Get the 411 from Google

Remember using directory assistance and getting charge a fee when the phone company would connect you to a business? Well Google is going to change all that. The Mountain View, California-based company is rolling out their own directory assistance for free.

Here's a video starring a Google employee that fully explains the service:


Simple, yet extremely useful.

Discovering NowPublic

As a person who has a Flickr account, thousands of people have viewed my photos since I joined the site. A few will add a comment or add a photo to their favorites and even fewer will ask me if they can use one of my photos for a website or publication. It has happened only twice before and now for a third time. The website NowPublic wanted to use a photo of U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey for a news story. Even though I never heard of the site before, it seems legitimate and I allowed my photo to appear in the news story. My photo can be found in the Michael Mukasey story here.

NowPublic is not your typical news site with professional reporters, instead it is powered by citizen reporters who provide all the content for the site. The site is part of the trend called "crowdsourcing", utilizing the power of the masses to provide news content.

Interview with Pop Art greats

Anyone that knows me knows Andy Warhol is my biggest artistic influence. I've been to his museum in Pittsburgh twice and visited Andy Warhol traveling exhibits in Boston and Washington, DC. I'm also a big fan of Pop Art in general.

I was excited to find online an old interview with Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol that appeared on the PBS program, USA Arts.

Here are the complete interviews, via Boing Boing:


Part 1 with Roy Lichtenstein


Part 2 with Andy Warhol

Google street view has arrived in DC

The last twenty-four hours have been great. I found my lost camera, Obama won the election, and Google street view has come to DC. Google street view is a feature that previously was only available for only a few select cities. The feature allows a person to see a rotating 3-D photo view of select intersections in Google Maps. DCist gives the whole rundown here.

Being in the know with Greg's List

While at a Yelp election night party last night, I ran into Andrea, a woman who works part-time for a website called Greg's List DC. When she first said the name, I thought I misheard her due to the noisy surroundings and I said, "Craig's List?". She replies, "No, Greg's List" and then explains it's a website focused on the DC social scene.

I got the vibe from Andrea that Greg's List is relatively unknown and still looking for an audience. This explains why she works on the the site on the side and it doesn't turn a profit. My first thought is "Here's another blog/website that attempts to get a hold on the DC social scene." Other sites do a good job already, like Washingtonian's After Hours blog or the local news blog, DCist. Some of these other sites a person has to sift through extraneous material. I like how the events on Greg's List are easily found on the site's clutter-free home page.