I popped into the Exploratorium's recent fund raising gala and was told the event had raised $1.5 million, $300K more than it expected. Which is fabulous news because there were some job cuts last year.

I'm a big fan of the Exploratorium but the transition to it's new location has taken time to build up visitor numbers. I love the new location and the Exploratorium has managed to recreate the look and feel of the old place at the Palace of Fine Arts. Plus it's three times larger. 

Thursday evenings at the Exploratorium are a great time to visit because there's a special theme for each "After Dark" event, lectures, and there's a bar too, plus a great looking crowd. This Thursday:

Off the Screen: Doors of Perception

Thursday, May 29, 2014 • 8:00 p.m.

Location:  Exploratorium, Pier 15, Kanbar Forum

These new and newly preserved experimental shorts craft visual illusions and allusions that flicker in your mind's eye long after appearing on screen. Using aesthetic techniques ranging from painstakingly hand-drawn animation to early computer technologies, these films approach visual and temporal perception with new eyes. As Islamic patterns move in careful synch and line drawings literally explode from the screen, another plane of vision emerges, creating a deepened and memorable viewing experience.

Featuring:

• Kitsch in Sync (1975) by Adam Beckett


• Two Space (1985/ 2013) by Larry Cuba


• Cyclopean Perception (1973) by Enrico Chiarucci and Bela Julesz

- - - 

Here's some photos from the Gala fundraising party and recent Exploratorium events:

A bull's penis.

Bugs in a doll's house.

Oscar Wilde in in America, 1882, 28 years old. 

Gary Kamiya tells stories on SFGate.com, from the history of San Francisco and its newspaper archives. It's a rich history for such a small city,  and it's a strong literary history, too, which is apt with Silicon Valley becoming a Media Valley.

This week Mr. Kamiya tells the story of Oscar Wilde's visit to San Francisco in 1882, as part of strange promotional stunt for a Gilbert & Sullivan opera lampooning the Aesthetes, an English artistic and literary set enamored with  a "Cult of Beauty," a heightened level of sensitivity to the beauty of nature, and in the decor of their surroundings — rooms, furniture, and even wallpaper. 

[San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum last year hosted an excellent "Cult of Beauty" exhibit with several pre-Raphaelite artists represented, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti; William Morris graphics design; and Aubrey Beardsley.]

Oscar Wilde was young, just 28 years old but already well known in London for his literary and other achievements, mostly on a very public stage of London society. He was considered a leading light of the Aesthetes, even though after three decades, it was on its way out.

A withered bouquet and a sombrero…

He made a memorable first impression on his arrival San Francisco, the tall, stocky young man quickly attracted a curious crowd, and no wonder:

 He was flamboyantly dressed in a black velvet coat ornamented with a withered bouquet, highly polished pointed shoes and a velvet waistcoat. His long hair hung below a Mexican-style sombrero.

The promoter of the opera paid Wilde $5,000 to go on a lecture tour of the US, so that San Francisco and other cities, could see and meet a member of the Cult of Beauty and thus find the resulting Gilbert & Sullivan performance understandable and hilarious when it arrived later.

… offensively daft

He was scheduled for four lectures in San Francisco. I find this fact hard to believe but Wilde was a terrible public speaker and many reviews were horrible. Here's one from Ambrose Bierce:

"There was never an impostor so hateful, a blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and offensively daft."

Earning respect…

Wilde always seemed to know how to impress those around him, and for some congregations it didn't require  incisive wit.  During his visit, he was invited to a reception at the city's notorious Bohemian Club.

The merry pranksters assumed that the foppish import was, like his literary alter ego Bunthorne, a hopeless twit, a sunflower-sniffing pansy. They planned to get the "Miss Nancy" drunk and make a fool of him…

Before, during and after dinner, the Bohemians kept pouring drinks, expecting Wilde to lose it, but the beefy, 200-pound Irishman kept downing them and calling for more. Soon it was the rootin' tootin' sons of the Wild West who were collapsing in a drunken heap, their would-be mark still emptying his glass and continuing his urbane conversation.

It is said that the members of the Bohemian Club, filled with newfound respect for the "three-bottle man," commissioned a portrait of Wilde to hang in the club. Wilde returned the compliment to the city, saying he had fallen in love with San Francisco.

Never ever, try to out-drink an Irishman — even if he is dressed as a "Little Lord Fauntleroy."

Mr. Kamiya makes a touching observation: "It was a happy episode in the early life of a great writer, later to be destroyed by Victorian homophobia, in the city that would someday become a beacon of gay pride for the world."

Read the rest here: Oscar Wilde turns tables in surreal sojourn to S.F.

Gary Kamiya is a co-founder of Salon and executive editor of SF Mag. Gary Kamiya - Salon.com

He has a new book "Cool Gray City of Love," about San Francisco, it looks great. Here is Clara Jeffery from the New York Times:

To tell the geo-politico-psycho history of a city as prismatic as San Francisco, and to do it as skillfully as Kamiya does, is no small undertaking…

San Francisco is a metropolis molded, far more than most, by topography and weather, and Kamiya artfully helps us imagine the landscape as it once was: a place of mostly windswept dunes where nomadic bands of American Indians traveled between summer and winter camps, along trails whose contours still exist.

Some days it seems as if the universe is conspiring to provide me with exactly what I need, in the right amounts,  and at the right time. Johnny Marr, the former guitarist of The Smiths, playing just down the street from me at The Fillmore -- was concrete proof of this conspiracy. 

He started off with the first track from his new solo album "The Messenger," demonstrating his guitar genius by playing just the one sustained note that opens "The Right Thing Right." The title of the song is also its best description.

There's no need for Johnny Marr to prove himself with flashy guitar licks, and theatrical moves, as his mid-gig special guest, Billy Duffy from The Cult, did.

Johnny Marr's singing was very good, and so was the performance of the young backup band touring with him. And he's a very modest man, far from a rock and roll stereotype, but totally absorbed in the roots of the music.

And he finished the set with what must be the best guitar intro ever: The Smith's "How Soon Is Now?"

The venue was hot and everyone was dripping, and it must have been much worse on stage. Before he came on for the encore he changed into a dry, loose fitting white T-shirt with three large words, one on each line: "Johnny Fucking Marr." Indeed.

- - -

Below, there's a clip of Noel Gallagher from Oasis talking about The Smiths, and Johnny Marr around 1.20 min, and his unique talent. He tells a story related by Johnny Marr, describing how he tried  to recreate his intro to "How Soon Is Now"  and it's like a five minute comedy sketch, and he just can't do it. "Even he's not as good as he is." Brilliant. Thank you universe for a superb night.

More:

Johnny Marr to collect Godlike Genius prize at NME Awards 2013

Fans Have New Reason to Worship Johnny Marr - NYTimes.com

Rolling Stone: The Smiths' Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke Reunite in Brooklyn to Play 'How Soon Is Now?'
Marr closes solo show with surprise reunion.

I was walking along Haight Street and spotted a poster competition for the upcoming Haight Street Fair, June 9, which has always been one of the best San Francisco Street Fairs. For a long time it was organized by the wonderful Pablo Heising, a good friend and one of the neighborhoods best community leaders. 

Pablo was a former Digger in the 1960s, and saw the neighborhood fall apart, and be torn apart, by drugs and violence following its "Summer of Love" season on the world's stage. Pablo was one of the protectors and caretakers of the community, guarding kids from predators in the park, helping to bring free medical care into the community, and so much more.

Pablo's Haight Street Fair was instrumental in bringing the neighborhood back to life. It showed that it could be a safe and fun place to visit, instead of a reputation as a violent, crack and speed infested no-go zone. The Haight Street Fair started in 1978 and quickly became the best loved and the best attended street fair in San Francisco, and an important community resource.

My wife and I used to publish a local neighborhood newspaper in the late 1980s called "The Street - A View From The Haight." It was a perfect excuse to get to know Pablo better and celebrate his life in a feature interview, calling him "The Mayor of Haight Street." It was a title that stuck well, and struck true to his thousands of friends.  

A dark and troubled time...

Pablo was always a modest man, quiet and unassuming; he achieved so many good things, and without any fanfare. He was a gentle giant in his community. His passing at 61, was a shock and we lost a kind man. And we lost a first-hand witness to an important period in the neighborhood's fabled, but also deeply troubled history.

The Haight-Ashbury story is as rock & roll as any cautionary tale of a rock star's life. From the heady thrills of life on an adoring world stage, there is the inevitable fall from grace and the slide into a bottom-less dark place of drug addiction and mindless acts of self-destruction. And then the painful, gradual rehabilitation, a reawakening, a blinking into a harsh sunlight but at least back on track, back onto a track of work and slow, gradual improvement. The Haight-Ashbury is no longer a neighborhood of crack houses and cracked kids, and Pablo was very important in the resurrection of what was a very damaged community for most of the 1970s and into early 1980s.

Pablo lived very simply, which probably was due to his Digger background, a radical group that ran free stores, and free community kitchens, and whose egalitarian philosophies are a key influence in the software engineer culture of Silicon Valley and beyond. Pablo should have bought some crack houses and flipped them to provide himself with a little bit of security as he grew older but he didn't. Many people, such as my landlord,  made fortunes in the Haight-Ashbury real-estate market as the neighborhood moved well beyond  gentrification.

In the mid-1990s, Pablo was forced out of his rented apartment and came to live with me and my wife and two kids,  for a couple of weeks up in Forestville, which is about an hour or so north of San Francisco. He was a long-time friend of my wife Mervana because both had worked for many years at Bill Graham Presents; we were very happy to have Pablo all to ourselves for a short while.

