Geoffnet

Music — No comments
17
Mar 10

Surfing South By

What’s the next best thing to being at SXSW? Assuming you’re on a beefy broadband connection, there are a few stations opening up their mics to capture the sounds at various venues on and around 6th St.

SXSW Music

I know my Squeezebox dial will be bouncing back and froth between KEXP, KUT, NPR, and KCMP – The Current. On my short list of shows to catch: Broken Bells (Wed on NPR), Frightened Rabbit (Thu on KEXP), and Surfer Blood (Thu on NPR).

Hard to believe it’s been 4 years since my trip down to Austin for the madness. Ahh, the memories.

Selections from the Archive: Web 2.0 (6/23/05)

According to the futurists at Supernova 2005, the web is just beginning to tap its potential as a tool for advancing “enterprise knowledge” (biz speak for sharing information). Next-gen social networking tools like blogs, wikis, and Friendster-like communities are drawing more and more users together around common interests.

What are the implications? Ask Chris Anderson, former Wired editor and Long Tail fountainhead. There aren’t many other business ideas getting as much traction as the Long Tail these days and for good reason. When Anderson asked web retailers like Amazon and Rhapsody what percentage of their catalog they were moving, their answers came back in the nineties. With the number of entertainment offerings in retail outlets dropping, more and more people are turning to e-tailers to get their fix. (Unlike their bricks & mortar counterparts, e-tailers never run out of shelf space.) In the era of the Long Tail, opportunities for filtering technologies and social networking abound. Why rely on a faceless editor for your playlist when you can sneak a peek at what critics/friends are watching and raving about?

Other Supernova posterchildren include Flickr.com (Yahoo’s recent photo acquisition), Technorati.com (blog tagging), and Odeo.com (podcast tagging). Is this really the new web? Stay tuned.

Storyboard: Chris Anderson on Long Tail of Stuff (wired.com)

2005 / TV — No comments
17
Mar 10

Selections from the Archive: Airtime (6/21/05)

The flotsam otherwise known as the summer television schedule is upon us. Fortunately, a few seaworthy programs have surfaced, and while reality TV on the networks jumped the shark about the time Fear Factor showed up, cable’s new breed may hopefully find legs.

30 Days

30 Days comes from the mind of Morgan Spurlock (creator/producer of the Oscar-nominated Super Size Me). The format draws from Fakin’ It, a BBC transplant that briefly aired on Discovery’s TLC, and the ubiquitous Michael Moore mockumentaries. In the inaugural episode, the minimum wage goes primetime as Spurlock and his wife, unemployed and homeless, arrive in Ohio where the minimum wage is actually less than the federal minimum wage, if that’s even possible. For 30 days, they rake rock bottom for the money to pay rent and bills, and maybe even celebrate a birthday. Poverty sucks — that’s no surprise; what’s revealing is how high the chips are stacked against folks on the fringe. (Where were they on Election Day, I’d like to know?) Future installments feature an ex-jock on growth hormones, Christians as Muslims, and more fish-out-of-water stories.

Spy, from the BBC, airs on PBS (Mondays). Production values (film-res footage, aerial shots, motion graphics) run high on this Survivor-style spies-in-training show. Decent editing spares us the mundane, while former vets from MI6 and the CIA give you the lowdown on how to stalk your ex and rummage your neighbor’s dustbin. The subjects aren’t entirely interesting, but the skills and the training are.

Other shows I’m watching: Frontline (no holds barred investigative journalism — how long before CPB cuts off their funding?) and Robot Chicken (stop-motion animation on Cartoon Network‘s Adult Swim).

Books — No comments
26
Feb 10

Graphic Novel Pull List

Looking for a few titles to explore the hidden backlots of human experience? The four below dive deep into biographical and psychological hinterlands, ruminating on childhood, parenthood, and more amid all manner of circumstances. In each instance, the artists/writers unearth emotional veins buried deep in meaning and experience to produce unique and powerful stories.

Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa
A father’s struggle to save his son from the fates takes him on an extraordinary journey. Cyril Pedrosa shows off artistic chops polished deep in the mines of animated film production (among his credits, Hercules and the Hunchback of Notre Dame) and takes full flight in this memoriam to a loved one.
Stitches by David Small
The New Yorker artist and childrens book illustrator stirs up a cauldron of childhood memories and comes to terms with the powerful, often terrible, circumstances that made him the artist he is today.
Tonoharu by Lars Martinson
A beautifully rendered debut by Xeric-award winning graphic novelist, Lars Martinson, tells the story of a lonely, depressed expat teaching English in Japan. I look forward to the second in this series — the look of which reminds me of Chris Ware‘s precise drawing style.
The Killer by Matz, Luc Jacamon
Unlike the above, the Killer (“Le Tueur”) treads on more rarefied ground — an introspective examination of life as an assassin. Originally written in French, the story unfolds slowly but drips with menace and suspense. David Fincher is apparently bringing this to the big screen.

Books — No comments
29
Jan 10

Web 2.0 Nontrepreneurs

Journalist Sarah Lacy lays bare the often inscrutable mating rituals of VCs, founders, and startups in her recent book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good. Set in post-bubble Silicon Valley, the story goes something like this — burned by meddling boards, corporate bureaucracies, and ill-fitting outside managers, Web 2.0 entrepreneurs rewrote the rules of internet startups by maintaining controlling interests and stubborn faith in their visions (often at the expense of the early exit). The benefits of benign angel investors (friend-tors), startup-friendly business services (open sourcing, CCBy licensing, CPC advertising, cloud computing), and, of course, individual fortunes are also documented. Dubbed nontrepreneurs, their self-professed mantra? Build cool stuff. No surprise the PayPal mafia (whose members went on to found Slide, Yelp, and YouTube) are frequently cited in the narrative. Other fixtures in the Web 2.0 landscape (Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Kevin Rose of Digg, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, and Evan Williams of Blogger/Twitter) loom large in this breezy, often waggish read.

Books — No comments
04
Jan 10

Post-Holiday Read: Stealing MySpace

Astute retelling of MySpace‘s rise, recounted by veteran WSJ tech reporter, Julia Angwin. DeWolfe and Anderson as counterpoints to the tech-savvy enterpreneurs of Silicon Valley heralded a new chapter in web innovation. While Facebook has proven the more durable innovator/platform (especially among developers), MySpace along with various partners like PhotoBucket certainly showed Silicon Valley Friendster a thing or two about delivering game-changing products.

Photos / SF — 1 comment
04
Nov 09

Home is Where the Castle is

En route to the Presidio, I came across this jewel of a home on Greenwich, near the Marina. Formerly the North End Police Station built in 1912 and designated a landmark in 1996, the structure now serves as a private residence. The facade reminds me of a stately Italian palazzo; giant lanterns astride the entrance bow to an Art Nouveau influence. I imagine jail cells make for interesting conversation.

Photos / SF — No comments
26
Oct 09

Angel High

For yet another year, Fleet Week filled the afternoon skies with flybys from the Blue Angels. Hard to ignore aerial acrobatics when car alarms and jetwash are echoing all about. I did most of my spectating indoors, although one afternoon I slipped away to Dolores Park and enjoyed the airshow from afar, an ice cream cone from Bi-Rite perfectly punctuating the blustery pageant. In the foreground sits the cupola for Mission Dolores High School.

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