Blogging the Aloha State and Beyond
For at least the third time within a week, the production crew for “LOST” returned to the historic Laniakea YWCA building on Richards Street, across from ‘Iolani Palace. For the show’s many character flashbacks, this beautiful building has served as everything from a mosque to a French restaurant, but most...
Looks like Oceanic has upgraded the services of its RoadRunner subscribers for free, and with little fanfare. Upload speeds have been doubled (or, rather, potential upload speeds), a major boon to content creators and users of online storage. The development is a small technical change but a big move in...
Hawaii residents are being bombarded with telemarketing calls from 202-552-1332. If you see the number on your caller ID, just ignore it. The number has already been posted to several nuisance number sites, including WhoCallsMe, whocalled.us, and 800Notes. The scoundrels appear to be targeting anyone, anywhere, with reports filed from...
Colt Brennan celebrated quarterback of the rejuvenated University of Hawaii Warriors football team, is featured on the cover of the upcoming issue of ESPN The Magazine. “It’s the first time a local athlete has received this national honor,” crowed KHON sports anchor John Veneri tonight. Now, not being particularly sports...
It’s one thing to make Newsweek. It’s another thing entirely to rate a citation in that venerable publication for a website called SuckItJesus.com. That claim to fame belongs to Carlos Uretta, a student at Hawaii Pacific University and the talented guy behind the HPU alt-news site FortStreetPulse.com. Carlos and his...
I was fortunate to be able to participate in a panel discussion for the Pacific Century Fellows Class of 2007 today. The topic was “Evolution of On-line News & Its Effect on Journalism and News Reporting,” and my fellow panelists were: Chris Archer, News Director, KGMB9 Sandra Oshiro, Managing Editor...
Hawaii Blog has moved. And it’s about time. When I first launched this blog in July 2000 — truly an eon ago in Internet time — I did so almost reluctantly, apologetically, stepping into the breach of “the weblog fad” that was sweeping through the journaling community. Though it seems...
About a month ago, I blogged about how the Webkinz virtual world would shut down every night just when my kids (and presumably other kids in the Hawaii time zone) would be trying to get online. By scheduling their system updates at midnight on the East Coast, they were cutting...
Google is planning a multi-terabit undersea communications cable across the Pacific Ocean, reports telecom news site Communications Day, but it’s unclear whether this big fat tube will bless Hawaii with bandwidth or pass us by entirely. Dubbed the “Unity” cable, the trans-Pacific link would be built in partnership with several...
The Highway Inn in Waipahu is truly a landmark island eatery. Situated in an unassuming strip mall on the west end of the dusty former plantation town, Highway Inn has served “a taste of old Hawaii” since 1947. Which means, of course, that this year marks the Highway Inn’s 60th...
Local blogger Evelyn Hunter of Homespun Honolulu has unveiled the first “Carnival of Aloha,” highlighting blogs in and about the Aloha State. A “blog carnival,” explains the eponymous dot-com, is “a particular kind of blog community.” Compared to magazines, they’re published periodically and compiled by an editor, who frequently decides...
No doubt about it, Steve Jobs loves Hawaii. One of the newest television ads for the revolutionary iPhone, “All The Parts,” prominently features the Kapalua Resort. In the commercial, the omnipresent iPhone hand model looks up the current weather conditions in Lahaina, checks the traffic around San Francisco International Airport,...
Congratulations to Hawaii Island bloggers Hunter Bishop and Aaron Stene for being named the Big Island’s best websites or blogs by the Hawaii Island Journal. “He’s a true citizen journalist with opinions about all things Kona and a willingness to share them in both the New Media and the Old,”...
A local actor and film student has two entries in the running for the Heinz “Top This TV Challenge,” which invited amateur media makers to come up with clever 30-second commercials for their ketchup. Eric Manke, a student of the Academy for Creative Media at the University of Hawaii, rallied...
Being a geek and a father, I’ve long tracked online destinations for kids. And while the offerings of Nick Jr. and PBS Kids are largely Flash-based brand reinforcement exercises, they are interactive (unlike the TV shows most of them are based on) and free (usually). And since I’m also a...
Boing Boing points the way to an L.A. Times article on The Source Family, “a mystical cult that thrived in Los Angeles between 1970 and 1974.” This group, it turns out, has ties to Hawaii, and has its eye on the islands as the home base for a possible revival....
Last week, my kids (again) killed their Mac mini. The Ala Moana Apple Store held on to it for a few days, but eventually (again) replaced the optical drive at no charge. Since the keyboard my kids were using — a black and blue classic from an old G4 tower — had...
During yesterday’s lifecasting talk at Hawaii Public Radio, I got to meet Eric Nakagawa, a guy who’s impossibly close to one of the year’s hottest Internet memes: lolcats. Lolcats are those Photoshopped pictures of cats with ridiculous captions that are so pervasive, they’ve spread beyond inboxes and blogs and message...
Today brings the official launch of Mixed Plate Special, a new online lifestyle magazine focused on Hawaii. A “virtual exhibition space” of sorts, Mixed Plate Special aims to chronicle modern Hawaii life in a variety of ways. “We’re really excited about bringing a fresh media outlet to the islands, one...
Lifecasting — live video streaming over the internet on a personal scale — will be the topic du jour on Hawaii Public Radio’s “ThinkTech Hawaii” radio show, airing this afternoon at 5 p.m. on KIPO 89.3FM. Host Jay Fidell has invited “digital wonderer” Burt Lum and me into the studio to discuss...
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