Pablo worked with many other city neighborhoods showing them how to organize and provide local services.  And he also organized the other great San Francisco street event -- The Castro Street Fair.

- - -

You can learn more about Pablo here in this profile from the San Francisco Chronicle: Pablo Heising -- 'Mayor of Haight'

Here's an interview with Pablo shortly before he died from Haight Ashbury Beat, one of the more recent in a series of publications from the Haight (which includes Rolling Stone): Watch 2006 Pablo Heising Interview | haight ashbury beat Episodes

- - -

Pablo's spirit can still be found at events such as the Haight Street Fair, which always seems to mark the start of a yet another great San Francisco summer season of street events and music festivals. This city has a wonderful cultural life and it doesn't require money to enjoy it. 

- - -

More posters...

My favorite in this year's Haight Street Fair poster competition is the one above. This first poster below, is one of my favorites from past years. It was designed by Kathleen Bifulco, one of the art editors on our publication "The Street." [Kathleen's husband Chris Dichtel wrote a historical column for the paper and many of our other friends were involved too -- "The Street"was a close knit editorial collective.] 

Here are the other posters from this year's poster competition from a Haight Street store window, (my apologies for my feet!):

[A note about the Culture Watch section: Startups should make sure that they expose their staff to as much of the local cultural life as they can manage because it builds a diversity in ideas and in services opportunities.

A business that doesn't take an interest in its communities will not be in business for long. Culture is constantly being disrupted and replaced, it is innovative and wildly creative -- and it constantly generates new languages of expression, and these reflect how society thinks about things, and what it thinks about itself. To understand "social" you have to be in it, you have to go out and about, and you need to be social. Social media is not enough.]

San Francisco's How Weird street fair is always fun and difficult to categorize.  Here's how it describes itself: http://howweird.org/

The How Weird Street Faire is a world-class music festival, featuring a wide range of electronic dance music. There will be 10 stages of great music, art, and sound systems from Symbiosis, Muti Music, Groove Garden, Enchanted Forest, Opel, Opulent Temple, World Famous Productions, Basscraft Soundsystem, Urge Productions, Pink Mammoth, SF House Music, Temple Nightclub, SWAG, Pulse SF, Space Shaping, PK Sound, The Boombox Affair, Party Babas, Red Marines, Psycircle, Happy Camp, and more.

Here's some photos of the festival from past years:

Startups should get out to these festivals all the time because knowing your culture is important to your business.Yet I don't run into many startup geeks at these local events.

I'm a big fan of the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and I love everything about it. It's been on a roll with great exhibitions and its free "Friday Nights at the de Young" has always been a great way to kick-off the weekend, 6pm to 8.30pm.

But that was last year.

This year the season started off with a whimper and gradually got worse. 

I've always liked the eclectic themes and the live music, and the different experiences  and different crowds of people that each Friday evening attracted. Sometimes it was not so good, sometimes superlative, but it was taking risks and I appreciated the efforts the organizers made.

But this season has been a huge dud. There has been no live music, just DJs. And now there's a 6-week "celebration" of Dutch culture, which started with last night with "Queen's Night"  -- which refers to "Queen's Day" in Holland,  a huge, bacchanalian event.

Dutch culture was represented last night by orange tablecloths, some very old ladies in Dutch attire, and three rooms of DJs belting out late night dance music at large volumes -- totally inappropriate for 6pm in the evening.

The DJs chased most people away, including the old ladies in their clogs, filling ever emptier rooms with the sounds of a bad Dutch disco.

There are five more Friday "Orange Nights" scheduled. Why? Because the Consulate General of the Netherlands, San Francisco, is paying and it seems its doing the cultural programming too, at which it is shockingly bad.  

I hope the De Young get's its "Friday Nights" mojo back -- it's so much better than the Academy of Sciences and its "Thursday Nights" just across the street. It has put several years of hard work in building a superb series of events -- it should't be thrown away so glibly. 

- - -

Some scenes from last year's "Friday Nights..."

A special exhibit for the opening.

The new $300m revamp of the Exploratorium opens today and I'm glad to report that it looks and feels lot like the old Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts but much larger, more exhibits, and more of everything. Here's a little tour:

The layout is very familiar and there are a lot of the popular exhibits preserved in the new location:

Scott Weaver took 37 years to build this depiction of San Francisco:

It's great for parties but it's so large you will lose most of your guests:

Some of the Exploratorium workshops visible through a glass wall (a dress made of candy wrappers):

I love museum gift shops and the Exploratorium has one of the best (lots of robots) and its staff are fabulous:

Foremski's Take: I love the new Exploratorium but I was a little concerned that it might be disappointing. After all, the $500m spent on the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park produced a building that housed far few exhibits and an aquarium with TV-sized windows, and no geological exhibits at all(!)

The new Exploratorium transports the look and feel of a venerable San Francisco institution to a marvelous new location on San Francisco's waterfront, just yards away from the Ferry building and the America's Cup racing. Come and explore!

More info: The Exploratorium

Related Stories:

The Science Of Food - Gastronomy Night at The Exploratorium

The Exploratorium Celebrates It's Re-Opening April 17! -SVW

I love The Exploratorium and have been bringing my kids to it for nearly two decades. I'm sad that it moved out of its beautiful Palace of Fine Arts location, but I'm excited to visit the new $300m site at Pier 15, which has far more space (three times larger at 330,000 square foot), and far more exhibits.

There's a special celebration tonight in advance of the public opening Wednesday April 17. Here's a preview of what's in store:

Some facts:

- 600 exhibits of which 150 are new.

- 1.5 acres of free outdoor space with outdoor exhibits, a restaurant, food carts and the Exploratorium Store with interactive exhibits.

- There are six main galleries: Human behavior; Seeing and listening; Living Systems; Maker Culture; an all-glass Observatory; and the Wired Pier filled with sensors.

- Classic exhibits have been upgraded, such as the Tornado (above), and the famous Tactile Dome where visitors move in total darkness using only their sense of touch.

- The Exploratorium has a goal of becoming the largest net-zero energy museum in the world.

- Lots of art installations such as: 

Fog Bridge, a large-scale, immersive outdoor fog installation on a 150 ft. long pedestrian bridge by Japanese interdisciplinary artist Fujiko Nakaya; and Aeolian Harp by Doug Hollis, which captures the wind dynamics of the site.

Also: The museum's After Dark series on Thursday evenings is wonderful. I attended one on Gastronomy:  The Science Of Food - Gastronomy Night at The Exploratorium

- Special cut price rates for locals. And five free days: Groundhog Day (February 2); Pi Day (March 14); Mothers' Day (2nd Sunday in May); Engineering Day (last Sunday in September); and Founder's Day (2nd Sunday in October).

I recommend getting an annual membership because you can pop in anytime and bring a guest.

On April 17 opening day there are free events throughout the day and into the evening.

Here's some excerpts from the day's schedule:

9:00-9:45am - The Exploratorium will dedicate its new home with a ceremony viewable from some parts of the Plaza. Speakers include Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Ed Lee, Exploratorium Board Chair George Cogan, and Executive Director Dennis Bartels.

9:45-10:00am - New Exploratorium Bell  

Since the museum's founding in 1969, Exploratorium Explainers have traditionally closed the museum by ringing a bell. The assembled speakers will piece together the intricate crown of a bronze bell created by artist Nick DiPhillipo and cast at The Crucible, a hands-on industrial arts organization in Oakland. Each piece represents individuals and organizations that have helped the museum on its journey to Pier 15. An Explainer will then ring the completed bell, which will be permanently installed to mark daily opening/closing in the Exploratorium's Outdoor Gallery.

10:00am- Exploratorium's New Home Opens to the Public.

10:00am until dark - Rangoli with artist Purvi Shah and volunteers from the India Community Center in Milpitas, CA

10:00am until dark - Outdoor demonstrations and activities with Exploratorium Explainers In addition to hands-on activities for visitors waiting in line, Explainers will provide free interactive demonstrations such as Observing Clouds and Finding North.

11:00am-2:00pm - Visitors can meet with Explorables volunteers to make free Quacking Cups and Glove-A-Phones on the Embarcadero Plaza or Light Boxes and Spectroscopes inside the ticketed area of the Outdoor Gallery.

5:00-7:00pm - Hands-on Activities with Explorables Volunteers Repeats.

7:00pm - KPOO Live Broadcast with Donald Lacy. Share your favorite Exploratorium story with KPOO-89.5FM listeners.

8:30pm and 9:30pm - This World Made It Self (2013). A large-scale multimedia performance by animator, designer and artist Miwa Matreyek. As the artist moves behind the screen, her shadow becomes the protagonist in a fantastical world of her own creation. 

8:30-11:00pm - Emergence (2013). At the close of the Exploratorium's Opening Day, acclaimed creative technology innovators Obscura Digital will transform the façade of historic Pier 15 into a luminous portal revealing complex micro and macro phenomena.

To accompany Emergence, Obscura will present an interactive thermal imaging wall (in cooperation with Flir) on the side of the Exploratorium's main entrance, where visitors can see their heat signature projected in real-time, at large scale, with brilliant color.

I can't wat!

Julie Burchill is a unique journalist, she has a finely tuned sensibility in being able to push society's face just far enough into the gutter to draw blood and snot, but not hard enough to cause grievous bodily harm. And she doesn't hide her pleasure when she shreds society's buffoons in a verbal wood chipper.

