We actually woke up at a sane hour today… If you call 2:30 pm a sane hour. Aki and I decided to venture put and explore, we started with the Alexanderplatz and took the U-Bahn (underground train) from there in a few different areas. Eventually we found ourselves resting in a park by the German history museum. In this area there were a ton of photo opportunities and many historic buildings, which of course I know nothing about. From there we walked west towards the setting sun and on to the Brandenburg Gate. As we got there the sub was hiring it perfectly and I was able to take some phenomenal pictures that really excited me. Also by the gate where a group of protestors putting on a hunger strike. All of their signs and fliers were in German so we were unable to follow their message. Aki pushed further until we found one of the representatives who spoke English.

He told us of a group of Iranian exiles living in Iraq who previously were recieving protection from the American government in Iraq, but as the turnover of power has progressed they have found themselves at the mercy of the an Iraqi government increasingly bowing to Iranian pressure to turn them over. This to them means certain doom. I haven’t had time to read over the necessary info as of yet but it sounds pretty legit. These people and their supporters hunger striking for the same protection from the Iraqi government that they recieved from the Americans. Interesting to say the least and not the kind of thing you find out about in the US. More info can be found at http://www.ncr-iran.org. Please take this with caution, this is not an endorsement or a reccomendation at this point, merely linked for curiousity. I have not been to the site myself yet.

So if you read my Twitter account today you might know that 78 is without internet at the moment and this post has been delayed because of it. Well I am writing this from Fischladen (translates to Fish Store but it’s bar that Mouse works at… no they don’t serve fish.) we managed to get in tonight to use the internet with Mouse’s keys. We’ve set up my MacBook Air as an ad-hoc wireless network so that Aki and I can both do our respective work. We are hoping the situation is remedied tomorrow.

We went to a party at another collective tonight, 84 Boxhagnerstraße, not much to discuss, biers were drank, franks were eaten, jokes were told & good times were had. I met some good people who hopefully will remember me next June when I plan to return. Anyway, I’m going to go, I’m being rude, the three of us are sitting in Fischladen drinking Tyskie and Vanessa just arrived to hang out with us. Tschüss!

Today was simple but great. We didn’t get to bed last night until 5 am and I didn’t get up till 5 pm. We went to the park again and made dinner (pizza and ramen… awesome.) We are now sitting around Mouse’s place drinking and watching Battlestar Galactica. (Germans love Battlestar Galactica… well at least ex-pats do).

Tonight we’re going to meet up with some people for a party and hopefully stay out till dawn again. I’m hoping to get on the roof and catch some shots of the sunrise.

I am posting a few more shots today as well, including Mouse’s room at 78 and a few more from the park. I’m going to try and document 78 a little more in the coming days.

For those reading this and finding it uneventful… you’re right, but this is exactly how we wanted today, I haven’t been this relaxed in ages.

We arrived in Berlin at around 9 am and luckily Mouse found us almost immediately. We traveled around a bit and attempted to find a SIM card to use in the unlocked iPhone I acquired before leaving. Turns about it’s just about impossible to get a prepaid data plan that will work with the iPhone, so it looks like I might be forced to use AT&T’s exorbitant rates.

The place we are staying at is pretty awesome. “78″ is a legally owned collective house with approximately 50 inhabitants. Each tenant seems to take pride in their home and respects eachother, that said the place is this beautiful mix of disaster and work in progress. Every corner screams potential.

After an extended nap we head over to Forki park, rested and conversed with Mouse’s friends. Finally we got ahold of Tex and agreed to meet up at the Alexanderplatz. Here I ventured off to take some pictures and eventually met up with Tex and his girlfriend Porsche.

From there we grabbed a taxi and went to dinner. After dinner we went out bar hopping. Tex being the local that he is took us to a few of his favorite watering holes including a few bars that he played at with his old band The Roughnecks. Aki and Porsche got along famously and a good time was had by all.

Check out the my Flickr page for more images from today. More tomorrow.

so far we’ve been flying almost 4 hours. (But of course this won’t be posted until after we land.) It’s 8:48 pm Chicago time which makes it 3:48 am Berlin time.

The flight thus far has been excellent. I am very impressed with Lufthansa (aside from them not letting Aki smoke her e-cig.) All of the seats have monitors built in with movies on demand. I started off by watching “I Love You Man” which was actually pretty good, after that I opted to watch Star Trek… in German. I gave up about halfway through though. I took 3 years of German in high school and parts are coming back to me but sadly most of it has been forgotten.

