We’ve long been skeptical of the overblown and self-interested claims by tech titans and their political allies that this dot-com boom changes everything and that it could never go bust, like last time. Read more »

UPDATED Today I got banned from posting on Facebook and I don’t know why, but it has left me feeling very unsettled about this brave new world we find ourselves in, one where a few large technology corporations have ever more power over our lives and liberties.Read more »

Board President David Chiu is calling for San Francisco to add to its broadband fiber network every time a contractor or utility tears up a street, joining other cities in expanding high-speed Internet capacity. But will this new network be a municipal utility or corporate-controlled? An upcoming hearing he has called for could begin to answer that question.Read more »

Gavin Newsom sat down for an hour with Brian Edwards-Tiekert of KPFA's Up Front, and the show is remarkable. Brian was a little less harsh than Steven Colbert, who (properly) said the Gavster's new book, Citizenville, needs "a bullshit detector" and that "everything in there could be carved on a stone and put in someone's garden," but he did a great job putting Newsom's book in the context of state and lo Read more »

A San Francisco entrepreneur's petition to allow consumers to unlock their cell phones has gathered more than 100,000 signatures, and now the White House will have to offer an official response.

Sina Khanifar, who runs opensignal, has been pushing to overturn a recent ruling allowing cell phone companies to prevent people who want to switch carriers from changing the firmware that controls the device.Read more »

Oh My Freakin God, the Gavster has a book and it's called "Citizenville." And it's all about how government isn't  a vending machine and we should look to the private sector to do everything much better with a lot of technology. I suspect there's not a lot in the book about homelss policy or poverty or income inequality, since those can't be solved with an app. Check out the trailer. Gack.

In this week’s issue of the Guardian, we spotlight a pair of pilot projects that introduce a new technology to San Francisco.

Using converted streetlights that can do a lot more than just illuminate city blocks, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) ultimately hopes to link a variety of city operations and infrastructure into a centralized, digitally integrated network. Proponents have pronounced the initiative to be an exciting venture into an “Internet of Things” paradigm, in which services are organized around real-time data sharing.

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How many ways is this video by the tech flackery sf.citi really embrassing and whiny? Let's start:Read more »