The fine folks at Ritual Roasters, a independent, geek-friendly coffee house in San Francisco’s Mission District, were dressed up as zombie Starbucks employees today. They asked me if I wanted a grande non-fat pumpkin latte with a shot of vanilla in typical undead fashion (of course Ritual would never serve such a drink).

You just gotta love Halloween in San Francisco.

- photo by Scott Beale

Here are my photos from Saturday night’s Life Size Mouse Trap Halloween Show. David Apocalypse was on hand with his Museum of Oddities, Cyclecide was running their Cyclefuge and the always wonderful Toshio Hirano treated us to a great set of Jimmy Rogers and Hank Williams songs. On the final run, after the three blind mice taunted the mousetrap, it dropped a safe on a giant pumpkin, courtesy of The Pumpkin Depot in Half Moon Bay.

Photos from The Life Size Mouse Trap

Back in July, Sony shot a TV commercial in San Francisco for their new line of BRAVIA LCD televisions. In order to make a point about the color quality of these new tv’s, the commercial features 250,000 superballs being unleashed on the streets of San Francisco. Here’s the commercial, photos of the shoot and behind the scenes video.

Sending 250,000 multi-coloured ’superballs’ bouncing down the streets of San Francisco may seem the strangest way to do this, but that’s exactly what Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig did for the BRAVIA commercial in July this year. San Franciscans have seen some unusual things in their time, but even this gave them something to talk about. And we’ve got the feeling that this commercial is going to do exactly the same thing.

via Niall Kennedy

Here are my photos from TagCamp on Saturday. The Friday set can be found here.

- photo of TagCity at TagCamp by Scott Beale

Want to get a bunch of coverage from bloggers while pissing them off at the same time? If you are Daniel Lyons, write a Forbes cover story trashing blogs, calling bloggers “lynch mobs” and providing information on how to “fight back”. More on this from Doc Searls, Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, Dan Gillmor, Om Malik and Steve Rubel.

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent alliles in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

Looks like Backlash 2.0 is now in full swing.

- photo of Forbes urinal cookie by Niall Kennedy

TagCamp is in full swing. Here are my photos from Friday night. Here are all the TagCamp photos so far. For additional info, including tomorrow’s schedule, check out tagcamp.org.

- photo by Scott Beale

This Sunday, October 30th, First Rule BMX and Cyclecide Bike Rodeo present: “Hell On Wheels” at The Bike Kitchen in San Francisco.

Starting at 10am on Oct. 30, Bay Area BMX, street, and flatland riders are invited to participate in an all-day ramp jam, complete with an MC, contests, and prizes. Yes, this is no pro affair at all: First Rule, the new BMX company started by S.F. flatlander (and Cyclecide rodeo klown) Koit and BMXer Kweli (no last names), spent the past 2 months scavenging wood and pallets in the ghetto to bring SF cyclists of all stripes the opportunity to participate in a good old-fashioned homemade-ramp hootenanny… Dressed as zombies. (Zombie makeup artists will be on hand to infect people, but folks are encouraged to rip up their clothing and roll around in the dirt before they attend.)

A few months back, Ryan King and Eran Globen created Supr.c.ilio.us, a website for the social tagging of social tagging websites, which pokes fun at the social bookmarks website del.icio.us (yeah, they’re geeks alright). They followed that up with WEB 2.0 or NOT?, a website where visitors can vote on the Web 2.0-ness of a website. Their latest addition to the family is the snark infested Supr.c.ilio.us blog, which rips the blogosphere a new one. Watch out, something tells me these guys are just getting started as they sharpen their pin for Bubble 2.0.

- photo of Ryan King and Eran Globen at Tag Tuesday by Scott Beale

Cookie Mongoloid returns to 12 Galaxies in San Francisco this Friday, October 28th for “Cookie Mongoloid Halloween”. Hatebreeders and Foreign Telegram open the show, which starts at 9pm.

Cookie Mongoloid is Sesame Speed Metal. See the Cookie Mongoloid in all his blue, furry, googly-eyed glory backed by the baddest of gender mixed metal bands as they decimate and regurgitate your childhood favorites in an abrasive metal wrath. See their harem of gothic gyrators, the Cookies, demonstrate such elemental concepts as up and down in a blaze of lights, smoke and pyrotechnic cookie shrapnel.

- photo of Cookie Mongoloid at SomArts by Scott Beale

>play: The Berkeley Digital Media Conference, which takes place on Saturday, November 5th, is reaching out to the Laughing Squid community with a few free tickets to their event (the admission is normally $125.00). Here’s more info:

>play: The Berkeley Digital Media Conference Welcomes Laughing Squid

A venture capitalist will ponder the future of digital media with a mash-up DJ. Chris Anderson from Wired will moderate a panel of leading longtail practitioners. Top product and interactive designers will address the issue of how the discipline of design contributes to competitive advantage – to name just a few of the highlights at the inaugural >play Digital Media Conference at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley on November 5.

