Denver News Blog

​What writer wouldn't want to cover the Olympics? The glitz, the glamor and the high-profile nature of the gig are just about irresistible, regardless of your feelings about winter sports. I mean, I'd jump at the opportunity, and I couldn't care less about skiing, skating and curling. Well, curling's kind of cool -- something about a man with a broom on ice is just special...

But for local blogger Amber Johnson, editor of the Denver Post's Mile High Mamas, covering the Olympics is something of a lifelong dream. Johnson's a winter-sports enthusiast and former adventure-travel writer and ski publicist. Now she's one of five finalists nationwide to cover the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver on Microsoft's dime. And for her, it's a second chance to live the dream, after her first shot got caught up in traffic, as she explained on her blog:

​The holiday season is in full swing, and even Denver's monthly Tweetup is getting in on the action.

The November meeting of the Twitter faithful is pairing up with the Denver Santa Claus Shop for the latest event, to help ensure a merry Christmas (or other culturally appropriate winter holiday) for less privileged families. The organizers behind this particular event are going all out: In addition to the usual Tweetup activities of cheap drinks and cheaper socializing, this one also has an embedded Geeks Who Drink quiz, Stranahan's distillery tours and more. In other words, there's probably never been a better time to go to your first tweetup, or to start going again.

DJ Hero

​Denverite Brian Crecente is sort of the Rupert Murdoch of video games. As the editor-in-chief of the influential video game blog Kotaku, Crecente, a former Rocky Mountain News scribe, was recently named of the twenty most influential people in the video-game industry by GamePro magazine.

Crecente has decided to put that power to good use. Case in point: Kotaku's holding its annual video-game fundraiser tonight at 6 p.m. at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom, 2637 Welton Street, to raise money for Child's Play, a game-industry charity that provides toys and games to children in hospitals.

​Back again in our old "three Twits to follow" form for a special Holiday prep edition to get your burgeoning Twitter feed feeding you stuff you can use as the holiday season descends. As always, follow us at @denverwestword, @cafewestword, @westword_music and @casciato.

@Colorado_Moms: If it's your first holiday away from your family, this could come in handy. Technically, it's supposed to be a resource for new moms, and I am sure it is great for that. But it's kind of like having a handy mom surrogate on Twitter! They've already been tweeting links on how to make your own holiday decorations and deal with holiday weight gain, which are pretty Mom-type things to tweet about. So follow them, unless your own mom is already on Twitter supplying advice on decorating and nagging you about not gorging on turkey.

I want you... to make me a movie. Here's some money...

​Downloading of movies, music and other digital media has the entertainment industry in an uproar. All of a sudden, they're afraid those multimillion dollar budgets aren't going to be recouped, and they have families to feed! Okay, they have coke habits to feed, but same difference, right?

Despite a few indies here and there that have managed to see the bright side of downloads, you have entertainment moguls trying to rewrite the law so they can cut off the Internet service of anyone they suspect of downloading, and maybe throw them in jail to boot. Clearly, this is like curing a sore throat by cutting it (see, doesn't hurt anymore!) -- and the kind of enforcement that would be required to curtail downloading would make the war on drugs look like Sunday picnic.

But making movies is an expensive proposition, and they've got to be funded somehow (if we're going to continue to have movies, anyway). So here are five suggestions on how to do that.

​This weekend, INK, a movie shot locally for $250,000 and self-distributed by Double Edge Films, was uploaded to various torrent servers such as the Pirate Bay. In just a few days, the movie has been downloaded nearly half a million times. By Hollywood's calculations, this is a massive loss of revenue and a tragedy. But for the producers of INK, it's been a blessing. In the course of three days, the movie has experienced an 83,000 percent increase in popularity on the Internet Movie Database and driven hundreds of visitors to their site, where they've wisely set up a means for illegal downloaders who enjoyed the film to donate. We talked to producer Kiowa Winans to get her take on the experience and how it will affect the film -- and possibly her future films.

​Our featured Twit this time out was one of the few who drew several nominations from people other than himself -- he's really quite popular.

(Granted, he did nominate himself, because, like everyone on Twitter, he likes to self promote).

