Shouting Fire is an innovative new online radio station that began as an experiment evolving out of Burning Man Information Radio. The station officially launched today, Leap Day and is now broadcasting a live stream 24/7 featuring an eclectic mix of programming.

Friday, February 29th 2008 marks the ignition of Shouting Fire, an online radio station that will bring a mix of alternative art, culture, and thought to the internet airwaves. Spawned by the hard-working radio staff of Burning Man’s BMIR 94.5 FM, Shouting Fire aims to bring the energy and ethos of Black Rock City out of the desert and into the world at large.

Never been to Burning Man? Looking for more than just Black Rock City noise? Not a problem. Although the station will have its share of content relating to Burning Man, the programming will not be “playa-centric.” Because Shouting Fire is not just for “burners”; it’s for everyone with an open mind and open ears. Interviews, news, and audio art. Performance, politics, and perspective. And, of course, lots of eclectic music from DJs who don’t just play music–but who have a passion for explaining, exploring, and celebrating it.

On February 29th Shouting Fire begins its regular programming, with weekly shows from DJs and on-air personalities including TradeMark G. (Evolution Control Committee), Patti Schmidt (Brave New Waves), Reverend Billy, the Viking Youth, Dr. Booty, J. Kanizzle, Douglas Wolk, Eric Myers, Bobzilla, and more. We’ll be rolling out a couple hours of fresh programming each day, but you can listen to Shouting Fire 24 hrs. a day, all year long. To see the full schedule and listen to Shouting Fire, visit the website: www.ShoutingFire.com.

New programming will be added to the lineup as it evolves–and as our extended community (AKA YOU!!!) comes forward with the content. So if you know of something we should know about, or if you want to do a program yourself, email us and let us know what you’re thinking.

We hope you’ll like what you hear. And let us know what what’s on your mind: show ideas and comments (both positive and negative) are welcomed at shoutingfire@shoutingfire.com

Shouting Fire: we build the platform, but we all build the content…

“Food Fight” is a fantastic stop motion animated short film by Stefan Nadelman (Tourist Pictures) that depicts the history of modern warfare in the form of food.

Food Fight is an abridged history of war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict. Watch as traditional comestibles slug it out for world domination in this chronologically re-enacted smorgasbord of aggression.

Here’s a cheat sheet showing what the various food in the film represents.

via Drawn! & Boing Boing TV

Uptime monitoring service Pingdom has posted a great gallery of Geek Graffiti over on their Royal Pingdom blog.

photo by Filippo Minelli

Ask Dr. Hal returns to 12 Galaxies on Monday nights for 9 week run in March and April beginning this Monday, March 3rd. Hal Robins will once again be joined by Chicken John, Krob, David Capurro, Pete Goldie and this time around special guest Frank Chu, who will open each show with his own special benediction.

photo by Scott Beale

OpenRoad.TV has posted their interview with me on their show “Life Outside the Box”. I met host Doug McConnell, who also hosts Bay Area Backroads, Carl Bidleman and Jim Wirth in the tech epicenter South Park, an area previously know as “Multimedia Gulch” that is located in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood where I live. We also met with Joel Martin, co-owner of The Butler & the Chef Bistro, a wonderful cafe located in South Park. Here’s Part One of the interview.

In Part Two of the interview I show the guys what Twitter is all about. I even conducted a little experiment by posting to Twitter to see if anyone wanted to come by and talk about South Park on camera. Not long after Thor Muller and Eddie Codel appeared and were interviewed for the show.

Here are a few photos I shot as we walked around South Park doing the interview.

See Previously: OpenRoad.TV Interviews Om Malik on Life Outside the Box

photos by Scott Beale

The new “Cake” animated music video by Joel Veitch (Rather Good) is guaranteed to brighten up your day. Bonus points for “squid” reference.

