Dave Schumaker

I've been having a lot of fun with Hipstamatic's new update (which includes Instagram integration).

It's almost time for baseball to start! I can't wait. (Photo taken from the outside of right field at AT&T Park.)

According to Goodreads, books about dystopian societies are as popular as they've ever been in at least 50 years. Apparently, the popularity of books with dystopian themes correlate fairly well to times of strife and conflict.

Dystopian fiction is more popular than it has been in more than 50 years. Whether it's the result of political turmoil, global financial crises, or other anxieties, readers are craving books about ruthless governments and terrifying worlds. The new breed of dystopian novels combines classic dystopian themes of cruel governments and violent, restrictive worlds with a few new twists—badass heroines and romance.

Click through to Goodreads to check out the rest of the chart.

The view from BART after leaving the transbay tube.

This is especially apt, since Kerry and I just started watching "Game of Thrones" this weekend. Over at PandoDaily, MG Siegler writes, "Help! I’m being forced to pirate Game of Thrones against my will!", explaining how he can't legally watch the latest season of HBO's new show.

The problem is that I’m not an HBO subscriber. Believe me, given the quality of their programming, I would love to be. Unfortunately, it’s absolutely impossible to subscribe to HBO unless you also subscribe to cable (and/or satellite television). You cannot give HBO your money directly. They will not accept it. They are fully in bed with the cable companies and are not going to get out of that bed anytime soon, because of what they get paid to perform their unnatural acts in that bed. A lot of money.

My only option to watch this upcoming seasons of “Game of Thrones” legally in 2012 is to get HBO, which means getting a cable subscription. I’m not going to do that. Why would I pay upwards of $100 a month for something I have no interest in? I just want HBO.

One could argue that you could always just wait until 2013, but in the day of instantaneous media consumption and ubiquitous on demand content, why must viewers unnecessarily wait?

James Whittaker writes about leaving Google due to their singular focus on Google+.

Larry Page himself assumed command to right this wrong. Social became state-owned, a corporate mandate called Google+. It was an ominous name invoking the feeling that Google alone wasn’t enough. Search had to be social. Android had to be social. You Tube, once joyous in their independence, had to be … well, you get the point. Even worse was that innovation had to be social. Ideas that failed to put Google+ at the center of the universe were a distraction. Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed. Google Labs was shut down. App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for a fee. As the trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled, derisive talk of the “old Google” and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to justify a “new Google” that promised “more wood behind fewer arrows.”

Sleeping all day is such hard work!

I saw this crazy, old Coast Guard ship docked off the Embarcadero last week. Pretty awesome!

Tons of people ripping Mike Daisey to shreds over This American Life retracting their story on Apple's factories this morning. (I reviewed Daisey's theatrical review, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" last year.)

When the original 39-minute excerpt was broadcast on This American Life on January 6, 2012, Marketplace China Correspondent Rob Schmitz wondered about its truth. Marketplace had done a lot of reporting on Foxconn and Apple’s supply chain in China in the past, and Schmitz had first-hand knowledge of the issues. He located and interviewed Daisey's Chinese interpreter Li Guifen (who goes by the name Cathy Lee professionally with westerners). She disputed much of what Daisey has been telling theater audiences since 2010 and much of what he said on the radio

Yes, it's a huge shame that he outright lied about parts of his story. But some of the other unpleasant facts still remain: worker suicides, packed dormitories, insane and outrageous hours. These are stories that both Wired Magazine and the NY Times have written (and as Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic notes, neither has retracted their stories).

Whether parts of the story were fake or not, I think there's a more important take away from this: Mike Daisey made all of us think about where our products came from (and the effect they had on the people who made them) in a way that no one has ever done before.

Transmission tower in Dreamtopia, inspired by San Francisco's Sutro Tower

Earlier this week, the ngmoco:) team behind We Rule released our latest game: Dreamtopia! (Currently only available for Android.)

The basic premise behind the game is that you have have the ability to make dreams come true -- in order to do that, you need to build things to fulfill various goals for each character.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this absolutely awesome take on San Francisco's very own Sutro Tower inside our game! I think it raises a valid point:

How awesome would it be if there were a restaurant / observation deck on top of Sutro Tower?

I'm not the only one to wonder this. Three years ago, Laughing Squid had an awesome post on what it was like from the top of Sutro Tower.

Photo by El Caganer

So, who do we have to talk to in order to make this happen? ;)