BidnessWeek recently conducted an interview with the letter “e” that has been mysteriously disappearing from the names of Web 2.0 companies: “Web 2.0 and The Letter “e”: The Interview”

In an exclusive e-mail exchange with our editors, the reclusive vowel talks about what he’s been doing since the year 2000, his investment strategy, and his thoughts on whether we’ve entered a new technology bubble. He joins us from his yacht just outside of Antibes on the French Riviera (recently purchased from legendary venture capitalist Tom Perkins).

via » Thomas Hawk

Factsheet 5, the legendary magazine that tracked and catalogued the world of zines in the 80’s & 90’s, is returning after an 8 year hiatus. According to their new website they will start publishing the magazine again this summer. In addition to covering independent print, audio and video, the new version of Factsheet 5 will now include online media such as websites and blogs.

Factsheet 5 has been keeping the world up to date on the zine and independent publishing community since the 1980s. Started back in a small town in New York State during the 1980s, it moved to San Francisco in the 1990s and established itself as the definitive guide to the zine revolution. Factsheet 5 halted publication in 1998 and a great resource for independent publishing was gone. However, Factsheet 5 plans to begin publishing again in 2006.

Factsheet 5 editor R. Seth Friedman was one of the people I helped get to come speak at Webzine ‘99. In 2005 he came out with Factsheet Five Zine Reader, which was the last we heard from Factsheet 5, until now.

For more on the history of Factsheet 5, see their Wikipedia entry.

Our friends and co-conspirators over at monochrom are planning a Pornography and Technological Innovation Conference and Exhibition to take place some time in 2007 or 2008, possibly on the West Cost of the US. The current working title for this international conference is Arse Elektronika and they have just put out a Call for Everything. They are looking for speakers, designers, artists, funding, a location, etc.

According to a study by Simon Smith, more than 800 items were registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office as sex toys between 1840 and 1997. Among them was a condom with a built-in computer chip that can play music. Progress?

From the depiction of a vulva in a cave painting to the newest internet porno, technology and sexuality have always been closely linked. No one can predict what the future will bring, but history indicates that sex will continue to play an essential role in technological development.

“Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence”
The Onion, July 26, 2006

via » Brian Oberkirch via » David Parmet

Jazz rock band Steely Dan is pissed off at actor Owen Wilson, claiming that his new film “You, Me and Dupree” is a rip-off of their song “Cousin Dupree”. They posted a hilarious letter on their website, addressing it to his brother Luke Wilson, suggesting that Owen apologize to their fans on stage at a Steely Dan concert. Owen had an equally hilarious response. Follow all the action on Wikipedia.

via » Waxy

Josh Quittner, editor of Business 2.0, hosted a cocktail party tonight for Om Malik at Hotel Vitale in San Francisco. Om recently left his position as senior writer for Business 2.0 to work full-time on GigaOm, his extremely popular technology blog. Business 2.0 hasn’t completely lost Om, who will be writting a monthly column for them starting with the September issue.

Photos from the Business 2.0 Cocktail Party for Om Malik

Congratulations and best of luck to my good friend Om. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of the future GigaOm empire.

Kitlers are cats that look like Hitler.

Most cats possess that typically feline facial expression that implies a secret longing for world domination. All cats want to rule the world, that’s part of the nature of the species, but to be a genuine Kitler there has to be some other similarity with the notorious German dictator. We’re looking for that tiny, unfashionable moustache. Or does it even have the flock-of-seagulls hairdo? An evil glint in its eye?

via » Dave Winer via » Rocketboom

Today at OSCON 2006 in Portland, Google announced free hosting for open source projects as part of their Google Code site. This looks like one more great way to encourage and advance open source development. Andy Baio makes a good point about it being “some badly needed competition for Sourceforge” and he mentions Upcoming Python API, an example project created by Simon Willison.

Here’s more info on this new service from Niall Kennedy, who is currently at OSCON.

Here are a few photos from last night’s dorkbot-sf at BOCA. It was pretty dark, so I wasn’t able to shoot all the presenters, but it was another great dorkbot and really good preview of the upcoming ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA2006 Symposium.

Photos from July dorkbot-sf

Dabble had its public launch earlier this week. Founded by my friend Mary Hodder, Dabble is resource for collecting, organizing and searching online video and other media. There are a ton of web-based video services these days and Dabble looks like it will be a really good way to keep track of it all.

Dabble collects video data from 240 + hosting sites that accept video uploads from people, plus tens of thousands of independent sites. Dabble also collects other sorts of media like audio for searching and organizing. And Dabblers bookmark media they find around the web. Dabble does not host media, but instead, makes media from anywhere on the web searchable, collectable through our bookmarking tool, part of a community, able to be tagged and commented upon, made into playlists and played. Dabble is an organizing tool to help people discover the value of media.

UPDATE: I just found out (via Ted Rheingold), that my good friend Ryan Junell, along with Brian Christian, recently released episode zero of their new video blog “The Vlogger”, a orginal series featured on Dabble.