The speaker and panelist lineup includes Marissa Mayer, director of consumer products at Google; Brett Lovelady, president of Astro Studios (designers of the Xbox 360); Philip Rosedale, Founder & CEO of Linden Labs; Jason Calacanis, Founder of Weblogs, Inc.; Lane Becker, Cofounder of Adaptive Path; and Om Malik, Blogger and Senior Writer, Business 2.0 Magazine. The new panelists join keynote speakers Cammie Dunaway, CMO at Yahoo!, Shantanu Narayen, MBA 93, president of Adobe, and Neil Young, GM of Electronic Arts’ Los Angeles studio.

>play will also host an expo of digital media technologies and an interactive gaming center, as well as an after-party displaying digital media artwork at Fluid in San Francisco.

A limited number of tickets are still available for the conference, and the organizers of the event would like to reach out to the Laughing Squid community by offering free tickets to the first 10 people who respond expressing interest in attending. Tickets are normally $125 (a few regular priced tickets are also still available). This is event is now sold out.

For tickets and more information, visit playconference.org.

UPDATE: My photos are now online.

So for those of you who are interested in tagging (the keyword Folksonomy version, not the kind done with spray paint) and need more than just a few hours at Tag Tuesday, then this weekend’s TagCamp may be just what you have been looking for. TagCamp takes place at CommerceNet in Palo Alto starting this Friday, October 28th and continuing overnight through Saturday, October 29th, with an after party at The Old Pro. Here’s who’s organizing, attending and speaking at TagCamp and Laughing Squid is proud to be one of the sponsors that are helping to make this event possible. More information can be found on the TagCamp wiki and blog posts and photos about tag camp will show up on Technorati’s “tagcamp” page.

Tag Camp is an open, welcoming event for geeks to camp out overnight, get wired on Halloween candy and think really fast about tagging, its applications, and implications.

UPDATE: Here are my photos from Friday and Saturday.

- Tag Camp logo by Chris Messina

Attaboy and Annie Owens of Hi Fructose Magazine were recently guests on G4’s series “Attack of the Show”. Here’s the video segment.

Recovery 2.0 and Identity 2.0 are a couple of interesting open source concepts that have emerged recently.

Recovery 2.0 is Jeff Jarvis’ project to leverage web technology to help better prepare for the next disaster. He outlines his proposal on his post “Recovery 2.0: A call to convene”. If you want to help with this important project, check out the Recovery 2.0 wiki.

Our goal is to be ready for the next disaster so people can better use the internet — via any device — to better:

1. share information,
2. report and act on calls for help,
3. coordinate relief,
4. connect the missing,
5. provide connections for such necessities as housing and jobs,
6. match charitable assets to needs,
7. get people connected to these projects - and the world - sooner.

Identity 2.0 is Sxip CEO Dick Hardt’s suggestions for improving and simplifying the online identity verification process. Check out this video of Dick’s excellent keynote address on Identity 2.0 from OSCON 2005.

As the online world moves towards Web 2.0, the concept of digital identity is evolving, and existing identity systems are falling behind. New systems are emerging that place identity in the hands of users instead of directories. Simple, secure and open, these systems will provide the scalable, user-centric mechanism for authenticating and managing real-world identities online, enabling truly distinct and portable Internet identities.

- photo of Jeff Jarvis talking about Recovery 2.0 at Web 2.1 by Scott Beale

The Life Size Mouse Trap is back in action, this time for a run of three Halloween Shows on October 28th, 29th and 30th. The shows will take place at 1634 Jerrold Street @ 3rd Street in San Francisco at 9pm and 11pm each night. Admission is $10.

Don’t miss the MOUSETRAP’S finale and witness what a falling 2-ton bank safe does to a 1,000lb COLOSSAL SIZE PUMPKIN! Puke your guts out while taking a ride on one of CYCLECIDES AMAZEING PEDAL POWERED CARNIVAL RIDES! And of course be sure to cruise the HAUNTED MIDWAY and visit the place where the reverend DAVID APPOCOLYPSE & HIS ODDITY MUSEUM explains the unexplained!!

- photo from last year’s Life Size Mouse Trap Preview Party by Scott Beale

UPDATE: Here are my photos from the Saturday show.

Check out Liz Hickok’s fantastic photos of San Francisco in Jell-O

Thanks for the tip Rick!