I've poked fun at the cult of Steve Jobs over the years in multiple formats: print, radio and video. Nevertheless I did find myself tearing up for the tech profit/prophet when I heard he'd died.

I wasn't crying for the man himself, who I hardly knew. Sure, we had the occasional lunch where he'd seek my advice on launching new products. (Kidding! It was only breakfast.) But I was tearing up over the end of the Steve Jobs era that I was a part of.

Of Jobs' many talents, the most notable was his ability to make consumers feel they were a part of something larger than... well, consuming.

Jobs imbued Apple lovers with the sense they were part of a social movement. And that Jobs himself was their visionary leader -- a leader they knew, and cared about, personally.

If you google Steve Jobs you'll read all about how this genius started, not just a company, but a revolution. And he was a revolutionary: Jobs revolutionized the field of marketing.

In his Think Different ad, ("here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels") Jobs linked buying Apple products to both acts of transgression (by using images of people like Jimi Hendrix), and to acts of social protest (by using images of folks like Mahatma Gandhi).  

As I've covered tech over the past couple years and consumed the never-ending stream of glowing Steve Jobs profiles, I began to feel like people genuinely felt that what was good for Jobs was good for the world. And somehow, no matter how much Apple stock rose, Jobs maintained his image as the scrappy underdog fighting the corporate machine.

My colleague Kevin Ferguson sent me the following email today:

A friend of mine in SF pointed this out: "Half this city is protesting corporate greed while the other half is mourning the death of a corporate juggernaut." How many people in that crowd posted Jobs tributes on FB and Twitter yesterday?

Ah, but that was the genius of Jobs. He made you feel that to buy an Apple product was to protest corporate greed.   Read more...

Today, October 7, 2011 marks the ten year anniversary of our involvement in Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. History. So, one full decade, many lives and a few trillion dollars later, are we making progress?

Yes. Kind of. Well, it depends on how you define victory. Says military analyst, Dr. Andrew Exum, who led troops in Afghanistan and was an adviser to General McChrystal. He acknowledges the circular nature of the conflict there...   Read more...

Music composer David Wittman made a really funny MP3 poking fun at himself as a kale-eating Prius-driving Whole Foods shopper. "Take it easy man, I try to calm myself. I've been on edge ever since they took Kombucha off the shelf ... Now I'm ... looking at my list, organic chicken, kale salad and a lemon twist."

He sent the song around to his friends. Not much happened. "It topped out at around 1,000" Wittman says.

A month and a half later he made the video. It blew up. "It speaks to how we consume things these days," Wittman says. "The video component drove it in this viral way that didn't even come close to happening with the MP3."

And now, according to Wittman, Whole Foods wants to feature the video on their website and Ryan Seacrest already has.

Wittman says he wrote the song after picking up the list (that's in the song) to make dinner for his fiancé. He was frustrated and getting ready to honk the horn at someone and he thought "what am I doing? This is crazy!"

But maybe the real take-away here is how aggressive Prius drivers are getting -- pulling up, to quote South Park, in their clouds of smug. As a Prius driver myself (ouch) I've noticed the Prii (that's plural for Prius) are going rogue.

Could this video kick off an anti-Prius meme? Only time will tell. But one thing's for sure -- on the web, we love to watch!

(Here's an audio interview, where Wittman talks about the virtues of quinoa and more...but then, who cares about audio?)

   Read more...

Remember the good old days in 2010, when Steve Jobs proclaimed the iPad a "revolutionary" new device that was going to fundamentally change personal computing for good? The problem was that the iPad couldn't do anything your computer didn't already do and there were tons of things your computer could do that the iPad couldn't, like edit video.

The same might be said about the Chromebook coming out June 15th. It costs about the same and doesn't add much to what you can already do on your computer. But nevertheless the Chromebook does truly overhaul our whole notion of personal computing in a way the iPad hasn't. In Google's New World Order, software and personal hard drive space will become a thing of the past. We'll begin to store, work and really think online in the clouds that they (companies like Google) own.

Your personal text documents, family photos and home videos will be connected to a network of worldwide users.

This brings up some troubling questions. First, once we go down this path, there's no going back. The entire notion of private ownership and intellectual property as we've known it will change.

First, as Paddy Hirsh, Marketplace editor and guest on this week's Cyberfrequencies podcast, said about photos on Facebook: It's kind of like a co-ownership. And it seems this same kind of co-owner relationship may be forged between cloud users and cloud owners.

Second, it's very unclear what Google can and cannot do with our information, stored in their clouds, in terms of data-mining. If you hand over everything to Google that formally lived in a private space on your personal computer, then Google gains a very intimate portrait of your personality in a way that even Facebook doesn't have.

Third, if governmental docs start going up into the clouds, like the E.U. is currently talking about doing, doesn't that open up the "clouds" to attack by terrorists, hackers and anyone else who can benefit from state secrets? And don't companies like Google become kind of co-owners with various governments?

The Chromebook, if it catches on, is pushing us to the clouds in a very new way. Which sheds light on Google's free-love attitude toward intellectual property, copyright protection and data ownership on Youtube. Through Youtube, Google has slowly been getting both individuals and businesses comfortable with the idea of a kind of co-ownership of our material.

