LA Times has a great profile on Kogi a mobile restaurant featuring a Korean BBQ taco truck that travels around Los Angeles announcing their location via Twitter. The truck has become a huge sensation, generating long lines where ever it shows up.

The truck and its staff of merry makers have become a sort of roving party, bringing people to neighborhoods they might not normally go to, and allowing for interactions with strangers they might not otherwise talk to. A constant Twitter feed connects truck-followers and updates them about whether Kogi is going to be late to its next stop. Occasionally, a negative Nelly will rain on this love parade by asking the Kogi truck to park elsewhere; when this happens, legions of Kogi-lytes rally to find a desirable new location.

Newsweek and NPR both recently did a stories on the Kogi trucks as well.

photo by Vincent Diamante

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Kogi Korean BBQ Taco Truck Uses Twitter To Go Viral In Los Angeles

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Last night Moses Grubb and Spy Emerson hosted a Speakeasy at Ritual Roasters in San Francisco’s Mission District. The event, a fundraiser for Swimming Cities of Serenissima, was abruptly brought to an end as agents from the San Francisco Bureau of Prohibition raided the joint, guns blazing. I managed to capture it on video as it all went down.

Photo Gallery: Speakeasy at Ritual Roasters

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Speakeasy Raided by San Francisco Bureau of Prohibition

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Abram the Safety Ape, “Health Educator” and driver of the Art of Bleeding ambulance, recently spoke out (in the form of rhyme) about the Connecticut Chimp Tragedy.

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Abram the Safety Ape Raps About The Connecticut Chimp Tragedy

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Here’s the music video for “San Francisco” by Jill Sobule from her new fan funded album “California Years”. The video was directed by Margaret Cho and features many local cameos, including our good friend and guest blogger Violet Blue.

via Violet Blue on Twitter

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“San Francisco” by Jill Sobule, Directed by Margaret Cho

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The LaCie iamaKey is quite possibly the coolest USB flash drive I’ve ever seen.

With the new LaCie iamaKey, inventive storage meets data protection. The key-shaped design is functional and memorable, and the protection that the LaCie iamaKey offers makes it extremely reliable. Best of all, with its 4GB and 8GB models, you can fit an enormous amount of data in a small flash drive. With the universal Hi-Speed USB 2.0 interface, iamaKey can be used with both PC and Macs. Hi-Speed USB 2.0 not only offers universal compatibility and cross-platform convenience, but features a hot-pluggable connection and high-speed transfer rates, and is Windows ReadyBoost™ compatible. With its eye-catching design, the iamaKey certainly stands out, but its connector (Gold SIP) is both water- and scratch-resistant, making it one of the most durable and thinnest USB keys on the market. Protective edges on the connectors ensure that you’ll always insert the LaCie iamaKey properly, keeping it usable and safe.

LaCie also makes the larger itsaKey, as well as the PassKey, a microSD USB Card Reader and the CurrenKey, a USB Flash Drive in the shape of a coin.

via FreshArrival

image via LaCie

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LaCie iamaKey, A USB Flash Drive in The Shape of a Key

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guest post by Dave Schumaker

Periodic tables are a great way to organize things. We have periodic tables for awesomements, videos, typefaces, food, and even chemical elements (who knew?). This organizational system, pioneered by Dimitri Mendeleev in the late 1800’s, has proven quite useful at categorizing information.

Michael Vasilev has decided to offer an updated version of the periodic table of elements by creating a fantastic periodic table of video game controllers.

As I browse through these controller configurations from video consoles of the past, I can’t help but find that muscle memory starts taking over my hands and they begin to assume poses for controllers from Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and all the other game systems that attempted to steal my childhood from me!

via Gizmodo

image by Michael Vasilev

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Periodic Table of Console & Handheld Controllers

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Embracing the popular “Stuff on My Cat” meme, Sam Hart and his girlfriend Karen made a video stacking 61 things on their cat Toby using Sam’s “Kitty Song” as the soundtrack.

via moderncat

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Kitty Song, Featuring 61 Things Stacked on a Cat

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Pink Tentacle has a great post about a fantastic series of Hakodate, Japan tourism videos that feature alien squid invading Hakodate by hijacking a giant mechanical squid fighting landmarks turned into giant robots that are called into action to defend the city.

Hakodate is known for it’s squid culture and every August they celebrate the squid with citizens doing the Ika-odori (Squid Dance) as part of the Hakodate Port Festival.

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Squid vs. Robots Featured in Hakodate, Japan Tourism Videos

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Last month Rocketboom hosted “Know Your Meme: The Game Show” as part of Ignite NYC 3. Rocketboom has been busy producing an excellent series of Know Your Meme videos and they recently launched a comprehensive Internet Meme Database.

via Fimoculous

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Rocketboom Hosts Know Your Meme: The Game Show

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“Computer Software in Plain English”, the latest video by Common Craft, explains how operating systems and software programs work with your computer.

