san francisco

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) have unveiled new energy-efficient bus shelters for the city.

The first of these bus shelters has been put up on the corner of Geary Boulevard and Arguello Boulevard with plans for four more to be rolled out in the coming weeks. The city plans to evaluate the five bus shelters throughout the summer to see what, if any, changes need to be made to the existing design.

Following the evaluation, SFMTA plans to replace a minimum of 1,100 existing bus shelters throughout San Francisco beginning this … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Could changing phone systems pay a big-league baseball player's salary? To hear Bill Schlough, the CIO of the San Francisco Giants tell it, the answer is a definite yes.

Last winter, the team migrated to a new $1 million-plus VoIP telecommunications system from ShoreTel for its ballpark, AT&T Park, abandoning its legacy system, which--ironically--was provided by AT&T. According to Schlough, the old system cost $490,000 annually, while the new setup for the 457 phones at the ballpark run the team just $135,000 a year.

Given that the minimum salary for Major League … Read more

I feel like that nice objective judge in the Pirate Bay case.

Ever since I set eyes on the wondrous sight of Barry Bonds, I have felt some bizarre commitment toward the San Francisco Giants. Sometimes I even give them money.

However, I must tell you that Giants pitchers have been involved in two separate but equally troubling Twittering incidents.

The first that came to my attention involved closer Brian Wilson. Wilson seems like a fine chap. He comes into the 9th inning of games and tries to throw very fast balls past tired batters, none of whom has ever … Read more

On this week's installment of the Digital City podcast, we discuss the complaints of Windows 7 beta testers, the closing of San Francisco's flagship Sony store, and Joey's long-awaited jump to the Xbox 360 team.

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The city of San Francisco is installing three EV (electric vehicle) charging stations across the street from city hall as part of a two-year pilot project to promote electric vehicle use, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday at a press conference.

The Smartlet Networked Charging Stations supplied by Coulomb Technologies will serve hybrid electric plug-in vehicles from Zipcar, City CarShare, and the city's municipal fleet, according to a statement from the mayor's office.

Because the EVs will be readily available for daily rental, skeptics and enthusiasts alike will have a chance to see what it's like to drive an electric car for a day.… Read more

Veronica Belmont of Revision3's Tekzillaand PlayStation's Qore rubs the sleep out of her eyes and joins us on today's show all the way from San Francisco. We chew up a little East Cost/West Coast beef, address Justin and Veronica's fleeting encounter at CES 2009, and jump right into our Valentine's Day plans. The three of us discuss our lonely and pathetic V-Day schedules, but we're all floored when Veronica reveals her top-secret wild and crazy plans. I'm not even sure where she rented a crane and a trailer full of Capuchin … Read more

Gavin Newsom knows a thing or two about grease, and we're not just talking about his hair.

Drawing from his experience as a restaurateur, the San Francisco mayor announced at a press conference on Wednesday plans for the city to build the country's first brown grease-to-biodiesel plan.

… Read more

A few months after Barack Obama’s historic election, and a couple of weeks after the release of Barry Libert’s and Rick Faulk’s book Obama Inc. (and, of course, Obama's inauguration), the first start-ups are popping up that directly apply some of the widely heralded business lessons emerging from the innovative campaign. The fact that most of these lessons lie in the marketing domain supports the view I’ve expressed earlier and on numerous occasions: 1) Marketing will (again) become the number one change agent in business, 2) when it follows the new rules of “marketing with … Read more

BART, the San Francisco Bay Area's commuter railway, plans to offer Wi-Fi access on all trains and at all stations by 2011, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday.

The 20-year deal, signed Friday with start-up Wi-Fi Rail, is set to bring high-speed wireless access to BART's 104 miles of track and 43 stations. The network is based on a "huge fiber-optic backbone," according to Wi-Fi Rail.

BART, short for Bay Area Rapid Transit, has been testing the service for about a year in underground sections in San Francisco and on about two miles of open track … Read more