Both the music and entertainment industries have given up, for the most part, on trying to control what gets posted on Youtube. Now they seem to just add their logo to the media, or a link on how to buy the song, and hope for the best.

I'm a videographer (think large files) with nine external hard drives. I have to house them, dust them off, and most annoying of all -- they continually crap out a few days after the warranty runs out. I'd love nothing more than to dump them in the trash and let my data storage and the tech problems associated with it become Google's headache. I put my finished videos on Youtube anyway -- what's the difference? But I'm just not sure if I'm ready to take part in this giant social experiment with companies like Google and Amazon leading the way. To crib Queena Kim in the podcast cribbing Donald Rumsfeld: "There are a lot of known unknowns." And right now -- that's all we know for sure.   Read more...

There's an ancient Chinese proverb that goes like this: "He who owns your data owns your soul." That's a rough translation, but you get the point.

The official data-grab begin -- who gets to own more of our souls, Google or Facebook?

Isn't it just a little ironic that Facebook hired a PR firm to get journalists to investigate claims of Google's " sweeping violations of user privacy"?

Really, Mark? Really? You're already in the Dickopedia, what more do you want? Still, the ironic lack of self-awareness on Mark's part (I'll use the terms Facebook and Mark interchangeably here) is staggering.

Facebook already owns our firstborn child -- they have him taking his first step, slapping the dog, falling on his ass. So why begrudge Google's appetite for our souls?

In a meeting of journalists at the Facebook office in Palo Alto, someone in the audience asked, "But who owns the content we post on FB?" The official response was, "You do."

Of course you do! In the same way you own the pictures you post on Facebook. They're technically yours, but that doesn't stop FB from using them to sell your friends stuff.

But truthfully Google has so much dirt on us I fully expect them to take over the CIA soon.

And Google's appetite for your info is like a junk food addiction: the more it eats, the hungrier it gets. Like Google's release of its own operating system to run on the Chromebook. There's very little hard-drive space on the laptop because they want you to store your files on their clouds.

And if you store your files on their clouds then you have to seriously wonder who owns that data. And after that you have to seriously wonder who owns you since, these days, we are the sum of our data.

Who's your data now, be-atch?

And it's only getting worse. There are now sites like Voyurl where you get to gawk at people's browsing history with the tagline it's ok to look.

Let's just say I'd rather forget some places I've been on the web, and I certainly don't want others peeking.

And speaking of privacy: never steal a laptop from an 18-year-old tech-savvy entrepreneur.

Mark Bao got his computer stolen and used his "automatic online-backup service to access the hard drive while the thief was dancing."

The thief was doing some goofy wannabe gangster dance that Bao uploaded to YouTube, where it's gotten a million and a half hits. Bao tracked down the thief's email address to tell him of his newfound stardom. Not only did the thief turn in the computer to the cops with a mea culpa, he also begged Bao to "take down the video."

But the video's still up. The thief's not getting his soul back anytime soon.

At friggin' 18 Bao's already created and sold a start-up and been interviewed about it on Fox, where he tactfully declined to say how much he sold it for. (To be a true Silicon Valley entrepreneur, all he has left is to seriously tank a start-up.)

So this will be great for his career!

But as for the dancer... not so much. As one young vlogger said to the thief: "I don't know how you can recover from this, it's Youtube!"

   Read more...

It's a funny time in media history when our performers are the ones doing the real reporting. (Jon Stewart has my vote in the 2012!)

Case in point: Compare the coverage of Foxconn in performer Mike Daisey's one-man show The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" with Wired Magazine's treatment of the same subject, which ran as their March cover story. Daisey's show is touring the country -- first in Berkeley, then DC, and running April 22-May 22 in Seattle.

Chances are, the computer you're reading this post on was made in Shenzhen, China. And if it's an Apple, it was made at Foxconn. Shenzhen is a special economic zone where China's already lax labor laws don't apply. Foxconn alone -- just one company in Shenzhen -- makes over half of our electronics.

For his one-man show, Daisey took a reporting trip to the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen to find out how his beloved Apple products were made and talked to hundreds of factory workers. He claims workers lived in 10x12 cement cubes with up to "15 beds stacked up on top of each other." In our radio interview with Daisey, he says he "met a huge number of people with permanent nerve damage," from the toxic chemicals used to clean Apple touch screens, for which there's no compensation.

Now contrast this with Wired's reporting. The feature story doesn't include one quote from an actual Foxconn worker and more surprisingly, the writer downplays actual undercover reports of forced overtime.

For example, the reporter who worked undercover in Foxconn's factory and for nearly a month "experienced dreadful conditions ... churning out iPods, iPads, and iPhones for Apple nonstop." This is according to Gizmodo writer Chris Chang.

Wired is like, really? The Public Relations rep didn't show me those kinds of conditions.

Going out on a limb here, it seems like Wired writer Joel Johnson met with Foxconn PR reps, was given a tour of the "campus" and, armed with lots glossy brochures about the congeniality of life on the "Foxconn campus," wrote his story.

