Art

Playing the light field with the Lytro camera (photos)

With the ability to adjust the focus of a photo after taking the picture, the Lytro Light Field Camera is one of the biggest technological advances in photography we've seen since the industry went digital. It's some pretty amazing technology, and with a few refinements, I'm sure this could be something that could change photography forever. Read CNET's review of the Lytro Light Field Camera, and take a look at some of these shots taken in San Francisco.

At Levi Strauss, green trees are brown (photos)

SAN FRANCISCO--A holiday "tree" lot here at Levi Strauss & Company's headquarters is offering up a green alternative to live trees.

Antlre Creative, a San Francisco-based eco-conscious design company, created 100 percent recycled cardboard trees, which grew into a forest in Levi's buidling lobby (shown above).

The large trees sell for $35, and small ones for $25. Proceeds from the fundraiser go to Friends of the Urban Forest. These "greener" trees are produced and manufactured entirely with solar energy and are inspired by recycling.

And while we're in the holiday spirit, here's … Read more

Yes, Leia, there is a Yoda Santa--made of Legos (photos)

SAN FRANCISCO--Brick by brick, visitors to San Francisco's Union Square are taking part in a fantastically geeky holiday treat: helping to build a 12-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide Santa Yoda. The event, which takes place this weekend, is part of a Lucasfilm and Lego promotion for the launch of www.legosantayoda.com, a Web site that will soon let you send Star Wars-themed holiday greeting cards. For each virtual greeting shared, Lego will donate one new Lego toy to the United States Marine Corps' Toys for Tots program, up to 1 million toys. The public is invited to come out and help … Read more

Rethinking products and processes at the Green Biz Innovation Forum (photos)

Feeding the meter for public space (audio slideshow)

As part of an urban-design movement that began in San Francisco in 2005, parking spaces around the world were reclaimed as public spaces yesterday, with artists and activists feeding meters to build temporary community spaces and small parks for Park(ing) Day. Across San Francisco, pop-up communities of restaurants, hair dressers, yoga classes, and gardens created new forms of temporary public space, re-envisioning the metered parking space as a public gathering space--a place for meeting people, cultural expression, teaching, playing, or just hanging out.

Where Molycorp mines rare earth elements (panoramas)

MOUNTAIN PASS, Calif.--Here in a hot, dusty corner of Southern California desert, a set of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table--so critical to advanced technology industries that they're a matter of national security--are being unearthed. Molycorp's rejuvinated $500 million facility, now under construction and set for completion in July 2012, will reduce the environmental impacts of the rare-earth-element-mining process and dramatically cut costs, providing a homegrown source for the elements used in so many national defense, energy, and consumer electronics products. This week, I toured the facility here, the only place in the United States that … Read more

The best in bots at RoboGames (photos)

Arriving from across the United States and around the world for a robotics competition that's becoming well known as the place for bot builders to compete, hundreds of engineers and their mechanized counterparts are in San Mateo, Calif., this weekend for RoboGames 2011. The doors opened at noon Friday and already in the pits sparks were flying and the smell of solder was in the air. Teammates shouted urgently for wire and batteries, and final preparations were being made for the first competitions. The passionate community, which will send its various creations into competitions ranging from kung-fu android battles … Read more

A break in the clouds at Web 2.0 Expo (photos)

It was a beautiful week in San Francisco, and while conversations about the future of the Web were happening inside Moscone West at the Web 2.0 Expo, some folks were taking advantage of the sunshine to work from the park, tinkering with the data cloud beneath a sunny, cloudless California sky on what turned out to be one of the first warm days of the year.

Here are a few of the cooler, springtime shots I found from in and around the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week. (Click here to see a slideshow of photos from the conference itself.)… Read more

Entrepreneurs get hands-on with ideas at TechShop

Apple, Google, and HP are just a few of the companies hatched in small garages--innovators surrounded by tools and machines, bringing ideas to life. San Francisco's TechShop, which had its grand opening Saturday, is a community that wants to offer anyone the chance to be a big thinker, by providing a start-up environment equipped with just about any tool you can think of, along with training, expertise, and other resources. The massive DIY workshop occupies a 15,000-square-foot space in San Francisco's South of Market neighboorhood, and it's already a thriving community oozing with ideas. With staff … Read more