Not a lot on the agenda for when we land but lots of ideas. My co-worker, Tex (a native Berliner) is going to be in town coincidentally at the same time, so we are meeting up with him in the evening for a bier. Should be fun. Aki and I have already discussed the possibilty of taking a train to Munich for a day. I’m really excited at the possibility, I was in Munich once before shortly in high school and would love to go back.

If we do hit Munich we plan on stopping at the Apple Store while there as well. I brought a spare shirt from work. I’m hoping I can convince an employee to trade me a German one for it.

Already missing friends at home but really excited at what lies ahead. Can’t wait to start taking pictures!

I have to make this quick as I’m about to hit the road to O’Hare. For the next week I’ll be in Berlin, followed by a 26 hour layover in Paris before returning home. The sole purpose of this excursion for me is to take pictures and get exposure to different culture.  I will be traveling with one of my oldest and dearest friends, miss Aki Braun and we will be spending our time in Berlin living in a collective house with her brother Mouse and his associates.

I will be leaving Berlin earlier than Aki however for my trip to France on the 28th. I arrive in Paris at 9am and I am there until 11 the next morning. I have no place to stay, no contacts in Paris and I don’t speak a word of the native tongue. My hope is to connect with some expatriates in Berlin who, in turn, can connect me with some in France.

Of course i will be chronicling all of this on my twitter and flickr pages.

Gotta run, see you soon!

Hey friends, sorry it’s been a while since I’ve updated routinely. Back in December my apartment got robbed and it’s taken me until just now to finally replace everything. Unfortunately this has prevented me from having access to my full Aperture library for some time and has made doing photo work a chore.

Hopefully now this will be a thing of the past, I just got a brand new iMac and I’ve been reunited with my library and workflow. I’ve gone ahead and posted a bunch of new photos on my Flickr account and plan to post many more in the coming days.

So what have I been up to in the last few months? Well…

In March I went to Austin for the South By Southwest Interactive conference with a bunch of friends, had a blast, learned a ton and made lots of new contacts.

In April I took a trip home to visit friends and family, while there I caught the opening of the new Yankee Stadium.

A few weeks ago I went to the Chicago Red Stars home opener with the Chicago Local 134 in support of the team and my friend CEO Peter Wilt.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go with Aki and Mark to play “Journey To The End of The Night”, a city wide street game akin to manhunt/tag/hide and go seek.

I’ve also taken over PR / Marketing and Brand Identity for Long Pork and we’re having a blast with it. Right now we’ve got a show running every Saturday at the Apollo Studio Theater at 8pm through the 23rd. You should check us out.

Some of my photography is now part of a local collective called NMA Artists an unofficial group of artists, writers and photographers who happen to work at a certain major retail store on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Lastly I’ve had the pleasure of consulting on the Chicago Tribune’s new ChicagoNow project. I can’t wait for the site to launch, it’s going to be big.

That’s all for now, life is pretty good, I hope to get the chance to update more often. Thanks for reading!

A few weeks ago I was in Austin, TX for the South By Southwest Interactive conference. While there, through word of mouth I heard about FourSquare.

FourSquare is a new service for smartphone users from the creators of Dodgeball, a startup purchased and then shelved by Google. FourSquare utilizes your phone’s GPS to “Check in” to different places you go, see where your friends are and allows you to “Shout” status updates to your friends. On the surface it seems similar to other “location status” services such as Brightkite or Loopt. However FourSquare goes a different route than it’s competitors, it emphasizes the social potential of location status by turning it into a game.

I was, at one point a big promoter of Brightkite. While there are functions of the service I did like, I’ve started to question more and more why I used it. I started to qeustion: “Who cares that I’ve checked in to my apartment?” “Do I really want people knowing where my apartment is?” If I am going to restrict visibility of my location – why am I even using this service to begin with?” The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a really useful way for someone to stalk me and not much more.

FourSquare takes a different approach, it focuses on bars, clubs and restaurants rather than just arbitrary check ins to every location. It’s intention is to connect you and your friends in a nightlife setting.

Although I’ve been using it since SXSW it wasn’t until this weekend, on a trip visiting NYC, that I really saw the potential of FourSquare. The service awards your “check ins” a variety of ways. For each check in you earn points, and you get bonus points for doing things like hitting multiple locations in one night. You can also unlock badges, (yes, like in Boy / Girl Scouts) for accomplishing an objective, similar to many video games. Lastly, by checking into a location on multiple occasions you can become it’s “Mayor” if you’re there more often then someone else. Each city has it’s own set of badges and Mayors (There are currently 12 supported US cities.)