I don't blame Johnson -- he's a gadget reviewer for God's sake! You know the guys whose careers rely on staying in Apple's good graces? It's just troubling that Wired chose to send someone, to write a kind of exposé piece, who gets free swag from the companies he's exposing.

Johnson's not the kind of reporter who's well positioned to take on Apple if he expects to get a first look at the iPad 3 that may or may not come out this fall. His last iPad review was, well, gushing. Johnson seems to see it as progress that Foxconn is opening up company stores where the workers can purchase the gadgets they're making.

Performer Mike Daisey, on the other hand, paints Foxconn and all of Shenzhen as a kind of dystopic experiment in what happens when all restrictions on corporations are lifted. And with the constant drumbeat to deregulate here in the U.S., Americans should watch this "experiment" closely.

Foxconn, Daisey says, sees people as parts of a machine; "when they wear out, we throw them away." He claims someone died working a 32 hour shift while he was in Shenzhen and that that happens "all the time."

The Foxconn "campus," as Johnson calls it, has been dubbed "Foxconn City." It's a manufacturing plant with 300,000 -- to 450,000 workers, according to Wikipedia. Wiki also says it covers about 1.16 square miles and "includes 15 factories, a hospital, bank, grocery store." But scariest of all, it's got its own television network called "Foxconn TV."

Yikes. Just the name alone is creepy -- it would be like having a McDonalds City with a population the size of Atlanta where all your hamburgers are made in forced 32-hour shifts and then shipped. Hey, maybe that day's coming. I can just hear the rationale -- you don't want the price of Happy Meals to go up, do you? That'll hurt the economy!   Read more...

This week on the pop+tech podcast CyberFrequencies, we hashed over the virtues (or lackthereof) of Facebook and the movie about its creation -- The Social Network. We had Dylan Wittkower on the show. He's the author of Facebook and Philosophy, and he talks about how Facebook has turned social connection into a kind of capital, or currency. I wonder how many friends it'll take me to buy myself that iPad I have my eye on? In fact, what am I doing here -- I should be busy making more social connections!

Radio producer Jackson Musker thinks Wittkower is overstating the current situation and that in fact the converse is true: we've have put so much of ourselves out into cyberspace we've actually devalued our personal information. Information deflation.

And if Facebook is mining Jackson's data and finds out he likes to play basketball, then tries to sell him new Nike's -- he's okay with that. Pretty soon I guess they'll have his shoe size on file too and just send over the shoes without asking. It'll be like an early Christmas present he'll have to pay for.

But the real question is -- should The Social Network win an Oscar for best picture? A highschooler in the video below says yes and that Zuckerberg is like the oil-barons of the 30's and 40's. Smart kid, in fact I'm going to go friend him right now!

Watch video:
   Read more...

We had author, futurist, inventor Ray Kurzweil on the show last week, who claims that information technology grows exponentially. In simple terms, the rate of change speeds up each year.

Kurzweil hypothesizes that in 20 years we’ll have computers that can simulate our brains, and ultimately we’ll all be able to upload our brains to the big computer in the sky and, essentially, live forever.

Jaron Lanier, who we’ve had on CyberFrequencies twice in a row now, says that the promise of eternal life has been the tool of charlatans since time began. He’s one of the fathers of virtual reality, and he points out that if you really want someone tinkering with your brain – first demonstrate you can control your privacy settings of Facebook. Good point.

For those of us who will be old geezers by the time the singularity hits -- Kurzweil says we’ll also be able to can reverse the aging process – and in fact you can already do so, he claims, through supplements (which apparently he takes handfuls of every day).

Johanna Blakley, Deputy Director of the Normal Lear Center, is a big fan of Kurzweil and the Singulary. What does she think of reversing the aging process? “Well I read about it all the time in Vogue Magazine, but nothing I’ve ever tried works.”

Watch Kurzweil explain the singularity here:

   Read more...

Much has been made about the fact that the military's whistleblower Private Bradley Manning is allegedly gay. Manning leaked tons of confidential military information to Wikileaks and a New York Times' piece on the topic even seems to speculate that being gay might have driven him to leak the documents:

And now some of those friends say they wonder whether his desperation for acceptance -- or delusions of grandeur -- may have led him to disclose the largest trove of government secrets since the Pentagon Papers.

But on CyberFrequencies this week we interview the man who blew the whistle on the whistle-blower, hacker Adrian Lamo, who claims that many of the key players in the Manning saga are also gay. Lamo calls it a "velvet espionage ring if you will."

Lamo has many interesting things to say, but among the juiciest is speculation that Julian Assange is gay -- along with military contact, who Lamo says is his ex.

So if nearly everyone involved was gay that changes things a bit, right?

For one thing, Hollywood better get an A-list ready of their best metro-sexual actors. I'm thinking Robert Pattinson would have to be in the mix somewhere.

The "velvet espionage ring" portion got cut from the NPR-affiliate KPCC version -- they have a policy of not outing people. But this is clearly SPECULATION my friends. (Or is it just plain gossip?)

