Photo by chuckmartel via Flickr Now this is probably one of the coolest success stories of government communicating with the public efficiently. LA Fire Department Spokesman Brian Humphrey writes at their blog about overhearing a Starbucks Barista using Twitter to find out what passing fire trucks are up to: Enjoying an off-duty cup of coffee with LAFD spokesman Ron Myers the other day, we soon heard the familiar sound of our colleagues responding to......

Using Google Transit, a trip from Union Station to Chatsworth on a Metrolink Train Last week, vowing to help make NYC transit less complicated, New York City and Google officially launched Google Transit's ability to help people navigate the city. So it got us thinking. If New York City has it and Chicago has it in addition to Orange County, San Diego, Burbank, Irvine, Metrolink Trains and Thousand Oaks, when will Metro, Los Angeles'......

Photo at Wedding Park in West Hollywood (more photos here) by Tom Andrews/LAist Big media is coming out against Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that seeks to eliminate same-sex marriage in California. Last week Google said no to the proposition followed by the New York Times on Sunday. Google, who does not take a position on issues outside their field, "especially not social issues," co-founder Sergey Brin wrote on the company blog, "it......

Today, former LA Times music columnist Kevin Bronson began blogging at his new website, buzzbands.la: "Here I am, digging Buzz Bands out of the trash bin at 2nd and Broadway, where my former employer, the Los Angeles Times, deposited it a few months ago," he wrote in his second introduction to the site. "Either out of obstinacy, or passion, or vanity, or a weird cocktail of the three, I will undertake sharing my thoughts and......

It was a sad day back in July when Buzz Bands columnist Kevin Bronson was let go from his near six-year LA Times post amid massive cutbacks. He wrote one of the LA Times' more notable blogs called Buzz Bands before it was folded into the paper's Soundboard blog. Today, we stumbled upon his new venture -- a website called Buzz Bands (obviously) at www.buzzbands.la. It's not fully operational yet, but it does act as......

Metro was forced to take down the Measure R website after complaints that they should not be advocating for a ballot measure with taxpayer money. Measure R would raise LA County's sales tax by a half-cent to raise an estimated $30-40 billion for transportation projects such as the "subway to the sea" over the next 30 years. But shortly after an article appeared on LATimes.com stating website removal, it seems Metro has relaunched the......

Now that the U.S. is catching up with the rest of the world's mobile phone addiction, we can use our nimble thumbs to engage in some quality worldchanging. We've learned a lot about what's possible with mobile from Google, Apple, and Nokia in the past year alone. Now is the time take the baton and move forward. Tomorrow and Saturday, the Big Brain Boy's Mobile Media Summit will feature presentations from some of the world's......

A study by a journalist from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on her personal blog shows that news agencies are finding Twitter more and more important to their work. Erica Smith (here's her Twitter) observes that CNN anchors and the Chicago Tribune have used the service to great success. "[The Chicago Tribune] recently picked up a tip from a Twitter follower about a bomb threat, and was able to share information through Twitter and the Tribune’s......

Take Metrolink from Santa Clarita to Union Station via Google Maps After finding out about Metro's new and improved transit map earlier today, we see that Metrolink is now on Google Transit, thanks to ExperienceLA's blog. We can't directly link to routes or embed them on a website, but give it a try yourself. As for Metro and Google Transit, they're talking, last we heard. (UPDATE, 2:46 P.M.: Metro just called us and said......

TMZ caught Orange County Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez on video in Denver at the DNC yesterday. She's certainly hopped on something (life, baby!), probably just general excitement of the atmosphere over there. However, it's just more fun to call her stoned and "four lattes past hyper," as TMZ proclaimed. Or maybe it's the water in Orange County. Also: TMZ has the 911 tape for Christopher Stampolis, the former head honcho of the California Democratic Council and......

Today is the first day that West Hollywood based Ticketmaster is on their own. Its parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp spun off the ticket seller and three other internet sites to make five separate publicly traded companies. At the end of the article posted on the LA Times' website, it has this little nugget about one of the most frustrating parts regarding Ticketmaster: "[The Company] may consider revamping how it presents fees and charges, if not reduce......

Seven men were arrested and 55 others were charged today as part of a federal-local investigation that spanned 8 months. "The investigation marked the first time law enforcement agencies have broadly targeted peer-to-peer [think Limewire type services] users sharing child pornography," reported the Daily News. "The 55 suspects nabbed in the investigation lived in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties." Among the seven arrested, there was a police officer, a lawyer and......

Photo by cwalkr71 via Flickr "It is imperative to know that when purchasing items on-line, if the price seems too good to be true, then it probably is too good and is possibly a stolen item," said an e-mail sent out this weekend by the LAPD announcing a press conference regarding hundreds of stolen tires and rims from newer model Mercedes Benz and BMWs. Two young men, ages 18 and 20, are prime suspects......

If you are seeing what we're seeing when you log into your Google Mail account, you're not alone, and no, the "errors" aren't your fault. What to do? Well, you can go to the beach, take a nap, follow the grumbling session on Twitter and throughout the blogosphere, or take a chance on the GMail HTML interface, which is still functioning for some users. UPDATE: GMail is back up after a couple hours on the......

