Here is what they had to say:

/via Mashable

Also miss it? Then enjoy some photos from talented local photog Anna Webber.

I’m a research junkie, so I looked for first-timer’s guides all over the place, hoping I’d find something like I did for Burning Man. But despite the fact that SXSWi is made up of a bunch of compulsive Tweeters and bloggers (who, as I mentioned before, are all good-looking and intelligent), you guys are completely pathetic when it comes to any kind of online tip guide. Seriously, when a bunch of Burners outdo you in the organization department? That’s a sorry story, right there.

So, in the spirit of sharing – and because the end of SXSW has left me with the three-second memory of a goldfish and I’ll forget this all if I don’t get it down – here’s All The Things I Wish I’d Known About SXSW.

Things I Wish I’d Known About Food and Drink at SXSW

@sxswfreenoms would make you think that food just floats out of the sky at SXSW. And sometimes it does. I was dodging cupcakes left and right in front of the Conference Center Saturday, and if Zone Perfect bars were $5 bills I’d be able to buy myself a new MacBook (okay, okay, at least an iPod). But for actual sustaining meals, there’s a lot of things I wish I’d known before SXSW.

1. If you’re vegetarian you will starve. There is allegedly a lot of great vegetarian food in Austin, but just about none of it is within a mile radius of the Convention Center. When parties say “We have free food!” they’re really saying “All the cow you can eat!” You can try a bean and rice burrito, but the refried beans are made with lard and the rice is made with chicken stock. And God help you if you have food allergies. Which is why you should…
2. Hit Whole Foods when you get into town and stock up. It doesn’t matter if you’re a vegetarian or a carnivore – stock up at Whole Foods. The Whole Foods Death Star is at 6th and Lamar. It is approximately the size of the Austin Convention Center. If you haven’t been there, you think I’m exaggerating, and if you have you’re probably saying to yourself, “Actually, I think it’s a little bigger.” It’s like Yuppie Wal-Mart – they have everything. But before you hit Whole Foods, go a block down 6th and…
3. Get ice cream at Amy’s. HOLY CRAPNUTS. I’d heard that Amy’s had the best ice cream on the planet, but I thought that was hyperbole. I wish I’d gone the first day. And every day. It’s not like I was eating anything else, anyway, because I didn’t…
4. Research restaurants before you go to Austin. 80% of the restaurants within a 10-minute walk of the conference center suck, and 18% of the rest are wall-to-wall with SXSW folks. Which means you can either miss three panels waiting for a table or eat bad food. If you flail on Yelp looking for something decent and nearby, you’ll burn valuable time that you could be using walking to a restaurant. If you walk into a random place on 6th Street, you will, like we did, have them deliver your meal an hour late, with every item wrong. (Staring at Anil Dash for 35 minutes didn’t improve things.) Do the research and write it all down before you come. Or better yet, mark it on a map.
5. You can get free water if you bring a water bottle. There’s plenty of water coolers around, but SXSW staff frown on attendees wrapping their lips around the spout. Bring an empty bottle and refill it. (Or buy a bottle of water, but that’s about $3.50 in the convention center.)
6. Don’t dehydrate. There’s a few ways that SXSW is like Burning Man, and this is one. It’s dry, it’s dehydrating, and most of the drinks people are handing you are alcoholic, which will just dehydrate you more. Drink water, and tons of it. Next year I may bring a Camelbak.

Things I Wish I’d Known About Panels Before I Went to SXSW

Every time I had #panelfail, because the panel was packed and I couldn’t get in or it sucked or it just wasn’t applicable to what I do, it made me crazy for the next few hours, because I knew I could have been at something better. Here’s some info that might have helped.

1. Panel rooms are really spread out. It’s about 4/10 of a mile from the front door of the Hilton to Ballroom A in the Conference Center, plus there’s geeks to dodge. If your prime pick panel is in the Hilton, several floors up, and your backup is in Ballroom C, you might make it in time for the Q&A, or as I like to call it, “oversharing time.” (More on that later.) When you pick a panel, make sure you have a backup in the same building, or that time slot may be a wash.
2. If you get the vibe you’ll hate it before hand, you’re probably right. I went to a panel that I thought would be on professional development. The bullet points on the boards made it clear it was about “The Secret.” I still stuck it out for 15 minutes, hoping I was wrong. I would have been better off bolting to my Plan B before the panel began.
3. Q&A sessions = audience self-promotion. At least half the people asking questions would spend several minutes shilling their skills, then ask something just meant to show themselves off. If you need to get to another panel, or lunch, skip the Q&A.
4. Panel hashtags almost always change. SXSW likes giving panels 30-character hash tags. Panelists ruthlessly shorten them, usually by scrawling with a Bic pen. This is a problem if you’re in row 40 and trying to monitor the Twitter backchannel.
5. Panelists need lessons in how to use the microphone. No, actually, that’s what I wish SXSW knew about panels. Speaking directly into a mic may seem simple, but many speakers can’t seem to grasp it, even when the audience shouts it repeatedly. Sit near the front so you can hear them even without the mic.

Things I Actually Got Right at SXSW

And here’s some things I actually did right that friends of mine who came to SXSW wished they’d done.

1. Bring multiple pairs of shoes and rotate them. I learned this lesson, painfully, at Burning Man last year. C.K. Sample didn’t have that info, and by Day 3 was Tweeting desperate requests for shoes.
2. Give yourself foot massages at the end of the night. It may sound lame, but otherwise you will wake up with feet that are almost as sore as when you went to bed.
3. Bring an umbrella. Nick Fairbairn of Engine Company One gave me this tip the day before I left, and I listened. Monday night the skies opened up when I was standing in front of Tech Karaoke. Suddenly, I had five new friends standing as close as possible. I wish more of them had showered during SXSW.
4. “Remember” people’s names. Everyone is wearing a badge with their name on it. Everyone forgets they’re wearing a badge with their name on it. When you say hi to someone you’ve met before, glance at their badge and use their name. It makes them feel special and it makes you look like you care.
5. RSVP for every single party. Some parties are hard-core about their guest lists; some will let anyone walk in who has a badge. There’s no way to tell which will be which, and I missed a few parties because I had RSVPd but my crew hadn’t. Just because you RSVPd doesn’t mean you have to show. Follow @sxswparty, @sxswparties, or @sxswPartyList(or next year’s versions of same). Check out the blogs Austinist and Republic of Austin about two weeks out. Between all of them, you should find 80% of the parties.
6. Make plans to see people. You think you’ll just run into people. You’re wrong. (Unless they’re Sean Percival, who is everywhere. How does he DO that?) I missed a good friend who lives in London because we’d never made real plans and he left Saturday afternoon. He was on London time and I was on California time, which meant when one of us texted “What are you up to?” the other was sleeping. I only got to see Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris and Mark Jeffrey – all people I really wanted to see – because I knew they would all be at the TWiST event, and I completely missed C.K. Sample there, which was when I knew I had to make plans. You won’t just run into people (except for Sean) – you have to make it happen.
7. You will always miss something cool. Deal with it and enjoy where you are. At every party I went to, there were a bunch of people sitting there, jacked into Twitter, trying to find out if they were missing something cool. And they were – they were missing the cool thing right in front of them. There’s a million cool things going on simultaneously at SXSW. Enjoy the cool thing where you are rather than searching for something cooler.

Like last year, readers can vote for their favorite douchbags across a few categories like Entertainment, sports and politics. You can get started with round one here.

From Holy Taco:

Holy Taco is hosting the 2nd Annual National Douchebag Tournament, which runs on www.holytaco.com from 3/16/10 – 3/26/10.  The event consists of an Interactive Bracket Tournament (modeled after the NCAA College Basketball Tournament) that pits famous Douchebags against each other in a battle to determine the Nation’s Biggest Douchebag.  The tournament consists of 64 douchebags representing four Divisions: Entertainment, Sports, Politics, and Business.  Visitors to Holy Taco will have the opportunity to vote for each head-to-head matchup over the 10-day, 6-round elimination tournament to decide who will move on to the next round, and ultimately who will be crowned the Nation’s Biggest Douchebag.

Sample Bracket:

Where else can so many of us geeks justify our existence and relevancy? Look here are 15,000 weirdos just like me! For others it’s just a great place to get tanked and finally score that hot PR girl you’ve been flirting with on Twitter with for LIKE EVER. For just about everyone it’s a place to connect, share, and form something offline.

Really SXSW can be a lot of things, none of which we really wanted to hear about. So we challenged the leaders of over sharing to distill their message into one simple word. Here is how they did.

Video features:

• Alana Joy
• Alexia Tsotsis
• Andy Sternberg
• Ben Metcalfe
• Brian Solis
• Cathy Brooks
• Chris Saad
• Damien Basile
• Erin Broadley
• Francisco Dao
• Gabe Rivera
• Jeremy Johnson
• John Boitnott
• Laura Fitton
• Lon Harris
• Loren Feldman
• Marc Hustvedt
• Mark Krynsky
• Micah Baldwin
• Michelle Oshen Feldman
• Nicole Gustas
• Nicole Jordan
• Pete Cashmore
• Robert Scoble
• Sean Percival
• Serena Ehrlich
• Tony Adam

All the dreams I’ve had of cornering Pete Cashmore in a dimly lit Mashable party while shoving my face onto his after I’ve taken full advantage of the open bar were squashed when I realized that neither my own company, nor anyone else I work for would be willing to pay my way to SXSW so I could be a hot, drunk mess like everyone else.

God, my life is tough.

Anyways.

You know, I actually have a weird sense of freedom since I’m one of maybe five people on the internet who aren’t at SXSW. It’s like when your parents leave town for the weekend and all you want to do is invite every guy over ever and make bad decisions with them while stealing shots from the liquor cabinet. No? Just me? Really? COME ON PEOPLE.

What am I doing? What am I SAYING? No one is reading this. I could post the cure to cancer here and people would be all, “What? You cured cancer? Oh, fuck, I was at SXSW blasted out of my mind with [insert hot tech person here]!”

I think the people who aren’t at SXSW should all get together on the internet and fuck around with the people who are in Austin. Like, we should Google bomb them. Or, tell them that something has happened with Silicon Valley and they can’t do anything about it because they are in Texas and we’re going to fix it and they’ll get none of the glory. That’ll teach people to go to tech conferences with loose morals and open bars to make said morals looser. Ha! TAKE THAT SXSW! THE INTERNET IS OURS NOW, JERKS. WE’RE TAKING IT OVER AND CURING CANCER AND YOU’RE GOING TO COME BACK FEELING TERRIBLE. AND REALLY, REALLY HUNGOVER. HA!

No, I’m not bitter, why would you say that? No, I absolutely love seeing everyone I’ve ever wanted to spend five minutes with tweeting about how they are all in one room together and “Jamie, why aren’t you here!?” I love that. Totally. In honor of how much I love that, I have been drinking wine in excess. To, you know, celebrate. Celebrate my independence. And, the fact that SXSW is stupid and sounds boring and why would I want to be having hot tech orgies? Why would I want free alcohol shared with some of my favorite people on the planet?

Fuck you, SXSW. Fuck you and your awesomeness and your free stickers and your drunken hookups and your being so goddamn expensive. Nope, not bitter. Not at all.

(Photo (cc) Kenneth Yeung – www.thelettertwo.com)

Digital LA Digital Drinks - ‘Tis our lucky day! We’ll be celebratin’ St. Patty’s a wee day early with our pre-St. Patricks Day – Digital Drinks @ Dillon’s Irish Bar. Rest ur feet and pull up a chair with good cheer! And practice for the next day: wear some green! We’ll be networking in the left back private room – the one with the big screen!

Time: 8:00pm to 11:00pm

Location:
Dillon’s Irish Pub
6263 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets: $10 advance registration required

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Mindshare LA – We hope to see you there for another night of enlightened debauchery!

Program Includes:

• David Orban / Founder, Chief Evangelist, WideTag, Inc. & Advisor, Singularity Univeristy / The Internet of Things
• Matthew J. Smith / Harvard Law School / Negotiation & Mediation Afterhours
• Wil Carson / Senior Project Designer, Michael Maltzan Architecture / New Questions for a New City
• Emily Tyrant / Pervert Extraordinaire, Den of Iniquity / Acclimating Men to Pain

Time: 7:00pm

Location:
Club 740
740 S. Broadway
(Enter through the alley at 8th Spring St.)
Los Angeles, CA 90014

Tickets: $30

WITI Spring Mixer with Girls In Tech – Make new contacts, re-connect with former colleagues, invite clients (and make new ones!). You’ll have rare access to a highly diverse group of professionals committed to your success! Men and women are encouraged to attend this smashing seasonal event and we will be inviting many other LA based groups to join us.

