Last night I went to Paris and watched a couple I never met confront their decision to end their 15 year marriage. They still laughed at each other’s jokes, had lifetimes of care for the other and were considered ‘Un Couple Parfait’ by their friends. It was very clear to me this couple could just [...]

Anyone who spends too much time close to technology has to sense that Technology (if you can consider it an organic enttity) is at odds with itself to either save or swamp us. This sensation is, of course, is simply a sentimental concept based upon a world of humans trying to use technology for myriad [...]

I was pleased about being invited to be ‘blogger’ for the SF Int’l Film Fest (thru May 4th), mostly because it will allow me (or force me) to watch a flurry of movies set in other cultures, told in other narrative styles based upon different cinematic tastes. Family, life, marriage, death, meaning, lonliness are universal, [...]

I had a good feeling about the Make magazine Maker’s Faire going on this weekend at the San Mateo Fair Grounds, and it was much better than that. It was a nerd jamboree where everyone was welcome and anyone could see just how close they could be to making something.
If you’re near the Bay Area [...]

Last night I saw an excellent documentary on Heavy Metal music and it’s fans shot and prduced by a pair of passionate Canadian cinemetographer metalheads. ‘Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey‘ is an immediate cult classic, full of interviews, stunning live footage and profound intellectual interpretations. The SFiFF 49is showing itself to be as topic-diverse as I [...]

In 2002 I was introduced to Stamen Design, a data-driven flash-focused design shop. They were involved in making great non-traditional visually-oriented websites like 16thandMission, Arthropoda Records (my client), GrafittiArcheolory, In The News. More recently Stamen members have been responsible for Mappr, ReBlog, and the irc visualization BackChannel, all the while cranking out high quality work [...]

In December 1995 I strarted working at the Institute for Alternative Journalism (publishers of the excellent Alternet) and found myself just across the street from South Park in San Francisco’s SOMA district. I had recently come back from a year working in Bangladesh. Before I left for Asia in 1994 I had only heard of [...]

Thanks to the wonders of the “New Media”, I’ve been invited to be a Citizen Press Corp for the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFiFF). Long story short, I’m going to be watching a slew of great movies from all over the world and doing my best to write about them here.
Kicking things off [...]

When Larry Lessig and co. coded the Creative Commons (CC) alternative licensing terms they made a best effort to codify usage terms that are completely within the U.S. legal code, as well as the inalienable rights of content creators. The primary benefits of CC licenses are: content creators can mark their work without having to [...]

The other day I got an email from Schmap, a clever service that aggregates user-submitted travel guide details and then ads related photos licensed under creative commons that they find on flickr. They take usage right seriously and seek explicit permission for using photos and fastidiously uphold the posting of author details next [...]