Joel is the same guy behind the infamous “We Like The Moon” music video.

via Cal Henderson

The Billboard Liberation Front has just released a brilliant new advertising improvement campaign celebrating the innovative collaboration between AT&T and the NSA. This billboard improvement can be seen at 14th St. and Valencia St. in San Francisco. For more info see the BLF press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 27, 2008
San Francisco, CA
http://billboardliberation.com/HQ.html

The Billboard Liberation Front today announced a major new advertising improvement campaign executed on behalf of clients AT&T and the National Security Agency. Focusing on billboards in the San Francisco area, this improvement action is designed to promote and celebrate the innovative collaboration of these two global communications giants.

“This campaign is an extraordinary rendition of a public-private partnership,” observed BLF spokesperson Blank DeCoverly. “These two titans of telecom have a long and intimate relationship, dating back to the age of the telegraph. In these dark days of Terrorism, that should be a comfort to every law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide.”

AT&T initially downplayed its heroic efforts in the War on Terror, preferring to serve in silence behind the scenes. “But then we realized we had a PR win on our hands,” noted AT&T V.P. of Homeland Security James Croppy. “Not only were we helping NSA cut through the cumbersome red tape of the FISA system, we were also helping our customers by handing over their e-mails and phone records to the government. Modern life is so hectic – who has time to cc the feds on every message? It’s a great example of how we anticipate our customers’ needs and act on them. And, it should be pointed out, we offered this service free of charge.”

Commenting on the action, and responding to questions about pending privacy litigation and the stalled Congressional effort to shield the telecoms from these lawsuits, NSA spokesperson [REDACTED] remarked: “[REDACTED] we [REDACTED] condone [REDACTED] warrantless [REDACTED], [REDACTED] SIGINT intercepts, [REDACTED] torture [REDACTED] information retrieval by [REDACTED] means necessary.”

“It’s a win-win-win situation,” noted the BLF’s DeCoverly. “NSA gets the data it needs to keep America safe, telecom customers get free services, and AT&T makes a fortune. That kind of cooperation between the public and private sectors should serve as a model to all of us, and a harbinger of things to come.”

The BLF (www.billboardliberation.com) has been improving outdoor advertising since 1977. Prior campaigns have included work for Exxon, R.J. Reynolds, and Apple Computers.

AT&T (www.att.com) is America’s favorite telecommunications trust. Based in San Antonio, Texas, it has over 300,000 employees and annual revenues of $117 Billion.

NSA (www.nsa.gov) is the largest intelligence organization in the world. Headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, its budget, personnel, products, and services are all classified.

Here’s the before photo of the AT&T billboard…

…and here’s the photo of the AT&T billboard after the improvement.

Here’s a video of the billboard being altered.

photos by Jacob Appelbaum, Milton Rand Kalman & Mademoiselle Rouxben

The Big Word Project is a clever experiment in viral marketing featuring a website that sells English dictionary words for $1 per letter. When you purchase a word it is then associated with the website of your choice. Guess which two I bought.

The Big Word Project has been set up by Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, two Masters students from Northern Ireland, who are exploring what different words mean to different people. The project allows you to purchase a word from our list to represent your site. Your site will then represent this word in our list and when people click on it, they will be taken to your site. The project is aimed at changing definitions and creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.

via Daring Fireball

The Pirates vs The Klowns is a special leap day party taking place this Friday, February 29th at 1015 Folsom in San Francisco, featuring The Mutaytor, Uberzone vs. The Bassbin Twins, Bootie, Kromestar, Cirque Berzerk and The Fringe.

On February 29, a diverse range of musical and visual artists band together for a party so crazy that it could only happen every four years; “Pirates vs Klowns” – the Leap Day Leap. Featuring a costumed crowd enjoying 6 hours of live music, performance art, circus and cabaret performance, and even some huge DJ sets. The centerpiece of this feast for the senses will be the first SF appearance of 2008 by the indescribable 43-piece music/performance-art/dance ensemble, The Mutaytor. Other highlights include a debut duo set by breakbeat stars Uberzone & Bassbin Twins and a visit from UK dubstep wiz Kromestar. Adrian & the Mysterious D. and Big Dolla will host the “Bootie Pirate Mashup Room” in the front, while Antennae, Ripple & Boggle host “Full Melt” dubstep and acid crunk upstairs. Motion Potion, Victor Vega, Absurge, and Rocket of the Fringe hold down the eclectic funk, breaks, electro and live art downstairs. LA’s legendary Cirque Berzerk will be on-hand to show off their high-flying aerials in the main room.

