Alongside the headlines of the horrific devastation of the Haitian earthquake are the headlines about how “digital fundraising” is providing a rapid flow of dollars, showing the importance of technology in providing new avenues for relief efforts.

For anyone who is technologically-minded, and even those who are not, if you want to lend your hand to a good cause, you should check out CrisisCamp Haiti in LA tomorrow at USC. CrisisCamps are hosted in a barcamp style where great minds come together to share their knowledge and expertise for social good.

This Saturday, the USC Annenberg School will be hosting CrisisCampHaiti Los Angeles to bring together volunteers to collaborate on technology projects which aim to assist in Haiti’s relief efforts by providing data, information, maps and technical assistance to NGOs, relief agencies and the public. Chad Catacchio will be leading up a team.

Project Proposals for CrisisCamp Haiti
1. Base layer map for Port Au Prince: This project would create a new collection of imagery and a new base map for NGOs and relief agencies. Post available imagery to share with the public for open source applications.
2. Family locator systems: Uniting efforts of interested technologists, developers and communications experts to provide technical assistance.
3. Tech Volunteer Skill Matrix/Volunteers: Create a role of volunteer as well as
4. Managing News Aggregator: Provide content channel management to coordinate data feeds
5. Defining the Collective: Create what we are and why we are doing this. Coordinate and post historical timeline/archive for the CrisisCamp efforts.

This will also been happening in London, Washington D.C., Denver, and Northern California.

h/t: Browyn on the BarCampLA list

Pantages Hollywood just made it easier for you to make good on your resolution to see more local theatre, with the release of their own iPhone app.  (Click here to open the Pantages app page on iTunes.)

You can buy tickets by phone, get presale offers, discounts, YouTube channel updates, and check out nearby restaurants. And it’s free. Like an app should be.

Go see a show, Freckles.

If Metro gets its way, you may soon be playing @foursquare deep in the bowels of the L.A. subway.

The Source is reporting that the agency is moving forward on the development of a request for proposal that will be sent out to private firms to outline the agency’s requirements.

I cannot wait until the day when I can tweet about meth-induced stupidity on the Red Line.

ESPN’s new online hub for local sports, ESPNLosAngeles.com, officially launched today, providing a new source for LA Sports news, as well as a new home for several LA Sports writers, including the LA Times’ (former) Lakers bloggers.

Meant as a hub for local online sports coverage one could set as their homepage, the site features SoCal-specific “SportsCenter” segments, local breaking news, and direct links to pages for all the major pro teams, including the Galaxy, Chivas USA, the LA Sparks, as well as the Angels and Ducks. There’s also a “Headlines” tab you can click to view nationwide sports headlines, in case you care about what happens outside of our little bubble. ESPN launched similar local sites for Dallas, Boston and Chicago earlier this year, and the sports network opened a new broadcast studio (along with an ESPN Zone sports bar) Downtown at LA Live this past spring.

But the best part of the site is the local team blogs and columnists, providing quick-access to news and columns about your favorite teams that is also easy to subscribe to by e-mail or RSS feed to keep up on everything. The other ESPN city sites have Twitter accounts you can follow as well, but as of this writing, @ESPNLosAngeles exists but hasn’t tweeted a thing. The @ESPNLosAngeles Twitter account is also up and running, providing links to stories on the site. So far there’s a USC blog (but no UCLA blog yet), a Clippers blog (sort of – it links to the outside ClipperBlog.com, part of an ESPN affiliate network), and of course, that Lakers Blog, which is basically a direct transplant from the LA Times’ Lakers Blog. Brian and Andy Kamenetzky, who just yesterday afternoon announced their departure from LATimes.com, pick up at ESPN right where they left off, except now the blog is called “Land O’ Lakers”. The Lakers Blog was regularly one of the most-visited on the site, sometimes getting over a million page views per month. No announcement has been made yet as to who or what will replace the brothers at LATimes.com. It seems that, at least for now, a few different staff writers are taking turns contributing posts to the Lakers Blog to keep it going.

Read the rest of this entry →

Winter Silence

Tomorrow night is the Longest Night of the Year to snuggle up to someone warm.

The Solstice is exact for us here in Los Angeles at exactly 9:47 AM this Morning. It’ll be the shortest day, and the longest night of the year. And that’s pretty much the story for the whole hemisphere.

But in L.A. it’s at exactly 9:47 AM.

See, my Pagan sensibilities come with a certain amount of anal-retentiveness. My Astrological curiosity comes with a little exactitude, ya dig?

I mean, y’ever wonder exactly when sunrise and sunset happen on a particular day? Maybe exactly when a New or Full Moon is? Ever find yourself trying to do the math from Greenwich Mean Time, and wondering whether you needed to subtract an hour or not?

