Blogging the Aloha State and Beyond
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...
Even though the “Interisland Air War” between airlines has given us unrealistic $29, $19, even $1 airfares, there is an incredible amount of interest in the new Hawaii Superferry. The Alakai — a massive 800-ton, 1,000-foot long double-hulled vessel — was built in Alabama and arrived in Hawaii to much fanfare at...
A life-sized, 1,100-pound bronze statue of Elvis Presley was unveiled yesterday on the grounds of the Neal Blaisdell Center. The 6’2″ music icon is depicted atop a pedestal bearing plaques that explain how his 1973 “Aloha from Hawaii” show at the Blaisdell was a major television milestone, broadcast live to...
Erika Engle, business reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, goes there in Thursday’s “TheBuzz” column, pointing out that the staid, obscenity averse FCC recently greenlit a low-power Maui digital TV station with the callsign KUNT. Feigning naivety for a moment, allow me to explain that the presumed phonetic pronunciation of the...
No, just a power outage. Geeks across Twitter (which did not go down) are reporting various websites and online services as unavailable. They include Craigslist, SixApart (LiveJournal and Typepad), Technorati, Yelp, Second Life… Google News turns up this report of an outage in Simi Valley, but I’m not sure if...
Congratulations to long-time Hawaii blogger Ian Lind for logging his millionth visitor today. (When I checked in, I was logged as visitor number 1,000,050.) As Ian himself notes, the true number of iLind.net visitors likely surpasses a million a year. But he’s had that old-school GIF counter from thecounter.com on...
Hawaii Sen. Daniel K. Inouye is behind a bill that would require several government agencies to provide better information about broadband internet service availability. Our lawmakers need to know what they’re talking about before they start passing laws. Otherwise we get hilarious yet terrifying lectures about tubes. So as the...
Once upon a time, old-school online diarists — an ancient civilization that hand-coded HTML and updated static pages, uphill, both ways! — decried the rise of the weblog as the beginning of the end. “There goes the neighborhood,” was the familiar refrain, as publishing stuff on the web became push-button easy. Carefully...
“Ever wonder what happens when your iPhone gets run over by a car?” That was the cringe-inducing question posed by friend and fellow iPhone owner Paul, both on Twitter and on the Bytemarks mailing list. Holding my breath, I read the rest of the story. “Well… I found out the...
Things really do happen faster on Internet time. Turns out one of Hawaii’s first “professional lifecasters” is already going independent. Star 101.9’s Maleko showed early interest in lifecasting, and was (along with yours truly) a finalist in Ustream’s “Lifecaster Grant” program earlier this month. So it seemed perfect that his...
We caught the trailer to Judd Apatow’s next film, “Superbad,” when we slipped out to see his current release, “Knocked Up.” Which was brilliant. But the “Superbad” trailer — in addition to promising another winner — also included a wonderful Aloha State shoutout. One of the characters gets a fake...
We have a Wii. I’m not a gamer at all (we have a PlayStation 2, dance pad and all, and have used it maybe a dozen times), but Nintendo’s groundbreaking console is surprisingly fun and addictive. Instead of focusing on horsepower and the latest and greatest graphics, the Wii is...
One of Hawaii’s tech startups, fundraising facilitator ChipIn, has unveiled its Facebook Application. ChipIn, which was effusively profiled in Hawaii Business Magazine (with several follow-up pieces), didn’t seem to be getting much traction outside of Hawaii. I seem to recall it made a blip on the radar after the October...
Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag, which generally teeters just beyond the edge of credible reporting, surprisingly nailed a serious story today. As serious as blogging gets, at least. “Microsoft pays star writers to recite slogan,” declared Nick Denton, and the names called out are hardly bit players in the blogosphere....
I’ve written before about Justin.TV and Justin Kan, the San Francisco lifecaster whose antics inspired me to start experimenting with live video. It all ultimately led to the launch of HawaiiGeek.TV, my own lifecasting site (which got some notice in a recent Honolulu Advertiser article). Plenty of my fellow island...
Theories about parallel universes, black holes, and space-time singularities are nothing new to rabid fans of science fiction. But even fellow island blogger Steve “Linkmeister” Timberlake must have doubted reality for a moment when he discovered an unexpected, infinitely improbable link between his world and that of renown sci-fi editor...
What I’m Reading Hawaii Wire