You can find him on Twitter as artbyNemo, and, it turns out, he's quite a talented artist as well. Read why you should follow him, and learn how you can not only see his artwork, but influence it in 140-character bursts, after the jump...

​It would take some sort of rocket scientist to create a model of advertising that doesn't suck. No coincidence, then, that Roger Toennis used to work on projects such as the autonomous lunar rover, Titan 4 rockets and air-to-air missiles before creating Loyal2.me, a product that promises to actually make advertising not only a useful, but even an enjoyable experience.

The basic idea is remarkably simple yet revolutionary: put the consumer in control of the marketing. "Marketing now is non-personal and not very timely," Toennis explains. "That is really not working anymore, especially with the younger generation. The eighteen-to-thirty demographic is used to ignoring everything on the web they're not interested in." And it's been well-received thus far: At the last minute, Toennis decided to show Loyal2.me at the DaVinci Institute's recent Colorado Inventor's Showcase -- and it won the show's award for Best New Software product.

​Facebook, we need to talk about our relationship. But don't freak out -- I'm not dumping you. Yet.

Look, I like you. I really do. I mean, when we first met, I was really into you. You were so much less gaudy and stupid than MySpace. You helped me get in touch with at least a dozen friends I had lost contact with. And you had some nifty features that I really enjoyed. But now, the magic has faded. You're still useful, but newer, simpler services like Twitter have taken your place in my heart. And I know it's not fair to ask you to change, but screw it. Here are five changes you need to make to keep me.

One woman got props from Punky Brewster via Twitter!

​This week we decided to go a little meta with our Twitter poll.

See, we know what Twitter has done for us (shameless self-promotion, convinced us that we needn't put on pants to "socialize" with strangers, taught us to think in 140-character bursts). But we decided to use it to ask you fine people what value you've gotten out of the service. So we did. And a dozen of you answered the tweeted call.

Read the responses after the jump.

​When we heard recently that Walmart has begun selling coffins online, our first reaction was stupefied disbelief. Really, Walmart? Coffins? Online? Aren't there some things that just shouldn't be sold online? Well, of course there are. But that doesn't mean they aren't sold online anyway.

We put our crack research team (i.e., me) on an intensive search (i.e., an hour running the craziest Google searches I could come up with) to see what other weird shit we could find online. Here's five things you definitely shouldn't be able to buy online, but totally can.

Photo by Chuck Iversen

​This week, we've decided to select a favorite Twit from among the masses and press him to justify his following. Our selection is @CacheFlowe (aka Justin Gitlin), a local musician/artist/technical whiz-kid with a hand in many a music and/or art project around town. Plus, if you like your men nerdy, he's real dreamy, or so we've been told by a couple women we know who do like their men nerdy -- which, of course, is why they were talking to us. After the jump, get to know CacheFlowe in 140-character bursts...

Still no flying car, but I've got something better

​All too often, people get so hung up on the fantastic future we didn't get that they can't focus on the even-crazier one we did. You know the complaints: "Where's my flying car? Why can't I live forever? When do I get to visit the moon?" But flying cars are the worst idea ever (most people can't drive a car in two dimensions, you want to add a third?), immortality means you'd be stuck with the same people you already hate for eternity and space is cold, empty and, really, pretty goddamn boring. Besides, today is way cooler than we ever imagined.

Don't believe it? These five reasons should convince you. And if not, keep holding out for that flying car...

We hope we can find a party this cool...

​Halloween is rapidly approaching and we're already a-quiver with excitement. Next to New Year's Eve, Halloween is probably the biggest excuse of the year for adults to go out and act foolish and immature -- good times! We can't wait to see the parade of sexy witches, sexy vampires, sexy cops and other distressingly unimaginative costumes with the word sexy prefacing them. More to the point, we wanted to know what you would be doing while dressed in those sexy whatever costumes, so we asked, via Twitter. And you answered...

heyzap.com - embed games Well, that didn't take long, did it? Balloon Boy went from riveting story to Internet meme in no time at all -- and now it's reached the last, best level of all: video game. You, too, can waste taxpayer dollars in the fantasy realm, and your employer's time in real life (double bonus if your employer is the government and you are wasting tax dollars in-game AND in-life!), as you soar through the skies shooting birds, collecting time-extensions, dodging obstacles and otherwise acting like a Falcon Heene who actually got off the ground. As a game, it's only moderately entertaining, but as a yardstick for our cultural fascination with this story, it's pure awesome. Beats a TV movie-of-the-week any day.

