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The Meaning of American Pie

San Francisco's Earth Day

The Green Apple Music Festival came to San Francisco this weekend and culminated in a huge showing at Golden Gate Park for Earth Day. Looming storm clouds yesterday cleared the way for solid good times as the local crew came out in force.

The line-up of music for the day was great: Jonah Smith, Marin Sexton, The Greyboy All-stars, Stephen Marley and Bob Weir & Ratdog.

All in all a great vibe with beautiful weather in the city today, and for a great cause. It was a quintessential San Francisco day.

Thanks Earth.

Free Hugs

FREE HUGS A PARIS
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Generation Now

There's a great moment in one of my favorite books, Way of the Peaceful Warrior where Socrates asks Dan: "What time is it?" and "Where are you?" After a set of cryptic exchanges, Socrates presents the answer clearly:

The time is NOW, and you are HERE

Even more profound, Dan is sent off to ponder something worthwhile to say and after many failed attempts, he comes back with a simple message:

There are no ordinary moments.

These proclamations could be easily applied to the state of the web world today that we are seeing evolve around us. We are living in the NOW generation, where everything is available at an instant and it's easier to connect immediately with the news, your friends, family, strangers, neighbors and distant colleagues than ever before.

Fred Wilson blogged this morning about his twitter experience in a post entitled Broadcasting Your Status.

Oddly enough, this title reminded me of a line from a song called "Drink of Streams" by Tea Leaf Green's Trevor Garrod where he sings:

Seek the ill winded backbone masses
Their eyes are blazing with broadcasted static
And their jaws are snapping
They got hungry stomachs and they’re fixing for their latest habits

Is it status or static? I guess it depends on who's talking and who's listening.

The song is a response to an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson who was a Transcendentalist, so it all kind of comes together.

Maybe the reason this whole Web 2.0 concept is getting so much buzz and traction is that as human beings, we feel a need to connect, as well as a certain growing sense of guilty pleasure from just consuming all day long. By producing content, we can feel important, like we're contributing to the discourse and not just sitting on our couches absorbing the world in front of us. Even if we're just telling people what we're doing at this instant, we still feel like we're adding to the collective conversation.

We watched the Adam Sandler movie "Click" last night. Thinking it was going to be a nice mindless way to wash away a tough Thursday night and an even tougher week of news, I was hit pretty quickly by the bigger theme throughout. Many of us live our lives on auto-pilot and fast-forward through the difficult, yet important stuff in our minds. Eventually we end up just racing to the next station until we look back and find ten years have got behind you...

Ok, that's enough for now...

Green Apple

...and then there's Jack Kornfield

justin.tv

In case you haven't heard by now, there's a guy in San Francisco with a camera on his head hooked up to the net 24/7. He's been at it for a little over a month and is getting a lot of mainstream web attention and now radio and tv are picking it up.

It's kind of like The Truman Show in reverse -- he knows he's got the camera and his intention is try and make this start-up it into a real business, the next generation of online media.

As I watched him traverse the city yesterday, go to a peace rally, have lunch go back to work, etc...I was intrigued first by the technology and how it actually worked. He's got a computer on a backpack with four wireless network cards and is streaming at 10 frames per second. Pretty impressive and while it cut out from time to time, it was generally reliable.

It was also interesting to see how people reacted to a guy with a camera on his head coming onto the bus, as well as the general observations which occurs from being a part of an event.

Justin could become our man on the street, a reporter of the future, the documenter of our world. We could send him to shows, major world events, weddings, funerals, skydiving competitions. Is this the future of tv? Maybe. Is it is kind of eerie? definitely.

But there's something sociologically intriguing about it nonetheless.

Decide for yourself:

I'm also a PaloozaHead

Create Your Own PaloozaHead - Visit Lollapalooza.com

This Time it's Digital

"turn the schmaltz up to 11"

Kali Yuga > Garden II

15 minutes of fun...

Twitter

this is how far we've come.

this is where we're at.

television and video games gave us the need for instant gratification, or attention deficit disorder.

along comes Twitter, making it possible for you to tell anyone (who will listen) what you're doing at that moment, and for you to find out what anyone (who cares to tell you) is doing at that moment.

this is the evolution of the internet. from a reader to a linker to a connector to a real-time as-it-happens immediate notification system.

i have no idea if this is something worthwhile.
http://twitter.com/andygadiel

This American Life

Gadiel friend Ed Ugel is featured on this week's This American Life

Check it out, about half-way through the episode (although the John Hodgman segment at the beginning is worth listening to)

You can pre-order Ed's new book here

Go Ed!

That's Pretty Underground

My Maps

I just went to Google Maps (as I do 100 times a day) and saw a new tab for "My Maps"

Looks like Gmaps has gone next level.

Make your own map, complete with cool icons.

I wonder where this one will lead...

Airport Wifi

I'm sitting in O'Hare airport on my way back from Chicago. I'm not connected to the internet, instead writing this on TextEdit.

I tried signing onto the internet, but they wanted to charge me $6.95 per day to get online.

You'd have to think that a large percentage of potential airport internet users are going to be quick, one-time users. You'd also have to think that they're one of the most desirable, targeted demographics for advertising.

So, why not let me get online for free, but show me an ad at the bottom of my screen (NetZero) - you could advertise the bar across the terminal or one of the airline's many sponsors. You could even give me discounts on future air travel.

But that's not the way the industry thinks. They consider the immediate pay-off from those that bite greater than the long term benefit from those who may have walked away. Free wi-fi means more connected, more satisfied and more likely to use your airline again.

JetBlue has free WiFi at JFK. Maybe they know something everybody else doesn't...