotta do it in serious style.

tags: hermes, smartcar
11/19/2008 • comments ()
han cholo
Posted by Angela Sauceda

Han Cholo is one of my favorite L.A. born jewelry designers. It's creator Brandon Schoolhouse, a former DJ for the Beastie Boys, designs high-end jewelry inspired by East L.A. culture, Star Wars, and all things geek. An interesting combination with a surprisingly bad-ass result.

tags: designer, jewelry
08/21/2008 • comments ()
you don't need this
Posted by Annie Tsai

A few years ago, The Anti-Advertising Agency created the Bus Stop Bench Ad project, featuring one particular bench that plainly stated "you don't need it".

The bench ad project gave rise to the sticker project. Steve Lambert created stickers that proclaim "you don't need it" with a bold red arrow. Users are encouraged to put the free stickers on all kinds of advertising media in an effort to curb the crazy consumerism that's being marketed these days.

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08/11/2008 • comments ()
weekinreview: what happens is the news
Posted by Annie Tsai

On Tuesday's episode we covered the weekinreview group in Los Angeles. What exactly is the weekinreview? Well, the founders describe it as an alternative to your regular news source: "Documenting and reporting hearsay recounts of the news, a forum is created in which people who care and are interested in the world around them can have a voice." I first heard about the weekinreview when it was conceived in 2004. They've stayed strong since then, expanding to other cities and countries even. Think of it as the DIY news.

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07/25/2008 • comments ()
little hands
Posted by Zadi Diaz


This is a fascinating short film documenting the life of deaf children. The narrator does an awesome job narrating, which leaves us able to absorb and actually pick up a few words. I now know how to say "smile" in sign language.

What was most enlightening is how they say their parents don't understand what they're saying some of the time, which is frustrating to them. The kids in this film (most seven to nine years of age) struck me as eloquent and wise beyond their years -- and most of all, they seem to have a talent for listening above many of us who are able to hear.

07/16/2008 • comments ()
is autism a stage in evolution?
Posted by Steve Woolf

Please watch this video. It's been around the 'net for a while. It's the story of a man named Daniel Tammet, who can do calculations to 100 decimal places in his head. He has been diagnosed with a form of autism, but one with a relatively mild affect on the way he handles social interaction. Typically autistics have trouble relating to other people and things in their environment, but can demonstrate an ability to focus on single tasks. This rarely manifests itself as true savant-like abilities, but for a while now I have started to wonder whether the escalation in autism diagnoses over the past 30 years is a result of environmental effects on children, or whether this is nature experimenting with us to take us to the next stage of evolution.

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06/10/2008 • comments ()
amazing bicycle parking tower in tokyo
Posted by Steve Woolf

This amazing facility is definitely designed with the future in mind. Tokyo is a very crowded, bustling city, and it seems like real thought has gone into designing a long-term plan for people who use alternate forms of travel.

We've gotten to know a few hardcore bike enthusiasts here in Los Angeles, but I wonder why nothing like this has ever been conceived for LA or New York City. Bikes are great exercise and (obviously) zero carbon emissions vehicles. Let's see some innovative facilities in our major cities here in the U.S., please!

05/05/2008 • comments ()
geek flowchart!
Posted by Steve Woolf
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Created by Sam Potts from the The New York Times. Click the image for a large version.

[ Via: [via technabob] ]

tags: funny
04/12/2008 • comments ()
paul dateh: we all belong
Posted by Zadi Diaz

4.11.08. we all belong. from paul dateh on Vimeo.


Paul Dateh recounts his personal experience with friends who were victims of gang violence. I wanted to pass this on because in this online web 2.0 world of ours, these are stories we often times don't get to hear (or speak about), but are all too familiar. These are the stories we need to share with each other.

04/02/2008 • comments ()
is twitter your social lubricant?
Posted by Zadi Diaz


A lot of us are on Twitter these days -- making new online friends and connections, but what exactly is the distraction/production ratio? How much time do you spend on Twitter each day? Does Twitter keep you from doing other things, or does it help? How many Twitter friends have translated to other areas of your life/work? How many people do you follow and how do you personally choose who to follow? How do you use Twitter?

[image via dieselsweeties.com]

02/11/2008 • comments ()
a continent of garbage
Posted by Steve Woolf

As if we needed further evidence that we are recklessly befouling our planet, The Independent has a disturbing article about an area of floating plastic waste twice the size of the United States in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The vast expanse of debris -- in effect the world's largest rubbish dump -- is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Charles Moore discovered it by accident in 1997 taking a shortcut back across the Pacific after a yacht competition.

He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"

This stuff won't degrade for hundreds of years at the minimum. Ugh.

[ Via: Via Core77 ]

filed: lifestyle, wtf
tags: disaster
01/31/2008 • comments ()
can you live in a tiny house?
Posted by Zadi Diaz


Jay Shafer takes you inside his tiny 100 square foot home. Since 1997 he's been living in a house smaller than most people's closets. I don't think I'll ever complain about a small apartment again.

Jay talks about his reasons behind designing these tiny homes, which are mostly environmental... though he does mention that he doesn't like vacuuming. :)

tags: green, video