Time: 6:00pm to 9:00pm

Location:
Wokano
1413 5th Street
Santa Monica, Ca 90401

Tickets: $20 for WITI members $40 for non-members

Docstoc March Mixer and Startups Uncensored #15 – How to Persuade People – This month’s Startups Uncensored will be on “How to Persuade People”. It will be an open and frank town-hall conversation talking about the skills and techniques leaders use to influence others. Led by Jason Nazar, the “How to Persuade People” presentation will be geared towards startups and entrepreneurs to learn and review the skills that will help them raise money, hire great talent, and land partnerships.

Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Location:
Santa Monica Public Library (Auditorium)
601 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, Ca 90401

Tickets: Free, RSVP
*This event is capped at 140 attendees. Confirmation will be required or your spot will be given up for our waiting list.

MediaClub LA – Join LA’s Largest Business Networking Organization for Media Professionals and see you at our next event. Come mingle with top industry professionals in Media and Technology. Attendees work at companies such as CAA, Disney, Dreamworks, Fox, ICM, MySpace, NBC, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, William Morris, YouTube, etc.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
W Hollywood
6250 Hollywood Blvd
Hollywood, Ca

Tickets: $12 until March 15th, then $15

It’s also a great tool for stalking your friends.

Of course many SXSW attendees this year were happy to broadcast every spot they visited, even their hotel location. And while that may not include their exact room number that’s easy enough to come by thanks to the friendly front desk staff.

So we decided to see just how many people we could track down based on their last check-in of the night. We can not confirm or deny if there was some responsible drinking involved. In either case here is what we found when we tried to unlock the coveted “Annoy the crap out of your friends at 5am” badge.

*Update: Some took this joke better than others so we have updated the video to include the best call of the night, the one and only Gary Vaynerchuk:

Each Community has what is called a “Founder” which is the person who started the community and is the one who manages it. They get to curate the content that members add, format the templates used for reviews, pick the top three reviews to highlight at the top of the page, and manage the Twitter account for the community. They essentially guide the conversation and topics.

The page is composed of reviews, featured lists, micro reviews and three featured reviews that usually revolve around a popular topic in the community. You have the ability to search members, see the top contributors and check out recent activity.

The SXSW Community is managed by Thomas Knoll and already has 56 members. With all the over sharing that takes place these days it’s pretty amazing that they were able to keep it quiet. Here are a few members which you might recognize:

• Chrisheuer
• Corvida
• Sarahcooley
• AlanaJoy
• Jyamasaki
• Missrogue
• Scobleizer

They have already added a ton of content and one particular tag that most if not all of the SXSWi attendees will want to check out. A list of all the parties.

When you click on the link of each event it takes you to a page that has a wiki with info on what the event is, where it’s located, the time it starts and photos. You then have the opportunity to write a detailed review or micro one, that will post to the page and can be sent to Twitter and Facebook. Check out some of the top parties ahead of time, the community has thoughtfully added tips for you SXSW newbies.

Needless to say there is some work involved with being a Community Founder, which is why you would want to pick something you’re passionate about if you’re going to sign up to be one.

If you want to become a part of the SXSW community and add your 2 cents about it, sign up to be a member of Lunch.com here. Then visit the community page to become a member. You can also follow them on Twitter at @LunchSXSW.

If you just want to browse the community before signing up for an account, we have a special beta code for you. Click here and enter the code “lalawag”.

Follow Lunch on Twitter @Lunch_com to stay up to date on news, and become a fan on Facebook.

How To become a Community Founder

In order to maintain the integrity of the Lunch community, people interested in creating a community will be asked to fill out a brief application form. This benefits fellow founders and members overall, by ensuring they’re surrounded by people who share Lunch’s brand values and vision for high quality content and responsible participation. Once you have created an account and signed in, enter the private BETA code CURIOUS as your passcode to access the application.

Get To Know Them

Lunch.com is a social media website where people share and discover genuinely useful information, connecting to others with common interests while uncovering common ground with those who may appear to be their total opposites. Fueled by curiosity, Lunch features reviews, lists and ratings created by members of the community, on almost any imaginable topic. Launched in April 2009 by J.R. Johnson former founder and CEO of VirtualTourist.com, which was acquired by Expedia in July 2008), Lunch’s proprietary Similarity Network engine calculates commonalities in taste and opinions among the site’s members.

Here’s a roundup of some of our most popular and outrageous posts from last year. Just click on the pictures to view the articles in all their glory.

(Photo (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com)

“for the next 30 days I’m going to do something each day to give to others. Its not always going to be a large amount of money and some days it won’t be money I’m giving away; I may make a donation online to various charities, give clothes to goodwill, buy a homeless person by my office a meal – I think what’s important is that I make myself think about the struggles other people are going through everyday.”

He makes a very good point. It seems more and more people are consumed by the things that are affecting them, and when they do think about doing something for others, they often use the excuse of later. It doesn’t take much to make an impact in someone else’s life and it definitely doesn’t take a lot of money.

Jason is asking for others to join his challenge and to help him find organizations and charities that you feel he should help out over the course of March. If you have one in mind he encourages you to leave it in the comments of his post. So far a few people have commeted and said they would join in the challenge including media empress Shira Lazar and David Travers from Rustic Canyon Partners.

Jason will be updating his blog regularly with his daily donation so you can follow along with his progress and hopefully get inspired to start your own.

(Photo (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com)

1. Enter the soundtracks of your favorite movies into Pandora and make your personal soundtrack. Every time you’re in a room with a computer, turn it on
2. Load Mac.com on Microsoft store computers
3. Load Goatse on Apple store computers
4. Load People of Wal-Mart on Wal-Mart computers
5. Spend a hundred bucks on Fiverr and buy your girlfriend twenty five-dollar projects
6. Put your family’s home videos on ChatRoulette
7. Put your actual parents on ChatRoulette
8. Subscribe all the National Review writers’ emails to newsletters from the Huffington Post and vice versa
9. Ask ChaCha and Aardvark all the questions from last night’s Jeopardy. Score them against each other
10. Find a relevant way to politely steer every conversation on Fark, Digg, and Reddit toward the practices and beliefs of Adolf Hitler
11. Hack Symantec
12. Get all your friends to search for Ebola symptoms on WebMD and Google. Then their friends, and so on…
13. Copy romance novels into 4chan, with all the names find-and-replaced with Fresh Prince characters
14. Rate everything on ToysRUs.com by taste and “mouth feel”
15. Email the staff of Wrong Diagnosis asking, “So I should do the opposite of what the site says, right?”
16. Comment on every Gizmodo post in the character of a Victorian-era inventor. Post steam-powered versions of new gadgets
17. Submit Cracked lists to McSweeney’s
18. Comment on every Instructables post offering to pay someone to do the work
19. Write the stories of famous literary characters into Fmylife posts
20. Install the Alexa toolbar and visit Alexa a million times
21. Rename the Trololo video as Kazaa’s most popular search terms. Upload
22. Fill your LinkedIn profile with links to flash games. Slow down all the people looking for jobs
23. Load lyrics sites in public and try to start midday karaoke
24. Play Yenta on OKCupid. Find pairs of people who’d make great couples. Then find them a 1 BR on Craigslist
25. Make jumpsuits out of your junk mail and sell them on Etsy

I’ve found the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back when it comes to bridging the gap between dating and technology. Shit, that was a lot of metaphors. I’ve had too much coffee. Like, really too much coffee. I’m shaking a little, but ANYWAYS.

We need to find a way to crowdsource our dates. Is it going to be Yelp or Foursquare or Gowalla who is going to crack into this viable marketplace? Or will a dark horse technology company situated in a random brick-walled office in San Francisco finally find a way for us all to spot the weirdos before we’re on date six with them? I’m rooting for the dark horse, because I like the underdog and because rooting for dark horses is always pretty trendy and cool to do.

So, I’m thinking something along the lines of a Yelp check-in thing:

“You have checked into Gloria’s vagina. There are thirteen reviews and her overall rating is 3 1/2 stars. Please see the Quick Tips for her erogenous zones and what she’d like to eat after having sex with you. She prefers you leave after twenty minutes of cuddling. She’s not looking for a serious relationship, but would prefer you take her out to dinner every once in a while. Would you like to meet her Regulars? Would you like to leave a review? How about emailing Gloria’s vagina to a friend?”

THIS IS GLORY! THIS IS GENIUS! WHY AM I GIVING THIS IDEA AWAY TO ALL OF YOU! BECAUSE I’M BEING GENEROUS! GO MAKE MILLIONS CHICKADEES!

I know, I sound like I’m joking, but I’m really not. This would revolutionize the way we date, people. All we’d need to do is login to Yelp (or that soon-to-be-popular dark horse application), put in the name of our date and check to see what other people have said about them.

Yelp has changed the restaurant industry for the better, since establishments are worried about getting unfavorable reviews. This review dating site/application would be a gift to HUMANITY. People would be so much nicer to each other if they knew their behavior was going to be reviewed and that said review could potentially ruin their chances to get laid again. I’M CHANGING THE WORLD WITH THIS IDEA. RAINBOWS. UNICORNS. GOLD STARS FOR ME!

While I’m pretty sure something like this definitely has some questionable privacy concerns, I’d say that overall it’s going to do much more good than bad. Think of all the time we’re going to save by being able to see if this chick puts out by the fifth date or this guy can actually give an orgasm.

This is valuable stuff. Not to mention, all the people we’ll be able to weed out because their reviews overwhelmingly point out that they become a raging tool after the third date. Douchebags Exposed! Bitches Pwned! These are just some of the blog post titles that will be associated with various write-ups of this new application. Mashable probably already has a draft written for it by now.

I’m basically just GIVING THIS TO YOU. FOR FREE. WITH BLOG POST TITLES AND EVERYTHING.

You’re totally welcome.

In addition to a fun night of mingling, they are having a tweet contest to see who the “Best Social Media City” is. This is based off of tweets that contain the hashtags #medialeaders and #LA. Currently out of the eight cities in the running, Raleigh is winning by a landslide. Now, I’m not encouraging you to spam your readers but, do you really want North Carolina to beat us at this?

To participate in the tweet contest and let other LA residents know that you will be attending the event, visit MediaLeaders.tv and click the tweet “this button”. Or just tweet out:

I am attending #MediaLeaders #LA on March 9th (and I want LA to win the tweet contest). Join me:  http://bit.ly/ab8CI8.

To check out who has already tweeted that they are attending and to quickly search what’s going on live at the event in your city, check out their Twitter Tracker.

Details

Date: Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Rush Street
9546 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, Ca 90232

Tickets: $12

(Photo from rushstreetculvercity.com)

Monday, March 8, 2010

Digiday: Mobile – Is Mobile The Next Critical Mass Medium? – Discover the what the future holds for you and this game changing media platform at digiday:MOBILE in Los Angeles. During this high-level full day event – top Publishers, Agency Executives and Brand Marketers will come together to discuss and debate how to fully utilize the next critical mass medium: MOBILE.

Full day of sessions and networking. Agenda here.

Time:
Starts at 8:00am, last session at 5:00pm
Cocktail party 5:30pm

Location:
Hilton Los Angeles (Universal City)
555 Universal Hollywood Drive
Universal City, Ca 91608

Tickets: $595.00
*The ticket includes all sessions, keynotes, meal functions, and a networking cocktail party.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Digiday: Social – The New Media Reality: Everything is Social. Are You? – During this high-level event, top Publishers, Agency Executives and Brand Marketers will come together to discuss how Social Media is everywhere and is changing everything.

Full day of sessions and networking. Agenda here.

Time:
Keynote starts 9:00am, last session starts at 4:45
Cocktail party at 5:30pm

Location:
Hilton Los Angeles (Universal City)
555 Universal Hollywood Drive
Universal City, Ca 91608

Tickets: $595.00
*The ticket includes all sessions, keynotes, meal functions, and a networking cocktail party.

Media Leaders Networking Event – Join fellow Media Leaders to share ideas and enjoy meeting new friends a week before SXSW. There’s no keynote speaker or panel of experts, just socializing and mixing with key influencers that are changing the way the industry operates.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Rush Street
9546 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, Ca 90232

Tickets: $12

Crash Space LA – BristleBots and LED throwie art – Tuesday night Crashpace LA is open to the public. They’ll be having some fun quick DIY projects for you to build. Come on over and have fun. The project kits are $5 for CrashSpace members or $10 for non-members and you can take them home after you build them. In the kit you get the parts to build your own Bristlebot, a tiny robot made from a toothbrush and LED throwie art. They’ll have a Bristlebot race track you can do time trials on.

Time: 8:00pm

Location:
Crash Space
10526 Venice Blvd
Culver City, Ca 90232

Tickets: None needed, more information on Crash Space here.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

ThinkLA’s February Interactive Mixer – Mingle at this mixer geared towards the interactive community. Appetizers served, no host bar.