So listen to the "director's cut" version here.

   Read more...

The L Word creator Ilene Chaiken is launching The Real L Word on June 20 for Showtime. I personally thought the fictional L Word was realistic enough -- I mean isn't every UPS girl who knocks on your door a scantily clad lesbian who looks like a super-model? Or is that just me?

We caught up with Chaiken (we didn't really "catch up" with her, I just always wanted to say that because it sounds so Vanity Fair) at her place in LA.

Chaiken is definitely forward thinking in her ideas on the media. She talks about her journey delving into New Media. At first, she discounted fan chatter online but eventually came to believe that it was integral to the success of the L Word. So much so that at times the fans, who made their opinions known on the net, even influenced the show's storyline.

Listen to The L Word interview here. Or you can watch the video below:


   Read more...

These amazing pictures of birds covered in oil are so totally depressing it's hard to imagine this spill is going to be our nation's wake up call. But that was an idea posited on KCRW's Which Way LA.

One of the more interesting speakers was Richard Cizik, an evangelical who says "polluters will have to answer to God, not just government". Ouch. What's God going to do warm the planet up or something?

Sadly I'm not buying the wake-up call notion -- much as I'd like to.

I read an article dated May 24 that said: "Former Shell Oil president John Hofmeister and former Saudi Aramco manager Nick Pozzi" told both BP and government officials that "85 percent of oil from a massive offshore Saudi spill in the early 1990s was cleaned up using supertankers to suck in seawater and oil - millions of barrels at a time."

Then the barrels were discharged "in port where the two substances could be separated and treated."

Great solution right? The downside: "You tie up oil tankers" - tankers that could be carrying crude above the Gulf's waters to customers." Gosh we wouldn't want to do that.

Mind you, this is former Shell Oil president and former Saudi Aramco manager suggesting this -- not some tree-hugging hippies.

After reading this suggestion a couple weeks ago I thought I'd be hearing it discussed everywhere -- but I haven't heard a peep. Does anybody have Obama's direct line?   Read more...

This weekend JPL has opened their house to the public. Their casa es tu casa. It's like a science Disneyland -- complete with all the long lines and crappy food. But the good news is it's all free and the seemingly random guys hanging around the exhibits are often JPL's top scientists willing to talk to anyone who wants to pick their brains.

But watch the video and decide for yourself if it's worth the trip.

You can see the newest Mars Rover unplugged (literally), and also check out a model of that Rover rolling around on rocks -- it looks like some kind of alien creature.

The new Rover will launch in a year and a half and it's take ten months to get to Mars. I hope there are no screaming babies on the rocket ship.

   Read more...

We all know it's a brave new world out there. At tech conferences, experts are talking about "total connectivity."

That's right, we'll be connected digitally 24-7.

Is that where we're going?

Kids seem to think so and in fact, some of them might already be living near total connectivity. And they're using technology in ways that adults can't even imagine.

Crenshaw High School teacher James Altuner was on KPCC's CyberFrequencies Radio this week and told us about students who are using cell phones to write papers!

And kids like 10-year-old Nico Young are creating Internet content that make adults gasps. Check out this video by Nico and tell us what you think.



It makes you wonder, if Nico is making videos like this at 10, what will he be doing at 18? And what affect will young content producers like Nico have on the already struggling entertainment industry?

And young musicians like Ryan Roberts make you wonder, "where goes MTV, VH1 and all the other music channels we grew up with?"

Instead of waiting for MTV to make him a "star," Ryan simply props his camera onto a tripod and makes his own music videos. Check out this Leonard Cohen cover Ryan made when he was 11-years-old.





See other Nico videos here. Other Ryan Roberts songs here.

More immediately, contrast where the kids are with technology with where many of the public schools are.

Many public schools still don't have reliable Internet. Teachers are super lucky if they have a few working computers in their classroom. Kids in lower socio-economic neighborhoods can't get consistent Internet connection at home.

When those kids step out of high school will they be prepared for the 21st century work force?

On this week's CyberFreuqencies radio, we speak with Adam Porsh of the Gates Foundation and James Altuner of Crenshaw High about that digital divide... between where the kids (and the world) are with technology and where many of our public schools are.   Read more...

So my friends, they've flipped the script on us...

That was my first thought reading the LA Times' take on The Entryway   Read more...

The wait it over. Your crack has arrived. iPhone OS 4.0 can be downloaded here. You'll need to link your "device id" to a developer's account, which according to this post, you can do by emailing: wynndc AT yahoo . com.

So now you too can zoom in to capture that cat video you've been meaning to upload, multi-task while crossing the street, get your ads 24/7, spell check ur stoopid txts, and all kinds of other cool stuff we'll soon be unable live without!

For too long our not-so-smart phones have forced us to play games with people we actually know. Finally we can play games with exotic strangers in remote locations while driving our cars.

According to Megaleecher.net, "Apple has made the beta" OS 4.0 available to Apple registered developers. But "the adventurous users" can "download iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 1 as it is now leaked and posted on internet by iModZone.net."

