Hawaii Blog

A month from today, using a cell phone (or other handheld device) while driving will be illegal on the Big Island, as a ban passed in June takes effect Jan. 1, 2010. This in the wake of a similar ban in Honolulu. The Oahu ban cleared store shelves of hands-free bluetooth headsets this summer, and [...]

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Hawaii is finally included in the “Street View” of Google Maps. The news was announced today in a great post on the Official Google Blog by one Laura Melahn, Product Marketing Manager, who says she was born and raised on Oahu. She links to Waimea Bay and Iolani Palace. There’s even a specially curated collection [...]

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SPOILER ALERT: The first “LOST” location shoots of the month were staged in familiar territory. Today’s reports are brief, but hopefully worth sharing on this rainy Monday. Also: Photos!

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“Where are you?” is the next “What are you doing?” Twitter has built a game-changing tool based on the latter question, launching the era of the “statusphere” and the “real-time web.”  But when it comes to predicting paradigm shifts, my money is on ubiquitous (and perhaps unavoidable) geolocation. It’s literally a whole new dimension of [...]

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On Friday, the monthly HISciTech Tech Download networking breakfast organized by the Hawaii Science & Technology Council will feature an update on the Hawaii Broadband Taskforce. Although the HBTF was technically shut down at the end of June, there’s still no shortage of new information to process. This Friday’s event, then, is just the first [...]

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Renown digital photographer and videographer Vu Bui (of The Bui Brothers) is returning to Honolulu as part of a “photo fusion” mini-tour. He’s going to be spending a week on Oʻahu shooting photos and videos to teach people what they can accomplish with the most basic gear. And the kickoff event is an entry-level new [...]

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Hawaii is hosting a major Ruby on Rails conference in October. “Aloha on Rails” is bringing many of the world’s leading developers to Honolulu for three days of presentations, discussions, and debates with an eye toward the future of web application engineering.
Ruby on Rails is perhaps the most popular tool used in developing web applications [...]

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Hawaii Public Radio is launching a three-part lecture series on Thursday, beginning with master Hawaiian navigator Nainoa Thompson (Executive Director of the Polynesian Voyaging Society). He’ll be speaking to an intimate crowd at the Atherton Performing Arts Center at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free, but reservations are recommended. Call (808) 955-8821.
The flyer reads:
“Sometimes the people [...]

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Today was the last day Gov. Linda Lingle could veto bills from the 2009 legislative session. And while she didn’t sign SB199, she didn’t veto it, either. So, despite the extensive lobbying efforts by the local technology and business community, and despite the fact that she listed it as a potential veto [PDF] weeks ago, [...]

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After months of work, and weeks of tweaks and waiting, Honolulu-based Edutainment Resources Inc. today announced the availability of its full PencilBot-Kids line of “Feed Me!” apps in the iTunes App Store [iTunes Link].
“Feed Me!” is directed at preschoolers, and focuses on numbers, colors, and shapes. Given ERI’s expertise in ESL (English as a Second [...]

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