Time: 6:00pm to 9:00pm

Location:
Rush Street
9546 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, Ca 90232

Tickets: Registration for this event is now closed. Walk-ins will be available at the door at $40 an individual.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Los Angeles VC and Angel Event – How to meet investors, pitch them, and what it really takes to get them to write you a check! We will be discussing trends in Early-Stage Investing, hot sectors, sectors that these Angels and VCs look at, things that are most important to them when they are considering an Investment, the best and worst things an entrepreneur can do to get their attention, additional advice for entrepreneurs, and, of course, the best ways to reach these and other Investors.

Time: 2:00pm – 6:15pm (workshop is 11am-1pm)

Location:
Bingham McCutchen LLP
355 South Grand Avenue Suite 4400
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets:
Entrepreneur Raising Capital – Event: $75
Entrepreneur Event + Pitching Workshop: $350
Investor / Service provider: $85

Friday, March 12, 2010

By now most of LA has arrived in Austin, Texas for the first day of  SXSW Interactive, excluding me of course. For those of you not going and wanting to drive everyone crazy with non SXSW tweets, check out @notsxsw.

Thanks to Nicole Jordan for information taken from her LA Tech Calendar on KickingSand.com

Why: I like easy games. I like city-building games. But I don’t like a game with no challenge. Especially if that game gets my long-lost relatives and friends to contact me after years, only to say “Come rake my cornfields!” This is utter bullshit.

Replace with: Texas Hold ‘Em. You need a game where you earn endless points that don’t get you anywhere? May as well learn how to play a real-world game and get shafted a bit less on your next Vegas trip (all people who like Facebook games like Vegas). It’s even by the same company, so you can still get swindled by “free” Netflix offers.

The Oatmeal

Why: It’s the Dane Cook of webcomics. “Why I believe printers were sent from hell!” Ha ha! That is funny because I have had trouble with a printer in the past! No punchlines needed in an Oatmeal comic; simple observations anyone could make, coupled with an “I’m so random!” joke about a bear or a penguin, are enough for this half-assed comic.

Replace with: Tom Oatmeal. Same name, much funnier. “Good afternoon.  I am trying to expand my horizons by acting in movies and shows like the BMX rapper does and like Steven Seagull does and so please hire me.  I am very diverse and convincing and can play a number of challenging roles.  In fact, a lot of what I do on a daily basis is acting.  ‘You’re pregnant?!  Of course I’ll support you.’ – Acting.”

Digg

Why: Not the content. Of course it’s a collection of stupid news stories and funny bullshit people found on the internet. So is, like, every blog these days. The problem is that Digg’s commenters offer no value. Plus the site keeps tricking you into clicking onto other Digg pages instead of going to the shit that was supposedly so interesting it needed a hundred thousand people to go look at it and overload the server.

Replace with: Reddit, where you can sort comments by “best” to read just the most popular, brilliant comments. Redditors are better than Diggers at voting up the interesting side notes and punchlines. Or try Fark, where the jokes are in the headlines themselves.

Pornhub

Why: There’s no real YouTube of porn. Several sites are still fighting for dominance: RedTube, PornoTube, YouPorn. So on each one, you’ll be missing out on some content.

Replace with: Fantasti.cc. It aggregates porn from all the sites above and several others, including T’n'A Flix, Xtube, Shufuni and XHamster. You can rate the porn, build your own collection, and explore other users’ collections to find someone whose tastes match yours. You can even look through user photos, where apparently actual women post nude photos of themselves. For everything missing at Fantasti.cc, there’s the Big List of Porn.

(Photo from rapprint.co.uk)

To be inspired of course. All week long Ignite events are taking place across the planet in different cities. Known as Global Ignite Week, participants get five minutes to present on stage with their 20 slides and try to enlighten and inspire the crowd.

The tag line for all of the events is “Enlighten us, but make it quick”, with topics ranging from social good, to robots, to remote viewing?? This was my first Ignite and I am sad to say I had to ask my friends that had been to past events what the point was. Thankfully there were a few presenters that stood out and actually made me think “Wow, that’s really cool, I want to know more.”

Kurt Daradics bravely took the stage and gave a very touching and funny speech about being a cyborg. He shared with the room a personal story that many have never heard, how he was born with a condition that left him deaf with 40% hearing loss until they were able to implant a piece of metal in his ear that conducts sound through the bone. I even had people coming up to me at other events this week to talk about how great they thought it was.

Photo by Laurie Percival

Eric Gradman shared a range of projects he has worked on including one called the Narcisystem, a wearable suit of biometric sensors which allows different parts of his body to control the elements in the room around him like the lighting and sound. How you can use RFID tags to turn any space into an interactive one and he talked about Sockieokie, a project that will be unveiled at a Syyn Labs, formerly Mindshare Labs, event this Saturday. He definitely inspired me to get out to the next Mindshare event.

The last presenter, Adam Sadowsky, treated us to some of the specifics behind the recently debuted video for OKGO’s new song “This Too Shall Pass”. It was released at 4pm on Monday and encompasses a Rube Goldberg machine. The band was really specific on their requirements and it was quite impressive that Syyn Labs was able to meet them all and pull off such a cool video in one shot.

The presenters that I liked, I really liked but they were few and far between. Overall I found the evening interesting but not necessarily enlightening. I didn’t seem like I had experienced what I had heard a typical Ignite event was like. That being said I am still willing to attend another one as long as they make some changes.

To the organizers I would have to recommend next time get a bigger venue, have the community vote ahead of time on who they want to see present, and for the love of god, have food available.

(Photos by Jim Alden @TechFrog)

It seems Village Voice, which the SF Weekly and LA Weekly fall under, left some interesting comments on the TechCrunch article announcing the app which Alexia included in her post:

That’s right, they are offering to buy the first round of drinks for anyone that can show either Alexia or Bill that they have the app on their phone. Great news for you freaks that don’t have an iPhone yet, the app is available on the Android and on the mobile web.

Here’s a handy picture of Bill Jensen and Alexia Tsotsis to help you get acquainted with who they are. Take a good look so you’ll be sure to spot them at SXSWi and get your free drink on.

Alexia Tsotsis
(Photo from LAWeekly.com)

Bill Jensen

You can check out all of the features of the “Happy Hours” app here.

Now if you excuse me I have some downloading to do. I may not be able to drink right now, but eventually that day will return and I want to be ready.

(Photo by Jim Alden @TechFrog)

Of course you do.

However, here’s the thing. I’ve decided to make up my fake dating life based solely on the amount of dating sites out there and I’d like to give you a preview of my future thanks to the world of technological advancement.

Firstly, I’d like to use eHarmony to find my mate of choice and thankfully now I can expand my market to include men and women, so, this gives me 100% better odds. Or maybe 50% better odds. I’m not entirely sure since I am clearly NOT a mathematician and am now spending so much mental energy on percentages that I’ve forgotten what I’m doing all together and whoa, weird, where did this margarita come from?

Anywho.

So, I’ll find either my dream wife or husband on eHarmony because they have scientific ways to match me up with my mate of choice. And then, after a couple months of romantic bliss, I’ll join Ashley Madison to have discreet affairs with people who are either also married or who have a particular affliction for married people. Planned affairs, for the actual win!

The Ashley Madison site says, “Life is short. Have an affair.” And, boy do I agree with that! Life sure is short and of course I’d want to commit to someone and then willingly cheat on them, because I obviously understand the importance of marriage has nothing to do with that whole committing to the person you love thing, but is more about just, I don’t know, being able to say I’m married. Plus, isn’t it more attractive to singles when I’m married? Like, I’m the un-gettable, but OH! SURPRISE! I’m gettable! Thank you, Ashley Madison. Thank you.

Then, once I have both my wife/husband and then my mistress or, uh, mister? What’s the male version of a mistress? Cabana boy? Okay, great, going with that. So, once I have my wife/husband and then my cabana boy, I’ll go onto SugarDaddies.com and find, what else? MY SUGAR DADDY! Hell fucking yes. I’ll have my poppa pay for things like trips to the Bahamas and purses from Marc Jacobs while I gallivant around town with my cabana boy and check in, from time to time, with my wife/husband. Win, win, WIN.

And, if that weren’t enough to satisfy my seemingly insatiable needs, I can always, you know, check into Adult Friend Finder and get a little nookie on the side. Unless, of course, that doesn’t work out, I can just sit on Chatroulette and flash complete strangers to satisfy my incessant need for validation from the outside world. Oh, to be shallow, dishonest and impossible to satisfy. This is the life, right?

My time in New York was a good nine lives ago, but my adventures in both Los Angeles and San Francisco are fresh and ripe for dissecting. So when Sean Percival, the prince of all things juicy in online fodder, asked me to write a LA Tech versus SF Tech themed article, who was I to say no?

First off, it goes without saying that tech professionals in San Francisco are automatically acknowledged for their intellect and tech savviness because of their location, and because they’re pretty damn smart.  LA techies have to work harder to be taken seriously because Los Angeles is the entertainment mecca of the world, not the tech capital. In due time, the convergence between the two industries is going to be so tightly knit that it will be difficult to distinguish between them.  But in the meantime, the biggest ostensible distinction is that SF has all the brains, and LA holds all the beauty.

Right out of the gate, both communities are deliciously warm and inviting, and they don’t seem to care if you have anything to do with tech so long as you’re on Twitter. However, while both crowds love to love the city of San Francisco, San Franciscans love to loathe Los Angeles, which is understandable in some regards. Traffic here is tragic, and this IS where buttock implants were invented.

With all the intertwining between both clubs, combined social circles, trading of tech employees, partnerships, conference shenanigans, and occasional grab-ass, there is quite a bit of cross over. But let’s be honest. Bay Area techies think us Los Angelenos are hung up on image and money, and LA geeks think SF-ers need to dress better.
I hadn’t thought much about whether or not people in LA Tech were unhealthily consumed with image until a friend of mine, who is not a Los Angeles resident, offered that disparity while I was in Vegas covering CES last month. At that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was right.  So I tapped into my memory bank and chronicled my initial and lasting impressions of both ecosystems thus far.

SF Tech is All Tech All the Time
My introduction to SF Tech stems back to my TechTV days when Leo LaPorte was saving screens and Kevin Rose was a production assistant. Raconteur Cathy Brooks was rounding up top tech experts around the clock, and Jim Louderback was radiating with gadget guru enthusiasm.

Fast forward through a series of dark New York minutes and four years in Hollywood to a fortuitous rainy San Francisco night in May 2009, and I’m crashing Los Angeles transplant Drew Olanoff’s departure party, where I met former Gawker gossip king Owen Thomas, now of NBCBayArea.com. I vividly remember our conversation about the web video scene in LA.

“Oh, online video producers in Los Angeles are so cute,” said Owen. “They love making their little movies for the Internet.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “People move to Los Angeles for a reason – to be in entertainment. If they end up in tech, their work is generally tied to entertainment in some way.”
“They’re just very cute,” said Owen with that mega-watt smile that only he can don all day long.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the kitchen, the lovely and whip-smart Maya Baratz and Eric Eldon chatted about blogging and the latest social gaming coverage, as Drew and MG Siegler showed off their newest iPhone apps.  Anyone at that party who didn’t work in tech other than myself stayed in the living room and played Rock Band.

As I met more people dialed into the SF Tech community, I began attending conferences and tweetups. My good friend Karen Hartline, who I’m convinced knows every influencer in social media, as well as the lyrics to every top 40 single, made it a point to get me out there.

Of course, I felt a tad out of place at first. People couldn’t have cared less that up until that point, my career revolved around hanging out with celebrities. The new friends I made were particularly dumbfounded when I didn’t know who Scobleizer was, and when I had to ask what Brian Solis did for a living. The truth is that the people of Silicon Valley do care about celebrities – their own.

Most of the events I attended involved listening to people geek out over Google Analytics, SEO and Twitter. In short, the tech community in SF, lives, eats, and breathes technology. Can we really expect anything less?

You Can Take the Tech out of LA, but You Can’t Take LA out of the Tech
My introduction to the LA Tech scene took place in October during a 140 Characters conference after-party at the Roosevelt. After hours of listening to panelists abuse the word “engage” and expound on how to get more Twitter followers, I ventured toward party host extraordinaire Paige Craig’s hotel room – the designated end-up spot for all the little Tweeters to go after the bar closed.

As I approached the party zone, the first thing I noticed was Sean Percival’s hair. The now-nicotine-free father-to-be was standing outside smoking a cigarette, looking quite cool and dapper with a full head of smoothly groomed locks. I wanted to poke one of my fingers through the strands, but security was nearby, so I walked inside the room.