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Computer Software in Plain English by Common Craft

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Collage Humor uncovers the real reason “Why Terminators Transport Naked”.

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The Real Reason Terminators Are Sent Back In Time Naked

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Our friends at Small Batch, Inc. have just launched their new project Wikirank, a website that tracks what’s popular on Wikipedia, grouped by trending topics and articles with the most views. It also generates nifty charts that you can embed on your website or blog.

Wikirank shows you what people are reading on Wikipedia. It’s based on the actual usage data from the Wikipedia servers, which the Wikimedia foundation makes available as a public service. We take that data, process it, and give it back to you in a format that’s easy to use and share. Wikirank reveals emerging trends, and lets you embed relevant charts in blog posts and on social media sites.

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Wikirank, Tracking What’s Popluar on Wikipedia

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guest post by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics)

Earthling, are you one of our Robot Overlords? Or would you like to become one?

The RoboGames Town Hall is an informal conversation where robot builders, circuit benders, robosumo enthusiasts, combat people, kit bashers, software mutators, makers, doers, thinkers and all other nerds bent on robotic world domination get together to discuss RoboGames 2009.

Topics will include how to compete at RoboGames; how to get involved with the RoboGames populace as a competitor, volunteer, sponsor or other supporter; how to show off your robotically-oriented wares at RoboGames; and ideas on how to make this year’s RoboGames a truly spectacular event.

The Town Hall will take place on Saturday, April 11 at Tech Shop in Menlo Park, and you can RSVP at Upcoming. For additional details and other robo-related musings, tune into RoboGames on the Twitter.

photos by Scott Beale

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RoboGames Town Hall Town Hall Meeting at Tech Shop

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The trailer is out for “Where the Wild Things Are” directed by by Spike Jonze, a film version of the classic 1963 children’s book by Maurice Sendak. The film will be in theaters on October 16th, 2009.

via Waxy

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Where the Wild Things Are, Directed by Spike Jonze

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The Boing Boing Video crew, along with bloggers from Offworld, BB Gadgets and Boing Boing are in San Francisco this week for the Game Developers Conference 2009 (GDC). While here they are doing daily live video broadcasts on Ustream from their remote BBV@GDC studio featuring many special guests stopping by all week through Friday.

Today Cory Doctorow will be doing a live report from the floor of the keynote by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and special guests on the live stream include the following:

Guests include Doctor Popular, who will be doing a live yoyo demonstration and possibly some game-themed freestyle nerdcore rapping; Legendary visual effects guru John Gaeta (Matrix, Speed Racer, etc), a ton of indie game developers, mobile game developers, this guy who created some game that like nearly every Dutch girl plays, Ustream’s CEO, then we’re going to stream the GDC Awards show live. This crazy sculptor/maker/hacker guy named Marque Cornblatt made some giant avatar video installations, and he’s going to install an Obama Avatar wall on our set. Also, steampunk robots.

Here’s the Boing Boing Video Game Developers Conference 2009 Preview.

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Boing Boing Video Live Streaming Game Developers Conference 2009

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On the first day of SXSW Interactive 2009 I ran into Gary Vaynerchuk and Kevin Rose in the lobby of the Hilton. They were hoping in a cab on their way out to see our friends Lynn and Jessica get their bacon tattoos inked by Jack at Southside Tattoo on S. Congress.

Afterwards we realized we needed to find a way back up to the convention center. In the meantime we walked across the street to Jo’s to grab some coffee and food, when we were done we spotted a cab just sitting in the parking lot next door. Could it be possible? Was this cab available? Gary tells the story of The Taxi Miracle at SXSW Interactive 2009.

photos by Scott Beale

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The Taxi Miracle at SXSW Interactive 2009

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guest post by Aaron Muszalski 

While there’s an ongoing debate over who actually created the character of Batman’s iconic nemesis The Joker (comic book artist Bob Kane, writer Bill Finger and artist Jerry Robinson have all variously claimed the idea) one aspect of his origin seems to be relatively free from dispute: that the creators drew their visual inspiration from German actor Conrad Veidt’s portrayal of the character Gwynplaine in the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs. An adaptation of a Victor Hugo novel, the film was directed by German expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni, with Veidt in the title role.

A well-known film actor with a long career, Veidt also appeared as Cesare the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Grand Vizier Jaffar in The Thief of Bagdad, and as Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca. The latter role being especially notable as Veidt himself was a fervent anti-Nazi, who emigrated from Germany to England in 1933, one week after marrying Illona Prager, a Jewish woman. Veidt also played what is likely the first homosexual character written for the screen, in Richard Oswald’s pioneering gay rights film, Anders als die Andern (”Different From The Others”).

Veidt died of a heart attack in 1943 while playing golf in Los Angeles.

The Joker is still at large.

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The Original Inspiration For Batman’s Joker, German Actor Conrad Veidt

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