Julie Burchill stranded on a desert island with no hope of return is a fantasy that many would love to come true.

She was recently interviewed by Kirsty Young, the quietly impressive host of Desert Island Discs, quite possibly the best celebrity interviewer since David Frost. She listens very carefully and it's a joy to hear. 

Julie Burchill is loathed widely -- and she couldn't care less. She readily admits it's because she was born with something missing.

But there's something disingenuous in her claim. It's difficult to believe her when she's clearly playing with far more than a full deck. If she's missing some cards she's replaced them with plenty of extra jokers and Queen of Hearts.

She shines and shimmers and slithers in this BBC radio interview. She's refreshingly unrepentant about her vices, and repugnantly narcissistic, in delightfully large amounts. She can charm and spit venom and play evil twin and good in the same sentence. 

It's just another day in the life of Ms. Burchill and her endless fascination with her larger than life character -- a relationship of mutual adoration.

It's the most entertaining thing I've heard in years. You are in for a treat.

BBC - Desert Island Discs - Castaway : Julie Burchill

- - -

Please see: Julie Burchill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Observer's decision to censor Julie Burchill is a disgrace ...

Here is Julie Burchill's censored Observer article - Telegraph Blogs

(Photos by Tom Foremski.)

Friday evening I was at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate park to see The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk.

The museum is on a roll with its exhibits of leading fashion designers. The Vivienne Westwood show was fantastic, and the Balenciaga exhibit last year was even better. And this one is extraordinary, the best so far.

It's a superb curation and the presentation the work of designer Jean Paul Gaultier, dubbed "fashion's enfant terrible" is fantastically creative. I've never seen anything like it before.

The mounting, the display, the lighting are superbly tuned to the works displayed -- the de Young's staff should be congratulated for their skill in building this exhibit.

The designs are incredible for their innovation and creativity. And there's lots of them, he makes it seem so easy. But there is a huge amount of detail in each one of the many pieces, matching accessories, and ornamentation. Each outfit must have taken a lot of thought and work.

Jean Paul Gaultier launched his first prêt-à-porter collection in 1976 and founded his own couture house in 1997.

Emerging as a designer in the 1970s, he developed his own dress codes that reflected the changing world around him. The openly gay Gaultier uses his designs to tackle gender and transgender issues through androgynous, gender-bending styles, meanwhile delving even further into some of the darker areas of the sexual revolution.

Always provocative, he addresses issues of multiculturalism by bringing ethnic diversity to the Paris runway. Despite the gritty and sometimes controversial context of his collections, the clothes remain beautiful, superbly crafted with the finest dressmaking and detailing skills.

When you first walk-in, this is what you see. A dark blue space and in the distance a glowing row of mannequins.

When you get closer you can see the faces are moving, lips open, eyes close, some speak, or sing, others seem asleep -- then wake wide eyed. Images are being projected from carefully shielded projectors. The effect is incredibly wonderful, creepy, and brilliant.

Jean Paul Gaultier.

Would Hipsters wear these clothes?

Discovering new music all in one place is a great way to spend three days and there was lots of music that was new to me.

Unmediated experiences...

It was also good to be in a large mass of people, tens of thousands, and I realized how rare it is to see so many people at the same time. It felt like I was checking in with my larger community, the one I only see through other channels, mostly media channels of one kind or another. Yet here was a totally unmediated experience.

I started thinking about the word and taking it apart: "un-media-ted" and how wonderfully descriptive it is, especially in the context of our media soaked experience of the world.

How much of the world do we get to experience that is un-media-ted -- that is not consumed through one kind of media or another? There's not much, at least not much that's meaningful.

I realized that meaningful unmediated experiences of the world are rare and that's why it felt extra good to have this experience at Outside Lands.

In that spirit, I'm putting together a collection of videos I found on Youtube and elsewhere, that capture some of the spirit and fun of Outside Lands.

It's all found footage from fans, most of it is shaky, some of it is extremely well shot, but all of it comes from people that are really into the music, you hear the crowd sing, the camera waves with the hands in the air... there's some great scenes.

Say it ain't so...

Up top is an example of Foster the People performing a cover of Weezer's "Say It Ain't So." You are right in center front, in the middle of the crowd, singing along. It's the closest we can get to an unmediated experience of being at Outside Lands.

And I've collected lots more of these found fan videos into a curation of Outside Lands 2011 -- it's essentially a crowd generated documentary pieced together from hundreds of video camera phones.

I've organized the project in Pearltrees because it has a great media viewer and I can easily share the entire collection. Plus, I can recruit a team of people working with me to curate the collection, by searching for new uploads, checking the quality of the videos, and throwing out the worst ones.

If you were at Outside Lands, or you are a fan of some of the bands that were there, please team up with me on this Pearltrees project -- you can become part of the first Pearltrees documentary!

If you missed Outside Lands 2011 please browse my Pearltree, you can choose by artist name and jump straight to their performance.

I'm still curating the collection but the first five artist videos have been sorted according to the best videos, the weakest are left in a "rest of videos" pearltree. But the work is not done so if you'd like to team up with me and find and add new videos, please send me a request. It's really easy to use Pearltrees in a collaborative project.

The Decemberists...

Here's the Outside Lands collection I curated for The Decemberists. Check out the incredible "Down By The Water." Another great found video. There's lots more.

Arcade Fire...

Here's the Arcade Fire collection. Check out the first video (below), you are right in the middle of the crowd happy and excited to be there, waiting for the band to come on. Then as the band starts "Wake Up" a crowd favorite, everyone is singing and waving, and you'll be too -- there's tremendous emotional power in these videos. It's good payback for the camera shake you have to endure at times with these videos. (I'd love to run them through iMovie's anti-shake correction, it wouldn't take long.)

Don't miss the second video too, the incredible performance by Mavis Staples and Win Butler in a cover of "The Weight."

Girl Talk...

The most memorable show was Girl Talk, which surprised me because listening to the music before the festival I was just mildly interested. But the show was so good.

It was just one man and his computer. He had the whole meadow full of happy and singing people -- the vibe was tremendous. Fans filled the stage, and you couldn't tell where the performer and audience started or ended -- the whole performance became one happy, pulsating crowd. And the music was a superb mix of musical icons, cultural passages that each evoked a mass of additional connections. A great live show.

Outside Lands 2011 watched from the crowd...

Here's the entire Outside Lands found footage Pearltree, you can browse it, you can add it to your collection, which means when I update it your copy gets updated too. Also, you can team up with me and help me curate the entire project.

I hope you enjoy this collection of found fan videos. And you can leave comments on the videos to thank the hundreds of fans that created this documentary of three days of great music at Outside Lands 2011.

Outside Lands 2011 (Found Fan Video Footage) in Outside Lands 2011

The event was sold out with about 650 tickets for the Yerba Buena location, a larger theater than the Academy of Sciences, where it used to be held. The mix of people was eclectic as always.

There were at least two or three talks where I wished for the return of the old Vaudeville stage hook, or maybe a remote controlled trapdoor. Most of the rest of the talks were interesting, intriguing, and some were even brilliant.

But it was a packed afternoon, from noon to 6pm, a bit too long. Also, my friend Jim pointed out, it would have been nice to have a 1 minute pause between talks so that you could think about what you'd just heard and maybe have a quick chat with the person next to you.

TED talks are a form of modern theater within an old school format in that it's a one-way stage. The only interaction is through live tweets and that's a poor channel because it distracts from the stage. I don't know how you can make TEDx events more interactive but maybe that's what the 'x' in TEDx should stand for, experimental rather than a formulaic format.

However, the formulaic format of TED talks is pretty good, so maybe the organizers know not to mess with what works.

Among the standout performances:

- Dr. William Thomas speaking about geriatric science and how we follow anti-aging gurus when we should embrace our senior age as "Elderhood" a vital life stage.

- Eythor Bender and his eLEGS exoskeletons, he showed a woman paralyzed from the waist down walking onto the stage. I spoke with one of the wheelchair bound testers of this remarkable contraption. I asked how many months does it take to learn how to walk in the exoskeleton? She said it's just hours! Very impressive.

Andrés Torres got several standing ovations for surviving 12 years in the minor leagues of baseball before making it big in the majors.

Scott Hess spoke about the differences between Gen X and Millennial generations. It was a funny and insightful talk.

But I don't see that there is much competition between the generations he describes, it's a case of both generations learning from each other and both are benefiting from that process -- it's "and" and not "or."

Simon Mainwaring. O.M.G. Social media marketing claptrap that was so bad that it had me convinced, at one point, that I was watching a performance art piece that was a parody of an egotistical "brand marketing expert."

Dave Kim with his violin and box of tricks was excellent.

Shereef Bishay talked about how to structure work relationships differently and learning from how open-source projects are organized, plus other commercial models. I'd love to hear more about this subject.

Mel Robbins is a great motivational speaker with some direct advice for getting to your goals. "Set your alarm 30 minutes early and when it goes off you have three-seconds to get out of bed!"

I've been quite successful with my routine: I set my alarm 18 minutes early, and reach for my iPad and I start each day with a TED talk. It gets me out of bed and keeps me in bed -- it's win win. And it comes with a cherry on top because of the positive mood I always get from a TED talk.

BTW here is my current favorite: Tales of ice-bound wonderlands: Paul Nicklen

The best part of the event was when it was over and there was a chance to meet and talk with the audience and performers. In past TEDxSF events few people stay around afterwards. This time it seemed as if everyone stayed for hours. Strangers formed spontaneous discussion groups, salons were formed on the-fly... All great stuff.