To my left stood wordslinging temptress AV Flox, waxing poetic on epic sex. When I looked to my right, I met the wonderfully verbal Alana Joy, who admired my purse and asked if she could feature it on one of her multiple blogs. Next, young baller Mike Prasad introduced himself, promoted Kogi BBQ, and gave me his GirlGamer business card. Five minutes later, satirist Brooks Bayne tried to persuade me to talk politics and admit that I’m a closet conservative.

A few weeks later, I met Mark Jeffrey at a dinner party, where we talked literature and then discussed working together on a potential new online venture.  A couple of days after that I had brunch with Francisco Dao at Norm’s (shocking I know), and listened to him elaborate on Twiistup as a conference versus a party.

In short, everyone had their hustle on. Why? Because you can take the tech out of LA, but you can’t take LA out of tech. To make a name for yourself in LA, one must stand out, stand tall, and stand in a long line of hustlers who all want a taste of the good life. To stand out, one must have a persona, project an image, and make some noise. Whether they’re in film, TV, music, porn, real estate, restaurants, or tech, career-minded people in Los Angeles possess rapacious ambition. Can we really expect anything less?

Concluding Thoughts
For the most part, a great deal of esteem exists between LA Tech and SF Tech. Far too many friendships and business relationships exist among members of both clubs for there to be any significant lack of respect. That being said, SF Tech heads will continue saying LA Tech members party too much and LA Tech will keep saying SF techies need to pay more attention to their bottom line.

So do I agree with the aforementioned saying about three different magnificent cities I have lived in twice?  Yes, but I have my own variation.

If you are a genuine geek, you can thrive in San Francisco. If you are even a smidgen of a geek with hustle, you can play and thrive in Los Angeles. If you are a genuine geek with hustle, you can thrive and play anywhere with anyone. But stay on the West Coast, please. We can’t let New York get all the glory.

(Photo by (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com)

Monday, March 1, 2010

Ignite LA – Speakers get only 5 minutes to give an amazing, inspiring talk. In LA, there are tons of different communities at the intersection of tech, art, green/sustainability, unique lifestyle design, digital/collaborative media, and social action that don’t know each other but should. Think of Ignite as a set of trailers for exciting projects people are doing that you should know about.

Time: 7:00pm to 9:30pm

Location:
Cinespace
6356 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Tickets: Free, RSVP

A Good Knight’s Party — Premiere Party for ‘A Good Knight’s Quest’ – official premiere party for A Good Knight’s Quest, a new web comedy series by The Escapist and writer/director Brett Register. Evening includes: special guest DJ Michael Woodward of Your Only Friends, signature “Quest” drink specials by a Capitol City mixologist, win an evening with a cast member, red carpet interviews w/Kristyn Burtt of The Web Files, high-definition screening of our extended trailer and cast and crew Q&A.

Time: 8:00pm to 11:00pm

Location:
Capitol City Hollywood
1615 N. Cahuenga Blvd
Los Angeles, Ca 90028

Tickets: Free, RSVP required

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Scripped – Hollywood 2.0 – The topic of the discussion will be *”Film Production and Online Distribution – Strategies for Success.”* This will be an especially useful chat for those of you interested in hearing how quality content is put together, and how to go about distributing content on the web.

Panelists:

• Tyler Crowley – Director of Strategy, Mahalo ; producer of several web series
• Sean Percival – Director of Content Socialization, Myspace; founder lalawag.com
• Mali Elfman – Editor-in-Chief, Screencrave ; Producer
• Aaron Lubin – Producer

Time: 7:00pm

Location:
Mahalo
902 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, Ca 90401

Tickets: Free, RSVP required (email Sunil at Sunil@scripped.com)
* We can only accept 100 people into this event due to the limited space.

Dealmaker Media – How To Build A Remarkable Company (aka: How Not to Be Boring) - At this special event, we’re thinking out of the box, so you can too. We’ll be discussing:

• Startup DNA: How do you build a truly remarkable company?
• Where does inspiration for “new” ideas come from?
• How do you promote a new idea to a market that might not yet be defined?
• Spreading the gospel: turning doubters into believers.
• How to surround yourself with a winning team

Time: 6:00pm to 9:0pm

Location:
Clearstone Venture Partners
1351 4th Street (4th floor)
Santa Monica, Ca

Tickets: Strategy Series & Mixer: $60 Member Price: $40 / Mixer Only: $35 Member Price: $25

Digital LA – Celebrity Websites Panel – The Oscars are coming up, perfect time for our panel on celebrity websites! At the perfect venue to talk celebs: Madame Tussauds in Hollywood, right on the Walk of Fame, on the same block where the Kodak Theatre will be hosting the Oscars a few days later! So after our panel in a section of the exhibit reserved just for us to talk about celebs, u can take pics with ‘em too!

Panelists:

• Jeff Pierce, 65 Media, concepted JimCarrey.com website, currently a finalist for this year’s SXSWi Film/Web award http://jimcarrey.com
• Anthony Malzone, Art Director for Prince, manager of Prince’s online presence, including his official website LotusFlow3r http://www.lotusflow3r.com
• Karen Woodward, content manager, writer, Booeep.com, works with Greg Grunberg, Sophia Bush, Lauren Holly, Disney kids, etc. on their official websites

Time: 5:00pm to 8:00pm

Location:
Madame Tussauds Hollywood
6933 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets: $60 thru Mar 1, Increases to $75 on March 2-3
* Includes admission to our panel, and a self-guided tour of the museum immediately afterward.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Digital LA – Alice In Wonderland – We just reserved a block of 10 VIP tickets to see Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in 3D at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood! Our VIP tickets include no waiting, reserved seating, popcorn, a drink and 3D glasses.

Time: 9:00pm to 11:30pm

Location:
El Capitain Theatre
6838 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets: RSVP here, and they will let you know when registration is available

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Art Directors Guild Panel Discussion – An open invitation to attend a panel discussion of Production Designers and Set Decorators nominated for the 2009 Acadamy Award for achievement in Art Direction. Footage from the nominated films will be shown. Following films will be discussed: Avatar, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Nine, Sherlock Holmes and The Young Victoria.

Time: 2:00pm doors open 2:30 event starts

Location:
Egyptian Theatre Hollywood
6712 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Tickets: Free, seating is first come first served

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Digital LA – Oscars Viewing Party – Get ready for the big awards show of the year: it’s our second annual Oscars Viewing Party! We had so much fun dressing up and watching the show together last year, we’re looking forward to more of the fun this year. Especially cuz a third of the Best Picture noms are digital: Avatar, Up, and District 9! This is a dress up event, blazers for guys and cocktail dresses for the ladies.

Time: 4:30pm to 8:00pm

Location:
The Parlor
1519 Wilshire Boulevard
Santa Monica, Ca 90403

Tickets: $35 thru Fri Mar 5, Increases to $40 Mar 6-7
*Your ticket includes light appetizers (shrimp cocktail, chicken satay skewers, sliders, veggie platter, and unlimited soda, juice, water).

Photo by Wm. Marc Salsberry

Join media empress Shira Lazar and theStream.tv’s Jim Festante as they a Read off the nominees for ten of the main categories. The full list of nominees in all 35 categories are set to be announced in a press release immediately following. Check back with us for a complete list once we have it.

The official Twitter account for The Streamys will be live tweeting the event and are planning on giving one special fan a ticket to the Streamy Awards sometime during the announcement. Be sure to follow them at @streamyawards for a chance to win.

The second annual Streamy Awards ceremony is scheduled for April 11, 2010 at The Music Box at Fonda Theater in Hollywood.  See photos of last years event by Wm. Marc Salsberry here and by Lan Bui here .

UPDATE: Info from NewTeeVee.com

And the nominees are:

OVERALL SERIES

Best Comedy Web Series
Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis
Easy to Assemble
The Guild
The Legend of Neil
Wainy Days

Best Drama Web Series
Angel of Death
Compulsions
OzGirl
The Bannen Way
Valemont

Best Hosted Web Series
A Comicbook Orange
Diggnation
Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show
Know Your Meme
The Totally Rad Show

Best Reality or Documentary Web Series
Interview Project
Mommy XXX
RADAR
Streak to Win
The Secret Life of Scientists

Best News or Politics Web Series
Auto-Tune the News
Rocketboom
The Tommorow Show with Mo Rocca
The Young Turks
VBS News

Best Foreign Web Series
Flying Kebab
Girl Number 9
Noob
OzGirl
Riese

Best New Web Series
$5 Cover: Memphis
Girl Number 9
Odd Jobs
Old Friends
The Bannen Way

Best Companion Web Series
Assassin’s Creed: Lineage
Dexter: Early Cuts
Harper’s Globe
The Office: Subtle Sexuality
Weeds: University of Andy

Best Animated Web Series
Eli’s Dirty Jokes
Happy Tree Friends
Homestar Runner
How It Should Have Ended
Zero Punctuation

Best Branded Entertainment Web Series
Back on Topps (Dick’s Sporting Goods)
Brainstorm (Altoids)
Easy to Assemble (IKEA)
Parts Art (Lexus)
The Temp Life (Spherion)

Best Experimental Web Series
Auto-Tune the News
Green Porno
HBO Cube
INST MSGS
Level 26

DIRECTING

Best Directing for a Comedy Web Series
Blue Movies (Scott Brown)
Dorm Life: Semester 2 (Chris Smith, Mark Stewart Iverson)
James Gunn’s PG Porn (James Gunn)
The Guild (Sean Becker)
The Legend of Neil (Sandeep Parikh)

Best Directing for a Drama Web Series
Anyone But Me (Tina Cesa Ward)
Compulsions (Nathan Atkinson)
Girl Number 9 (James Moran)
The Bannen Way (Jesse Warren, Mark Gantt)
Young American Bodies (Joe Swanberg)

WRITING

Best Writing for a Comedy Web Series
Back on Topps (Jason Sklar, Randy Sklar, Eric Friedman, Matt Price)
Dorm Life (Chris Smith, Jordan Riggs, Jessie Gaskell, Jack De Sena, Jim Brandon, Brian Singleton, Mark Stewart Iverson)
The Legend of Neil (Tony Janning, Sandeep Parikh)
The Guild (Felicia Day)
Wainy Days (David Wain)

Best Writing for a Drama Web Series
Anyone But Me (Susan Miller, Tina Cesa Ward)
Compulsions (Bernie Su)
Girl Number 9 (James Moran, Dan Turner)
The Bannen Way (Jesse Warren, Mark Gantt)
Valemont (Christian Taylor)

ACTING

Best Male Actor in a Comedy Web Series
Zach Galifianakis (Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis)
Tony Hale (CTRL)
Amir Blumenfeld (Jake and Amir)
Sandeep Parikh (The Guild)
David Wain (Wainy Days)

Best Female Actor in a Comedy Web Series
Illeana Douglas (Easy to Assemble)
Justine Bateman (Easy to Assemble)
Joanna Cassidy (Sex Ed)
Felicia Day (The Guild)
Lisa Kudrow (Web Therapy)

Best Male Actor in a Drama Web Series
Craig Frank (Compulsions)
Robert Englund (Fear Clinic)
Joe Absolom (Girl Number 9)
Mark Gantt (The Bannen Way)
Eric Balfour (Valemont)

Best Female Actor in a Drama Web Series
Zoe Bell (Angel of Death)
Rachael Hip-Flores (Anyone But Me)
Tatyani Ali (Buppies)
Sophie Tilson (OzGirl)
Crystal Chappell (Venice)

Best Ensemble Cast in a Web Series
Back on Topps (Randy Sklar, Jason Sklar, Jason Nash, Janet Varney, Stephanie Courtney, Brian Huskey, Phil LaMarr)
Dorm Life (Nora Kirkpatrick, Hannah Pearl Utt, Anne Lane, Jessie Gaskell, Brian Singleton, Jack De Sena, Jim Brandon, Jordan Riggs, Pancho Morris)
Easy to Assemble (Illeana Douglas, Justine Bateman, Eric Lange, Michael Irpino, Cheri Oteri, Daryl Sabara, Michael Panes, Rob Mailhouse, Sean Durrie, Tom Arnold, Ed Begley Jr., Tim Meadows, Ricki Lake, Greg Proops, Kevin Pollak)
GOLD (Robert J. Brewer, James Paul Xavier, Nathan Mobley, Rick Robinson, David Nett, Gary Karp, Shannon Ivey, Alan Loayza, Shannon Nelson, Jeremy Guskin, Angela Schnaible) The Guild (Vincent Caso, Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, Amy Okuda, Sandeep Parikh, Robin Thorsen)

Best Guest Star in a Web Series
Chris Hardwick (Back on Topps)
Nathan Fillion (PG Porn)
“Weird Al” Yankovic (Know Your Meme)
Wil Wheaton (The Guild)
Courteney Cox (Web Therapy)

Best Web Series Host
Alex Albrecht (Diggnation)
Zadi Diaz (Epic Fu)
Kevin Pollak (Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show)
Kristyn Burtt (The Web.Files)
Michael Buckley (What The Buck?!)