Get all the info here.   Read more...

It looks like the U.S. IT market is going to see an 8.4 percent "rise in spending this year," according to CNET.

This is because tech sells. Watch iPad porn here. (Like most porn, the movie is way too long.)   Read more...

In response to what she sees as a general misperception of MacArthur Park, (and the recent The Entryway scuttlebutt), longtime resident gives a short video tour of another MacArthur Park.

We visit an historic building, her favorite Salvadoran Panaderia, and the park itself which has free concerts at Levitt Pavilion every summer. She talks about MacArthur Park having been an affluent area with Jewish roots starting in the 1920's -- with remnants like Langers still there.

According to Absoluteastronomy.com (go figure) the area was "one of the first" in Los Angeles "west of Figueroa Street to see residential development." And that "by the 1920s Westlake resembled the Upper East Side (complete with a large Jewish population)."

Watch tour here:

   Read more...

According to CyberFreak Queena Kim, Rose Hills Cemetery was the place to be on Easter if you're Asian!

"It was wall-to-wall people burning incense; eating fruit; chopping up cooked pigs; and laying out offerings for the ancestors," Queena says. "We had bagels, lox and cream cheese... and rice cakes!"

Queena sent a few videos and here's what I stitched together.

   Read more...

USC New Media Professor and author Andrew Lih shows us his new iPad in the movie below.

Andrew speculates that the magazine industry might be in for a nice surprise if the iPad changes us from being active content producers on the web -- think YouTube -- to becoming more passive consumers of information, their information.

But Content Matter says iPad won't save print and people won't stop producing content.

After yesterday's iFail post a fight broke out in the comments section between the Mac defenders and detractors.

One of the more interesting points, which I hadn't considered, is that by not including a standard USB port where you can plug in, for example, a mouse. Now, you'll be forced to buy an Apple mouse.

The comment comes from "deepfreezevideo" who says that he'll wait for the competitors to introduce something with standard ports so he can use "off-the-shelf keyboards, mice, external displays and many other accessories."

But the question becomes who are the competitors? There's the JooJoo Tablet, yawn. I'm psyched about Light Blue Optics' invention of a projector that "instantly turns any flat surface into a touch screen." I doubt the technology is quite there yet with this product, but one day it could be very cool.

But for now we have the iPad, take a tour below:

   Read more...

Alright Apple fanboys, it's time to put up the iFail movie version of the iFail radio show we had on back in January.

In the words of the Wall Street Journal, "The last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it."

And in the words of Molly Peterson in the movie below "I don't understand how people have so much money to spend on ridiculously redundant devices".



But don't take our word for it -- hear what Hilter has to say:



Or learn here how you can get hi-tech with your feminine products:


   Read more...

Your house is so dirty your mama has to wear combat boots! Ahh, brings back my high school days.

Here at the CyberFrequenices headquarters -- we were sure the smackdown was coming to a multimedia project called The Entryway, about a couple of white chicks who move into a house of Latino immigrants to learn Spanish.

Now always start with the positive, right? So the good news is it's a great idea and super cool looking site...but...instead of getting to know the family, they totally "otherize" them.

They chastise the family for not learning English, seeming to equate it to a year junior abroad in Spain.

It's like duuude...they left the country and people they love behind to make ends meet, not to sit in the Barcelona sun conjugating verbs. I taught ESL for years and it was so friggin hard for folks to make it to class because they worked two and three jobs -- and when they did come they were bone tired.

But to our shock, the smackdown didn't come. And in fact LAist wrote a gushing blog, the public radio types weren't far behind, the Knight Foundation's promoting them, and they got a shout out from LA Observed.

When the smackdown did finally come it wasn't from the white blogosphere but blogger Daniel Hernandez. Lots of angry folks commented on his blog, including Ask a Mexican’s Gustavo Arellano.

Now I’ve actually met The Entryway ladies and I gotta say they’re really nice women – just totally clueless about matters of race.

But leaving aside race for a minute, I have some real issues with their approach journalistically.

Essentially the family featured in The Entryway are opening up their home and private lives to The Entryway ladies, and The Entryway ladies are turning around and VERY publicly dissing them.

In this entry they talk about how they thought they had finally found a clean Latino home (the implication being most aren’t), but then to their horror there were, gasp, cockroaches.

Now to me this borders on petty gossip -- it's not Perez Hilton telling all about Britney Spears, in which case fair game. But it's just a little small family they're supposed to be "getting to know", and maybe developing an affinity for. Now I've never even me them but my first thought was -- how’s the little girl in the family going to feel when the whole world reads about her family's cockroach moment without putting it into any kind of context?

We had a show where we talked to blogger Shannyn Moore, who made allegations about Sarah Palin. Now I’m not a huge Palin fan and I certainly wouldn’t call her powerless! But we still went to Palin for comment.

If you're gonna dog someone out that you’re covering -- other than the president or Bill Gates -- then journalistically you should have the balls to tell them to their face and include their response. It’s only ethical, it's only fair.

In fact I gotta go and send The Entryway ladies my blog right now so I'm not being a hypocrite!

