Does your IT department log your internet activity? If so, I highly recommend impressing your superiors with the amount of “innovation time” you spend at Sketch Swap.

Once you’ve completed this exercise in visual expression, click over to Sheep Beats and bang out a mad track.

It may not be the best way to feel better about your job… but it’ll for sure make you more creative.

ps: Why don’t the sheep beaters get a proper URL?[tags]innovation, sketch swap, sheep beats[/tags]

The Dirtybird crew continue to tear up the undergroud techno scene. World tours, professional management, unstoppable… I caught up with them at Shine recently and learned that there will definitely be more Golden Gate park jams this summer.

Gotta sign up for their e-mail list, you don’t want to miss it.[tags]Dirtybird, Golden Gate Park, Shine, SF[/tags]

There’s been a lot of hype in the hip hop blogs about rappers boycotting a luxury champagne brand. You might enjoy Hadji Williams article on the topic (via Clyde Smith).

Williams argues that “everybody in hip hop hates the [brand in question]“. If that’s the case, why keep talking about it? Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a cool sounding exhibit coming to SF’s Dogpatch titled “No F#@*ing Way! Selling America on the Bus“.

Someone who works at SF Muni just sent me a link. The event looks worthwhile. The theme is that artists, marketers, and transit geeks can get all together and create some new ways to feel about buses. Perhaps one of the outcomes will be a few clever ideas to revolutionize urban bus systems. Who knows?

Here are two suggestions:

1.) Create a free public bus system. Fund the service by taxing every car owner in the city. The system would be free for residents who apply for a pass. The service would require all others to pay $0.50 per ride.

2.) Create a luxury bus system. Design the system to specifically address the needs and interests of SF’s middle and upper middle classes. This bus service would exist somewhere between the present bus system and the taxi system. Make it sexy. Make it a social scene. Tie it into some type of online community. Make it expensive, convenient, and comfortable enough to be perceived and desired as a luxury. Fund the system by increasing the rental rate on public street parking, since we all know that public streets are a precious and undervalued commodity. Fares would be paid with some type of smart card; a really smart card, one that would even allow people to run a small short term interest free debt (up to $12.00 or so), and easily recharge their credits via their mobile device of choice. Include late night service and greatly expanded Golden Gate/Bay Bridge routes. Also offer airport routes at prices higher than the independent commercial shuttles, and lower than taxis.

See you in the bike lane.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of social media is that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to control.

That doesn’t stop people from trying. I recently had a run in with a corporate profanity filter. I was trying to tell my dear old friends how excited I was about the news of their pregnancy. Unfortunately, in a an effort to emphasize my excitement, I wrote what anyone might write in that situation:

“Holy shit! That’s great news!” Read the rest of this entry »

That this new high frequency ringtone isn’t the only new technology that we’re oblivious to…

Some students are downloading a ring tone off the Internet that is too high-pitched to be heard by most adults. With it, high schoolers can receive text message alerts on their cell phones without the teacher knowing.

When I was a highschool student, I participated in an “experimental” math curriculum. Every student was required to buy and use a graphing calculator. The teachers were great, and I’m glad they made the effort to introduce us to new technology. What I remember most was how quickly the students learned (and taught each other) how to create and store text based cheat sheets into the devices. Physics and chemistry equations immediately became a lot easier for us to “memorize”.

We’re relatively helpless to teach technology to kids that are growing up immersed in the stuff. It seems that sometimes the best we can do is create conditions in which they’ll learn to use the tools effectively and to good purpose. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s something worth paying attention to:

http://www.southcentralfarmers.org

The community has been growing food that feeds 350 low income families, using 14 acres in LA. In 2003, the city sold the land to developers to build a warehouse. Now the farm is struggling to raise the funds needed to fight off their pending eviction. The video at their site does a better job relating the story…

Markets are good. They function efficiently and they help us make great use of scarce resources. Unfortunately the political process often intereferes with how communities would otherwise choose to support themselves. I’m not completely against political regulation of markets. So what am I?

I’m strongly in favor of community initiative. These people have organized something far more meaningful than a $5.1 million dollar real estate deal, or the likely modest economic impact of a successful warehouse. The farm has been running successfully for 14 years.

I know very little about this specific situation. I know a little more about the importance and urgency of establishing models for urban farming. This seems like a case where the political process has failed the local public interest, and now it’s apparently up to the public at large to make a correction.