Best Vlogger
Brigitte Dale (Brigitte Dale)
iJustine (iJustine)
Phillip DeFranco (sxePhil)
Shane Dawson (ShaneDawsonTV)
Shira Lazar (Shira Lazar)

CRAFT AWARDS

Best Editing in a Web Series
$5 Cover: Memphis (Nathan Black, Morgan Jon Fox, Josh Swain)
Brainstorm (Jochen Kunstler, Jacob Vaughan)
Auto-Tune the News (Evan Gregory, Andrew Gregory, Michael Gregory)
I Kissed a Vampire (David Bekoff)
The Bannen Way (Zack Arnold)

Best Cinematography in a Web Series
Angel of Death (Carl Herse)
Brainstorm (Michael Lohmann)
LUMINA (XiaoSu Han, Andreas Thalhammer)
I Kissed a Vampire (Robert Lam)
The Bannen Way (Christopher Charles Kempinski)

Best Art Direction in a Web Series
$99 Music Videos (Kit Pennebaker)
Green Porno (Rick Gilbert)
Mountain Man (Matt Enlow)
Riese (Chad Krowchuk)
Tiki Bar TV (Kim Bailey)

Best Sound Design in a Web Series
Fear Clinic (Kunal Rajan)
Mountain Man (Michael Miller)
Riese (Bill Mellow, Kevin Belen)
Rockville, CA (Seth Talley)
The Vetala (Randy Kiss)

Best Visual Effects in a Web Series
Backyard FX (Erik Beck)
Fear Clinic (Jason M Bergman, Nicholas Onstad, Bethany Pederson, David Dang)
Mordy Koots (Reece Sanders, Clayton Jacobson)
Safety Geeks: SVI (Thor Melsted, Mike Smith)
The Crew (Jeff Bell, Zack Finfrock, Brett Register)

Best Animation in a Web Series
College Humor: Hardly Working (Dan Meth)
Happy Tree Friends (David Winn, Alan Lau, Jason Sadler, Brad Rau, Roque Bollestros, Paul Allan, Nica Lorber, Michael Lipman)
How It Should Have Ended (Daniel Baxter, Tommy Watson, Tina Alexander)
Inventions (Chris Weller, David Lamps)
theGoob (Magnus Jansson)

Best Original Music in a Web Series
Auto-Tune the News (Evan Gregory, Andrew Gregory, Michael Gregory)
Horrible Turn (Chance McClain, Kevin Ryan, Frank Bullington, Jeremy Botter)
Key of Awesome (Mark Douglas)
Sparhusen (Rob Mailhouse, Todd Spahr, Illeana Douglas)
The Coat (Thierry Chaze)

Best Live Production in a Web Series
Coin-Op TV Live
Fantasy Football Live!
Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show
The RadNerd Show
TWiT.tv

Best Interactive Experience in a Web Series
Circle of Eight
I <3 Vampires
Married on MySpace
Valemont
Wreck and Salvage: Suppendapo

Best Product Integration in a Web Series
Circle of Eight (Mountain Dew)
Easy to Assemble (IKEA)
The Bannen Way (Jaguar)
Valemont (Verizon Wireless)
Woke Up Dead (Kodak)

Best Mobile Experience in a Web Series
AT&T Life Without Mobile
Mr. Wrong
Playboy: Interns
Seth on Survival
Valemont

(Photo by Wm. Marc Salsberry)

4/20: Seemingly abandoned unconference ISO a good home

Hey Los Angeles. It’s BarcampLA. I know I haven’t been around for a while, but there’s a good explanation for that. I’ve been abandoned. At least I think that’s what has happened. Nobody has done anything with me for almost a year now. You used to like to hang out with me every six months.

If you don’t want to chill with your old friend that’s fine I guess. Could you let me know what happened though? Am I not cool anymore? Did I not talk about social media enough? Maybe I talked about it too much. Whatever I did, I can change.

There’s something I really want to know more than that though. Maybe it’s harder to answer. Maybe it isn’t. Doesn’t hurt to ask though. So here goes nothing.

Can someone please make me happen again? Like once every six months? It doesn’t matter who does it. I just want to see my friends again. Is that too much to ask?

(Photo by Wm. Marc Salsberry)

Chatroulette. What is the significance of Chatroulette? What does Chatroulette mean for society? Is Chatroulette the past or the future? Do we want a return to anonymity? Are we hungry for human connection?

God.

Chatroulette is a place, where you go and you see a stranger on a webcam, you chat a little, you feel awkward, and then you go drinking with your friends.

If you’re a reporter, someone in the news room says, cover this Chatroulette, it’s on the Digg and the Fark and the Gawkers.

You go on, and you’re a nerdy white person, the other people on here, they look a little like you but younger, cause they’re a little nerdy. Anyway they keep clicking away from you, because you’re boring, you’re a reporter. Even if you’re the young cool one in the office because you were on Facebook before the company network was on Facebook and you twitter things that don’t include a bit.ly link.

So you flick through, Mr. Reporter, you see some pets, you see college kids, because college is where all the memes grow, a really interesting angle to pursue but you don’t talk about that, Mr. New York Times or Vanity Fair or CNN, because there is one way your piece is gonna go:

1. “This is what Chatroulette is blah blah.” Your readers are old, all the young people heard the name and they got it.

2. “You meet rrrrrandom people!” Yes. That is what the site is. Say two words, “it’s interesting,” and move on. The rest, it’s your own Chatroulette experience, it is as boring to me as you describing your dreams. That’s why you didn’t have a good photo to run with the story, that’s why you used that same goddamn screencap of the guy in the leopard costume from the very first fucking blog post about this, on someone’s Tumblr before it got copied from Tweetpic.

3. “There are dicks.” Surprise! Pope shits in woods. It’s a semi-anonymous chat site. Of course everyone uses it to jerk off. If I weren’t scared of every blogger getting a screencap of my little peener, I’d be wanking it to Chatroulette too. It’s free flashing where no one can report you.

4. “What does it mean, argle bargle braum braum.” It means there’s a fad on the internet, it’s catchy, it’s like Omegle, which Jesus Christ your readers don’t even know, and it would have been helpful if you made the comparison. Because Chatroulette is so interesting since you’re making a more visceral connection, your brain is hard-wired to love faces, this is so much more than Omegle.

But it’s still nothing, which is why your news report sounds like bullshit. It’s not even a viable company. It’s half Omegle, which is not even trying to be a business, and half Justin.tv, which, god, look at their homepage and the top show is a guy trying to live in a metal box. And Andrew W.K. is doing an interview somewhere.

YouTube can’t get ads and they know what their videos are showing, Chatroulette is a toy, it’ll be around as long as the guy wants to run it, but it will never. matter. Except for the forum for sharing tits that girls have flashed on cam, which is where I’m going now.

(Photo from danalaurengoldstein.blogspot.com)

Fotolia and Flixtime CEO Oleg Tscheltzoff had this to say about the site:

“We have been getting more and more demand from users who want a tool that easily creates stunning videos by using images and text. Companies from all over the world have video needs, whether for websites, projects, or presentations. Instead of investing tons of money in equipment, talent, and a location to produce videos, our users can simply use their content, or the images and music provided by Flixtime, to create the videos they envision.”

According to Ryan Born, CEO of AudioMicro:

“We are very pleased to partner with Flixtime to provide the music for such an amazing technology. With just one click, Flixtime users can bring energy and emotion to their videos by adding music. We’ve supplied a handpicked selection, spanning nearly every musical genre and style. With tracks for everyone, Flixtime users are sure to have the perfect soundtrack and take their videos to the next level.”

Users can pick from their own photos and videos or choose from a library of royalty-free stock images that are provided by Fotolia. You then add your choice of music and text and voilia you have an awesome 60 second video with sound effects and music for free.

I made my own video in about 20 minutes using the lalakitteh’s. You can make one much faster but it took me a while to find the song I wanted. Unfortunately I couldn’t embed it even though there was a button that should let you. Click on the link below the pic to see my masterpiece.

lalakitteh video

Flixtime launched worldwide on February 22, 2010. Follow them on Twitter at @flixtime and make your own video here.

However, us women of the technological persuasion know that, at times, a cute boy will very much like to make an impression on us. And, how do you go about that without us thinking you’re a crazy person just looking to make a voodoo doll out of us? I mean, yes, I know, my imagination is a bit out of control, but it’s probably because I watch To Catch a Predator while drinking and that means things get a little crazy all up in my head space.

But, say you’re not creepy and you actually want to hit on a girl who is funny and smart and maybe also blogs, but you have no idea what to say other than, “I swear I’m not creepy, but I just wanted to tell you that I think you’re fantastic.” And, while, okay, that might work once or twice, it’s bound to have a much less success than failure rate, so here are some tips:

1. Don’t hit on her directly
What you should do is comment on her blog (if she has one), @ reply her on Twitter, and be particularly witty with your responses. Show her that you’ve been listening, reading, and giving an actual shit about what she has to say. And oh, oh! Definitely quote her writing back to her and be all, “You know, this is a particularly poignant sentence and I think about this a lot when I’m drinking sophisticated things like wine and thinking about how I would just like to find someone who appreciates romance and multiple orgasms.” WE LIKE THIS.

2. Do not ever Poke, Wink, or Nudge her
COP FUCKING OUT. If you are interested in a girl, I cannot stress enough that if you Poke her on Facebook before even sending her the cutest email you’ve ever sent in your life, then I will personally go to your house and stab you in your poking finger. Because, you’ll go through step number one, then you’ll add her on Facebook so she can see if there is any attraction and if you actually have a life. And, if you, before even emailing her something fantastic, POKE HER ON THE FUCKING FACEBOOK, she will never speak to you again. Because, this is equivalent to using a Hallmark card to declare your undying love and signing it, “Love, me.” HOW ORIGINAL.

3. Email her and make a serious impression
Off-handed @ replies will only get you so far. What you need to do in order to get this girl’s attention is to send her a fantastically-crafted email that both states your intentions and gives her a nice little rub-down all over her ego. Show her you’ve been paying attention, because you have the advantage to impress upon her that you like this girl for her mind and not just for her gorgeous rack eyes. Us girls eat that shit right up. BELIEVE ME HERE GENTLEMAN.

4. Make an honest move
Does the girl of your dreams live in Ohio, but you live in Nevada? If you weren’t willing to take a plane out there to sweep her off her feet, then you shouldn’t have gone through steps 1-3. There’s nothing sexier than a man who knows what he wants and will take the steps necessary to get it. If you’re going to be the type of person who isn’t creepy and genuinely hits on a girl virtually, then, you better get it together and take that shit offline. Unless you just want some hot sexting and she does, too, then sigh, you go get yours. HOT SEXTING FOR THE ACTUAL WIN.

Speaking of, where the fuck is my phone? I need to go tell someone what I’d do if he were here and… yeah…

According to the coverage on TechCrunch today, Jason Nazar, CEO of Docstoc, stated that:

“One of the platform’s fastest growing user base segments are small business owners looking for free and paid documents for entrepreneurs, startups and professionals. Documents range from legal documents to real estate contracts to analysis to forms for business models.”

What this means for users. They can sell their documents through the site and for the first 60 days they will keep 100% of the revenue. After that point the revenue is split 50/50 between the user and Docstoc. There are no other fees or charges and Docstoc provides the user with reporting and analytics to track purchases. You also get live customer support via phone and chat, the ability to sell content in bundles for a much higher average sell, and you can embed and sell documents on your own website or blog as well.

Check out the Docstoc Docstore here, and follow them on Twitter at @docstoc.

Get to know them

Docstoc is one of the fastest growing internet companies targeting Small Business, they currently reach over 20M uniques a month, and are aiming to be the largest trafficked site on the internet for small business. Created by CEO Jason Nazar, from Starups Uncensored, Docstoc gives you the ability to search over five million documents. You can find and share proffessional documents and store private ones as well.

So what can I do to help? What can this lowly individual do to add to the sheer amazingocity (trademark Jobs) that is the iPad? I can’t program. Christ, I can’t even spell HTLM let alone do anything with it (see what I did there?). So I decided to compile a list of books – real books – from Amazon that I thought would be perfect for the iPad. Titles that sum up the sexy piece of glass you just bought. Imagine booting up your iPad to see these titles winking back at you.

1. What Is This? by Antje Damm
2. Pointless by Jeff Connor
3. Waste of Money by Owen Money
4. Why the World is Full of Useless Things by Steve McKevitt
5. Useless Beauty by Robert K. Johnston
6. Don’t Be Afraid to Drop by Julia Cook and Anita Dufalla
7. Boom! Splat! Kablooey! by Pat Murphy and The Scientists of Klutz Labs
8. Why Did I Buy This? by Lynn Brunelle
9. More Money Than Brains by Laura Penny
10. Refund by Mike Thompson

(Photo from wired.com)

Monday, February 22, 2010

Gravity Summit – We have an amazing day planned for attendees – a virtual brain trust of the top brands and minds in the industry. In addition, the attendees are outstanding – decision makers from all types of businesses across Southern California – financial services, entertainment, healthcare, music, high-tech, non-profits, municipalities, and entrepreneurs.