TEDxSF is a great example of a type of curation that is uncommon: curating people. Choosing the people that present at the event, and also choosing the people that are allowed into the event (everyone has to apply).

It's a form of curation that is difficult but rewarding when done right and the TEDxSF team seem to be really hitting their stride.

- - -

Here's the event program and links:

Events | TEDxSF

TEDxSF Membership Application

Here is a Pearltree about TEDxSF.

Prior events:

TEDxSF: The Edge Of What We Know...

Captain Of The Sea Shepherd - Paul Watson Stole The Show At TEDxSF...

TEDxSF - Little TED Just Like The Big TED

My friend David Rozelle is organizing this event at Workspace in San Francisco Saturday evening. It was great fun last year, I expect the same this year.

Please join me:

I discovered lots of great music there and put together some great playlists. I was buying music for the first time in ages. Lala.com offered the best business model: one free play then for 10 cents you could buy lifetime streaming rights from any computer.

Also, I transferred my music library to LaLa's cloud. I could access all my music, at any time, from any computer, from any browser.

It was great. I often would gift 10 cent songs to friends, family that I came across because it was so cheap. And I could easily see what my friends were listening to or had bought recently. It was a great music discovery service.

I was also a fan of the founders, Bill Nguyen (photo) and John Kuch. Both are huge music fans, and I discovered lots of great music through them, watching what they were listening to. They were also big supporters of independent musicians creating a fund that helped struggling musicians.

Oh, and let's not forget a great UI, better than iTunes, better than anything else I've used.

Then Apple bought LaLa in December 2009.

At the time everyone thought that the service would get even better and that LaLa would essentially become the new iTunes, a better UI and with streaming.

We were all wrong. On April 30 Apple said it would shut LaLa by the end of May. We would all get our money back as credits on iTunes.

If I wanted to buy music on ITunes I would already be buying music on iTunes! Why would I want to do that now? Apple should return all the cash money.

Better yet, Apple should have given us the MP3s of all the songs we had bought on LaLa. That would be respectful and heck, it can afford it with its $40 billion in cash.

As you can see, I'm not happy with Apple and Apple won't know because it doesn't respond or acknowledge social or any media in any way. [Lessons for Apple in Social Media: Unlike A Rolling Stone A Good Blog Post Continues To Gather Stories]

I think Apple bought LaLa as a strategic move aimed at frustrating Google's ambitions. A couple of months before the sale, LaLa had been named as a key partner in Google's music service. A Google search for any music usually turned up LaLa at the top of the list. That made LaLa into a big competitor for iTunes. That's what probably killed it.

What's puzzling is why the founders would sell for a paltry sum, reported to be just $17 million. They had just signed the Google deal, created an iPhone app, and signed a deal with Facebook.

Why sell just weeks after putting all those pieces in place and enjoying a renewed momentum?

Take a look at this interview with Bill Nguyen at PC Mag, just one month before the Apple acquisition was announced. It's full of enthusiasm for the next stage in LaLa's growth.

Lala Founder Talks Google, iPhone Apps, Music | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

I think we've been really fortunate in that we've been embraced by the independent artists and distributors, and also all four of the major labels. We add more music every day. We added 400,000 tracks from a French label that are now going to be available in the U.S. We're adding one of the largest libraries of Bollywood music, ever. We have so many different cultures in the U.S., and it's cool that they can just listen to the music here. So we're just trying to add as music from around the world to this platform.

The founders of LaLa had to do a lot of heavy lifting: dealing with the music industry and its arcane licensing systems and having to negotiate a huge number of contracts. Why would they walk away from all that work, just as LaLa was about to find huge new audiences through its deals with Google, Facebook, etc? It sold to Apple for pennies on the dollar--a distressed sale.

And why would the founders sell knowing that Apple would close LaLa? They built LaLa for themselves, as much as anybody, they built it because they are huge music enthusiasts and had a vision of how people would buy and listen to music in the future. Why sell?

It doesn't make sense.

Yes, I could try out some of the other streaming music services. Yahoo Music was great, but I couldn't use it on my Mac when I switched from PC a few years back; Zune looks good but it is tied to the player; Spotify is great but not yet in the US. My 15 year old daughter, Sarah uses Grooveshark. But I really don't want to have to try and recreate all my playlists...

Bye LaLa, I'm going to miss you big time, especially on Fridays. Apple sucks...

Here are a few other fans:

Some LaLa Thoughts

The web understandably up in arms in anger over this. The money I spent to get hundreds of songs on Lala will most likely only get me tens of songs on iTunes. I can no longer listen to my songs online, and any hope that I might be able to listen to Lala on my mobile device have been hopelessly shattered.

...How awesome would it be if Apple is simply killing Lala to replace it with a better more innovative iTunes in the cloud? Could the reason behind shutting down Lala.com simply be to replace it with iTunes.com? I sure hope so.

Why is Apple Killing Lala?

...Lala has been the best system I've ever found for playing music. I've been seeking song finding Nirvana for over fifty years.
If you haven't lived with Lala you won't know what you're missing.
...
I just don't think people know how cool Lala really is, and I want praise Lala before its forgotten, and maybe explain why Apple is killing it off.

It's all about ease of use. Lala is far easier to use than iTunes, far cheaper, and even more important, it's far more exciting for finding new music and sharing that excitement with other music lovers. All is this is much easier on Lala, I kid you not.

...Steve Jobs, why are you taking this all away from me? Is it greed? Must you destroy anything that is better than something you invented? Do you merely want to crush the competition? Do you even know the beauty you destroy?

UPDATED: What was the Lala Music Site? Why will it close?

I see no evidence that the software press ever managed to notice the ferment and great activity that was happening within the confines of the Lala site, or the design that enabled this to happen. I document this in detail because others who were compensated to discover that this kind of activity was going on must have dropped the ball.

April in Paris, April 10th, 2010

Workspace, Ltd.
2150 Folsom St.
San Francisco, CA 94110

Please join us on April 10th, 2010 for a showcase of music, art, fashion and atmosphere, inspired by everything French.

OUI,OUI!

Evening Highlights: Live musical performances, French style salon art show by local artists organized by Gogograciegalleries, fashion show presenting San Francisco boutique, April In Paris artisan leather accessories, delicious crepes by street cart Cre'Pierre and Brigitte Bardot look-a-like costume contest open to the public! Prizes and Surprises!

Stroll le Champs-Élysées, enjoy a drink et danse a Place Pigalle, et viver L'Art de Monmartre..

Time: 8:00 pm - 2:00 am

Performances including, live classical, chanson, accordion playing, burlesque dance and more by:

Allison Lovejoy ~ playing French cafe music on piano and accordion
Rob Reich ~ accordion and Dave Ricketts, guitar/vocals of GAUCHO
Zoli Lundy
Lua Hadar
Robin Lovejoy
Branislav Radakovich
Le monde Merveilleux du Burlesque by Delilah
The Panhandlers
and much more..

Tickets:
$12 at the door
$10 tickest at the door with RSVP to: tickets@aprilinparissf.com
(s'il vous plait - rsvp by 4 pm - April 10th, merci!)

Here is a taste of that music with Gaucho, who played on Wednesday night at Amnesia. They are a local band and they play a lot of local venues and feature some fantastic musicians such as the legendary Ralph Carney (they are all legendary). I've got an interview coming very soon. Please check them out and the rest of the Hornucopia Festival:

http://blip.tv/file/1257539#share

http://www.gauchojazz.com/index.html

http://www.hornucopiafestival.org/

The geek-life is fun but it's not enough. Understanding the culture of our times is important to every business, to every startup--but you won't get it unless you go out and get it. No TechCrunch, no Giga, no Twitter, know tech-nothing--just getting out into a wider culture is important.

Here is one way to do that...

Here is an event, the 11 day Hornucopia music festival in San Francisco, a celebration of any music with horns-- that deserves support--especially the upcoming Saturday show with the Jazz Mafia Summit at the Rickshaw Stop in Hayes Valley.

Allison Lovejoy from Lovejoy Lowdown has the details . . . She interviews Sol Crawford, one of the more interesting of San Francisco's young music promoters. He is a co-partner at Amnesia, which has earned a stellar reputation as one of the best live performance rooms in the Mission district.

Click To Play

http://blip.tv/file/1218918

The Hornucopia Festival is also a non-profit effort to benefit community organizations through a free music workshop, an educational presentation on the provocative history of brass and horn music, and as a fundraiser for two worthy causes: delivering new instruments into the hands of beleaguered youth second line bands in New Orleans and raising money for a humanitarian circus that presents free shows and workshops to refugee children in Kosovo.

http://www.hornucopiafestival.org/

Sol Crawford is one of the most interesting of San Francisco's music promoters. He is a co-partner at Amnesia, which has earned a reputation for one of the best live performance rooms in the Mission district.

Hornucopia is a celebration of any music with horns, and that's a very broad definition. Starting September 4th 35 bands will play across 9 venues in 11 days.

Click To Play

http://blip.tv/file/1218918

The Hornucopia Festival is also a non-profit effort to benefit community organizations through a free music workshop, an educational presentation on the provocative history of brass and horn music, and as a fundraiser for two worthy causes: delivering new instruments into the hands of beleaguered youth second line bands in New Orleans and raising money for a humanitarian circus that presents free shows and workshops to refugee children in Kosovo.

http://www.hornucopiafestival.org/

Tango inspired melodies mixed with traditional tunes and wove into multi-layered compositions that invariably broke into a dance groove. Bajofundo were having fun, enjoying the incredible outdoor redwood grove setting, and playing with the audience, teasing them with the breaks.

