Month: March 2016
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Baseball Opening Day
It’s the first day of the Japanese baseball season today which gives me occasion to share this excellent commercial from last year.
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Dancing Heart Guy Unveiled
Have you ever wondered about that joyous dude dancing on the bridge right near Potrero Hill, greeting everyone stuck in traffic driving North into the city via the 101? Thank you KQED and #BayCurious team for finding out. It’s people like this that make this city what it is. Hat tip to Dav for sharing…
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“I think that’s the bigger story”
I missed the keynote at ONA 15 last year so I didn’t get a chance to see Josh Singer, the screen writer of Spotlight, on stage interviewing the original members of the Boston Globe Spotlight team (Matt Carroll, Sacha Pfeiffer, Michael Rezendes, and Walter Robinson) that were the subject of the now Oscar-winning film. Having…
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Heineken Champions League
Heineken has long-running relationship with the UEFA Champions League tournament in Europe. Each year they run a series of advertisements running up to the contest that feature the fans and get everyone excited about the game. This year’s installment is brilliant. The Dilemma pits an Italian fan’s love of the game against his faithfulness to…
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How to make an audio birthday card
A couple people asked how I created the audio birthday greeting card for my wife’s birthday. It was super-easy to do and shows off the power of open platforms. Here’s the recipe. Ingredients Phone number from Burner Account on SoundCloud A webpage to host the SoundCloud files What you do Create your account on Burner.…
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Google DeepMind Plays Go
There is a Challenge Match taking place in Seoul between Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo computer program vs. 9 dan professional Lee Sedol (9 dan is the highest rank). Most of the engineers at SmartNews have a background in machine learning and are following the matches closely on a dedicated internal Slack channel. The YouTube coverage is…
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Do what you love. Love what you do.
SmartNews SF had over 50 Japanese university students visit the office to learn about doing business at a US startup and learn about how to start their career. This trip is part of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs-funded Kakehashi Project to promote greater understanding and opportunities between the US and Japan. I’m always looking for…
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Analog
As the world around us transforms to the digital, we are increasingly drawn to the analog. Check out Swedish musician Martin Molin from the band Wintergatan make music from his marvelous, human-powered marble machine.
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San Francisco Bay on a clear day
Back in February, while everyone was watching the Super Bowl, DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 satellite took this photo from its vantage point about 800 miles to the West out over the Pacific. Normally haze would cause such and image to blur out from such a distance but this satellite is special. From the Mapbox blog where I…