Time: 9:00am to 4:30pm conference
Tweetup Cocktail Party at the Roxy at 6:30pm (free)

Location:
UCLA Covel Commons
200 De Neve Drive
Los Angeles, Ca 90077

Tickets: Register here

UCLA Anderson School Of Management – Entrepreneurship Week – Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, will be delivering the Keynote address on campus as part of UCLA Entrepreneurship Week. His speech will be followed by time for networking. UCLA Entrepreneurship Week encourages and celebrates entrepreneurship across all the graduate schools on campus.

Time: 7:30pm

Location:
UCLA Anderson School of Management
Gold Hall (Building B)
Executive Dining Room

Tickets: Free, RSVP

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Social Media Club – Going Goo Goo over Google Analytics - join Social Media Club as we discuss Google Analytics, with John Shiple, CTO, Ultralive; Alex Becker, Co-Founder and President, Highly Relevant; and Andrew Hahn, Luxury Link and Familygetaway.com. Erica Forrette, Online Marketing / E-commerce will be moderating this event.

Time: 7:00pm to 9:30pm

Location:
Mahalo
902 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, Ca 90401

Tickets: Advance Pre-Sale $10 Members Free Student Free

Thursday, February 25, 2010

New Media Vault 1 Year Anniversary Bash! – New Media Vault Celebrates its 1 Year Anniversary with a New Media Star Studed Bash at its new location The Standard Hotel in Downtown LA. With Live Jazz and Musical Performances! Get your photo taken at our free photo booth to comemorate this historic evening! Tech and Software door prize give aways all night! We will be raffling off tuition for 2 students for Hollywood’s Newest Web TV School! WEB TV WORKSHOP. Raffle tickets will be sold for $5

Time: 7:30pm

Location:
The Standard Hotel (Downtown)
550 South Flower St.
Los Angeles, Ca 90071

Tickets: Free, RSVP

TechZulu Turns 2 – Digital LA, Techzulu, and Citrusbyte invite you to celebrate at the new Geisha House – Santa Ana. Just walking distance from Efren’s home! TechZulu’s Efren says: “Come down and celebrate with us. There will be lots of new faces and contacts to be made so we are definitely looking forward to this years celebration!”

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Geisha House
2773 North Main Street
Santa Ana, CA

Tickets: $10 advance registration required

Friday, February 26, 2010

Digital LA – LA3D – VFX Animation Panel @ Cinespace – We’re teaming up again with the LA3D vfx/animation group, for our VFX panel and mixer at Cinespace. Our top-notch panelists specialize in movie animation (character design, title treatments, visual effects), and commercial effects. We’re super stoked that the lead designer on Avatar will be joining us to chat about animation, design, and FX on the highest grossing film of all time.

Time: 8:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Cinespace
6356 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets: $15 Advance Registration Required

Sunday, February 28, 2010

UpTake’s Los Angeles Meet-up for Bloggers – Learn tips & secrets from UpTake’s search engine team to
increase visitors and awareness to your blog.

Time:
Increase Your Blog Traffic Seminar: 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Cocktail Reception & Networking: 4:00pm to 5:00pm

Location:
Huntley Hotel
Aqua Room
1111 2nd Street
Santa Monica, Ca 90403

Tickets: Free, RSVP

2. Allow it to expose even more about the user. So for instance, alongside your cool screen-name it should show the age you really lost your virginity, if you’ve ever had sexual thoughts about your pet(s) and if you’re an alcoholic.

3. Fire all their Buzz employees and replace them with Twitter’s entire staff. Then fire the new staff and replace them with Facebook’s crew. Keep doing this until no one knows where they started off from – it just might give you an edge.

4. Suggest serial-killers as people to follow. Surely they’re more interesting than our regular friends.

5. Instead of auto-following or, indeed, auto-suggesting, bring in auto-erotic asphyxiation as an option. Trust me; neither Twitter nor Facebook have ever even considered this. You’d be truly groundbreaking.

6. Replace the multi-colored speech balloon icon that makes you think you have mail even when you don’t with a giant dog poo. But add a smile to it. You don’t want to be that on the nose.

7. When you click on “Find People” ensure that ex-girlfriends/ex-boyfriends don’t show up as options. Online stalking should never be that easy as it denotes a “we’re all in this together” attitude about something very private and dysfunctional.

8. Send out a free Domino’s pizza to whoever clicks on the Buzz icon. Domino’s have admitted how lame their pizza is – even their new version of it – so it’s in keeping with your branding. Besides, it’s not like you’d have to send out that many (btw, if it DID get out of hand, you can just mail out bits of cardboard with some cheese on top).

9. Write a list of all the other more successful social media platforms you wished you’d thought of first and have a good cry. Cry it all out. You’ll feel so much better in the morning.

10. Start over and develop a program no one’s thought of yet.

• Facebook: Someone you kiiiiinda remember who, if you ignore them, will turn out to be a headhunter (the good kind) and if you accept, will turn out to be a headhunter (the bad kind).
• YouTube: An advanced AI that has nearly mastered swearing and is ready to move on to the rest of human language.
• Wikipedia: People screwing with Wikipedia.
• Pandora: People who left their iPods at home.
• UPS: People getting increasingly excited around midday.
• Craigslist: Your girlfriend.
• Amazon: People buying books.
• Barnesandnoble.com: Barnes & Noble employees.
• Chatroulette: Guys with their dicks out.
• Pornotube: Guys with their dicks out.
• eBay: Guys with their dicks out reflected in a teapot.
• GameSpot: Noobs who can only handle BioShock, Dragon Age, and Dante’s Inferno.
• Yahoo Games: Hardcore gamers who can plunge into the depths of Harry Potter Years 1-4.
• AOL home page: People who don’t get how the web works.
• Google home page: People who don’t get how the search bar works.
• Digg home page: People who don’t get “work.”
• Reddit: People who think Diggers are dumb.
• Metafilter: People who think Redditors are dumb.
• Slashdot: People who think people are dumb.
• WordPress: Bloggers who’d rather be coding.
• Tumblr: Bloggers who’d rather be reading.
• Blogger: Bloggers who’d rather be on WordPress. How the hell do you export from this thing?
• Livejournal: Bloggers who’d rather be dead! Then you’d finally pay them some attention! Well maybe that’s just what they’ll do, Mom!
• Xanga: The 90s.
• Club Penguin: The two’s -to-thirteen’s.
• CNN: People who think they’re reading the news.
• Fark: People who laugh at the word “news.”
• Go.com: Unimaginative people testing a computer at a store.
• Ripoffreport: Ripoff victims.
• BestBuy.com: Ripoff victims.
• Scientology.org: Ripoff victims.
• Bit.ly: People heading somewhere else.
• Gawker: Subjects of Gawker articles.
• IRS.gov: People who are way too on the ball.
• 4chan: Kids pretending to be hackers, hackers pretending to be kids, reporters pretending to be kids pretending to be hackers, child predators, child-predator predators, Han Solo.
• eHarmony: 97% of desperate singles.
• Loopt: 3% of desperate singles.
• AdultFriendFinder: People who will claim tomorrow that they were on eHarmony.
• Evite: People who still refuse to get on Facebook.
• Friendster: Jonathan Abrams, sitting in a quiet room that no one has entered in weeks. He needs a bath.

Kurt Daradics is the co-founder and President of FreedomSpeaks and an all around stand up guy. He feels they have a pretty refreshing project. They want to build the worlds first complete database for elected officials (there are over 513,000 elected officials in the US alone!)

The database would be a one-stop web site for citizens to identify their elected officials at all levels of government. By identifying these officials, citizens will be more informed of who represents them down-ballot and thus be able to make a more informed decision about who should represent them on important local issues.

“We know this may not be as fun sounding as sending kids to camp, or art projects. However, we think that building this database and making it available over the internet can accomplish quite a bit of change. Local officials impact our daily lives more then any other politician but getting information on them is almost impossible. We make this info free to you at FreedomSpeaks.com so that you can outreach directly to your public officials and help make your government suck less.”

Currently they are ranked 34th and only the top 2 ideas will receive the 250k funding. You have until February 28th to get your vote in. My advice, don’t wait to the last minute. Procrastination never helped anyone. Plus I’m pretty sure you can vote more than once, sneaky! According to the site you can vote for 10 of your favorite ideas every day. You hear that, you can vote EVERY DAY! So get to it!

Get to know them

Freedom Speaks – FreedomSpeaks has built the largest database of elected officials to date. It is the only completely non-partisan political social network that allows its members to write letters to their publicly elected officials. With the click of a mouse, a single letter can be delivered via both email and fax to one or all of the public officials you select! We currently have data for Federal, State, County & City officials, including their addresses, telephones, faxes, emails and websites. It’s time for you to speak out and be heard America – with FREEDOMSPEAKS.COM, it’s easy!

Started by Scott Rocher, a web developer (and food truck fanatic), Cluster Truck keeps tabs on 67 food trucks. There’s a live map that will show you at a glance where a truck is located in the city by address and the time period the truck is scheduled to be there.

Each truck also has their own page with menu information, their schedule and link to their Twitter account. Most of the accounts have a picture of their truck so you know what your looking for once you track it down.

Information is still being added to the site and some of the schedules and menus haven’t been filled in yet. Each truck has the abilty to edit and add to their own page so if you have a favorite truck on the list that is missing information you might try encouraging them to update their info.

Want to get your truck added? You can contact Scott via email at scott@clustertruck.org and he’ll get you setup in just a few minutes. Follow them on Twitter at @clustertruck. Happy eating!

(Photo from www.clustertruck.com)

Anyone who knows me online is aware that I drink copious amounts of whiskey and that I took a one-way ticket to Rome and didn’t look back for three months. They know I was Vanessa in Rome. Vanessa Simone, a made up American author writing a fake book about love and sex around the world. THEY, to be 80’s romantic comedy Molly Ringwald-ish, GET ME. AND I GET THEM. Slow clap, single tear, lollipops and gumdrops.

Yet, when I go out into the wild real world, I meet someone and I’m all, “Oh, hi, how are you?” And he’s all, “Hi” and his eyes are not on my blog or my fantastic intelligence, but instead his eyes are undressing me. And, while, all right, that’s not the worst thing in the world, it’s also not the best. Because, sometimes, when I meet someone out and about, I want to sit them down with my iPhone, open up my blog, and be all, “Take a shot of Maker’s Mark, read up, and get back to me if you’re still interested in undressing me.” Which is to say one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.

Because, here’s how I want this to go: I want to see someone cute in a bar, hand him my iPhone, tell him to read my blog, my Twitter stream, this lalawag column, and then I want him to report back to me. On a scale of 1 to Never Want to See Me Again, are you at about a 5? I can work with a 5. I can work up from the middle. Oh yeah, I can definitely work up from the middle. God, that sounds so fantastically dirty. Mmm. Mind. Wandering. Stop.

ANYWAYS.

And, then, here’s what I want my future soul mate to do. I want him to QUOTE MY BLOG BACK TO ME. Why? Because, I’m a fucking narcissist. That’s why. And, then after he quotes me back my funny, I want him to slyly attempt to make out with me and I want to play a bit coy, but not coy enough that he thinks I don’t want to make out with him. Because, eventually, I’m going to stop being coquettish and I’m going to let him make out with me and then we’re going to live happily ever after.

Because, damn it, I want the best of both worlds. I want to meet someone IN PERSON, because online dating gives me hives. Actual, motherfucking hives. So, what I want to do is throw all my online awesome at someone in person and build the best damn relationship in the whole planet of relationships.

So, THERE Universe. I KNOW WHAT I WANT, NOW GIVE IT.

1. If you are a wealthy Hollywood director with three films on the way, and you like your space but still like to mingle with the hoi polloi, please at least spring for business class.

2. If you are an airline, any airline, please be careful what you do to celebrities, even if you weren’t aware they often bitch in public.

3. If you are an airline, any airline, teach your employees to be really careful with that “too fat to fly” rule, because honestly, you’re just begging for bad PR in a nation of lardos.

4. Fat people shouldn’t fly.

5. If you’ve been wronged by a company, it’s normal to make a stink. But you’ll only get so much pity. Eventually you need to forgive them, show you’re the better person, and accept that they’ve learned their lesson. If not, you lose your moral high ground – and the PR battle.

6. If you exploit your celebrity status to make a stink about something, you’re not allowed to yell at anyone for helping you out because you’re a celebrity. Take the goddamn voucher and stop being a baby.