Sour Stern Grove Event staff...

It was a very well produced show and everyone was having fun. . . Except the event staff patrolling the well behaved crowd and snapping at anyone that loitered along one of the paths.

They went to unbelievable lengths to harass people, even if one toe was dangling on the side of a path. Anyone taking a photo, even with a camera phone was also hassled. There as a non-stop stream of hassles from the event staff--they were a relentless buzz-kill. It was the only fly in the ointment, the crappy attitude of the event staff - someone should pull that hair out for them.

Stern Grove Festival | Stern Grove Festival

MySpace.com - Bajofondo - Uruguay, Argentina & - Electronica / Rock / Tango - www.myspace.com/bajofondomardulce

Bajofondo Tango Club is a South American music band consisting of seven musicians from Argentina and Uruguay. They decided to do away with “Tango Club” to shorten their name simply to Bajofondo. The change in the name, more inclusive and with an immediate impact, mirrors the path Bajofondo’s music has followed. Often compared to Gotan Project, their music is a fusion of acoustic tango and electronic music, part of an evolving tango genre which is known as “Electrotango” or “Tango Fusion”, which is greatly helping to bring tango back into the mainstream.

Bajofondo Tango Club – Listen free at Last.fm

"The Seven Deadly Pleasures - A cabaret opera by Allison Lovejoy and Geoff Ball - A story of human character...or, the search for it."

8.30pm seating, show at 9pm at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street, San Francisco. $10.

It would be a sin to miss it...

]]> Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:01:01 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-scorching-weekend-plus-the-seven-deadly-pleasures/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-scorching-weekend-plus-the-seven-deadly-pleasures/241412
San Francisco is having a mini-heat wave, summer is here and I hope you manage to log off and tune in a bit and go outside of the geek world :-)

Coming up on Friday April 18th the debut of:

"The Seven Deadly Pleasures - A cabaret opera by Allison Lovejoy and Geoff Ball - A story of human character...or, the search for it."

At 9pm at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street, San Francisco. $10.

It would be a sin to miss it...

]]> Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:23:17 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-first-friday-returnsconnecting-not-networking/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-first-friday-returnsconnecting-not-networking/241159"First Fridays with Foremski" at the de Young Museum returns this Friday April 4. It was fun last year, small groups, good conversation and a great environment: the De Young Museum in Golden Gate park, which is open until 8.45pm Friday evenings.

(BTW, the De Young was founded by M.H. de Young of the SF Chronicle newspaper family.)

This time I'd like to start off at Peet's coffee on Broderick and Oak around 5pm for a walk through the Panhandle and into the park. Or you can join me at the museum from about 6pm onwards. And drinks at my place 9pm afterwards...

This is not a networking event as such. It is more about connecting than networking.

Come and say "Hi" and come and enjoy the spectacular de Young. There is a no host cocktail bar, and music, and a fashion show, plus lots more this Friday, all free!

Take a look:

Friday Nights at the de Young featuring Discarded to Divine, the de Young Poetry Series, Noise Pop, and Gilbert & George

Discarded to Divine

Discarded to Divine debuts one-of-a-kind creations designed from recycled materials by Bay Area fashion designers and students of recycled couture to benefit the St. Vincent de Paul Society’s programs for the poor and homeless.

Bay Area fashion designers such as Jessica McClintock, Colleen Quen, Nice Collective, Cari Borja, Verrieres & Sako, Michael Boris, and Sara Shepherd join fashion students from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, City College of San Francisco, and Academy of Art University.

Music by Von Iva and DJ Omar presented by Noise Pop

Von Iva, the Bay Area synth rock trio—fronted by vixen soulstress Jillian Iva and featuring Becky Kupersmith on keyboard and Kelly Harris on drums—takes gritty soul-drenched dance punk to the masses.

The de Young Poetry Series: Three Vietnamese Poets: Nguyen Do, Hoa Nguyen, and Truong Tran

In celebration of the recently published anthology Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions), three Vietnamese-American contributors will read their poetry.

Art Activity for Everyone

Inspired by Discarded to Divine, create jewelry from found and reusable objects.

And don't forget the Gilbert & George exhibit! Maybe I'll see you there?

I first met Tim at a lunchtime event I was speaking at. He wanted some advice on how best to market his book online, which was just a couple of months from publication. He took to the online world of blogging and online marketing like a duck to water. His is a perfect case study of how to launch a book and make it popular without the endless rounds of book tours.

Obviously, you have to start with great content. Here is a Silicon Valley Minute pitch from Tim:

Saturday, February 23, 2008 - Sunday, May 18, 2008]]> Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:01:31 -0800 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-scoop-jazz-was-created-in-san-francisco-plus-free-jazz-legends-concert-on-sunday/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-scoop-jazz-was-created-in-san-francisco-plus-free-jazz-legends-concert-on-sunday/241119I popped along with Allison Lovejoy to interview Peter Fitzsimmons, the head of the Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center. He told us about plans to revive what used to be a vibrant jazz scene in San Francisco. In fact, the term "jazz" was first used here, he says, not in "N'Orleans."

It is a controversial claim...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UPH5TJEIhc

Allison Lovejoy interviews Peter Fitzsimmons, executive director of the Jazz Heritage Center located in San Francisco's historic Fillmore district. The Fillmore used to be one of the world's top jazz centers and where the term "jazz" was first coined. Mr Fitzsimmons talks about the work of the non-profit organization, the art gallery, and the new Yoshi's resaturant and jazz club, which recently opened in the Fillmore.

There is a free "Living Legends" jazz concert on Sunday February 24 from 2pm to 5pm at 1290 Fillmore Street, San Francisco:

Eddie Duran, Guitar

John Handy, Sax

Frank Jackson, Piano & Vocals

Al Obidinski, Bass

Denise Perrier, Vocals

Allen Smith, Trumpet & Flugelhorn

Akira Tana, Drums

Other recent Interviews:

Beth Custer...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENPawvQ94m4

The Edwardian Ball...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP7vScwiJRk

]]> Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:39:02 -0800 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-beth-custer-ensemble-at-the-red-poppy-art-house/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-beth-custer-ensemble-at-the-red-poppy-art-house/241249The Beth Custer Ensemble will perform new songs written with Octavio Solis from three musical productions: the popular Ballad of Pancho & Lucy, Lethe, and the upcoming June in a Box. They’ll also be playing songs from their CD Respect as a Religion (voted one of the top 100 albums in WNYC's “Listener Poll”) and music from the Joe Goode Performance Group's Hometown.

The Beth Custer Ensemble is the crème de la crème of Bay Area musicians, including drummer Jan Jackson (who’s played with Grammy nominated Will Bernard’s ensembles for many years), guitarist David James (Sila, The Coup, Spearhead), iconic pianist Graham Connah, and bassist Mark Calderon (The Meters, Roots).

Beth is a founding member of the notorious silent film soundtrack purveyors the Club Foot Orchestra, techno-tribal ambient ensemble Trance Mission, the quintet of esteemed clarinetists Clarinet Thing, the trip-hop duo Eighty Mile Beach, and the Latin-jazz-rock influenced Doña Luz 30 Besos.

$12 suggested donation. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Show at 8:00 pm. 2698 FOLSOM STREET SF, CA 94110

http://www.redpoppyarthouse.org/concerts.html#

http://www.meetthecomposer.org/conversation.htm

Here is a recent video: Beth Custer in conversation with Allison Lovejoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENPawvQ94m4]]> Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:21:57 -0800 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-san-franciscos-3-night-edwardian-ball-steampunk-edward-gorey-and-more/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/weekend-watcher-san-franciscos-3-night-edwardian-ball-steampunk-edward-gorey-and-more/241469The Fifth Annual Edwardian Ball starts its 3 nights of festivities this evening at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Saturday is sold out but some tickets are still available for Friday and Sunday.

You don't need a top hat, but many do...

Allison Lovejoy is one of the many performers in the Friday lineup. Here is Allison interviewing Justin Katz, the executive producer, at an event on the eve of the ball.

More info: The Edwardian Ball Weekend 2008

]]> Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:00:44 -0800 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/more-love-not-hate--launch-a-spam-grenade/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/more-love-not-hate--launch-a-spam-grenade/241446
Will it get past your spam filters?

From HATEGrenade team:

Has anybody ever pissed you off so bad that you wanted to add them to a SPAM list?



If so, a new startup site, Hategrenade.com can help! By using the form on their website, you can anonymously add the people you most HATE to the world's first community driven SPAM list ...



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



What it is ...

It is the world's first community driven SPAM list, a.k.a. The Ultimate Online Payback!

How it works ...

It's quite simple and 100% FREE … this website is regularly crawled by spam bots. The person's email address that you add to HATEgrenade.com will get completely blown up with SPAM very soon ... this is what we call, Dropping a HATEgrenade Beeeatch ...



The rules ...

There are no rules ... except that you should be aware that you, not us, YOU are soley responsible for the comments you make on this website.



Why we created this ...

Because we are dorky web-developers that do not know how to fist fight. Because we might be able to make some money from it one day? Oh yeah, and because it feels oh so good to SPAM our enemies ... muahahaha!



