The geniuses at Common Craft created this video explaining Twitter in plain English. We only wish that governments would hire them to explain how parking ticket revenues worked and how to best follow a city council motion from creation to approved city ordinance. LAist tweets too, you can follow us here. Related -- What is RSS? Common Craft explains RSS on RSS Day -- Using Twitter in Car Culture -- Los Angeles, What Are......

This guy's happy about something, maybe it's the Webbys | Photo by soundfromwayout via Flickr Webby Award Winners (basically the online Oscars) were announced today. A handful of locally based sites were nominated last month, but only a few made the grade. Congrats to all! Here are the winners: The Huffington Post walked away with both The People's Voice and official Webby Award. The Los Angeles Film School won the Webby Award for Best......

You just finished filling up your tank at the gas station, but the next thing you do is not grab your keys to leave, it's to take an extra twenty seconds to note some statistics by inputting into Twitter the miles since your last fill up, the price per gallon and how many gallons you put in. Welcome to FuelFrog, a new application designed by three guys who embarked on a mission of launching a......

There are thousands of people that read this blog via their subscription to LAist's RSS (Really Simple Syndication). But sometimes when people hear the word "RSS," their faces go blank. RSS is a pretty sweet tool to know how to use. Basically, instead of visiting a handful of your favorites sites everyday to see what's new, you visit one site, your RSS Reader, and all your favorite sites are loaded into one clean space. It......

A job listing popped on Craigslist yesterday that might be music to the right web and graphics dork's ears. It seems Nine Inch Nails is on the prowl for "an internet-savvy web and graphics assistant who will work with an art director on a wide variety of tasks relating to web development, graphic design, video editing/production, and online marketing." The basic blabbity-blah-blah expected know-hows follows (CSS, HTML, Flash, Javascript, et. al) along with design chops......

This week's Senate Committee Hearing on the Future of the Internet featured notable speakers on both sides of the net neutrality debate including Stanford Prof. Lawrence Lessig, FCC Commissioner Kevin J. Martin, Patric Verrone, President of the WGA-West, and Michele Combs of the Christian Coalition. And Justine Bateman, aka Jason's sister, aka Mallory Keaton. What is Ms. Bateman's interest and/or expertise in the Net Neutrality debate? "I have acted in many projects, from TV’s 'Family......

Those of you who rarely use your cell phones while driving need not take too much notice of the following announcement (oh, and p.s.? Thanks for being better than other people). For those of you, however, who insist on multi-tasking throughout your driving experience, watch out: that phone call you're making while wending your way down the 101 might just get you pulled over and fined, fined, fined. The CHP just released a press......

Photo by Peggy Archer via Flickr On Friday, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) launched their new website, which is a vast improvement to what they had before. And while the site is repackaged with a much nicer visual design and an easier to find live traffic conditions page (super useful, check it out), it's still missing two important components that should be built in the near future: A guide/FAQ to parking questions.......

Our photo storage/sharing network of choice, Flickr, is finally offering a video component. In other words, Flickr will store, stream, and enable the embedding of any kind of content that can be produced by a basic digital camera (now that most shoot moving as well as still pictures). A Flickr Pro account is required to upload video, which at $25/year was already necessary to upload more than 100mb of photos each month. Also, at......

Photo by Zach Behrens/LAist Soul Vegetarian opened up last summer in the nightclub space, but quickly closed a couple months ago. Not to fear, however, Jewel, who owns the building, continued the short lived soul food vegan restaurant near the corner of Pico and Crenshaw. "I've been a vegan for twenty-some years," she said, "and it was a dream of mine to open up a vegan restaurant." Soul Vegetarian (not to be confused with......

From everyone at LAist and in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, congrats! | Photo by discarted via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr While the Pulitzer Prize announcements yesterday gave nothing to the LA Times and as the LA Weekly noted, this year marked the first time since 2006 that the Weekly didn't win a Pulitzer, effectively ending their current streak (at one), the Webby Awards were announced today and with locals nominated. Epic-Fu --......

You may have seen this ad-mural go up at Melrose & Fairfax. It's part of clothing company 55DSL's viral-ad-whatever-the-fuck-it-is campaign to get people applying for a new job opportunity. The job: travel around the world in 55DSL clothes, or, as they say, "roam the earth and find all that is good and pure and kick ass." The application: a video application 1:55 seconds long. But if you plan on staying on planet Los Angeles......

We caught up with Mahalo Daily host/producer Veronica Belmont at Community Next over the weekend to discuss her daily (weekdays) video podcast for Santa Monica-based Mahalo. Veronica discussed her sci-fi affliction, World of Warcraft habit, and LA vs. SF. We also coined the term "puppy roll," a unique variation on the Rick roll featuring the Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis' bulldogs. What will Veronica get up to next?......

Calling all entrepreneurs, tech startups, and developers -- are you ready to pitch? Venture capitalists, industry execs and investors -- want to swim along with the sharks? Tonight, Dealmaker Media hosts its premiere Dealmaker LA event and it's not going to be just another cocktail party, according to Dealmaker CEO Debbie Landa. Dealmaker has been active in the Bay Area since 2000, bringing together start-up entrepreneurs with VC's and major executives with impressive results.......

Photo by discarted via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr After the Daily News' story on the Culver City based RateMyCop.com, the LA Times comes out with an editorial opinion on the site when talking about the hypocrisies of police accountability. "Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton tends to honor it in the breach -- he proclaims the department accountable, then decries those who scrutinize its work," the opinion with no author reads. "Critics......