7. Realize when you’re about to be better known for spending your weekend bitching out an airline, than for making movies. On second thought, maybe you looked at your recent movies and made this decision on purpose.

8. When you apologize to a customer, leave it at that. Stop defending yourself. You don’t blog “hey, but he usually buys two seats” – which was apparently private info until now. You leak those dirty details to the press while in public you act contrite and don’t make excuses. What idiot is running your PR department, Steve Rubel?

9. Throw the flight attendants under the bus! Unless that’s a mixed metaphor.

10. Don’t boycott an entire company because one person screwed up, then defend yourself by pointing at the company’s response to your silly threat.

11. Don’t write long blog posts broken into Twitter updates, breaking in the middle of sentences like a schoolchild trying to fit your entire speech onto one 3×5 notecard. This is what blogs are for. If your blog doesn’t have any readers, it’s because no one wants to hear more than 140 characters from you at a time.

12. Sarah Silverman is funnier than you.

13. If I always fly Southwest, I’ll never have to watch “Jersey Girl” in-flight.

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Digital LA – Digital Drinks at W Hollywood - Introducing… the new W Hollywood! After months of construction and anticipation, the brand new W Hollywood has *just* opened! We’re among the FIRST to schmooze in this new hot spot in Hollywood – check it out before your friends and give them the report! We’ll be in the ‘Station’ outdoor patio reserved just for us, for your digital networking, just off the Living Room lobby.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
W Hollywood
6250 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, Ca 90028

Tickets: $10 advance registration required

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Los Angeles Social Video Meetup – Join us for our first LA Meetup. Mark Horvath, a visionary producer, will join us. Mark is the founder of InvisiblePeople.tv has travelled across America to capture the stories of people without a home, raw and unedited. Mark will share his experiences and the effectiveness of using social broadcasting technology to rapidly share your story. We’ll also have a cool new start-up, Vpype presenting along with producers/media mavens and personalities to talk about how to use social video within Facebook to create your personal digital studio.

Time: 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Location:
Blankspaces
5405 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, Ca 90036

Tickets: RSVP

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Streamys – IAWTV Member Webseries Courtesy Screening – Join us for a special screening of web shows in a lovely environment where you can kick-back and just watch. With drinks. Each featured show will offer a sampling of episodes for your consideration for the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards. This screening event is being held as a service to IAWTV Members, but is open to the everyone. Please, come, hang out, drink, laugh, and enjoy these shows of which we are so proud. Space is limited, RSVP soon!

Time: 7:00pm to 9:30pm

Location:
Cinespace Hollywood
6356 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets: RSVP

Check out the stats for all of the states in the infographic from HubSpot:

It’s like a Yahoo Questions that works. You ask questions online, and friends and strangers answer them. Usually, only a couple of people see the question, and you get about three to six answers.

How to start

You sign up, you plug in your Facebook and Gmail contacts and whatevs, and Aardvark says which of them are on the service and lets you add them as contacts.

(Making these people your Aardvark contacts theoretically helps you get better answers to your questions. I’m skeptical – if I want to consult my circle of friends, I’ll just Facebook or blog it. Luckily, Aardvark lets strangers answer questions too.)

You tell it some details about what questions you can answer and what you can’t, and when and how you want to get asked.

How it works: Asking

You enter a question, like this one that I asked in January:

What’s an American Sign Language sign that resembles brushing lint off one’s clothing? I’d especially like a concrete noun. I’m writing a scene where a sign language interpreter thinks the lint-brushing is a word.

I asked this on Gchat; you can also use AIM, the Aardvark website, or a phone app. Over the next three hours, I got three answers:

Andre V.:

I think there is one where you brush your left arm with your right hand. I think it is a swear word but I don’t remember which.

Marjorie F.:

A few signs come to mind: CLOTHES, HAPPY, PANTS, LEAVE-ME-OUT-OF-IT, STICKY (on the body)

Those are just few, but I hope you find it useful. Goodluck!

Diane R.:

You might try a sign like “happy” where one or both hands brush with flat palms against the chest ( http://www.signingsavvy.com/sign/HAPPY/178/2) .

As you can see, one answer was slightly helpful, the others just what I’d asked for. A success!

How it works: Answering

You tell Aardvark how often you want it to IM you with questions. You tell it what topics you can answer questions about. You can also “mute” topics that you don’t want to hear about. (Eager adopters can opt to get answers about everything, then mute topics on the fly.)

Aardvark IMs you every now and then (only when your status is “available”) asking a question. You can answer, pass, or adjust the question category. You can also type “see” to listen in on the answers. So that’s cool.

How it doesn’t work: Oh my god pick your own damn restaurant

The most annoying thing about Aardvark is all the restaurant questions. Everyone wants to know where to eat, where to go on vacation… These are Google questions and Yelp questions! The internet already has extensive databases of people’s opinions on entertainment. Apart from the circle-of-friends feature, Aardvark users don’t necessarily have better venue knowledge than you. It’s too hard to identify which users share your tastes. (That said, this isn’t a terrible flaw – to avoid it, mute all questions tagged with a city name or “restaurants” or “dining”. Much as I hate venue questions, I still sometimes answer them.)

But for specific, tough-to-Google questions like my lint-brushing sign language, Aardvark is uniquely useful. It’s much better than Yahoo Questions or any other public forum, because Aardvark looks for people who call themselves experts on a topic.

Presumably, Aardvark took my question to people who tagged themselves with “sign language.” If I wanted to reach those experts without Aardvark, I’d have to find a sign language forum, make an account, and post my question. I might get more answers, but I really only needed a couple of people. (And Aardvark’s web site lets me re-ask a question if the first answers don’t satisfy me.)

What it reminds me of

The Internet Oracle, where everyone asks each other questions and gave silly answers and pretended that they were all asking a being called the Internet Oracle (née Usenet Oracle). It’s the fourth internet meme ever invented.

Why Google bought it

It’s awesome. It does what Yahoo Answers doesn’t: Bring relevant answers to the people who ask them, and make these answers searchable for later answer-seekers, specifically patching up the gaps left in Google’s knowledge. You know what else didn’t do that? Google Answers.

It’s quantifiably useful. As TechCrunch reported earlier, Aardvark has some great stats:

87.7% of questions submitted were answered, and nearly 60% of them were answered within 10 minutes.  The median answering time was 6 minutes and 37 seconds, with the average question receiving two answers.  70.4% of answers were deemed to be ‘good’, with 14.1% as ‘OK’ and 15.5% were rated as bad.

That’s solid! That’s building value. When you’ve got over a hundred thousand users asking over 3 thousand questions a day, that’s building $50 million in value. Value that’s best realized not by slapping ads into the IM feeds, but by owning the question-answer database and thus better putting it into Google results that do have ads slapped on them.

GigaOM’s Liz Gannes notes that it’s embarrassing that these ex-Googlers weren’t fostered to create this product in-house, and it must be painful to buy back your old employees for that much cash. But at least Google’s got them back now, along with a better product than the Google Machine could have built, and now the company just has to try not to ruin it.

Business Insider’s Nicholas Carlson says that IAC turned Aardvark down, because they’re cheap and Barry Diller has checked out. Makes sense, though it’s another sign that IAC will never be a huge player in the finding-shit-out business.

What kind of question Aardvark rejects

Nick: How is babby formed?
Aardvark: Oops — I’m not able to find an answer to a question that short!

“If you want to look like everyone else you have no shortage of options. If you want to wear the same clothes everyone else is, there are hundreds upon thousands of companies who will happily sell you the same designs over and over again. At R3515T we have always been drawn to the limited and the unique and felt that our products should reflect that. With the exception of one or two standard logos, our products will always be limited and changing.”

So far the product assortment includes the weekly tees and they also have a track jacket available. We hope more products will be added as the site grows. In addition to the online product, they will be doing individual store exclusives with shops around the world. Each design will be exclusive to a single store and only available at the shop. Time to make some international friends or turn in your frequent flyer miles!

Follow them on Twitter at @R3515T and join their mailing list here.

Get to know them:

R3515T – The team behind R3515T has been designing tshirts for the better part of the last 20 years. We’ve created logos and merch for bands like Hot Water Music, Hatebreed, Less Than Jake, Strife, Bad Brains and countless others. We’ve exhibited and collaborated with artists such as Glen E Friedman, Shepard Fairey, Space Invader, Coop, Richard Coleman, Estevan Oriol and Tim Biedron to name a few.

You see, on Wednesday the Iranian government shut down Gmail service throughout the country. That was a bummer! So we decided to help Iranians out by shutting down the Iranian government.

While this may seem like a sudden and rash development, our engineers have been working on this problem for quite some time. Quick note to Chinese dissidents: Hang in there for the wide release, guys! This product’s in private alpha for now!

How Google Armed Insurgency Works

G.A.I. runs on a simple principle that’s worked for us many times before: User collaboration. We give the power to you, the user, in the form of free Android-powered phones and liberated S.5′56 assault rifles. (Phones come with three-month trial network access.)

Then you use that power to collaborate on a major Google project, Google Armed Insurgency. (Our product manager insisted that “armed insurgency” is redundant, but ha ha, he has been shot.) You storm Tehran, depose Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and call Google Global Marketing VP Lorraine Twohill. She’ll put you on a conference call with the U.S. State Department, where you can personally announce the success of G.A.I.!

You’ll also get a special badge next to your Google Buzz avatar to show you’re a special member of the community.

How Google Armed Insurgency Looks

What Google Armed Insurgency Is Not

Google Armed Insurgency is only in private alpha! Participation requires an NDA – no telling, or you’ll be the first against the wall – and a Google account in good standing. No spammers in this army!

G.A.I. has no plans to spread to any other sovereign nations at this time. We’re not in the nation-building business! (WINK WINK, Chinese dissidents! No, WINK. Not squint. God no. We’re not racis– Shut up or we’ll forcibly export your personal info to Yahoo, and you know what they’ll do with it.)

One particular link caught my eye so I clicked.

What I was rewarded with was a Twitpic of two completely naked girls, a full frontal shot you could say. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The tweet was normal sounding enough, I though maybe some drunken debauchery would be shown but there was no hint that there would be nudity in it. I immediately got Sean’s attention and showed it to him. We joked about it for a minute or two and then let it go.

*Black bar was added to the picture by us

A few minutes later more tweets from this user started flowing in, along with them came more naked pictures. This time they had a clear explanation:

*Black bars added to the picture by  us

Again, I was surprized but didn’t think much of it. I am not the kind of girl who shy’s away from nudity. I have no problem with out of the ordinary things that may cross my path. However the next day this got me thinking. What about the people who are not so casual about these things? I wonder what their reaction to seeing these pictures would be? Better yet, what about the teens that are supposedly on Twitter, are they coming across this kind of material?

The first thing to consider would be the user that was putting this info out there. It was Olivia Munn, one of the hosts of  “Attack of the Show” on the G4 network. I follow her because we watch the show and I am a fan, probably much like the other 114,647 people that follow her. (Which I would have to assume includes young men). I have seen her tweet about her Maxim pics and heard her talk about her Playboy spread but up until that moment I had never seen Twitpics of a totally naked girls coming from her links. I didn’t expect these kinds of pictures from her account.

I went back to the pictures a few days later and found that over $20,000 people had viewed the first full frontal nude one, and 53 accounts had re-tweeted the two pictures. I honesly thought they would have been taken down by now, considering the network she works for is fairly conservative.

With all the tools we currently have available that allow us to instantly share our experiences and feelings, when and where do we draw the line and decide, maybe I shouldn’t share that? Should Twitpic have some responsibility for hosting the nude pictures? Should Twitter be monitoring what’s out there? Or should we as adults monitor ourselves and know that some things just shouldn’t be shared. What about the women in the photos? Yes they are strippers but that doesn’t mean they want naked pictures of themselves floating around the internet.

Who decides when we have crossed the over sharing line and invaded other peoples privacy? Do we need someone to tell us or can we be responsible enough?

Hey. It’s Jamie. Here’s the thing. I am kind of getting this feeling that you and I got off on the wrong foot here. Because, um, ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME? Is this a joke? I mean, it’s not funny. At first, okay, I admit, it was a little funny. Of course, throw hot married men and amazing guys with girlfriends in my face. Okay, I can handle that.

But, when I finally get my whole thing together for online dating and torture myself into some sort of profile-writing-submission, you throw men at me that have spelling errors and who wink at me surreptitiously. Next, are you going to have potential dates poke me on Facebook? IS THIS WHAT MY LIFE IS BECOMING? Pokes on the fucking Facebook and misspelled words? AWESOME. Thanks.