Last month my friend Steve Mobia shot this great photo of the SFPD guarding Monicacos de Esperanza, a series of sculptures created by Pepe Ozan that was originally planned for a Burning Man 2006. It was installed at India Basin Shoreline Park in San Francisco by the Black Rock Arts Foundation in conjunction with the launch of the Blue Greenway Art Trail, a 13 mile corridor that runs along the San Francisco Bay shore between China Basin and the southern border of the city.

“I know you are but what am I?” Well on Saturday, July 29th, you might just be Paul Reubens/Pee-wee Herman if you take part in Paul Reubens’ Day IV in San Francisco. There will be a PRD crawl during the day and an after party/fundraiser event in the evening at The Dark Room.

Come celebrate four years of Pee-wee Herman loving, bow tie wearing, spooge-mongering, adult-themed Saturday kid’s show watching, secret word screaming mayhem

Speaking of Pee-wee Herman, the original Pee-wee’s Playhouse is now back on the air on Adult Swim.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your chugging! The 4th Annual San Francisco Beer Olympics takes place this Saturday, July 29th at Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park. This event is a fundraiser for the Black Rock Roller Disco camp at Burning Man 2006.

How did sports like synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics and badminton get to be “Olympic”? Since baseball and women’s softball have been eliminated from the Olympic program, it’s time to include some new, innovative sports. On Saturday, July 29, there will be a new entry making it’s mark on the Olympic scene.

Can you arm wrestle while chugging a beer? How about tossing a keg while chugging a beer? Can you chug a beer while running in a three legged race? If this sounds like the kind of competition for you, come on out to Speedway Meadow in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park where real beer chugging athletes will push their bodies and bellies to the limit in the 4th annual San Francisco Beer Olympics.

The Firestone Walker Brewery will present the “San Francisco Beer Olympics”. The festivities starts at 12 noon. The events are Keg Tossing, Arm Wrestling and the 3 Legged Race. The event is open to anyone both male and female.

July’s dorkbot-sf takes place this Wednesday, July 26th at B.O.C.A. (Bar of Contemporary Art) in San Franciso. I’ll be bringing my EV-DO router along if anyone wants to check it out.

From the dorkbot-sf annoucement list:

This one is a special one as a pre-ISEA/Zero One San Jose preview night. ISEA is being held in san jose this year it is the 13th International Symposium of Electronic Art along with ZeroOne Global Festival of Art on the Edge which a lot of dorkbot friends both local and abroad are involved in! And as you all know by now probably is that one of the ISEA events Aug 11th is going to be the biggest, SRL show we’ve had in the Bay Area in decades so check the event out:
http://01sj.org

but back to dorkbot here are the details:

time: Jul 26 7:30pm
place: B.O.C.A. (Bar of Contemporary Art run by our friends at rxGallery)
414 Jessie st (off 5th near Mission)

FREE ADMISSION as usual but please give what you can at the door to help our generous hosts offset the expense of hosting us!

cash bar so 21+ with ID

and check out our awesome lineup of presenters:

Joel Slayton - C5 Quest of Success and Zero One San Jose

Oron Catts - From Semi-Living to the Biological Art Lab

Eric Paulos - Interactive City

and open dork featuring:

Scott Beale and his EVDO router

Jake Appelbaum with more travel tales and 23C3 (23rd Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin)

and

YOU (just contact dorkbot if you want to give a 10 min presentation or show something)

BYO-Gadget to show off

UPDATE: Here are my photos from the July dorkbot-sf.

Holy fast connections! Check out OpenDNS, a free client side DNS caching service that does not require any kind of external software. Not only does OpenDNS speed up your internet connection, it has anti-phishing and domain name typo correction features, both of which are opt-out by ip address. With the typo correction, if a vaild website cannot be found, then you are sent to a search page. This is how OpenDNS will pay for it’s services, which are free to the end user. You can configure OpenDNS at the network or router level or by individual machine. Here’s how it works.

In the past I have had problems with Comcast’s name servers not resolving properly. When that happens I would go to various broadband forums and look for alternatives. Well that problem just went away.

OpenDNS was founded by my friend David Ulevitch, who has been telling me about this project ever since I met him last year at an early SuperHappyDevHouse event. David’s previous project is the highly successful EveryDNS, a free DNS hosting service. So, David knows his DNS and I can trust him to do the right thing with OpenDNS.

So, I had no idea how great OpenDNS would be until I actually had a chance to try it out today. David told me that they just launched when I saw him at last week’s Stirr event, but then I got sidetracked. Today Matt posted about it which reminded me to check it out. You should do the same when you get a chance.

UPDATE: Oh hey, if anyone tries out OpenDNS, let me know in the comments if you see a difference in your lookup speeds. Also, mention what ISP you are using and what city you are in, if you don’t mind. So far most people I’ve talked to are reporting an noticeable increase.