san francisco

A San Francisco Board of Supervisors committee on Thursday voted unanimously to approve a watered-down settlement with the wireless industry over legislation that required cell phone retailers to distribute radiation warning materials.

As currently written, the settlement calls for San Francisco to agree to a permanent injunction against the "Right to Know" ordinance and promise that it will refrain from further litigation. In return, the CTIA, the wireless industry's trade association, will waive any claims to attorney's fees.

The proposed settlement now advances to the full board for consideration at its May 7 meeting. If approved … Read more

With the flip of a switch Tuesday night, the San Francisco Bay Bridge, already known as one of the world's most amazing bridges, will undergo an epic transformation.

Starting tomorrow evening, anyone looking at the San Francisco side of the Bay Bridge at night will be wowed by the ever-changing swirls, bursts, star fields, and other patterns of the Bay Lights Project, the world's largest LED art installation.

Created by artist Leo Villareal, the project features 25,000 1-inch LEDs strung for 1.8 miles along the bridge's cables that together make up the pixels on what … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--I'm standing behind Leo Villareal, watching the well-known artist calibrate settings in the software running on his screen. Each time he moves a slider, one of the world's largest art installations -- mounted on one of the world's most-famous landmarks -- changes in an instant.

It's a gorgeous evening on the Embarcadero, San Francisco's eastern waterfront, with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge dominating the landscape in front of us, and a near-full moon doing its best to overcome the typical evening fog cover. Lights from the city, and from Oakland on the other side of the bay reflect brilliantly in the water. And with just the most subtle adjustments in his custom-designed software, Villareal makes thousands of LEDs strung out over the 1.8 mile-long western span of the bridge almost instantaneously change what they're doing, and how they're interacting with each other. … Read more

On Super Bowl Sunday, Domino's Pizza is planning to deliver millions of pizzas (it estimates that a total of 11 million slices will be delivered) and 2.5 million chicken wings. According to Domino's execs, the national game day gorge has become more than just a manner of beefing up on drivers, dough tossers, and yes, beef -- it's also quite an undertaking in the information technology department.

According to the Michigan-based company, a third of Domino's orders come though a digital channel these days, and of course even the analog orders run through the corporate network. In 2007, for the first time, Domino's saw the need to put together a game day "defense" team on Big Game day to sit in a conference room and keep an eye on all the information systems. … Read more

Do you know who will win the Super Bowl in New Orleans this weekend? If you're a San Francisco 49ers or Baltimore Ravens fan, I can venture a guess as to who you might choose. But let's put aside your bias for a moment.

Using the video game Madden NFL '13, EA ran a mock game featuring the 49ers and Ravens to determine who would take home the Vince Lombardi trophy. If you think the prediction is hogwash, you're probably correct on some levels (it is just a video game, after all), but it's worth noting that the annual simulation resulted in correct predictions for seven out of the last nine Super Bowl showdowns. Such accuracy must mean something, right? EA summarizes the first few quarters: … Read more

Trying to find parking in San Francisco sometimes feels likes a car-based version of "Survivor." It's not pretty. Cars block driveways, drivers forget to curb their wheels, lights get left on, and meters run out. These are all reasons why you might want to contact a vehicle's owner. If everyone in San Francisco signed up for CurbTXT, then it would be easy to get in touch.

Drivers can sign up for CurbTXT by registering their license plates and phone numbers. A sticker on the car gives people an anonymous way to contact the driver through text … Read more

It looks like Uber has yet another legal hurdle to surmount, this time on its home turf in San Francisco.

The popular ride-summoning startup, which has recently dealt with regulatory challenges in Washington D.C., New York, and Chicago, is now being sued in San Francisco by the city's cab drivers, who are claiming unfair business practices.

The fast-growing service, which allows customers to use smartphones to arrange transportation in several U.S. cities, announced last month that in the San Francisco market it was testing out a taxi service option within the Uber app, alongside its existing sedan … Read more

When heading to a city like London on a budget, a service like Airbnb can be a godsend: with dozens and dozens of available apartments to choose from, a traveler can easily find a place to stay that's much less expensive than a hotel, and which offers privacy, a sense of home, and maybe most important of all, a kitchen.

Last year, I went to London on business and decided the visit was long enough to merit getting a place through Airbnb. But I hadn't been to the English capital since I was a teenager and had no … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Airbnb, a leader in the short-term rental market, today unveiled Airbnb Neighborhoods, the company's first attempt at comprehensive neighborhood guides aimed at giving renters a way to pick the best location for their needs in large cities.

At launch, the new service offers the guides for seven cities: Rio de Janeiro, New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Paris, and Washington, D.C.

The idea behind the new service is addressing the possibility that people using Airbnb to find a place to stay in a large city can be overwhelmed by choosing the most appropriate part of … Read more