What you’re saying here, Universe, is that you’d rather me drink 3/4 a fifth of Maker’s Mark in ONE NIGHT instead of, you know, maybe actually date a cool guy? Is this what I’ve been led to believe here? Because, then you throw someone into my life who is amazing and who reads my blog and STILL WANTS TO TALK TO ME and I’m like, ok, well, this is good. This is a definite good start. My blog and general writing style serve as a fantastic way to weed out the weak boring incompatible.

So, this guy, we start talking and we move our DM conversation over to Gchat and ooh, la, la, right? BIG MOVE. And then, it’s all, yum, amazing, he’s awesome, we get along, wee! And then it’s all, oh, hey, great new guy that came along when I wasn’t even WANTING to date, you live in Washington? You don’t say? Well, ain’t that the kitten’s caboodle?

Because, here’s the godforsaken thing, Universe. I’ve been keeping track of my karma and, based on my records, I have done far more good deeds than bad deeds and so, at this point, I’m starting to think my love life is not based on any sort of merit system, but is actually just a byproduct of you being really fucking bored. Or drunk. Or potentially on acid. Because, and I’m going to just throw this the hell out there: YOU DO NOT HAVE MY BEST INTEREST AT HEART. I call bullshit on The Secret and Law of Attraction and I’m just going to go ahead and say you’re a fickle, fickle bitch, Universe.

And I want zero part of your shenanigans. If my karma is shooting through the roof and you’re still pulling tricks like this, then I am forced to make bad decisions, give karma the finger and just do what I want.

Come to think of it, that sounds like a damn good time. Who’s with me? SHOTS ON ME!

I mean, not literally shots ON me. We’re not doing body shots. At least, not tonight. Oh hell, what am I saying? OF COURSE we’re doing body shots tonight.

I’ve got a reputation to protect.

xoxo,

Jamie

(Photo from collegecandy.com)

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Startups Uncensored – Google Adsense for Websites - This month’s Startups Uncensored will be on the “Google AdSense Tips for Startups”. It will be an open and frank town-hall conversation talking about how to best optimize and monetize your website with Google Adsense.

Time: 6:30pm to 8:00pm (Reception to Follow)

Location:
Santa Monica Public Library (Auditorium)
601 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Tickets: Free, RSVP
*This event is capped at 140 attendees. Confirmation will be required or your spot will be given up for our waiting list

ThinkLA’s Interactive Mixer – Mingle at this mixer geared towards the interactive community.

Time: 6:00pm to 9:00pm

Location:
Rush Street
9546 Washington Blvd.
Culver City CA 90232

Tickets: Registration is closed, walk-ins welcome $40

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Digital LA -The Actor Producer Panel – We’re teaming up with SAG’s New Media group for our panel on how actors can use online tools to create, develop, distribute and market their web stories. We will be covering Creation, Development, Distribution and Marketing.

Panelists:

• Brett Register – Actor/Creator, The Crew, @brettregister @theCrewtv
• Jodi Binstock – Producer of Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow; (formerly at E!, Disney ABC TV)
• Aaron Grasso, Producer of Closure, part of the 30 Day Film Challenge; appeared at Sundance Tweethouse panel @30dayfilm
• Amber J. Lawson – Babelgum, Comedy Publisher
• Brandon Martinez – Abrams Artists Agency, New Media Agent
• Marc Hustvedt – Tubefilter, Editor-in-Chief; Ex.Pr. Streamy Awards, SAG @MarcHustvedt @Tubefilter
• Mark Friedlander – SAG @SAGnewmedia

Moderator: Kevin Winston – Digital LA founder @kevinwinston @DigitalLA

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
SAG
5757 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Tickets: $20 advance registration required. Tickets increase to $30 on February 8th.
*Free for SAG members, email name and SAG number to specialevents@sag.org.

ProductCamp Preview – ProductCamp SoCal is just a few weeks away! If you’ve never been to a ProductCamp, you need to come to OC Product Managers’ ProductCamp Preview. Following an hour of networking, we will have a session that will follow the format that you’ll see at ProductCamp SoCal. Drinks and appetizers will be served.

Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Location:
JT Schmid’s @ The District
2415 Park Ave
Tustin, CA 92782

Tickets: $15 pre-register online and pay at the door, ($20 if not pre-registered)

Thursday, February 11th, 2009

Tech Happy Hour Mixer – Gravity Summit, Tech Supper Club and iHollywood have teamed up to host a happy hour mixer for you to meet executives with a passion for digital media, social media, sales and marketing. Come mix and mingle and learn more about the Gravity Summit taking place on February 22nd at UCLA. They will also raffle off the new Cisco HD Flip Camera at 7:00pm. (Must be present to win).

Time: 5:00pm to 7:30pm

Location:
Acapulco Restaurant
1109 Glendon Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90024

Tickets: $10 for one, $15 for two

Register now for discount rate of only $249 for the Gravity Summit.

*Special thanks to Nicole Jordan for some of the events included. Taken from her LA Tech calendar on Kickingsand.com.

Instead lets start fantasizing about all the iPad-centric apps we are going to see. I really hope they look something like this…

iLantern

Remember those crazy popular “flashlight” apps for the iPhone? Well put on your sunglasses and turn on the iLantern! Now you’re cooking with fire!

Star Trek iPad Simulator

Oh please baby baby someone make this app! The iPad is clearly the first step towards an all knowing pad system as seen on just about any episode of Star Trek. I want the works. The sounds, the nonsensical data visualizations, oh and throw in Captain Janeway’s hair!

Board Games

Imagine having every board game ever made at your disposal. From the classic Monopoly to the new geek chic Settlers of Catan. Roll the dice with a wave of your hand, pass go and collect 200 Apply fan boy points.

Shoe Sizer App

Want to measure your feet and/or see how big someone’s penis is? Just open this app, plant your foot down and find out!

Lite Brite App

Look it’s an app even a girl can use! (JOKING) Remember how awesome the Lite Brite was? Easily assemble your warmly light masterpiece and use the new iPad stand to show off your work.

Two things apparently even Google has an answer for…

2010 Super Bowl Commercials | Google: Search On

More Commercials:

• Docker: Wear the Pants
• Dr. Pepper Cherry with Little Kiss Super Bowl Commercial
• Cars.com Growing up 2010 Superbowl Commercial
• Robin Hood 2010 Super Bowl Commercial
• Monster Job Hunt Super Bowl Commercial
• FLO TV: My Generation Commercial
• Dodger Charger 2010 Superbowl Commercial
• Harry Potter Superbowl Commercial
• Bud Light: Light House Commercial
• Papa Johns Delivers Super Bowl Video
• Megan Fox in a Bathtub Superbowl Commercial
• Denny’s Free Grand Slam Super Bowl Commercial
• Bridgestone: Tires or Wife?
• Google Search On Superbowl Commercial
• Census 2010 Super Bowl Commercial
• Kia Toy Fantasy Superbowl Commercial

Merging social media and food together, the Battledish Dishcrawl will take you on a culinary mission around Los Angeles. The location based food adventure consists of five missions. Each mission is a dish in a restaurant. To play, simply pick an adventure, go on missions, and get foodie prizes.

Battledish is still in private alpha mode, but if you’re lucky, you’ll get a peek inside. Sign up here. You can follow them on Twitter at @battledish.

Details

Date: February 6th and 7th

Time: Happy hour kicks off at 7:30pm at Little Bar

Location:
Around Los Angeles, more information here

Tickets: Free, Register here

(Photo from steelheadstudio.com)

Just enter to win on the Stylit.TV site by Tuesday, February 9th, 2010. If you use the code “HeartsAndArrows” you will receive 20 extra credits that you can use to win. If you use our special code “LaLalove” you’ll get another extra 20 extra credits.

One person will take home the grand prize, The Essence I, a diamond pendant from Whiteflash.com.

Plus, the person that enters the most credits will win the Essence II diamond pendant worth $395.

I was lucky enough to win one of their gift bags at a tech event and I have to say the quality of the items I received was fantastic.

Follow them on Twitter at @StylitTV and watch for tweets alerting you to even more chances to win and to future giveaways.

(Photos from Whiteflash.com)

Yet another Twitter attack this week, this time from a hacker who built custom torrent site and forum templates, inserted an exploit, harvested people’s user names and passwords, very Matrix… Yeah, he used this access to steal people’s Twitter passwords. That was the end game!

He then hacked the Federal Reserve to read Ben Bernanke’s LiveJournal.

Big news today for Verizon today, announcing the latest Google Android phone. Yeah, they didn’t give it a “Droid” name, decided that was too unfriendly. So they called it “Devour.” That’s gonna look a lot more appropriate on the $22,000 bill.

Textbook makers are cutting deals with Apple, so students can buy their books on the iPad. Yeah, now your physics textbook will only cost $500 instead of $500.

The textbook makers said they’d been waiting for a partner to work with, but only Apple demonstrated the same devotion to their core ideals: Keeping people locked into an expensive monopoly.

Mark Cuban – the loud guy who likes to be held by tall men – called Google a vampire that wants to suck everyone dry. It was surprising, since last I checked, he and Google were on the same team.

You know, the team that tries to put Yahoo out of business.

Speaking of going out of business, AOL’s revenue dropped 17% last year, according to the quarterly report. The CEO Tim Armstrong said AOL is “incredibly focused on day-to-day execution.” So they’re really getting into the layoffs, that’s good. Good to be excited about something.

And finally, Nexus One phones are getting multitouch, meaning now there’s another gadget that’s like the iPhone but better. So you know, the opposite of the iPad.

We’ll take you out with a little clip from the new Daring Fireball With Comments – you know, the site that shows John Gruber’s Mac blog would be much better with reader input:

It used to be home to some of the best and most memorable slums in the Americas, with enough stories to fill a hundred books. This is the Los Angeles of Fante, this is the Los Angeles of film noir. It is now faceless, nameless, listless, endless, just more nondescript tall buildings in a city becoming increasingly synonymous with nondescript tall buildings.

On a personal level, I’m a huge fan of author John Fante’s series of books about Arturo Bandini – a hapless and poor writer who never seemed to give up the dream even when working shit jobs in a factory. The books are funny and moving, painting picture perfect details about the Bunker Hill of the 20’s and 30’s, during Hollywood’s golden era. He didn’t dwell on the fame aspect – this was a poor man’s Los Angeles – and thusly the books still hold the test of time and I highly suggest you check them out if you get the chance.

He described the area in great detail, and before I moved to Los Angeles I was excited to see the same Bunker Hill he described. I was looking forward to the hotels, the bars and diners, or at the very least enjoy the gentrification that comes with time to any run-down area. I remember hopping in my car and looking for it – driving around Pershing Square, looking for the diner where he meets the waitress as described in ‘Ask The Dust’, looking for the shitty apartment building Bandini lived in, looking for anything that even closely resembled what Bunker Hill used to be.

I find nothing, just Angels Flight, which hasn’t worked for years.

There’s a great movie called “Los Angeles Plays Itself”, which helped me get ideas for this column in general. In it, they show various clips from movies filmed in Los Angeles and talk about the city’s history, more or less. The Bunker Hill that I saw bore no resemblance to the locations filmed in the 1955’s film noir classic “Kiss Me Deadly”, a great film noir in general, which had many of the major locations filmed here, such as the Hillcrest Hotel, pictured here next to Angels Flight (thanks to uncanny.net):

All were razed very soon after the film was completed, and the area took forever to redevelop. Bunker Hill was essentially the “slums” in technical terms, but to be frank, it was affordable cheap housing – with places like the Hillcrest Hotel being what were then called ‘apartment hotels’ that offered similar amenities to modern day hotels, such as sheet changing, etc.

It was that kind of affordable living that drove a lot of the classier residents to the West side of town, over to Beverly Hills and Bel Air, the same Hollywood caste system that still divides the town so starkly into the rich and poor neighborhoods.

Writers, artists, and poor actors lived in Bunker Hill among the pimps and prostitutes and drunks. It made downtown “real”. The razing of the entire neighborhood is similar to New York’s Times Square redo in the early to mid 1990’s. By taking away the dirt and grit and sterilizing such a great full-blooded neighborhood – they took away a lot of the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Gone were the Fante’s of the neighborhood, the film noir feel, the city element that LA still fails to fully encapsulate. Skyrise apartments and office buildings loom over the neighborhood now – offering only a city ‘feel’ to a place that used to be the heart of the working class. The poor element moved to Skid Row, creating what has been referred to as America’s only 3rd World City – currently inhabited by upwards of 8,000 homeless.

Bunker Hill  still has its charms; It’s a nice place to walk around. Inviting, and pleasant. A particular favorite and popular bar ‘La Cita’ plays host to some of the cities most eclectic dance nights and is well worth a visit if you haven’t been. However, looking at it now, you’d fail to even so much as catch a glimpse of the magic that used to inspire characters like Fante’s Arturo Bandini and ‘Kiss Me Deadly’s Max Hammer.

(Photo from uncanny.net)