Photo by discarted via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr Today, the Daily News looks into one of the internet's latest fascinations -- RateMyCop.com, a site, which happens to be based locally in Culver City, that gives people the opportunity to review an officer they've had an interaction with. Of course, concerns over officer safety and privacy are at the top of the opponents' lists to the site. "Law enforcement should never be trivialized, and......

So what DOES Rick Astley think of his accidental role as star of the viral Internet prank that keeps on never giving up? Despite rumors of a possible Super Bowl halftime appearance and the pining of journalists and geeks around the world, the Rick behind the Rickroll has remained mum. Or perhaps nobody bothered to call his management. But in a breakout week for the Rickroll that included a nod from the Gray Lady, David......

Students these days are so lazy...Instead of taking it to the streets like their parents' generation and brandishing signs and making noise they're opting to stay inside, chained to their computers. Except sometimes they discover that the medium is what makes the message, and in the SGV right now students who want the Gold Line extended to Montclair have found that their campaign is positively viral. Students have created a website called I Will Ride......

Today, the Wall Street Journal's blog, Buzzwatch, pointed readers over to a local graphic designer named Bobby S., who runs a blog called Kitsune Noir. "Ummm… I’m In The Wall Street Journal," he wrote earlier today. "File this post under un-fucking-believable." Earlier this month, Bobby started The Desktop Wallpaper Project, a weekly release of one free downloadable desktop wallpaper every Wednesday morning. Every week features a guest artist and each wallpaper is available in multiple......

One commenter on Digg asked "Was that jesus?" | Filmed by Zach Behrens/LAist At last Saturday's Anonymous protest in Hollywood, LAist took this above video. Before we could even got a chance to post it on LAist late Saturday afternoon, it had already been found on YouTube and dugg on Digg.com, garnering over 12,000 diggs under an appropriately written headline, "This is how police SHOULD react to protesters." It has not even been 48......

This is where Digg got its start | Use the Google map to zoom in and play! 17 million people get their news monthly via Digg.com, a powerhouse social news site where the readers vote, ahem, digg, on stories, eventually pushing the popular and important ones to the homepage. And in 2004, it all started here in Los Angeles in the Westside neighborhood of Mar Vista according to a CNN Money Business 2.0 report. Digg......

As reports and tweets comes out of of SXSW in Austin, TX where BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy reportedly held a disastrous interview with 23-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, news of the popular social networking site with more of a national and local business twist hit the wires: Paramount will offer movie clips via a Facebook application, a first for the movie industry....

Attentive BarCampers at Dan Kaminsky's Ask a Hacker session. Attendees range in age from 18 months (her 2nd BarCamp) to so old we're afraid to ask | photo by pinguino The twice-yearly, geek-tastic unconference for technologists, gamers, industry-folk, and Internet lovers of all stripes is again upon us. BarCampLA is in its fifth iteration and thanks to a collaborative effort fronted by Jason Cosper and Crystal Williams (and dozens of sponsors), it's shaping up......

Four Los Angeles area schools went into lockdown yesterday, the one thought to have the most potential danger in Pasadena at Blair International Baccalaureate Magnet School. An early morning report by a student saying someone had a gun prompted a lockdown that lasted throughout the day. Later in the day, police detained one male juvenile for questioning, but no further details have been released. The Pasadena Star News reported students inside the school "got on......

Drinks with Digital LA tonight at Bodega Bar in Santa Monica (and yes, this is not the Bodega bar) / Photo by C-Monster via LAist's photo pool. FILM I am so scaaared. Writer/director Eli Roth (Hostel) continues his reign at the New Beverly in “The Greats of Roth” series. Tonight, he’s screening the double-feature of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980), an earlier film that deals with a missing documentary film......

Don't try this at home -- or at the Civic Center Metro Station. / Photo by puck90 via LAist's flickr pool. TRANSIT TALK Metro is studying alternatives for connecting the Gold, Blue and Expo lines through downtown Los Angeles. This study will examine linking the future Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension (near the Little Tokyo/Arts District Station) and the 7th Street/Metro Center Station. Tonight Metro will update the public on the project and allow......

Sony's Blu-ray high definition video disc won a contentious, expensive, and possibly over-hyped video format war reminiscent of the VHS v. Beta battles of yore. The "battle" for dominance of the next-generation DVD market was determined over past few weeks as major studios and big box retailers sided with Sony's Blu-ray, essentially shutting Toshiba's HD-DVD format out of the market. But who really wins here? The studios and retailers manage to force consumers to go......

Scientology centers around the world were targeted by a mass protest yesterday organized by an anonymous group called, simply enough, "Anonymous". Members refer to themselves only as "Anon" or "Legion". Protests were reported in Boston, Toronto, Europe and Australia. Here is an LAist photo essay of the protest at the Celebrity Center. Blogger Bandergrove has provided additional photographs and a first-hand account of the events in Hollywood yesterday. People showed up in droves —......

'V' ran amok through the streets of Hollywood today as hundreds of picketers descended on the Church of Scientology complex at Sunset and L. Ron Hubbard Way. | All photos by Tony Pierce The global day of action was initially announced last month after a video attributed to "Anonymous" coincided with an online effort that managed to temporarily knock out Internet servers belonging to the Church of Scientology. Another speech by "Anonymous" appeared this......

As we reported earlier, the two-month Writers Guild of America strike is nearly over. WGA-East members voted heard about the proposal earlier and West members weighed in at 7 p.m. Some are already questioning the deal, but most expressed relief that the work stoppage is about to come to an end. Stay tuned to LAist for excellent coverage. A man was shot this morning in North Hollywood by an alleged gang member who approached......