Does your icon look like this? We're done.

​Look, it's time for us to talk. We've been following you for a while now, and it's just not working out. We're going to have to dump you. It's not you, it's us.

Okay, that's a lie. It's you.

See, like all too many a new Twitter user, when we started this great social-media adventure, we were eagerly clicking the follow button on any anme we recognized and any account that followed us. In our youthful naivete, we ended up with a follow list full of spammers, scammers and old-fashioned idiots. So now it's time to clean house. Here's a list of the six types of Twits we'll be dumping. May they never darken our feed again!

​If you need to scratch your nerd itch tonight, Ignite Denver 5, at Casselman's, 2620 Walnut Street, starting at 7 p.m., would be a fine place to do it. If you aren't familiar with the Ignite concept, it challenges a ragtag bunch of "experts" to present their expertise in five minutes, using twenty slides that rotate every fifteen seconds. It's fast, it's rowdy and it should be quite fun -- especially if you're not one of the poor bastards on stage presenting. "Come meet people, learn something new about something you might never have even thought about. That's what Ignite is all about," explains organizer Jeff WIlker. "Ignite's motto, more or less, is 'Enlighten us, but be quick.'"

David Thomas shows off the Nintendo Airstream

​I got an intriguing e-mail yesterday from my buddy David Thomas, a local syndicated videogame columnist and professional contemplator of all things related to joysticks. "I am meeting the Nintendo van tomorrow at 1 if you want to come along," he wrote cryptically.

I'm not a big videogame player, but the idea of visiting some magical wheeled contraption full of pixelated goodness sounded too good to pass up. That's how I ended up in a downtown parking lot today with Thomas, knocking on the door of a long, unmarked Airstream trailer, ready to get my Nintendo on.

Mr. Cargo

​Last week, we asked actual twits why we should follow them. We received many amusing responses from lots of people, including an unreasonable amount from one Mr. Cargo (@defconqueso) who gets th enod this week for both his dogged persistence in winning us over, and the fact he's actually a pretty funny guy. Find out what he tweeted to sell us, and more about the man behind the tweets -- all in 140-character bursts, after the jump.

​Colorado State grad student Greg Schroll has taken the idea of the spherical robot -- basically a robot contained in a ball, as seen above -- and made it a reality. Well, not quite a reality, but close enough for Schroll to be named one of Popular Mechanics' 10 Most Brilliant Innovators of 2009.

"What I have is a concept prototype." Schroll says. "My hope is that what I created can someday be deployed in a real situation, but there is still a lot of work to do."

​Want to know why the police are congregating outside the house down the block? Chances are that if you wander down there and ask, they'll just growl at you to head home and not to worry about it. But get online and ask Lieutenant Matthew Murray via Twitter. He says he will be glad to tell you what's going on -- if he hasn't already tweeted about it. "I try to answer those kind of questions as fast I can," he says. "I don't want them just hanging out there."

click to enlarge

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Move over swine flu, the latest epidemic to hit Denver is an outbreak of ghosts. Granted, most are made of rags, have tissue for brains and dangle from the low-hanging branches of maple trees, but the photo above proves that more mischievous spirits do exist. Yes, ghosts must be real, because why else would someone take a perfectly serviceable late-model automobile and doll it up with fake ghostbusters paraphernalia?

And you can tell that this a dead serious ghostbuster. Look at that perfect parking job, with the front wheels angled toward the curb to prevent accidental rolling, as per the driver's training manual. Be prepared for an infectiously frightening Halloween this year.

Lauren Cook.

​This week, we asked actual twits why we should follow them. And among the many, many amusing responses we got, the tweet by Lauren Cook (@laurencook) took the prize for its timely nods to two great figures in western history. Find out what she tweeted to sell us, as well as what she tweets regularly about and why -- all in 140-character bursts, after the jump.

The Internet and booze: separated at birth?

