Zecco Bay to Breakers Float

It's always really exciting to share something you've put a whole day of hard, physical work into. And I don't get to do it that often.

So here it is - for this year's Bay to Breakers race, we have a float for some refreshments that we'll be pulling along. Here's a quick photo we snapped off - and check out the full Flickr stream if you want.

Thanks a ton to Mitch (@mitchellwfox, http://www.mitchellwfox.com/) for helping out majorly with all the design and prep work. And to Ellaine (@ellainemariano) for helping out as well.

jamiekleach - My Sister's Art on Vimeo & Flickr

I love that my sister's starting to put her work online. She's a Boulder, CO (and soon SF, CA)-based artist who does really great stuff. It's awesome, cause I can finally share her awesome genius with other people I know. For starters, make sure you check out her entire portfolio at http://jamiekleach.com/

Her Flickr pool shows off some of her photo art. Really great stuff - she does this one where she merges siblings into each other over a course of 16 photos. Nothing's more trippy to see a Tony-Jamie mashup. It definitely freaked out our mother...

And then there's this video, which she says is "about addiction to technology and the recent emergence of personal electronic devices. These things make us so available and dependent on things that were not even a part of everyday life 5 years ago." Very true - and hits a little close to home!

Chain-Chain-Chained from Jamie Leach on Vimeo.

And of course, follower her on twitter. She's @jamiekleach.

BrightKite & More Location-Based Services

I just got hooked up with a BrightKite account, which made me happy since I love trying new things. It's kinda nice - the point is basically to share location information with others, and post notes/photos from those locations. It's almost like twitter knowing where you are.

I love that they're Colorado-based (like Lijit, which I mentioned before) - even though I'll be in the bay area forever, it's good to see an innovation hub in the place I grew up. They're one of the TechStars companies, which has born IntenseDebate and SocialThing. They've integrated well with twitter, which is great for posting location-sensitive photos and having them show up in your twitter stream.

They've also integrated well with Fire Eagle, which I mentioned liking before. Playing nicely with these guys - and any others doing location-based services - is very important. It's not clear to me whether Fire Eagle or BrightKite actually owns the master location, or what happens when I update one place and not the other.



Unfortunately, like a lot of sites launching recently, it's hard to immediately see the point. The site doesn't integrate terribly well for mobile, relying on SMS and email rather than a web app. To me, a good designed-for-mobile site is necessary for location-based services.

Location-based services like these will be absolutely killer when I don't have to tell it to update my location. Shoot, I've got GPS on my phone and the Loki toolbar on my browser - there's no excuse for these guys to force me to update my location for them. It'd be really cool to trace your path - and share it with others. And get ads based on where you go - or something.

More from...

• R/W/W
• Mashable!
• TechStars Profile
• /Message