My FourSquare activity tells an amusing story about my trip to NY. According to Foursquare: I got “Crunked” on Thursday night bar hopping through Brooklyn, earned extra points meeting up with my friend Tom (who saw where I was via FourSquare and proposed we meet up) and went on a 4 day “Bender” which culminated in me becoming the “Mayor” of the Coyote Ugly Saloon Saturday night. Hopefully you can see why I’m enjoying this.

Something I’m really enjoying is the ability to build to-do lists of things / places you want to hit and view local to-dos that other users have posted. This allows for someone to craft their own adventures and come up with creative experiences. There is also a weekly leader board that lets you see who in your area is really partying it up and where you rank.

The end result is a service that feels like a giant mobile web scavenger hunt that encourages users to challenge each-other and compete.

The service is not without flaws though: Many bars and restaurants don’t show up in the listings, the there are many quirks to the website and application itself. IT’s creators have acknowledged that he service is still very much in development and honestly, it sometimes feels like a very public beta. They’ve reportedly set themselves a June 1st deadline to iron out the kinks and get it working the way they want. Even taking all that into consideration, the service is very functional and ver impressive.

Some things I’d like to see in future revisions:

• More visibility to user profiles and todo lists: I’d really like to discover new people to connect to, right now there are few days to do this. I wish profiles listed a clearer stream of what I did, when I did it and what rewards my actions earned me.  In 6 months I’d like to know which 4 bars I went to to unlock the “Crunked” badge.
• Less walls between cities. It’s strange that on the website I need to switch a drop down to see different sets of information for different cities. I’d like the ability to see everything at once and also see my local updates. The walls are weird. They discourage people from being friends cross-city. My friend Frank has an account but I’ll likely never see what he’s up to unless I switch my location to where he is. Sure local users should be prioritized, but just because I can’t get to Washington to meet up with Frank tonight doesn’t mean I don’t care.
• Badges also suffer due to these walls. I like the idea of having different goals in different cities but it seems silly that I’ve now earned the “Newbie” badge a few times and that I have to go our 4 nights in a row again to earn the “Bender” badge in Chicago because the one I earned was in NY. Perhaps there should be global badges and specialized local badges?

These are just my .02 cents. I’m excited to continue using FourSquare and to see where the service goes in the future, it’s genuinely a lot of fun. I recommend checking it out via their website: playfoursquare.com. There is an iPhone application available via the App Store and a mobile browser optimized version of the site available for Android and Blackberry users for now.

My friends, submitted for your approval on this fine New Years Day is a pamphlet found in the attic of my parent’s house.

What you see is just part of a piece of 1950’s Cold War propaganda in the vein of such nonsense as “Duck and Cover,” This particular piece was produced by New York state in association with Time Inc.’s Life Magazine as a civil service and is bound by no copyright. A pamphlet like this one would have been distributed to help individuals prepare for “The Bomb” which at that point many felt was inevitable. Nevermind the fact that in an actual atomic blast these methods would do very little, if anything, to save one’s life. They both created and eased fear among the populous while fostering dependency and loyalty to the government.

To me it’s an amazing piece of American history both from a psychological and a design standpoint.  My grandfather was a chemist and member of the Nassau Country Civil Defense Commission and near as I can tell this was his, there may be more. If I come across anything else I’ll post it as well.

Enjoy.

Today I put the wraps on a project that has been ongoing for about a year now. While the delays on both ends were frustrating I’m very proud to announce that I have completed my work on the new SinnermanEnsemble.org website.

For those unfamiliar with Sinnerman, they are an amazingly talented up and coming theater group here in Chicago. Their performances of The Incredibly Famous Willy Rivers and most recently their production of their original piece Sweet Confinement have both been met with huge success and critical acclaim.

I am proud to have worked with them and to finally be able to launch this site.

It’s worth noting that the group has plans to do some exciting things with social media that I don’t think any other theater companies have tapped into yet. Including a Twitter Account and a Flickr page.

Stay tuned to Sinnerman’s blog for more info. They have a new show planned for March with a working title of “Bible B-Sides” that will run from March 23rd 2009-April 25th 2009 at the Viaduct Theater. I wish them all the luck in the world.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been busy with a lot of little projects that I’ll share more about very soon, but I wanted to post a word about this right now:

A few weeks back I started a Podcast with my friends Brad and Ashley; it’s called Shotspan. The basic idea is that it is a podcast drinking game, we have a PDF of terms and we read weird news stories, if any of the stories match the terms we do a shot. We have a different guest each episode and it’s a lot of fun.

Episodes 1 and 2 are now online and have had a good reaction thus far. Do us a favor and check us out on iTunes and hit ‘Subscribe’. Just a warning though.. might not be safe for work.

Thanks!