--

HATEgrenade Team

hategrenade@gmail.com

http://www.hategrenade.com

Technorati Tags: hategrenade

]]> Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:19:09 -0800 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/geeks-abroad-the-weekend-starts-on-thursday----dont-weep-for-me-silicon-valley/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/geeks-abroad-the-weekend-starts-on-thursday----dont-weep-for-me-silicon-valley/241497
News Release from Leela Palaces, one of India's premium hotel and resort spa brands:

Thursdays Begin Long Weekends for Techies Who Head to Leela's Spas in Bangalore and Kovalam to Unwind and De-stress



Bangalore -- January 2008 -- What do American hi-tech and finance pros from Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Goldman Sachs do when they are done with business in India? They indulge in a Royal Spa Weekend at the five-star Leela Palace Kempinski in Bangalore or hop on plane and fly an hour to the ultra-luxurious Leela Kovalam Beach Resort in Kerala and enjoy the hotel's new 8,000-square-foot Divya Spa and Ayurvedic Center. Weekend room rates and spa services at the spectacular Leela Kovalam are a "steal" with lodging prices starting at $215 per night and spa treatments beginning at $55.

In a spectacular location:

The five-star Leela Kovalam Beach Resort in Kerala, located in the south of India and nestled on a spectacular outcropping of rock with panoramic views of the Arabian Sea, has fifteen highly trained therapists and four dedicated Ayurvedic doctors who create tailored Ayurvedic programs for each guest.

And if you can stretch your weekend out a few days...

For those who are able to stay for five days or more, the Divya Spa offers several life-changing packages including:



Stress And Strain Relief Package: Calming guests' moods and bringing relaxation to the body and mind by releasing the day-to-day stress and strain of busy lives. Packages start at five days for $1,490, seven days for $2,225, and fourteen days for $4,225.

You know you need it, all those hours staring at screens...

Spine & Neck Care Package: This program is designed to heal guests from neck and lower back pain due to poor posture from prolonged periods of time sitting at a computer, muscle strains and past injuries.

See you there...

Hotels currently in operation are located in Mumbai, Bangalore, Kovalam and Goa. For more information visit www.theleela.com

Technorati Tags: leelahotel

Ken interviews Tay Zonday of "Chocolate Rain" fame...

- Jason Dunn's CES experience: The Personal Blog of Jason Dunn - The Blogger Bus CES 2008

- John Furrier taunts Kara Swisher :-) Kara Swisher Watch Out - Tom Foremski Has a Camera Furrier.org - Business & Technology Blog

- The incredibly prolific Dan Farber on CES: CES best of show winners | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

- Sarah Meyers: Prank Gawker Style @ Ces Sarah Meyers

- Brian Solis: CES Day Two-- bub.blicio.us

- Rene Blodgett: down the avenue: BlogHaus Energy at Gates Keynote & Beyond

- Marc Canter: Marc's Voice CES #3 - Heading Home

TeresaCentric Blog

Six days in Las Vegas is a long time. But it was time well spent because I got to build relationships with people that would have taken me months to build online. FaceTime is worth at least 10x FaceSpace.

Coming home to Bloghaus...

-The Podtech.net Bloghaus media center was a life saver at CES2008. It was a warm, welcoming place to head for after and between CES events. Having a full bar manned by Carl and John was also very welcome. And the broadband never went down. It was our "home page" for CES.

A French startup...

-I drove up to the Microsoft Siicon Valley campus with Loic Le Meur, the French "Robert Scoble" one of France's best known blogger personalities and a new neighbor of mine in SF. It was great getting to know each other as my stoic Audi was being battered by a tremendous downpour. More on Loic and his video start up Seesmic coming up... From Loic's blog:

From: http://loiclemeur.com/

Mogulus 24/7...

-The boys from Mogulus, the live video startup, were always around and fun to be with. Max Haot and Rainer Cvillink were tireless in their coverage of CES. Here is a great roundup by Max.
(Max Haot is far left in photo.)

The universe always provides...

-It was fun hanging with blogger Paul Mooney (Living, Linking, Learning). As we were walking into the Bellagio, amongst a huge throng of people, I was complaining to Paul that processing my videos could be done a lot faster if it were done in silicon rather than running it through a general purpose microprocessor. Where are the multimedia co-processors when you need them!?

As soon as I said it, a guy walking in front wheeled around and gave us his card. It was Bin Lei, head of worldwide sales at C2 Microsystems, based in San Jose. C2 is developing chips for exactly what I need! What are the odds of that? Certainly better at CES but still...

C2's product family supports encode and decode of all major audio and video codecs (including VC1, H.264, Mpeg2, Mpeg4) in resolutions up to the most demanding HD video.

http://www.c2micro.com/

When the camera stops rolling...

I got some great footage while at CES, but the best is always when the camera stops rolling. I wish I could transfer my memories to video :-)

Here is a recap, in chronological order...

From My House to Bloghaus: The Media Center Bus to CES in Las Vegas

Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at http://www.podtech.net/home/4818/my-house-to-bloghaus-the-media-center-bus-to-ces-in-las-vegas

Watching the Bill Gates Keynote in the BlogHaus

Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at http://www.podtech.net/home/4825/in-the-haus-watching-the-bill-gates-keynote-in-the-bloghaus

Showstoppers + BlogHaus

Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at http://www.podtech.net/home/4824/showstoppers-at-ces-2008

Intel Atomic BlogHaus

Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at http://www.podtech.net/home/4833/another-day-at-ces-intel-the-atomic-test-museum-and-more-from-the-bloghaus

Scoblewatcher

Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at http://www.podtech.net/home/4841/scoblewatcher-all-scoble-all-the-time-but-in-less-time

Robert Scoble's first girlfriend(!)

SiliconValleyWatcher CES2008 Out Takes...

Technorati Tags: CES2008

Here is a fun video from my trip to Liverpool to see my long time great friends Stuart and Carmel Nolan. I was lucky to catch up with Pete Price, a local Liverpool radio personality, stand up comedian, and newly published author: "Pete Price Namedropper."

It was great to show Pete how I put this video together, in about 10 minutes, literally, and I had it posted on Youtube just minutes later.

It's not that I'm some kind of techno whizz kid, which I'm not, it is just that the technology these days: a Sony hi-def video camera and a MacBook Pro with iMovie 8 (comes standard with the laptop) is so point and click that I can wow people without regard to my actual technical skills. It all looks tremendously impressive and I'm happy to take the credit :-)

For about $2500 or 1250 pounds sterling, you too, can have a mobile high-definition video/television production studio....

In a world where the technology is easy, it is one click, it is access to the content that becomes the most important thing.

Technorati Tags: peteprice

And that helps my overall perspective about what goes on here. Otherwise we get caught up in our own words too much and lose sight of Silicon Valley's place in a much much larger place.

Silicon Valley often feels so very small, like a village. The key influencers here probably number just a few hundred. Which is amazing because Silicon Valley's influence is global and now spans across many important industries.

A few hundred influencers helping determine the future of a much bigger world is fascinating. But that only works if Silicon Valley knows its place in the world, and can converse in a common language of ideas. Otherwise it looks like gobblygook to outsiders. And some of it actually is gobblygook.

Most of the time I'm pretty sure I can tell what is what. But it never hurts to double check and take a look at things from a distance, from the outside in :-)

- - -

BTW if you haven't seen this music video yet you are in for a treat:

(Part of a major new Broadway musical coming in 2008...!)

- - -

Sometimes you don't need to go to a distant place to get a change from the usual. Coming up: "Sing it yourself Messiah" is at Davies Symphony Hall, December 12, 2007. Tickets: 415 401 9229 or www.sfsinfonietta.org

Here is classical pianist and educator Allison Lovejoy interviewing maestro Urs Leonhardt Steiner, who will be conducting the event as the audience sings Handel's Messiah along with the professionals. I can't be there but maybe you can...?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uznnxmjqWt8

Plastic is made from oil:

--You can either burn oil and produce copious amounts of carbon dioxide and pollutants.

-- Or you can convert oil into plastic and its carbon stays put for several thousand years. The carbon is bound with chemical bonds that are so strong, it takes many thousands of years to break down and release.

Plastic has other great properties:

--The contents of plastic garbage bags in garbage dumps are partly protected from decomposure. Which means that their carbon content is not released as quickly as in a cultivated compost heap, through methane and other biological actions. The plastic bags protect their contents from those carbon-releasing processes--and that's a good thing.

--plastic based clothing fabrics such as microfiber offer silk, cotton, and leather-like substitutes that are getting better than their organic (and carbon-loose) comparable materials.

--creating plasticized wood and cements is producing superior wear resistant materials that are longer lasting and have superior carbon sequestration properties than their counterparts.

A Carbon Sequestration Value

It would make sense that materials of all kinds, in all manufacturing processes, should be rated on their carbon sequestration properties. For example, wood based products would have a lower value (bad) because they give up and recycle their carbon easily through burning or composting.

Plastic based products would have a higher carbon sequestration value than wood, which would be good because the carbon in plastic is tied up for thousands of years. And plastic does not pollute, it is a very inert substance which means it does not dissolve or react with anything in our environment.

Recycling Increases Our Carbon Footprint

Every time we recycle anything, it increases our carbon footprint because of the energy that is needed to process the recycling. With plastics you don't need to recycle, you just bury it.

Of course, we would have to weigh up the value of carbon sequestration in each case. But right now, we don't consider it at all, and we should.

Technorati Tags: plastic, carbon sequestration

Here is Marcus Shelby and company, (almost) live from North Beach, San Francisco:

Technorati Tags: marcusshelby

It was a great event, I took my son Matt with me so that he could see some of our living history, the people that have helped make Silicon Valley into the world's innovation engine. We were guests of Microsoft, one of the sponsors of the event.