(((funny spoof by Dennis Romero here)))   Read more...

On CyberFrequencies' latest podcast, we spoke to author Diana Grove. She wrote Dot.Conned, which is about conning the Internet con men. In one chapter, Grove gets an email from a pretty young girl named "Earl," who offers her inheritance. Grove takes on the character of "Prophet Opus" (see photo above!) and sends email pleading with Earl for money.

Here's a dramatic reading by John Rabe and Karen Fritsche.



Music by The Streets John Reid and The Black Keys.   Read more...

If you look at this movie from TED Talks -- minute 11:10 -- you'll see that the kids don't know how to identify common veggies like tomatoes and potatoes:



Queena Kim -- yes the the co-producer of CyberFrequencies Queena Kim -- refuses to believe it's true...that's right, she thinks Jamie Oliver is risking his career to put up a fake.

Now I have a second video to prove her wrong...   Read more...

Turns out the revolution will be televised -- on YouTube!

Though Arianna Huffington has been on a Move Your Money mission, and there's a website called Move Your Money, we here at CyberFrequencies wanted to remind you of the original move you money honey who started a debtor's revolt revolution on YouTube -- Ann Minch of the Debtor's Revolt.

Listen to our podcast and hear what she has to say.

Also featured on the podcast where internet comedians Rhett and Link's bailout video.



And of course let's not forget Peter Finch's evergreen performance and the Debtor's Revolter's rallying cry -- I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GONNA TAKE ANYMOOOORE!

   Read more...

Here's a video from the winning project -- LA River Rubout -- in our UCLA multimedia class -- picked by a panel of judges...read more to find out who the judges were.

To make this video...these badass ladies, Jessica Perez and Rachel Sulprizio, drove their cars down in the river before the rainwater had drained out:

   Read more...

Lola of the famed kid band iOla! stopped by the CyberFrequencies studio to sing a spoken-word-meets-Joni Mitchell rendition of Hotel California.



Hear more of iOla! by listening to this week's show (we didn't podcast it b/c it was a re-jiggered repeat)    Read more...

That's right -- a beer float! Gotta say it tastes pretty good (Queena was driving so I know!)

   Read more...

Well Tiger's in the news again today and I just happen to have a video explaining to Cindy Crawford why she should have used Tiger Woods' nanny instead of the one who tried to export cash for pics of Cindy's all kids tied up in a game of cops n robbers:


But you know, I have a random video for every occasion -- for example here are some robbery tips for the digital age:
   Read more...

We've been getting emails from y'all asking "Why aren't you producing more podcasts?" "What happened!" And as of yesterday, why aren't the "subscribe" buttons working?

The short answer: We're in freeware hell!    Read more...

Our Podcast this week features Ray Bradbury's musical “Wisdom 2116,” which he wrote for an old couple he’d befriended as a young man. It’s taken Bradbury more than 50-years to see the musical performed on stage. “Wisdom 2116” is a robotic love story about the beauty of growing old as humans.

We caught up with the legendary science fiction and fantasy writer at his home in Los Angeles where he talks about everything from Bo Derek to his writing process. Here's a video of some of the outtakes. You've heard of Sh** My Dad Says? Well here's sh** Ray Bradbury says.




Watch clips of the play:



   Read more...

I saw a musical play last weekend by Ray Bradbury called Vision 2116. I loved it. (*disclaimer: movies like I'm Not There, Dancer in the Dark, and yes even Moulin Rouge can make me tear up long after everyone else has left the building.)

Ray Bradbury was there and still delivering wise cracks at almost 90, and I had the good fortune of chatting with Roslyn Shapiro whose husband formed a writer's group with Bradbury in the 1940's. She says Bradbury was terrified of driving and, according to wikipedia, never did get his license.

Richard Bach was also in the group and Roslyn's daughter talks about fights breaking out -- her father wrote a parody of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and all hell broke loose. Watch Roslyn Shapiro and her daughter tell the story below:

   Read more...

Jacob Solomon, a student from the UCLA multimedia class I co-teach with CyberFrequencies web guru Joshua Rodriguez (you'll be hearing more about this class as we pimp their stuff), did an interesting review of audio mics for those of us who are trying to squeeze better audio out of our iPhones. He comes out with Brand Flex as the winner. But my money's on Apple Headset. Take a listen and decide for yourself.   Read more...

I taped Queena eating a Bacon Donut at Nickel Diner for this Saturday's Off-Ramp. As I proudly posted it to YouTube, I noticed that the Bacon Donut (BD) genre has a rich and caloric history on YouTube.

So compiled here for you is a Best of (ours being the best, theirs being the "of").   Read more...

If you google the iPad, feminine napkin jokes are neck and neck with the actual iPad news. Heck, even Hitler weighed in. Does this mean we're collectively over-Appled? In Jobs' presentation on Wednesday, he re-positioned Apple as a "mobile devices company". Very unsexy way to position yourself when your company's been seen as more about innovation than business. Besides, something else could come along tomorrow and blow mobile devices out of the water (no idea what...I'm just sayin).