Okay, probably not. But for all you amateur astrologers out there who aren’t ready to invest in their own telescope, or all you fledgling vampires out there who want to avoid bursting into flames or looking conspicuously sparkly, a few links for current Los Angeles data:

Seasons, Equinoxes and Solstices
Sunrise and Sunset
Moonrises and moonsets (That’s Right.)
Moon Phases
Interestingly enough, (at least, if you read this far, I assume it is) the Griffith Park Observatory has a list of Moon Phases, as well. They differ slightly, by about a minute, on a few of the times. To be fair, the “Time and Date” website claims an accuracy of “within one minute,” so there yeh go. You can make you’re own decision about who has the final word. Personally, the Griffith folks are local, I been there, I’ma go by what the local kids say, but you do as you like.

So, there it is. All the Loony info you need. Now if I’d just tell you something useful, like when it’s okay to park in a green zone. (Never, that’s my space on Sunday!) But that kind of thing only happens once in a Blue Moon.

Which, incidently, occurs this year on New Year’s Eve. (At exactly 11:13 AM)

This is your chance to join an official DARPA Challenge Team and all you have to do is look to the sky this Saturday, December 5 and report back if you spy a red balloon!

To sign up, go to ispyaredballoon.com and you will be part of a team effort to win $40K that will be donated to charity, plus all the fame and attention that comes with that!

On Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 10:00am EST, DARPA will launch ten 8-foot red weather balloons across the United States, held in place by a tether. The first team to submit the locations of all ten balloons will win $40,000! This contest is called the DARPA Network Challenge, sponsored by DARPA, the people who (among other things) hold contests to build cars that drive themselves.

The I Spy A Red Balloon team has pledged to donate all of the prize money to the American Red Cross. The entire team is volunteering their time, so absolutely no money will be used for any other purpose. Every dollar that the team wins from DARPA will be given directly to the Red Cross.

Again, go to ispyaredballoon.com to sign up and they will send you a reminder on Friday to look for the balloon. On launch day, their site will change, ready to accept your sighting details. They will provide a clickable map, or you can provide latitude and longitude if it’s available to you (using your phone or standalone GPS device). The names/nicknames of all contributors will be part of a poster to be published after the contest has finished.

Become a part of the I Spy a Red Balloon DARPA Challenge team today!

On November 14, 15 and 16, locals will have the opportunity to check out Nissan’s first ever zero-emissions electric car, the LEAF. This will be the first public unveiling of the LEAF in North America. You can check it out this weekend at the following locations:

Nissan's New Electric Car Debuts in LA this Weekend

November 14, 2009 10am – 9pm
Third Street Promenade
1351 3rd Street Promenade
Santa Monica, CA

November 15, 2009 11am – 8pm
Americana at Brand
233 S. Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA

November 16, 2009 9am – 5pm
University Southern California
3501 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA

According to Nissan, the LEAF handles and accelerates like a V6 and has a top speed of up to 90mph. It will have an average range of 100 miles per charge and the battery will charge in 4-8 hours on a 220V home charging unit. At quick-charge stations, it will charge to 80% in about 26 minutes. Although Nissan has not released exact information on pricing, they say that they are “targeting a price in the range of other typical family sedans.” The LEAF will be on the road in some states in 2010, with mass-production beginning in 2012.

To attend one of the unveiling events this weekend, register on their website here.

LA Times has unveiled their new  eEdition, “a reproduction of the print edition– online” for $12.99 per month.  Considering that I just got a year of 7-day home delivery of the actual print edition for $75, or $6.25 per month, and they are offering print subscribers the online subscription at no extra cost, I’m wondering what the strategery is here.

Access to its archives is one thing LAT is offering as part of the deal, and they are also touting that it’s available at 5:30 AM everyday, unlike the online edition, which is available the preceding midnight, contains much more news and, um, it’s free– for now.

I guess this is a first step (and trial balloon) for the online paid subscription model we’ve been hearing about from other newpapers in dire straits– which means the vast majority of them.

As a side note, PBS.org is streaming Inventing LA, the recent doc about the Chandlers and the LA Times. Worth a look.

Watch the Derby Dolls from the comfort of your own Intertube.

Tonight at 6:30, the Los Angeles Derby Dolls are taking the excitement of high-speed all-female banked track roller derby out of the Doll Factory in Historic Filipinotown and bringing it live to the entire planet via the World Wide Web.

Varsity Brawlers (the pretty team) will take on Tough Cookies (last year’s champs) in a full-length exhibition game streamed live to your very own home, office, or car (if you’re on your laptop, parked down the street stealing WiFi.)

Now how much would you pay? But wait! There’s more!…

Have you seen the trailer for Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, “Whip It?” I can’t wait to see it when it’s released this weekend. Barrymore, Ellen Page (“Juno,”) Juliette Lewis (“Old School,”) and other stars from the movie will be at the event for a post-bout Q&A. I’m told you can submit your questions online, too. There will also be a live half-time concert by Landon Pigg.

All for the low, low price of…FREE. That’s right! All you have to do is log in to www.derbydolls.tv at 6:30pm and it will all stream right out of the internets and into your eyeballs and ear holes.

I’m kind of excited about this, so there’s even more. Click the link and follow me… Read the rest of this entry →

Apart from my other jobs, I moonlight as a wonk.  In particular, for the last 6 years or so, I’ve been involved with a group called the Open Voting Consortium, much of that on its board and as its CTO. With that hat on, I am enormously excited that Los Angeles County is likely to get much better voting systems in the relatively near future.

