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“Sweet Frown”, the latest music video by My First Earthquake from their first full length album “Downstairs”, features a rockin’ reenactment of Marie Antoinette and her court. The video was made by Jesus Beltran and Zumpango Films.
My First Earthquake will be playing at the Earthquake 20th Anniversary Party this Saturday, October 17th at Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco, along with The Chop and Goodbye Nautilus.
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Electronic Frontier Foundation presents The 18th Annual Pioneer Awards on Thursday, October 22nd during the Web 2.0 Summit at The Westin San Francisco. An annual fundraiser for EFF, this year’s ceremony honors Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Harri Hursti and Carl Malamud, along with a keynote by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
Awarded every year since 1992, the Pioneer Awards recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier.
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Plug1 of the San Francisco photo blog WHAT IM SEEING has just outed himself as Troy Holden and has joined forces with Brad Evans, Stuart Dixon and Julie Michelle to launch the new group photo blog Caliber. Congratulations guys, it looks great!
Our subject matter will focus on The City and its surrounding cities, with the occasional trek across state and international borders.
I should also mention that we are honored to be hosting Caliber on our cloud service.
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photos by Scott Beale
Last week I stopped by the headquarters Alamofire, who have a beautiful office in downtown Austin. They are the awesome folks who make the location-based social network Gowalla (see my previous post) and the Facebook game PackRat.
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Laughing Squid is headed to Dallas next week and while there we are having a two part Drinkup on Friday, October 23rd. We’ll be starting out at CoHabitat, an awesome CoWorking space in Uptown Dallas, from 5-7pm, followed by a drinks up the street at The Ginger Man from 7pm on. See the Facebook event listing for more info.
Special thanks to Blake Burris helping set this up and offering to host us at CoHabitat.
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The 8th annual San Francisco Documentary Festival takes place October 16-29 at the Roxie Cinema. Here’s this year’s schedule, features, shorts and ticket info.
Proving that truth is often stranger than fiction, the 8th SF DocFest presents 60 new documentaries from around the world October 16-29 at Roxie Cinema in San Franicsco. The festival visits rabbit competitions, cat ladies, war photography, obsessive artists, paper folding, crazy West Virginians, the early days of Burning Man, plastic surgery, Lucha Libre, Johnny Cash, personal stories of birth and family, rock poster art, Big Oil, indie record stores and much much more.
The Roller Disco Costume Party takes place at CELLspace on October 23rd.
What does Roller Disco have to do with documentaries? Absolutely nothing! But who doesn’t like dressing up, drinking cocktails, and skating around CellSpace to timeless disco tunes? Dig out your Halloween Costume early and join us Friday October 23, 8p-2a, at CellSpace. Tunes and skate rental courtesy of Black Rock Roller Disco. 21 up. Admission: $10, $5 in Costume, FREE with any DocFest ticket stub! IndieFest not responsible for alcohol influenced roller skating wipe outs!
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Nathaniel Kassel rides his bike around New York City giving high fives to people who are hailing cabs. The people’s reactions are priceless.
via The Presurfer
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In order to prove The Fun Theory, Volkswagen wanted to see if they could get people to use the stairs instead an escalator at the Odenplan subway station in Stockholm, Sweden, by turning the stairs into a giant piano. 66% more commuters than normal ended up choosing the stairs over the escalator.
We believe that the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better is by making it fun to do. We call it The fun theory.
As part of this series, Volkswagen also created The World’s Deepest Trash Can.
via TreeHugger
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photos by Scott Beale
A couple of weeks ago I stopped by the one year anniversary and open house for Noisebridge, a marvelous hackerspace in San Francisco that recently moved into a huge new space on Mission Street in San Francisco.
Noisebridge is a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and of course, learning. Noisebridge is also more than a physical space, it’s a community with roots extending around the world.
Photo Gallery: Noisebridge
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photos by Scott Beale
On my recent trip to Los Angeles I finally had a chance to visit Intelligentsia Venice Coffeebar, a beautiful new Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea location. The place is a temple of coffee worship with every detail carefully thought out, from the design and seating, to the personalized attention each customer receives from the baristas.
Intelligentsia’s newest Los Angeles coffeebar is another re-imagining of what a coffee experience can be. Located in Venice on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, guests are not met with the standard experience of waiting in line. After passing through the iron gates facing the bustling boulevard, visitors walk down an ivy-covered hall open to the sky where they are greeted at a butcher block “concierge desk.” From this point, they are taken to one of four custom-fabricated espresso machines where their espresso drink or coffee-by-the-cup is prepared. The idea is for a barista to stay with one person throughout the interaction to create an individualized experience for every customer, regardless of how many are being served.
In the back of the cafe they have restored 1972 La Marzocco from the original Starbucks that they fire up on special occasions.