But my question is: What's the competition for the iPad? The iPod? As KPCC'S Molly Peterson says in our EXTRAS/THE VIDEO version of the CyberFrequencies radio show/podcast, Apple's entered the land of "ridiculously redundant devices". Watch CF outtakes video below:

   Read more...

CyberFrequencies was in full force at the LA Art Show this year! (Which means two of us went.) I think there may have had some pretty good art. Sadly, I didn't seem much of it because I was waiting in line for about an hour for TWO Hama Sushi rolls. I didn't even bother trying to get a drink because the lines were twice as long. Now I think that if they wanted folks to buy art, they should have liquored them up and sprang for a couple people walking around with those cute little drink trays. But then...LA Art Show didn't ask me for my advice...so I'll stick to what I know.

Featured on KPCC's Off-Ramp this week were graffiti artist friends & collaborators El Mac & Retna. Here's what they had to say:   Read more...

Decide for yourself which beatboxer is better!



OR

Who's a better beatboxer?
	Daichi
	Julia Dales
pollcode.com free polls

   Read more...

On Flavorpill LA Tanja Laden and Shana Nys Dambrot's Browsers:

1. Annenberg interviews with photographers

2. Tiger Woods' Slow Jam Remix

3. Dark Bob's New Year Special   Read more...

In case you're a little fuzzy on your history, the original Rosetta Stone was about four-feet-tall and two-feet-high. The ancient Egyptians etched three languages - hieroglyphic and Demotic and classical Greek - onto the one-foot-thick slab. Napoleon's soldiers found the stone and it unlocked ancient Egyptian civilization -- before then, nobody could read hieroglyphic!

The high-tech Rosetta Disk fits in the palm of your hand, has about 1,500 languages etched-on in microscopic writing and is designed to last ten thousand years.

Rosetta project director Laura Welcher says it could be the tool that unlocks ancient-English to the far-future. But more importantly, Welcher says with the world's languages (and culture) disappearing, the Rosetta disk will be a reminder of how diverse humanity once was. Check out the full-interview on CyberFrequencies Radio   Read more...

Robert Torres of last week's show on the gaming high school Quest to Learn says:
Some of my favorites sites are:
Design by Design
Quest To Learn
New York Times Education page
Daily Kos
Pandora
BBC
Ferry Halim
Shambhala
   Read more...

Netflix just announced that it’s well on its way to a, well, blockbuster year of profits. The online movie outfit banked 430 million in revenue, lowered its costs-per-subscriber (who now number 11 million), and boosted all of the important acronyms and ratios that stock analysts care about.

But the rah-rah press releases don’t mention an important detail: I am responsible for Netflix’s exorbitant profits.

Okay, so I’m probably one of several million people. Here’s how it happened...    Read more...

Before I get known as the pro-file-sharing, anti-industry anarchist, let me state for the record: I just think if invention gets ahead of industry, industry shouldn't try to shut down invention. A “group representing copyright owners” (whatever that means!) recently shut down Pirate Bay, again!

Folks will hop over to any number of other BitTorrent sites, so shouldn't the record industry spend its money thinking up new ways to stay relevant? Put those Pirate Bay guys on the payroll instead of in jail.   Read more...

Pop star Lily Allen got into an online spat with her fans in the UK when she came out in favor of a government proposal to stop illegal downloading: if you get caught downloading copyrighted material three times, you lose your Internet access. Yep, and according to Fox, three strikes might be coming soon to a computer near you!

Draconian?

Dan Bull thought so and was inspired to write "Dear Lily," which has been going viral.

Is his song a manifesto of the Cyber Generation? Rafer Guzman, entertainment writer for Newsday, says, if so that's a sad commentary on what the youth of today care about: the entertainment industry. And besides, big concept albums take big money...you'll never produce an album like Bowie's Ziggy Stardust from your home computer.

You can download Dear Lily here and tell us what you think. Manifesto of a movement? Or misguided trend?

Or to download Dan Bull's newest album Safe click here.   Read more...

Tao Lin writes from his apartment in hyper-connected Brooklyn. Robert Peake programs by day but writes in his free time in sleepy Ojai. And Katie Peterson teaches, most recently at a remote college in eastern California. And yet they're all grappling with what it means to express their art on the Web, especially on instant media like Twitter, IM, and gchat. I asked them to share their stories in this week's podcast (at right). They were also kind enough read some of their work....

Robert Peake reads "Digital Forensics" and "Yellow":
Katie Peterson reads "Aubade: Winter" from her collection This One Tree:
More Twitter reflections/thoughts/images from Katie:
Tao Lin's "some of my happiest moments in life occur on AOL instant messenger" from his collection you are a little bit happier than i am:
Check out video readings (including William Shatner's Ode to Sarah Palin!) after the break...

   Read more...

I'm a big fan of Julieta Venegas.

I got the download for the show from labandaelastica.

Ruben Rodriguez says that

"Just when it seemed that Julieta Venegas was taking a well deserved sabbatical after a string of international successes, our favorite chanteuse from Playas de Tijuana makes a splash on the scene with a couple of collaborations between musician pals."

