Blogging the Aloha State and Beyond
This morning, in a special Black Friday segment of the “Geek Beat” on the Hawaii News Now morning show, Burt Lum and I joined half of the Sunrise crew at Pearlridge (the other half was at Ala Moana Center) to share some tech-flavored gift shopping suggestions. Since many of the biggest...
Local teams vying for two different business innovation competitions, one national and the other international, will come together on the same stage on Tuesday for a “double-threat pitch off.” The winning teams from each will then have a chance to cross the sea to compete at an even higher level. Firstly, the...
As solar systems go, the one we live in is pretty boring. In the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” by the great Douglas Adams, our neighborhood was described as being “far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy.” (Our planet was deemed “mostly harmless.”) But planets...
Some Hawaii’s newest full-stack software developers have unveiled a new website designed to take a mountain of government data and turn it into a visual, browsable, useful resource for Hawaii’s largest and most vital industry. HiViz makes it easy to explore visitor market data that’s currently published only in spreadsheet form by the Hawaii...
If you’re looking to get a little more creative than gift cards this holiday season, this weekend’s annual print sale for Honolulu Printmakers is a great way to find unique and often one-of-a-kind creations of local artists. “Impressions15” features fine art, notecards, frames, apparel, and other items crated by local printmakers, allowing discerning shoppers...
More than a year in the making, the inaugural Anime Matsuri Hawaii convention kicks off on Friday. One of the nation’s largest Japanese animation conventions arrives at the Hawaii Convention Center on the same day Black Friday bargain hunters will descend on Ala Moana Center a couple of blocks away. Anime...
On Tuesday, the elder of the twin telescopes of the W.M. Keck Observatory will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its “first light” operations perched atop Mauna Kea on Hawaii Island. The milestone comes as the planned construction of the world’s largest optical telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope, was delayed once again....
Good science is important, but it’s notoriously hard to explain. Even though scientists may be doing groundbreaking research, they sometimes struggle to capture the attention — let alone the comprehension — of the average person. One effective strategy, then, is to skip a thousand words, and go with a picture instead....
Given the exponential growth we’ve seen in mobile app development, it makes sense that most people associate venture accelerator programs with software startups. But plenty of new ideas require hardware — whether it’s the smartphone needed to run those trendy apps, or the glorious future analysts see in the “internet of things.”...
Want to complain? Send repetitive messages faster? Expand your travel plans? There are apps for that being built right here in Honolulu. This morning’s “Geek Beat” segment on the Sunrise morning news show on Hawaii News Now featured three apps being nurtured into businesses at Blue Startups. They are members...
Some artists like to work in quiet studios or windy rooftops, while others find inspiration in rainforests or bustling coffee shops. An upcoming art festival, however, will explore the creative connections between people and the ocean. The “Surf Art and the Surfer” art festival will be hosted in Wahiawa by Surfing the Nations...
Students at Kapiolani Community College will be presented with a veritable feast of opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math on Thursday at the school’s 6th annual STEM Expo. Nearly two dozen exhibitors will be participating, including from both the public and private sector as well as from across the...
The eighth Startup Weekend Honolulu wrapped tonight at Kakaako Agora, with seven finalists pitching and presenting their work after a 54-hour marathon of designing, building, and preparing. And if you thought it was remarkable that a teenager won the last local event, then hold on to your hats. First prize...
The University of Hawaii venture accelerator, XLR8UH, is now in its second year, and this week announced the finalists for its third cohort of startup companies. The diverse group is building solutions ranging from athletic coaching to scientific algorithms to tiny homes. As finalists, the seven companies will enter the first...
An up-and-coming community in Kapolei is hosting a free Energy Fun Fair tomorrow, highlighting energy efficiency and local technology, while giving residents their first look at the neighborhood. Not to be confused with Hawaiian Electric’s Clean Energy Fair, held in September for the 12th year, the Energy Fun Fair is the...
Plague diseases are the stuff of nightmares, horror movies, and post-apocalyptic sci-fi. But they are also real threats that still keep scientists and government leaders up at night. On Tuesday, a leading local expert will try to put everything in context at the November “Honolulu Science Cafe” meetup. Social mixer or...
Developers of every stripe are invited to join in on a global celebration of software craftsmanship on Saturday, with Honolulu’s fifth annual Global Day of Coderetreat. Last year, local coders were among more than 2,000 developers in 150 cities around the world that spent the day practicing and sharing their...
Perhaps the third time is the charm for the makers of the Sunny solar-powered battery case for the iPhone 6. The Sunny case was teased in May, and was launched on Indiegogo in June. Perfectly timed for summer, we featured it in our “Geek Beat” segment on Hawaii News Now’s...
The eighth Startup Weekend Honolulu is this weekend, coinciding with the sixth annual Global Startup Battle, which this year spans over 250 cities around the globe. A mix of developers, designers, entrepreneurs and marketers will come together on Friday night to pitch ideas and form teams, and will be expected...
In 1985, Ronald Reagan was president, a first-class stamp cost 20 cents, and gas prices were just starting to fall again after the Iranian oil crisis. In Hawaii, “Magnum P.I.” was in its fifth season, the Polynesian Voyaging Society launched its “Voyage of Discovery,” and the Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii...
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