?From Google Wave to mommy blogs to TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington “stealing our tweets,” 2009 was a booming year for the Web and social media scene. To celebrate, LAWeekly.com is hosting the LA Web Awards 2009 and asked you to nominate the best in 36 categories. Who gives the best tweet? What’s the best site for gamers? From over a thousand nominations, a team of expert judges from LA and SF’s online communities — including Kevin Pereira, Andrew Nystrom, Gabe Rivera, Travis Keller, Sean Percival, Aubrey Sabala, Mike Prasad, Shira Lazar, John Resig, Maya Baratz, Andrew Sorcini, and VVM new media staff — combed through the sites and selected winners. And to keep it fair, none of the judges voted in a category they’re affiliated with. Check out the winners below and stay tuned for information on how you can win a spot on the guest list for our private party at Bardot on January 21st to celebrate 2009’s best online.
LA’s Best Twitterer
@XeniJardinLA’s Best Flickr Pool
LA AddictLA’s Best Flamer (i.e. best shit talker)
BuddyheadLA’s Best Food Blog
Eater LALA’s Best Music Blog
Aquarium DrunkardLA’s Best Police Blog
Witness LALA’s Best Tech Blog
Lalawag
City Life in a Black Hole (for Wireless Voice services)
If you follow me on столовеTwitter, you know that I do have opinions. When appropriate I’ll post long-form rants on LAist. My latest is about how pathetic it is that I can’t make a wireless voice call from my house no matter what the carrier is. And it’s been that way since I moved here four years ago!
Oh yeah, the data coverage is fine. I’ve been spoiled by AT&T’s 3g data coverage since 2006 and never turned back. Did it bother me to only have nine keys and #0* on my LG CU500 and a small screen? No. It was 3g. Did I at least use T9 predictive text or would I actually make 10 entries on the keypad just to spell “s-h-i-t?” Hell no, I became the fastest texter in town. Why? Because no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t hear more than scratchy sounds and broken words coming from the other end of the handset. Didn’t matter where or how I stood in the house or on the block. I was in a black hole. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile. You can’t NOT lose. It’s 2010, and I still find myself going to the mall just so I can have a coherent phone conversation with Mom.
VIDEO: Citizen Journalism & Social Media Panel at Mahalo 7/13/09
I was honored to be on a panel this Monday with David Sarno (LA Times), Chris Tolles (Topix) and Christina Gagnier (Politech) discussing Citizen Journalism. Thanks to Geoff Brown and Social media Club LA for hooking it up and Alexia Tsotsis (LA Weekly) for moderating!
Full recap at the SCMLA site here.
Thanks to Tyler and Mahalo for hosting and finally thanks to Efren and Techzulu for shooting this video:
VIDEO: What Analog TV is Like after the Digital Television Transition
I’m not the only one who didn’t bother to upgrade my TV set from a hand-me-down analog to a DTV-capable (or converted) set. Surprisingly, there are at least two or three channels that continue broadcasting (on UHF in Los Angeles), including HSN.com. The rest of the local channels feature an irritating infomercial on how stupid we must be for not converting our analog TV’s with a DTV converter box. Or, as you’ll see in the beginning of the video — it’s complete and total dead air (as in the case of ABC 7). No matter, I’m watching Game 5 of the NBA Finals via a Veetle livestream broadcast. Interestingly, some channels — for example, what was formerly NBC Los Angeles Channel 4 — are broadcasting the DTV infomercial exclusively in Spanish, as if to say that it’s clearly a class or language issue. Also noted — an apparent Chicago bias in the content of the DTV infomercials. Catch Alfonso Soriano rounding the bases with a quick cut to a Lou Malnatti’s Pizzeria sign about half way through. Check out the 3:30 video below for a tour of analog TV in the DTV era.