Let me give the brief plug: we want to make sure that no one has to vote on proprietary DRE voting machines (or ever does voluntarily, for that matter).  There are two glaring flaws in these systems: the source code is secret (so-called trade secrets), and both accidental flaws and deliberate vote tampering is both possible and has likely happened; a voter has no means to inspect the recorded vote before casting it (other than a machine telling them, “trust us, we’ll put the right electrons somewhere”).  Read the rest of this entry →

It feels like deja vu all over again.  If Time Warner Cable (Roadrunner) is your ISP, and you have been having spotty Internet service all week, it’s not simply that Mercury is in retrograde.  I have been having “server not found” problems all week, and called TWC tonight.  They said they are having an L.A.-area-wide problem.  They didn’t know if it’s hackers this time.  I demanded credit for my lack of service, and they transferred me to another department (accounts or billing) .  They then issued me a $15 credit for multiple days without full service.  I thought that was a generous offering, since it represents at least 10 days of service.

Of course, that still doesn’t solve the service problem.  In the meantime, don’t forget to save your blog posts and other online writings in progress, early and often.

(Travis, sorry for stepping on your post so soon, but I thought that, if others are being driven nuts by this problem like I am, they would want to know about this asap tonight.  And if I wait, who knows if I would be able to publish it at all?)

With an About the Author bio that says, “If you don’t like what you just read here you can just get out of my country. Now how about that smart-alack. Follow me on twitters,” Christwire is such dry parody it almost passes for the real thing– a right-wing,  Bible-quoting site seeking to save America from The Gays and other “weirdos.”

And they are loving the fires here in California:

The lands were soaked with the combustible sins of perversions and marinated in the flammable juices of homosexuality! God is angry and his great power cannot be contained! …Fire falls upon California and great pillars of smoke shoots from his nostrils!

The holy pillars of smoke from his nostrils are filling up the lands of California! They are the harbingers of doom for the homosexual gay fornicators of Satan!

If you doubt this is satire (which is easy to do because Christwire has real ads for things like Ann Coulter books and a dating service called Christian Mingle,) a recent post called If You’re a Fantastic Pro-Family Republican, Does One or Two Same-Sex Encounters Really Make You Gay? asks, “If you have a great record fighting against the gays, doesn’t it cross out a few moments humping a younger man against the wall of some hotel room?”

Tom Colicchio

“The idea that religious leaders are continuing to shape state law is just wrong.”

Remember last fall’s boycott of El Coyote restaurant in West Hollywood by supporters of same-sex marriage after it was learned an owner had donated money to the campaign to pass Prop 8?

El Coyote had a sizable gay clientele on Thursday nights, the unofficial “gay night” at the restaurant, which packed the place. That all changed in the aftermath of Prop 8′s passing when the owner’s name appeared on donor lists that were available online and publicized by some media outlets.

Demonstrators appeared in front of the restaurant, business fell off on Thursdays, the pilloried owner did herself no favors when she tried to explain herself, saying if she had a chance to do it all over again, she would do the same thing, citing her religious convictions.

Such a mess for such a mediocre restaurant.

Enter Tom Colicchio, Bravo TV’s Top Chef lead judge and owner of Craft, his first venture into the  Los Angeles restaurant world, located in Century City. Read the rest of this entry →

As Jerry Seinfeld would say, “who are the wizards who thought this one up?”  Yesterday, notices were posted at my apartment complex indicating that, this Saturday night/Sunday morning starting at midnight, Southern California Edison plans to shut off power in my neighborhood to perform “routine maintenance.”  The posted message on my building owner’s letterhead, which may or may not have been from SCE talking points, states that “in an effort to minimize inconvenience, the testing will be done during night time hours, when the majority of our residents will be sleeping.”

Oh really?  Asleep on a Saturday night at midnight?  I can (and did) assure my building complex’s manager that the majority of us certainly will not be asleep.  Rather, many of us will be engaged in a variety of activities (use your imagination) for which we will want to use our stereos, televisions, lights, or other electrical appliances.  Read the rest of this entry →

Julie Phineas of Lezgetreal recently came face-to-face with homophobia at the FedEx Kinkos (now renamed FedEx Office) on Hawthorne Blvd. in Torrance.

As she tried to access The Gay Ad Network site, a gay and lesbian advertising network, on the store’s self-serve computers, the computer prompted her for a password because it was considered an “adult” site.

Phineas met resistance when she asked an employee for assistance.

The clerk at the counter made degrading statements about what I was trying to view once I told her I was trying to print out a document from The Gay Ad Network.

She told me that I “would not be able to look at that stuff here”… She issued me a refund for the time I was connected to their self service computer, and while she did she felt it necessary to mention that “other customers would be offended” if I were allowed to view “site’s like that”.

I asked her who I could contact to change the filters. There was a sign on the wall with contact information and I asked her if I should contact the store directly or the number on the wall. She told me “Oh, they don’t have time for stuff like that” and waved off my question with her hand. Read the rest of this entry →