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At first glance, the Internet and booze may not seem all that similar. One is a powerful psychoactive drug and delightful beverage, the other is an information superhighway. One comes in a bottle; the other a series of tubes. And I am pretty sure the Internet doesn't give you hangovers no matter how hard you go at it, whereas I am still feeling last night's beers at lunchtime today, and not in a good way. But despite these significant differences, once you dig a little deeper it becomes apparent how shockingly similar the two really are. Let me break it down into five reasons for you.

​This Friday, October 2 marks the launch of boco, a one-day conference in Boulder that combines food, music and tech. Featuring panels with names such as "Handheld Awesome Detectors" to "Autotune your brand?," plus speakers that include everyone from an artisan chocolate maker to a "cyborg anthropolog[ist]" and hosted happy hours and dinners, the event promises to be unique.

Over the course of a day, attendees will participate in discussions and panels on the future of tech, food and music with local and national experts. That diversity in focus may seem a little schizophrenic, but organizer Ef Rodriguez feels it actually makes perfect sense, since the conference is a reflection of Boulder itself. "We didn't want to limit ourselves to just technology. Boulder has way more going for it than tech," he explains. "Some of our favorite startups delve into food and music, in addition to tech. So we wanted to spotlight that spirit."

"So, do you all love me yet, or what?"

​We've been doing the Twitter Tuesday thing long enough to fill your feed up with some interesting Twits -- so we've decided to open things up a bit and have some fun. We're harnessing the power of the Internet's latest and greatest darling to answer the big questions in life, starting with the hottest question in Denver: Has the Broncos 3-0 start sold you on Coach McDaniels, or are you still on the fence? Plenty of professional sports yakkers are already crying "Sold!" -- but what say you, Twitter-people?

More Twitter-tots and less Facebook-fingers, please

​You want to know what the next social media service that will be eating all of your time will be? All of them. Or rather, all of them that you want, in whatever proportions you like.

Recently, Twitter announced a couple of big integrations -- one with MySpace and another a few days later with AOL. And Facebook bought FriendFeed while simultaneously copying Twitter features. So where is all of this headed? Let me put on my prognostication goggles (they look a lot like my regular glasses, mind you) and tell you.

The crime map's most colorful quadrant for the week ending September 18.

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Among the more intriguing and/or disturbing features on the City of Boulder's web site is a crime map feature that allows residents and other curious Internet surfers to see precisely where a variety of offenses have occurred throughout the community in a given week -- in today's case, the one ending September 18. Click on the "Aggravated Assault" button, for instance, and five aquamarine dots pop up. Likewise, three bright-red circles appear upon clicking "Sex Crime," six green ones represent "Residential Burglaries," and 21 purple orbs stand for "Vandalism." In all, 47 incidents took place in eight categories during the most recent week, most of them massed around the area of The Hill. It's a fascinating and useful tool, as well as a fine argument for investing in some pepper spray.

How can you have a circus without elephants?

​It doesn't get the same kind of attention hot social-media darlings such as Twitter and Facebook garner these days, but Craigslist is still a pretty decent social network -- especially if you enjoy the WTF side of life, as I do. Everyone knows about the classic "Best of Craigslist" section, where the weirdest, wildest and most likely fakest ads live. But personally, I enjoy perusing the "Activities" section. It's not only a good place to advertise your Aquarium Society get-together; it's also where people without friends (or with really, really lame friends, I guess) go to find workout buddies and, uh people to teach them how to hunt. And occasionally you get something really interesting, like this ad looking for "circus folk."

Wouldn't you like to see Boulder's mall crawl like this again?

​Today, former Westword fellow Melanie Asmar, now writing for the Colorado Daily, brings us a story whose time has come -- an attempt to bring back the Boulder Mall Crawl, a Halloween bash on the city's Pearl Street Mall that proudly celebrated revelry and goofiness until being shut down in 1991. A line Asmar quotes from a 1986 Daily Camera story about the event -- "An 8-foot-tall green Gumby chats with a yellow and black bumble bee, and two underworld psychedelic reptiles sneer at a Heineken Beer umbrella as snow dampens the ground" -- tells you all you need to know about why it's past time for a Mall Crawl return.

The men behind the notion are Jonathan Sackheim and Ryan Van Duzer, who share their vision on a Facebook page that invites visitors to pledge their support. Look below to read their manifesto of fun: