Results tagged “internet”

When the first internet transmission happened, there was no celebration. In fact, the guys behind it back on October 29th, 1969 (40 years and one day ago), invented the internet and called it a night. That's because at the time, they had no idea that their solution to an annoying problem would start changing the world years later. In case you missed it, NPR yesterday did a fascinating report on the events leading up to the birth of ARPANET:

I can't tell you where or how I first learned of Damon Packard, but his experimental-nostalgic-acid-horror-collage Reflections of Evil melted my brain forever. Packard excels at melding "borrowed" footage from '70s TV, science fiction & God knows what else with his own paranoid fantasies for pure cinematic psychosis.

Imagine if you could make urban graffiti disappear with a shake of your iPhone.... It's not that easy -- yet -- but LA-based FreedomSpeaks.com launched a new mobile tool that comes close. CitySourced enables anyone with an iPhone to report to 311 with the click of a button. See a pothole, snap a photo, and send it off.

Users of the business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn who are based in Orange County are sick of being considered part of "greater Los Angeles." One user, Laguna Niguel's Sven Johnston, has "spearheaded the campaign to get the O.C. recognition," apart from L.A. explains the OC Register's Jan Norman in a blog post.

Jesus Sanchez, the blogger behind The Eastsider LA, found that street artist Shepard Fairey put an anti-graffiti coating on the brick walls of his art gallery and ad agency in Echo Park. Fairey explained that "when graff seeped into the raw brick it was very difficult to clean. The building is historic and I love and want to protect the brick." The new anti-graffiti coating will make abatement easier, but will not stop graffiti.

It's quite a change from the old look, but a welcome one at that. It's more mature and newsie with a hat tip to the past--much better than that corporate turquoise thing that was going on before. There's an interactive tour you can take and over at the Readers' Represenative blog, online managing editor Meredith Artley explains and highlights the key changes made, such as better navigation, the new font (Georgia!), a faster loading video application and other features. Your thoughts?

The City of Los Angeles is one step closer to four years ago after yesterday's City Council meeting, when a study concerning the possible adoption of a Google-based e-mail system was approved, reports the Daily News.

Not only was Mark Madsen recently traded to the Los Angeles Clippers, he also bought a pretty nice sounding web domain on eBay--www.P2P.com. Too bad, it was stolen, reports the Associated Press. A 25-year-old New Jersey man apparently hacked the website, took ownership and then sold it to Madsen for $100,000 over the auction based site. No word from Madsen yet--he's a big Twitterer--but alleged hacker Daniel Goncalves faces "felony charges of theft by unlawful taking or deception, identity theft, and computer theft," which could carry 10 years for each count. The case is reportedly the first ever criminal prosecution of domain theft.

After much pushing and prodding by the public and media, Metro finally succumbed, quietly launching Google Transit this past weekend. Go ahead and play, it's like we're in a real big city now, catching up with most other major ones.

About 500 employees were slashed from MySpace's company roll call, CNET reported today. "Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company," Owen Van Natta, CEO of the News Corp.-owned social site, said in a release. "I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product." Van Natta was hired in April and used to be the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook. MySpace will continue to employ around 1,000 people in the U.S.

Today Metro made a big step with an announcement that will give programmers a new tool to make and computer savvy commuters ecstatic. They launched a new beta developer website (and blog!) with two downloadable data sets--GIS and GTFS, or Google Transit Feed Specification, which is used in Google Transit. "This data set is a collection of tabular data describing route, stop, schedule, and fare information for Metro’s system," Metro said in a news release. "The GIS data is a collection of shapefiles for mapmakers who wish to include a layer of Metro Bus and Metro Rail lines and stops into a map."

Today, the Santa Monica Police Department announced the city's new crime mapping tool. It's a great start, but it's a bit clunky when compared to LAPD's crime map. Data, stored for the last 90 days, can be searched by type of crime in relation to an address, intersection, landmark or within the city's boundaries. Only sex-related crimes are not included.

Oof. Not only did The Onion pull their print editions out of our fair city today, so did the free and cheap drink mavens at MyOpenBar.com. In an e-mail sent out this afternoon, they announced a slow down in operations: "Looking for free booze? Oh. Yeah. About that... We had to fire the entire staff after squandering most of the Myopenbar fortune on Cadillacs and Courvosier. Call it an 'MC Hammer,' call it a damn shame, but don't call it a comeback, baby, 'cause we out of this game. Come on, you all knew the party wasn’t gonna last forever." Their New York City portal will stick around for now and they will send occasional Los Angeles blasts when they "hear about something special."

Last week, the blogosphere and Twitterverse watched with baited breath as 17-month-old Maddie Spohr was rushed to the hospital after falling ill. People all over the world knew Maddie because her mother, Heather, is a "Mommy Blogger," having chronicled the short life of her infant online via a blog and Twitter, since her premature birth in November 2007.

Let's face it: Celebrities are people, too. People who...Twitter. The wherefores and hows of the issue notwithstanding, sometimes a 140 or less character Tweet is worth a thousand words. Or, if you are Sandie Guy and a fan of Demi Moore, it's worth your life.

We bumped into Sean Percival, founder of lalawag, at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and here is what he had to say about the conference and the possible next step for the web's future.

This hilarious video is full of ideas and initiatives that newspapers could employ to shake the print downturn and become more like LAist. the more economical and timely Internet publications of today. Fill the news racks with double-D racks? Open up an LA Times Smoke Shop on Spring Street? Got any better ideas?

For the past few months, there's been a constant drone of Time Warner complaints that come our way. "Time-Warner has hit an all-time low. Despite the fact that both LAist and The Los Angeles Times has reported Bot attacks on the provider they absolutely refuse to 'fess-up' to the issue and credit me with a refund," a reader left in our anonymous tip box. Another tipster followed up with a complaint we experience daily at home. "Paying extra for Digital service and using their DVR box does nothing to improve things; DVR'd shows frequently have blips and sound drops. How is this company allowed to continue providing such sh*tty service to the 2nd largest media market in the country?!" It's true, at least for us at home where they happen consistently about every 15 minutes. Who else experiences this?

Yesterday evening, the local United States Coast Guard Sector entered a new era of public information by launching a blog. This is "a revolution on how we deal with information management and the new social media, or some people call it, Web 2.0.," Admiral Thad W. Allen sternly said in a video. "We are not living in the same information environment we grew up in, it's critically important that senior leaders of the United States Coast Guard understand what technology is doing today, how it is changing, how we must change with it."

Think the saga of OctoMom is played out? RadarOnline.com sure doesn't.

After December's debacle of Time Warner internet service outages, especially around 10 p.m., they started to strike again over the past week. "Over the past 7 days, hackers have launched a series of DOS attacks on Time Warner Cable's DNS servers, affecting customer experience in our Southern California and National regions," TWC wrote two days ago.

First Lady Maria Shriver has launched an online program aimed at helping "put more money in Californians' pockets," cbs2.com reports. The WE Connect campaign is described as "a pioneering public/private partnership designed to help California’s working families become more financially secure by connecting them to important programs and resources." There are many programs that have funding that is going unused because many people don't know how to properly tap into them--programs like WIC, food stamps, Lifeline phone service, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Currently, more people are receiving aid in LA County than any other county in the nation, and those numbers are expected to grow.

Gone from KLSX 97.1 FM, Adam Carolla has taken to the Internet. The North Hollywood-native’s first podcast was released today. It spanned a commercial-free 37 minutes. This begins Carolla's promised Monday - Friday daily podcast.

Say goodbye to Hollywood, baby. Defamer, the loved--but not loved enough--celebrity gossip blog has been folded into its parent blog, Gawker.

Los Angeles-based college gossip website JuicyCampus.com has announced they will shut down. Founder and CEO Matt Ivester "announced his intention Wednesday in a message posted on the website. The message cited the national economic meltdown and falling ad revenue," reports USA Today.

Yesterday, a city website published what turned out to be "a confidential report on police misconduct that included the names of hundreds of officers," much to the dismay of the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Police Protective League, abc7.com is reporting. Included in the report, which also was delivered to news media via e-mail, were "the names of about 250 officers that the internal affairs unit had investigated over allegations of racial profiling." The posting came down within an hour of being online, and the Police Commission along with LAPD reps issued apologies to the police union president, who called the incident "absolutely outrageous."

They grow up so fast don't they?

Good news for geeks and the unemployed alike: The internet is the place to work this year. Per a poll conducted by Twiistup ahead of their upcoming meetup event:

Fifty-seven percent of the Southern California start-ups surveyed said the health of the Internet industry in Los Angeles in 2009 will be better than 2008. A significant proportion of respondents, 71%, also said that LA is a better place to build a startup in the Web 2.0 and / or digital media space over the San Francisco / San Jose Bay area.

In Los Angeles, A-list celebrities wait in line in front of you at Caffe Primo, while B-list celebrities make your nonfat mocha. That is to say, there’s ‘stars’ everywhere, and it’s easy (even in fashion, perhaps) to be unimpressed. In Spokane, Washington, however, celebrities are a bit harder to come by. Strange, since this is exactly where you can find Barats and Bereta, longtime internet video sensations. With millions of hits, numerous accolades, and a one-year NBC deal behind them, the two mid-twenties comedy boys just keep on working, producing videos and doing a lot of fresh, live work. There isn’t the sense of urgency that you might find in a starving artist living in downtown LA, but you certainly like to believe Barats and Bereta have the skill and determination to be successful.

A while back, Iast summer, I was in San Francisco and covered the Facebook Developers Conference where I discovered the ginormous amount of attractive nerds there.