FriendFeed is a new social network that aggregates and shares your feeds from various web services. You just add the accounts you use and then your posts to those services are automatically added to FriendFeed and shared with your friends, who then can can then comment on various items that are posted.

FriendFeed was created by a team of ex-Google employees and recently launched out of private beta, now open to everyone. Here’s my account on FriendFeed.

The goal of FriendFeed is to make content on the Web more relevant and useful for you by using your existing social network as a tool for discovering interesting information. You get a customized feed made up of the content that your friends shared — from news articles to family photos to interesting links and videos. And your friends get their customized feeds, full of the cool stuff that you’ve shared.

Check out Eric Eldon’s excellent VentureBeat write-up on the FriendFeed launch.

FriendFeed also includes some interesting usage statistics, for example here’s a pie charge showing top sites where I post.

UPDATE: Per Ted’s recommendation, I’m checking out iminta as well. Here’s my account on iminta. For more on iminta, check out the recent write-up on Mashable.

SXSW Interactive 2008 starts next week (March 7-11) and the majority of the geek world that I know will be there. SXSW Interactive runs concurrent with SXSW Film and is followed by SXSW Music. This will be the fourth year I’ve attended the conference. Here are my write-ups and photos from 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Here are some SXSW 2008 resources and information:

- SXSW Interactive 2008 - the official website

- SXSW Tools - web resources for SXSW attendees

- SXSW '08 Insider's Guide - tips and advice from fellow SXSW attendees

- SXSW Baby! - the unofficial SXSW blog

- SXSW Videos - the latest videos from SXSW

- SXSW Tweeps - a wiki resource for Twitter users at SXSW

- SXSW 2008 on BitTorrent - 3.5 GB of free SXSW music

- SCHED: SXSW 2008 Scheduler - a great way to schedule your SXSW experience

Oh and then there are all the parties and events:

- Evening Events at SXSW Interactive - official SXSW Interactive events

- SXSW Events & Parties - all events tagged “sxsw” on Upcoming

- 16bit SXSW Interactive 2008 Party - Laughing Squid is a co-sponsor

- BarCamp Austin III - the unconference companion to SXSW

- Kick! 2008 - SXSW Interactive’s unofficial, informal kickball kickoff

- dorkbot-austin at SXSW - a convergence of art of technology

- Plutopia! Gathering of the Tribes - the annual EFF-Austin event

- The Heather Gold Show: Opting Out - Laughing Squid is a co-sponsor

- Fray Day 8 - the annual personal storytelling event

- The People Powered Party - Moo Cards, Etsy, Timbuk2 and Threadless

- The Bigg Digg Shindigg - Digg’s big closing night party

Twitter really had a big impact last year at SXSW and this year it will play an even larger role. I’ll be posting stuff to my Twitter account throughout the week.

photos by Scott Beale

Garfield Minus Garfield shows what the Garfield comic strip looks like when Garfield the cat is removed, leaving just Jon Arbuckle. The results are often quite bizarre.

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

via Tom Coates

origina Garfield comic by Jim Davis

Next week I head off to San Diego for ETech 2008, O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference, for my third year in a row. Here are some photos I shot at ETech 2007.

Program chair Brady Forrest has put together a full schedule featuring a great line-up of speakers, as well as several evening events, including a special Ignite ETech, EFF 17th Annual Pioneer Awards and the first ever Emerging Arts Fest.

ETech overlaps with Graphing Social Patterns West 2008, organized by Dave McClure and produced by O’Reilly. Both events take place at the San Diego Marriott.

After ETech I’m going straight to SXSW Interactive in Austin for more geeking out.

UPDATE: If you are going, but having registered yet, GigaOm is offering a 20% discount on ETech.

photo by Scott Beale

Digg is having their first in a series of live Digg Town Hall events tonight, Monday, February 25th at 6pm PST/9pm EST. Tune into the live stream from the Digg world HQ hosted by Digg CEO Jay Adelson and Digg founder Kevin Rose.

Just just in: “Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early”