Morris Chang helped create the fabless chip industry. And in doing so, he created a massive innovation platform by enabling small bands of chip designers to buy production time as they needed it. Chip companies no longer needed to own and maintain hugely expensive chip fabs.

John Hennessy helped develop the RISC microprocessor, whose features are found in all modern microprocessors. As president of Stanford University, he has made huge contributions to education, and the creation of a student body that has gone on to found many of Silicon Valley's largest companies. And his work has helped generate huge licensing revenue for the university.

David Patterson made important contributions to microprocessor design and RAID data storage technologies. As head of Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley, he has helped educate generations of computer engineers.

Charles Thacker helped create the personal computer. His work at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center led to the Alto, the machine that inspired Apple Computer and featured a windows graphical user interface. He co-developed Ethernet and also the laser printer.

TechOne

Technorati Tags: computer history museum, TechOne

Vagabond Opera strolls through old world gypsy classics, 1920's European Cabaret, up tempo Balkan beats, and Klezmer funk, all with a sideshow of theatrics that will get grannie out of the rocker and off to the show.

The aptly named 6 piece band hails from Portland, OR and puts the vibrato in neo-classical opera, complete with fedoras and striped stockings.

Take a look as we recently caught up with them at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, CA.

I offered to drop Tom off at Caltrans, and on the way we stopped to pick up my friend Tom Abate, business reporter for the SF Chronicle (and Mini Media Guy blogger). Which made for a very rare occurence: 3 Toms in one car.

Actually, it was stranger than that, it was: 3 Toms who are also journalists in one car.

This is a dangerous situation, and I warned my passengers. This type of rare situation can tempt the hand of fate.

It can also draw the ironic hand of the divine being - which expresses itself by taking an enormous interest in our lives. The Divine Being expresses itself by looking very carefully for opportunities that show its complete interest in our lives, by enabling ironic disaters. . . such as : 3 Toms Perish in Fiery Car Crash.

We were fortunate to survive.

---

Please see: Ironic Design Offers Better Proof Than Intelligent Design

Technorati Tags: ironicdesign, iornic design

If you missed my panel on social media at Intel Developer Forum, you can watch it here. You can find out how Intel has been using blogs and wikis. It is always interesting to see how a very large and established company such as Intel (Intel is a sponsor of SVW) is able to change and embrace social media - it is not an easy process. We also had an Intel lawyer on the podium.

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iPhone religion . . .

I meet a lot of people and many of them like to talk about their cell phones and then go on to tell me why they don't have an iPhone, and/or don't need one. This is interesting because these are unsolicited and unprovoked comments. It is as if just the presence of my iPhone stirs some pangs of guilt or justification.

Let me say this: I like my iPhone, but I'm not religious about it, but many people are religious about their non-iPhones. Which is interesting.

My response is this: think of the opportunity cost to you in your business and professional life. Waiting for another price reduction or until your contract comes up for renewal makes sense if you are the average consumer. It makes no sense if you live and work in Silicon Valley, if you are in media, in PR, or are a developer, or an investor. Saving a hundred or few hundred later, will cost you bigtime now because you will be behind in experiencing and being experienced with this platform.

The iPhone is a media delivery platform of a unique kind. My colleague at TechOne Steve Gillmor, says this:

The iPhone has effectively replaced my laptop for much of my working day. The extent to which I can create the necessary metadata to do my various jobs determines what applications I use.

The iPhone does have problem spots but they are mostly software fixes--it will get better very quickly. What is the cost to you in not having experience with this platform? It is far more than saving a few bucks.

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Blue moon . . .

Lunarr invitations. Let me know on Facebook (send me a friend request) if you'd like to check out this unique collaborative platform created by two Japanese entrepreneurs based in Portland, Oregon.

Lunarr: A Once in a Blue Moon Company with a Unique Collaborative App

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Gaia hackers . . .

My 13 year old daughter Sarah is very sad this week, someone hacked into her Gaia Online account and stole all the things she had collected from over a year's worth of work, and erased all her friend info and other malicious damage. I did some searching and there are several sites that teach others how to hack Gaia user accounts.

I sent Sarah this to cheer her up . . .

Technorati Tags: gaia online, IDF, iphone, lunarr, social media

Please welcome The Conversation Group . . .

Congratulations to Giovanni Rodriguez and the other members of the newly formed The Conversation Group. My good friend Chris Heuer is a member of the team. Also Denise Vardakas joins from Eastwick. Mark Adams, co-founder of Text 100 is on the board and so is Peter Hirshberg, CMO at Technorati.

Technorati Tags: andylark, conversationgroup

Tom Cheyney over at the excellent "Chip Shots" blog writes about the layoffs at IBM's chipmaking operations from an insider's perspective.

Yes, he said, “I got tapped Monday”—Blueman was one of the 450 people on IBM’s “resource-action” list, the corporation’s euphemistic term for the unlucky manufacturing and other employees who got notice that they were going to be laid off.

. . . Andrew Keen blows himself up

In a graphic mashup metaphor that left everyone gasping, Andrew Keen, the author of "The Cult of the Amateur" was debating with an august panel at the Stanford Summit. He then put his foot in his mouth and blew his whole rhetoric to pieces. Doctors said they could stitch it back together but why? "He'll only go out and do it again," they said.

The audience heard Mr Keen say that because Prince, the musician, is giving away his music for free, that this would deprive millions from access to his music. Millions would not be able to buy his music anymore, he said.

And because it was free, Prince would not put much effort into it. Prince fans would have to pay $125 per ticket to see him play in Las Vegas. He said that this was exactly the kind of thing that the Internet was destroying. George Gilder was excellent...

Here is the archive: http://alwayson.goingon.com/page/display/15568?param=session/123

BTW, Mr Keen fares much better over at TechOne, where I am executive editor. Check out our new show: "Keen on Politics" on TechOne.

TechOne | PodTech.net: Technology and Entertainment Video Network

. . .UK ads pulled from FaceBook because of neo-Nazis

Peter Robinett draws attention to this:

Several major British advertisers have pulled their advertising from Facebook after being placed next to a British National Party related page.

For US readers, the British National Party is considered a neo-Nazi party.

Peter asks:

For instance, purely hypothetical, how would you feel if you are listed right next to a neo-Nazi in the in Rammstein’s friends list on MySpace? And of course, should companies like Facebook police their sites for organizations like the BNP, which is legal in the UK yet widely loathed there?

Peter’s Blog » Blog Archive » Losing Control

. . . SF's crumbling WiFi plans

The tireless Kimo has been my source on how San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom plans to bring free Wi-Fi to the city.

It seems that the GOOG+Earthlink plan seems to be in trouble. Kimo points to this article in which Barbara Taylor, reporter with KCBS, says that the issue may come to voters.

So, what to do when the going gets tough, ponders Taylor?

In San Francisco, that often means going to the voters and that's exactly what the mayor is considering as he stares down the barrel of a 5:00 p.m. Friday deadline to put measures on the ballot.

http://www.kcbs.com/pages/758192.php?contentType=4&contentId=753695

UPDATE: WiFi is on the ballot. Kimo says:

It basically reflects the direction taken by the negotiations between Peskin's office/Board of Supervisors and EarthLink. No provision for the city as an anchor tenet is addressed - which is what EarthLink is now requesting.

Emphasizes:

1) "Free service should operate at a high speed that fully supports typical home, educational and civic uses"

2) "adhere to privacy policies that offer strong safeguards against the unauthorized sharing of personal information with 3rd parties and against the unnecessary retention of information about wi-fi users' locations"

3) encourages but does not require private entities to adopt strong privacy policies and clear service standards before finalization of the contract and a reasonable term of contract that is not a franchise.

. . . Girls in Tech presents Girls in VC

Co-founder of Girls in Tech, Adriana Gascoigne says: August 8 at Porter Novelli, 530 3rd St, SF. The Women of VC.

Panel includes:Trae Vassallo, Kleiner, Perkins,Caufield, Byers; Jennifer Fonstad, Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson; Eve Phillips, Greylock Partners; Maha Ibrahim, Canaan Partners.

Doors open at 6.30, panel at 7. Cocktails at 8.30.

. . . Happy Birthday to Sabrina Horn of the Horn Group

...Reports FaceBook! Also from FaceBook, news from another PR maven, Margit Wennmachers photos of her new baby. Congratulations!

And FaceBook says that Dev "is now looking for friendship, dating and a relationship." He's got some time on his hands.

The cool thing about FaceBook is that it automates blogging for you. Instead of blogging that I'm in or out of a relationship, that I just uploaded some photos, I'm going to an event, etc, --it does it all for you. Brilliant.

They ignored me, or rather Dave Winer tried to ignore me. Dave Winer tried to take Gabe away so that they could continue to talk about API's without my "rude interruption."

I apologized profusely, I said I didn't intend to be annoying so early in the evening, ( I need to pace myself at these events.)

Once I had a taste for being annoying, nothing much could stop me. I think Nick Douglas from ValleyWag would agree.

I had a surprisingly good chat with Jason Calacanis, I've bumped into him twice this week. We spoke about the spiritual path that blogging represents. (Seriously...)

With Mike Arrington, I teased him about his love life. As the Prince of Silicon Valley, Mike should not be surrounded by guys. Mike is straight, which is my point... (and very single.)

Running out of people to annoy I got a ride back with my good buddies (now husband and wife) Chris and Kristie Heuer.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/211/446892572_15cb030f4f_m.jpg

I was a busy bee on Thursday. The day started slowly, I had trouble getting out of bed due to a 5am stop but by 11am I was up and running and heading down to Santa Clara for a meeting with Hong Kong's technology czar Dr Robert Yang.