   Read more...

Can you picture T.S. Eliot tweeting? Or e.e. cummings thumbing out inspired text messages? How about Shakespeare proclaiming, "Let me not to the gchatting of two minds admit impediments!"

Sure, it's a little ridiculous to envision the Bard with a Blackberry. But mixing poetry (high art) with microblogging (no art?) isn't just happening; it's flourishing. As the web prioritizes shorter, more efficient forms of communication (from email to chat to twitter), poets have taken note...and taken the form to fascinating new places.   Read more...

Arianna Huffington says "Oh I have tons of stuff on my browser"...
   Read more...

Good for you, Mark Zuckerburg! You created Facebook, this century's hottest tech phenomenon. You're young (25!), you're rich (a billionaire!), and you're a Harvard dropout. That takes chutzpah. Just this week, you gobbled up rival company FriendFeed and gained the support of two tech moguls: Arianna Huffington and Marc Andreeson, late of Netscape. Your Facebook status probably reads: "Revolutionizing the internet." You should be commended.

But I don't trust you. If you friended me, I'd ignore you.

   Read more...

Miami It Band the Awesome New Republic are our guests on the podcast this week.

You can DOWNLOAD their Rational Geographic Series for free.

My favorite song is Birthday, which you DOWNLOAD right now - instant gratification!   Read more...

We put the question to Howard Dean and the Awesome New Republic's Michael John Hancock. Their answers?

   Read more...

My primary lines of work are clustered around two major set of issues:
Fighting Counterfeit medicines in the developing world and mobilizing awareness about and responses to Africa’s developmental challenges, with an obvious emphasis on Ghana, where I live.   Read more...

In our podcast, Molly Peterson finds Howard Dean totally dreamy. But a lot of her countrymen have found him a little too screamy.

When you google Howard Dean the second link is about the scream, or should I say SCREAM. Why that scream brought him down I'll never understand, but in its aftermath an American legacy was born: the "Dean Scream" genre.   Read more...

I wanted to interview Howard Dean at the Fortune Magazine Tech Conference. The Fortune people gave me the number to Howard Dean's people and I emailed them. Then, a few minutes later, I got a call.

“Hi Tanya, this is Howard Dean calling.”   Read more...

When you hear the word "pirates," what pops into your head? Plunderers? Somali terrorists? Johnny Depp? Scoundrels? Peglegs? Illegal downloaders?

How about "model sharers?"

That's what occurred to bestselling author Paulo Coelho while he was following the Pirate Bay trial. "The Pirate Bay" is an international file-sharing site where you can find everything from music and movies to video games and porn.    Read more...

89.3-KPCC's Molly Peterson shows us the Kindle DX on the beach.


At $489 is it worth it?
Molly Peterson: No, unless you have $489 to blow.
Queena Kim: Yes, if I had $489 to blow. As far as luxury items go, this is a useful one. You can read newspapers, magazines, download pdfs from work and you don't have to lug around a computer. And I was kinda sad when I had to give it back.    Read more...

The same day that the Phillies poached ace pitcher Cliff Lee from the Indians, Microsoft announced its own blockbuster trade: it purchased Yahoo's search engine rights for the next 10 years.

The same day that the Phillies poached ace pitcher Cliff Lee from the Indians, Microsoft announced its own blockbuster trade: it purchased Yahoo's search engine rights for the next 10 years. Microsoft plans to retire Yahoo! Search and replace it with its new "decision engine" Bing.   Read more...

Because I'm a radio reporter, friends ask me "Hey, what kind of recording equipment should I buy?" Usually, they want to record their 97-year-old granny's voice or get their dad telling some funny story. My answer: iPhone.   Read more...

Listen to John Rabe and Kevin Ferguson try out the iPhone:

float left code:
The U.S. government is considering ending troop access to all forms of social networking.
"It’s the latest twist in the Defense Department’s tangled relationship with so-called “Web 2.0″ sites. But while earlier social media blockades have been thrown up over bandwidth and secrecy concerns, this fresh ban stems from fears that Facebook and the like make it far too easy for hackers and cybercrooks to gain access to the military’s networks."Via Wired
   Read more...

It's truly amazing what kids can do on the web these days. Scott Simon, NPR host and CF guest, told us "literally, within two minutes of opening" his iPhone, his six-year-old daughter showed him how to take pictures and eventually download aps. My friend's six-year-old, Lola, wants to be a star on the Web. (See CyberTV)

Lola's cousin Ocelotl loves to go to the Jackson Pollack's site where he can make his own paint-splattered homage.

But still, every parent I know is conflicted. Should my kid go online? Is it safe?   Read more...

With Michael Jackson’s passing, YouTube views of videos like Thriller have been skyrocketing, that should almost go without saying but USA Today doesn’t think so. In fact, the online world has been buzzing with so many MJ queries and web hits that when the news first started circulating, Google assumed the internet was under attack.   Read more...

In the wake of the Craigslist killing the attorney generals of three states met with Craigslist to get them to take down advertisements for "prostitution and other suspected illegal sexual activities."


   Read more...