Photo Gallery: Intelligentsia Venice Coffeebar
Special thanks to fellow coffee fanatic Sean Bonner for turning me on to Intelligentsia Venice, which became part of my daily ritual while I visting LA.
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guest post by mikl-em
Please note, several real sneezes were filmed during the making of this video!
Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage (@donttrythis), the guys from Mythbusters, shot the above public service announcement as part of a larger campaign to inform about H1N1 flu virus (of which swine flu is a subset) which stars in the current flu pandemic that is sweeping the globe.
The Discovery Channel campaign includes a Mythbusters website that explains five myths about the virus.
Adam tweeted that it was directed by our good friend Carl, who made that Trader Joes film. There are 2 versions of his fake TJ commercial actually; go ahead and watch the long one cuz it’s great!
You can see those videos and more on Carl’s website or his YouTube channel. He also directed the MB guys in the Intel commercial below.
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Dom Sagolla, who was one of the original members of the team that built Twitter, has a new book out, 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form. The book focuses on helping people get the most of out writing messages for Twitter, Facebook and other social media that involves short form communication.
The advent of Twitter and other social networking sites, as well as the popularity of text messaging, have made short-form communication an everyday reality. But expressing yourself clearly in short bursts-particularly in the 140-character limit of Twitter-takes special writing skill.
In 140 Characters, Twitter co-creator Dom Sagolla covers all the basics of great short-form writing, including the importance of communicating with simplicity, honesty, and humor. For marketers and business owners, social media is an increasingly important avenue for promoting a business-this is the first writing guide specifically dedicated to communicating with the succinctness and clarity that the Internet age demands.
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Sean Bonner has decided to take on the challenge of creating a Hackerspace in Los Angeles which he is calling Crash Space. He’s setup a mailing list, as well as a wiki and is looking others interested in working on the project.
Check out Hackerspaces for more info about Hackerspaces around the world. Who knows, maybe you’ll be inspired to set one up in your city as well.
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photos by Scott Beale
While hanging out at Mission: Comics & Art during 24 Hour Comic Book Day, I couldn’t help but notice that I was surrounded by several fantastic zombified versions of Marvel comics superheros drawn by Matt DeLight, including Captain America, Iron Man and Thor.
Here are non-zombie versions of Green Lantern and The Thing also drawn by Matt.
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At the MBP Urban Arts Fest in Brooklyn, Shepard Fairey released a really cool Obey Sticker Kit print to help raise funds for the sticker themed PEEL Magazine.
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Sarah Silverman has a plan to end world hunger, Sell The Vatican, Feed The World.
via Bill Maher
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photos by Scott Beale
Here are a few photos from 24 Hour Comic Book Day which took place at the wonderful new San Francisco comic book store Mission: Comics & Art.
Photo Gallery: 24 Hour Comic Book Day
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Wow, I’m not sure how this is even legal, but I just received a demanding letter from a fraudulent organization calling itself “Business Filings Division” that is attempting to scam Laughing Squid into paying them $239.00. The letter they sent (front & back) is very similar to the annual “Statement of Information” form that the California Secretary of State requires of Limited Liability Companies in California.
The letter threatens us that if we do not pay their $239.00 fee that our LLC will be suspended and that we will lose the right to conduct business.
The California Secretary of State has issued a customer alert regarding the fraudulent Business Filings Divsion scam along with information on how to report these letters.
Here are more reports of the Business Filings Division scam from The Consumerist, Frye / Wiles, TaxLoopholes and MyWifeQuitHerJob.com.
UPDATE 1: Ha, check it out, Business Filings Division is on Yelp. Too bad that you can give negative star ratings.
UPDATE 2: California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. is suing serveral organizations that are operating scams targeting small business owners, including Business Filings Division, which is run by George Alan Miller, Rebecca Miller, Arghisti Keshishyan and Kristina Keshishyan.
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Last week Adobe released a free Photoshop.com iPhone App, that allows you to manipulate photos shot with an iPhone and share them on Photoshop.com.
Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone provides a fun, seamless experience to view photos with full-screen previews and edit images with gesture-based editing. Consumers can transform their photos with essential edits like crop, rotate and flip. Users can correct and play with color by adjusting the saturation and tint, enhancing the exposure and vibrancy and converting images to black and white.
Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone also offers eye-catching special effects. The Sketch tool helps photos look like drawings, and Soft Focus can give photos a subtle blur for artistic effect. With just one click, users can also apply dramatic changes to the look and feel of their photos with effects such as Warm Vintage, Vignette and Pop. Edits or changes can be undone or redone so users can experiment without the worry of losing the original photo.
Here’s more on the app from Josh Lowensohn (CNET’s Web Crawler) and Thomas Hawk. The Photoshop.com iPhone App can be downloaded from the iTunes store.
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