Jacob Blackstock first conceived of the burgeoning social comics site Bitstrips as a way to let the rest of the internet participate in his childhood passion. Blackstock says as a kid, the comics he most enjoyed creating “were the ones I would make for my friends, starring those friends.” Last December, he converted that idea into an app (that has since gone viral) that lets Facebook users create a cartoon avatar of themselves and their Facebook friends, and place those characters into customized comic strips.
But the cold reality is, it’s not easy to create a respectably funny (and thus, shareable) comic.
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Greedhead Records founder @Himanshu put this call out on Twitter yesterday:
Hi! My names HIMA! I like rap and Queens where im from and India where my parents from. What do you like?
What followed was a stream of retweets from his fans who answered that question. Eliminating the noise words, others that appeared most frequently included “girls,” “rap,” “pizza,” “music,” “art,” “weird,” and “witchy.”
Here’s a snapshot.
Not many surprises there, I know…though I guess I thought there’d be more Dadaism.
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A version of this story aired on APM’s Marketplace.
Silicon Valley may be the financial center of the tech industry, but lately San Francisco is earning a reputation as the heart and soul of it. Tech workers who don’t want to live in the Valley’s sprawling suburbs have migrated northward. And hundreds of tech-related businesses have set up shop in San Francisco too. But the culture of tech that’s taking hold in the city hasn’t come without controversy. (more…)
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After 30 years as one of San Francisco’s standout ethnic film festivals, the CAAM Fest returns not only with a new name, but with significantly expanded scope and ambition.
Put on by the Center for Asian American media, the event formerly known as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival grew its music-driven programming last year, with events like its Groove Salon, said Music Program Director Marky Enriquez. “In the past few years, we’ve seen the programming go beyond film, and start getting into very different types of programs from music events to more interactive events. Last year we did several Ted Talk-style panels, and pitch panels.” This year, he said, the evolution of the festival became official with the name CAAM Fest.
This year’s program brings back the Ready, Set, Pitch! event in which Asian American creatives are moved up through a pitch competition, first by YouTube voters, and culminating at a live judging where their project is eligible for $5,000 in seed money. (more…)
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Older workers aren’t the only ones insecure that their skills will be obsolete in the rapidly changing info tech economy.
That from a survey by Dice.com that found that tech workers are most concerned about matching their skill sets to new jobs. (more…)
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Reflections from tech industry leaders like Twitter’s Evan Williams and (the especially engaging) Chamath Palihapitiya were the banner events at the Launch Festival in San Francisco this week, but the energy that fueled the conference came from the inventive young founders debuting their startups at the three day showcase.
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Rockets that launch commercial satellites and robots that manipulate cell phones are the sort of big, bold ideas that excite some of the Silicon Valley investors who addressed the opening of the sixth annual Launch Festival on Monday in San Francisco.
“In the (pitch) meeting, I want to feel inspired,” said Charles River Ventures partner George Zachary, one of five VCs on the first plenary panel at the conference, which showcases promising startups and gives them an audience with high-profile investors. “If I don’t have that feeling, I’ll drop out even if I think it’s a good business.”
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Well, we were waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one.
About a week ago, we began seeing this interview circulate: a Vice writer talked to his friend, a young social worker in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, about what it was like to work in what the writer called “the most hellish neighborhood in San Francisco.”
The TL’s terrible reputation is attributed to its high rates of crime and open drug use. For people who live there, like a recent interviewee of mine, these aspects of the TL are used to paint the neighborhood with a too-broad brush that doesn’t account for its diverse populations, or for the contributing role of San Francisco’s urban planners in their efforts to sanitize the rest of the city for tourists. (more…)
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Memory Palace (Podcast)
I recently fell in love with the Memory Palace, a podcast by Nate DiMeo. The series is like a shadow box of well-written, narrative stories about various historical characters like John Wilkes Booth’s brother and baby Donner. DiMeo’s style is spare but there’s plenty to love, and with his archive up to Episode 50, there’s plenty to listen to as well. -Sayre Quevado
iDannyBoom (Adorable video tutorial)
Ever wondered how to make the Apple logo appear in a Microsoft Word document? My daughter asked me the other day, and what we found when we searched was so much more compelling than Alt-Shift-K. Meet iDannyBoom. -Lissa Soep
Build A School In The Cloud (Ted Talk)
It’s about time we find a way to educate kids in areas where finding teachers is difficult. Sugata Mitra’s idea to allow youth to educate themselves is a twist in thinking. However, in my opinion, it embodies the word awesome. -Kurt Collins
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If you’ve been hit by end-of-the-week sluggishness, this high-energy video about upping your Facebook game (targeted at musicians, but useful for anyone trying to build their personal brand) might put a little more hustle in your step.
It’s basically a video tip sheet from a young entreprenuer who’s a relentless hustler himself, Hipset CEO Matt Schlicht. Hipset’s founders have Lil Wayne’s 40+ million Facebook fans under their belt, and have launched two new ventures on the strength of their reputation building musicians’ social media engagement. (more…)
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As you all undoubtedly already know, Google Glass is finally here.
Sponsors
Now streaming: the archive of our Google Hangout On-Air with Jesse Vigil of Psychic Bunny, one of the designers of the new audio adventure game FREEQ (iOS/Android).
We’ve featured dancer Matt Luck’s work before.
I first encountered Sifteo Cubes back at IndieCade last October, and spent some time playing around with the little blocks which I first mistook for iPod Nanos.
Over the weekend I was having a conversation about the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum that’s been announced.