All the reported crime on August 7, 2008 within a 5-mile radius from 200 N. Fremont Street LAPD's interactive crime maps have been helpful since they launched a couple years ago. Today, they relaunched the tool, now using Google Maps instead of the old city map they were using. The new maps also let you double click on an area to browse crime in neighborhoods and also toggle between the graphic, satellite and hybrid......

The upcoming race for city hall is not this next November, but in the winter of 2009. The only truly contested city district is Council District 5, currently represented by Jack Weiss who is now running for City Attorney. The district covers West Los Angeles to Sherman Oaks/Encino. Six people are currently running for the seat. At the top is Attorney/News Columnist/Community Activist Ron Galperin business executive Robyn Ritter Simon and former Assemblymember and West......

Photo by Simon Shek via Flickr After yesterday's earthquake, Metro did something unusual for them. They informed the public in real time what was going on with the rail system. Metro's Twitter account, usually used for stating facts and promoting their services, was quickly put to work. "Bus and Rail Operations report no effects from the earthquake on Metro services. But trains operating at restricted speeds," they tweeted. Later on, an update: "After earthquake......

Google Trends provides insights into broad search patterns by users on Google. A look into what is being searched nationally this afternoon is obviously the earthquake. Today's 5.4 magnitude quake was only considered "moderate," which is big enough to knock things off shelves and cause minor damage to buildings. However, Google searches across the country are intensely focused on the incident. The majority of top 100 trends ("hot trends") are quake-related. U.S. Google Trends......

Screenshot by K. Moriarty via Flickr Whether it was the shaking or a surge of readers checking the LA Times' website, it was shut down temporarily after the 5.4, 11:42 a.m. earthquake in Chino Hills.......

www.strike.tv Teaser from StrikeTV on Vimeo. During the Writers Strike, a group of creatives got together to make Strike.TV and began to develop 40 projects that are expected to debut starting today (as of this writing on the morning of July 4th, only the above teaser has been launched). One of their promises is "to demonstrate that it was possible for Hollywood professionals to coexist and flourish with the studio system that has supported......

In another round of job cuts for the LA Times, the paper announced today the planned sacking of 250 jobs across the company which includes 150 editorial ones. The paper will also reduce the number pages it prints by 15%. This is due to a declining revenue, some which is blamed on the internet (which is also a blessing, depending on how you look at it). "You all know the paradox we find ourselves in,"......

Photo by JOHNNIE W@LKER via Flickr The FBI is reportedly looking into a Santa Monica based internet company that crashed a San Francisco based internet television's network last weekend. MediaDefender, who is hired to prevent "alleged copyright infringement using peer-to-peer distribution" (think old-school Napster) performed a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) on Revision3. “Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3’s servers for their own purposes – quite without our approval. When we closed off their......

Carlos Mencia is back at it and chances are you're either pumped or pissed about it. The loved/hated comedian's show, Mind of Mencia is back for a fourth season, his new Comedy Central special "Performance Enhanced" is now in heavy rotation on the cable network and he's hitting the road with the Bud Light Presents: Carlos Mencia at Close Range Tour, which hits the Gibson Ampitheater September 26 and 27. The comic who was......

How many Internet memes can you spot/name in this video? Weezer's self-titled "Red Album," produced by Rick Rubin, is out June 3rd. via Weezer's official YouTube channel.......

Photo by nailmaker via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr 22-year-old Alan Hamai from Redondo Beach had just been awarded his degree in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and was celebrating when he fell to his death from the third floor of a dorm building. Hamai is the second student from SoCal to die at UCB this month; two weeks ago Christopher Wootton was fatally stabbed after a party on campus. The folks at......

Photo by akeg via Flick As powerful as the written word can be, sometimes it takes the extra help of a video and a little push by the "fourth estate" to get things done in Southern California. In today's weekly Road Sage column by Steve Hymon, he features Rich Allen who made a nearly 10-minute video to post on YouTube that highlighted the terrible pothole conditions on the 60 Freeway (video embedded below). Then......

The geniuses at Common Craft created this video explaining Twitter in plain English. We only wish that governments would hire them to explain how parking ticket revenues worked and how to best follow a city council motion from creation to approved city ordinance. LAist tweets too, you can follow us here. Related -- What is RSS? Common Craft explains RSS on RSS Day -- Using Twitter in Car Culture -- Los Angeles, What Are......

This guy's happy about something, maybe it's the Webbys | Photo by soundfromwayout via Flickr Webby Award Winners (basically the online Oscars) were announced today. A handful of locally based sites were nominated last month, but only a few made the grade. Congrats to all! Here are the winners: The Huffington Post walked away with both The People's Voice and official Webby Award. The Los Angeles Film School won the Webby Award for Best......

You just finished filling up your tank at the gas station, but the next thing you do is not grab your keys to leave, it's to take an extra twenty seconds to note some statistics by inputting into Twitter the miles since your last fill up, the price per gallon and how many gallons you put in. Welcome to FuelFrog, a new application designed by three guys who embarked on a mission of launching a......

There are thousands of people that read this blog via their subscription to LAist's RSS (Really Simple Syndication). But sometimes when people hear the word "RSS," their faces go blank. RSS is a pretty sweet tool to know how to use. Basically, instead of visiting a handful of your favorites sites everyday to see what's new, you visit one site, your RSS Reader, and all your favorite sites are loaded into one clean space. It......