Boyd Fung, of the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office set it up and I'm glad he did, because I got an exclusive interview with one of Asia's top technology thought leaders.

I have to say, I'm amazed that the local mainstream media didn't show up to this event because they missed a great story. Dr Yang, is heading up a $1.5bn technology science park and this is not Xerox Parc, this is an institute headed by someone who knows how to make such things work.

Dr Yang used to head Taiwan's technology research initiatives for many years before being lured to do the same for Hong Kong. This is someone who knows how to make technology transfers viable and productive.

His benchmarks and metrics for measuring success are brutal. This is someone who can put together teams of researchers and have them produce jaw-dropping advanced technologies within seven months to a year.

Hong Kong is very serious about becoming the innovation front-end to the manufacturing behemoth of greater China. Check into SVW next week for an exclusive interview with Dr Yang.

. . .

Then I was off to Palo Alto, for a briefing on a hot new startup with a hot new product from a hotshot development team. Alas, you will have to wait until March 7th, but I have secured an exclusive beta test invite for SVW readers because you are the shakers and makers of the future. Watch this space.

. . .

Since I was in Palo Alto, I wandered over to see if Ross Mayfield. CEO of SocialText was around. Ross, however, was taking a break from evangelizing the corporate wiki. I was told that Ross was celebrating his tenth wedding anniversary and was away in Las Vegas. I hope Ross got lucky -- but I've no idea if he is a gambling man.

. . .

I slipped through the rush hour on 280 back into San Francisco and it was a warm, sunny evening. I constantly catch myself, even after 21 years in Silicon Valley, at how dream-pinchingly gorgeous this part of the world can be.

A popped briefly back home and then back out again for a reception at the British Consultate -General's residence for a British company called Oxonica.

I was late arriving, and the British Consulate-General's residence at Presidio Terrace seemed unusually quiet from the outside. I decided not to ring the bell and pushed open the front door only to find myself walking smack dab into the middle of Martin Uden's introduction to Oxonica.

Martin Uden, the British Consulate-General for San Francisco, being the consummate professional, immediately incorporated my blundering entrance into his introduction. I was a little flushed and flustered by the experience but I could not have wished for a better entrance ;-)

. . .

It was good to catch up with the team over at the British Consulate, and also with Martin's better half Fiona, who admitted to still being a little star struck by the recent visit of Prince Charles. This was an excellent opportunity to mention my lunch with Prince Charles' father, the Duke Of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. It was several years ago when he was visiting Novell, which was an important supporter of his charity work. But that is a story for another time.

. . .

It was also good to meet with Rachel Lawley, one of the vice consuls in the UK Trade and Investment team. Plus, I got to meet some of Melody Haller's Antenna Group team.

Rosalind Jackson, Serena Kwan, and Nathan Tinker--all from the Antenna Group were a delight. Smart, cultured, and tremendously good company. Serena, it turns out, shares my passion for chemistry, and Silicon Valley is ALL about chemistry, the chip industry is all about chemical engineering just ask Gordon Moore and Andy Grove.

Plus, their client, David Browning, CEO of Oxonica, I noticed was a real no nonsense hands-on type of guy who is rare in this part of the world but common in the UK.

. . .

Then I went home and wrote this.

I love my job. And as soon as I can figure out how to pay my family support, landlord, my tailor, my bar keep, taxi drivers, DSL, web hosting, domain-name-buying-addiction (now affecting my son), my gas-guzzling Audi Quattro, and pay for my editorial team . . . and my Trader Joe's bill--I will love my job even more :-)

VCs-a-plenty. . .

The place was full of VCs and vendors and I met just one person who described themselves as a potential customer! Everyone was talking deals, obviously happy with Oracle's announced open-source acquisition deals.

But building open-source communities is not something that is done by announcement. And who do you think is going to be volunteering to develop products for free, so that Larry can buy the company?

Claim your rights. . .

I had an interesting chat with a patent attorney from Philips, the huge Dutch-based consumer electronics company. Philips has been using open-source products within its products for many years. It uses Linux and other components in its TVs and other consumer electronics gear which is often resold under oem deals.

"We tell our partners that they have to offer the source code to their customers, " he said. Because that is the stipulation in the open source licensing agreement. So, if you purchase a product that contains Linux (e.g. Tivo) you have to be offered the source code. But over a five year period, not one customer has bothered to read the small print and make such a request.

He also said that the latest version of the GPL license was badly written and probably intentionally so, so as to create debate and involve larger numbers of people.

A reality smack. . .

You can't slow this man down! Well, the police can and did. SocialText founder Ross Mayfield couldn't make it all the way to San Francisco on Tuesday. In his zeal to man the wiki at the Open Source Business conference--reality caught up with him.

A policeman objected to Mr Mayfield's internet fueled frenzy of speeding to the future, and stopped him. And one thing led to another and Mr Mayfield's car was impounded.

I offered to put him up at my humble blogger encampment under the Highway 101 onramp on 4th street--but Mr Mayfield said he would be fine and would take the train back home to Palo Alto.

Sushi barometer. . .

Sun Microsystems sponsored the evening cocktails and food event at the conference on Tuesday. And the quality of the sushi was more than excellent. I guess the good times are coming back for Sun, and it shows Sun is back on a roll (California :-).

Corralling the top bloggers. . .

I had an excellent discussion with Richard Edelman on Tuesday morning and I knew that Steve Rubel, of Micro Persuasion would be joining the Edelman team but I was under embargo. The news is out now...

Phil Gomes, also a top blogger in the PR sector joined Edelman last year.

Kay Luo from Simply Hired offers these tips for the office Romeo and Juliet...

Top 10 Rules for Safe Sex in the Workplace

1. Know the rules

Before even entertaining the thought of wooing a co-worker, check your company’s employee handbook. If the rules say no inter-office dating and you want to keep your job, keep your thoughts – and your hands - to yourself.

Survey says: 35% of people have fantasized about a co-worker.

2. Know your co-worker

Get to know your co-worker before pursuing a romantic relationship. Make sure s/he’s single, not one to kiss and tell, and most importantly, not related to your boss.

Survey says: 6% of people have dated a relative of a co-worker.

3. No means no.

She Loves You Not? If you ask a co-worker out and she/he says no, that’s it. Game over, do not pass go. Do not ask again, do not sulk, do not make further references to the encounter, jokes or innuendos, Clarence.

Survey says: 16% of men and 5% of women say they’ve been rejected by a co-worker

4. Create a workplace prenup

Before moving forward in a relationship, have a candid conversation about what might happen if things go south. Be aware of any potential consequences to your career before starting a relationship and agree on boundaries and expectations.

Survey says: 5% of people said that romantic relations with a co-worker made work uncomfortable

5. Don’t fish in your boss’s pond

If your new “love bunny” in the same department as you do, be prepared to change departments or tell your boss.

6. Date up, not down

If you have a choice, it’s always safer dating someone above you. You may get fired, but at least you won’t get slapped with a sexual harassment suit. And on that note…tempting as it may be, stay clear of temps. Contractors, consultants, and interns can all spell trouble, Mr. President. Just because they don't work for your company full-time doesn't mean that the rules of the game are any different when it comes to dating these folks (at least while they're under your roof).

Survey says: 7% of men and 11% of women have dated a boss or superior

7. Keep your privates private

Don’t gab about your new romance. Love in the workplace becomes dangerous when it’s out in the open for others to scrutinize. No flirting, furtive glances in the elevator or taps on the derriere. People catch on to these cues.

Survey says: 9% of people said that romantic relations with a co-worker resulted in office gossip

8. Use Hotmail for hot mail

This may seem obvious, but plenty of people disregard it. Never use company email to exchange love notes or anything remotely suggestive. Companies can and do monitor email exchanges. If you must profess your undying affection while at work, use a private web-based email service like Yahoo or Hotmail.

9. Don’t drink and date

Be wary of office parties and more than 2 drinks. Too many careers have been killed when people have dropped their guard at an office party.

10. Your Office or Mine? NEITHER.

C’mon people, get a room. Don’t have sex or “sexual relations” in the office. Period.

Survey says: 16% of men and 7% of women reported having sex in the office.

Win a Trip to “Sin City”

The Simply Fired Contest will challenge site visitors to submit their funniest, saddest, most outrageous stories about workplace romance. Simply Fired judges will select a Grand Prize “Loser” who will win a trip for two to Las Vegas.

The winner and a guest will be flown to Las Vegas, where they will stay in a honeymoon suite in the Paris hotel. For more details visit: www.SimplyFired.com.

About the Love In the Workplace Survey

Simply Fired’s annual Love in the Workplace Survey was conducted online in February 2006 by Harris Interactive. Harris Interactive is a leading market research firm most widely known for The Harris Poll® and for its pioneering leadership in the online market research industry. Sample size was 2477 respondents and was weighted to the U.S. general adult population.

About Simply Fired

Simply Fired (www.SimplyFired.com) is operated by Simply Hired (www.SimplyHired.com) operates the world's largest search engine for jobs. We aggregate and index over 4,000,000 jobs from a wide variety of sources including job boards, newspapers, classified listings, and company websites. Our mission is to help people find their next job in the simplest, most effective way possible.

Simply Hired is a privately held company, headquartered in Mountain View, California. SimplyHired.com was selected by Time magazine as one of the "50 Coolest Websites 2005" and honored as "Best of the Web" by Business Week.