Bay Area
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Google wants employees to return to the office on April 4th
Employees in the Bay Area and several other cities will soon be back at their desks.
Android users can now tap to pay for transit rides in the Bay Area
Google Pay joins Apple Wallet in supporting Clipper cards.
San Francisco's Clipper transit card gets iPhone and Apple Watch support
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has launched support for Clipper, Bay Area's all-in-one reloadable transit card, on the iPhone and the Apple Watch.
Apple Pay will soon work on BART and other Bay Area transportation
Apple has announced that the Wallet app support for the Clipper card, the Bay Area's all-in-one reloadable transit card, is "coming soon."
Revel's electric mopeds come to San Francisco amid growing safety concerns
Revel is expanding to San Francisco despite concerns the company isn't doing enough to protect its riders.
Alphabet’s Verily shows how its drive-thru COVID-19 testing sites work
Verily -- Alphabet's healthcare brand -- isn't just creating a website to help northern Californians determine whether they need a test for COVID-19. It's also piloting drive-thru testing. It has opened two sites, one in Riverside County and another in Sacramento County, and today, it shared a video that shows how the COVID-19 testing works.
Lyft now offers public transit directions in the Bay Area
Lyft's public transit directions are available on the company's home turf. Its app now includes routes, schedules and trip planning for public transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area, giving you an easier way to minimize car use. You can grab a Muni bus after riding a Bay Wheels bike, or save the ridesharing car for the last hop after a Caltrain trip. The company noted that "many" of it most popular bike share stations and ridesharing points in the region are near bus and train stops, making this a logical extension -- this just streamlines the experience for those travelers.
San Francisco's grand plan to ban online e-cigarette sales
Nearly 90 percent of all San Francisco high school students who vape get their fix by shopping online or through friends. Just 13.6 percent actually buy their pods at a physical store. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is acutely aware of this teenage reality -- these statistics are laid out in Health Code ordinance No. 190312, which prohibits the sale of e-cigarettes in San Francisco, in person and online. The ordinance's authors are specifically concerned with curtailing e-cigarette use among the youth population, noting that the number of teenagers who had tried vaping at least once rose by 1.5 million from 2017 to 2018. The ban will last until the US Food & Drug Administration reviews the health risks of vaping, which likely won't happen until 2022.
Google reveals plans to build 20,000 Bay Area homes
Google says it'll invest in thousands of new homes in the Bay Area over the next decade, in the hopes of helping many of its employees and other residents find an affordable place to live in one of the planet's most expensive regions. CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a blog post that Google plans to repurpose at least $750 million worth of land it owns for residential housing. Through this, the company hopes to "support the development of at least 15,000 new homes at all income levels in the Bay Area, including housing options for middle and low-income families."
Waze begins testing new carpooling service in the Bay Area
Google-owned navigation app Waze is bringing their carpool pilot program stateside. The company will test the new Waze Rider app with 25,000 employees at select Bay Area companies who will be able to get a ride to work with the over 700,000 local drivers using Waze.
Former Epic, Irrational head Rod Fergusson starts new 2K studio
Rod Fergusson is launching a new studio for 2K Games in the San Francisco Bay area, he announced in a tweet today. The studio is already working on something new: "It's official: I'm launching a new studio for 2K in the Bay Area with an exciting new project! Details soon!" Fergusson most recently spent a year at Irrational Games, a subsidiary of 2K Games, as Executive VP of Development, where he helped polish up BioShock Infinite. Before that, Fergusson was Director of Production at Epic Games.
Google X lab is full of smart people with crazy dreams and frozen yogurt machines, probably
A Google lab so secret that even some of the company's own employees don't know of its existence? That's Google X -- or it was, before The New York Times ran a profile on the lab's super secret goings-on at an undisclosed location somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area. Naturally, the paper doesn't have a ton of information about the lab, which some claim is "run like the CIA," though it paints a picture populated by robots who are are learning menial work tasks and how to take photos for Google Maps. There are around 100 concepts in all from the lab that helped give rise to those driverless cars, including social networking dinner plates and internet-connected refrigerators. No word on the lab's production of an adamantium-laced super soldier for the Canadian government, but we're sure it's around there somewhere.
Better Place's electric taxis coming to SF Bay Area, thanks to $7 million grant
San Francisco, San Jose and Palo Alto, California were all too happy to endorse Better Place's electric vehicle infrastructure two years ago, but now the powers that be have invested some cash to get this show on the road. The Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission has dropped $6.9 million to purchase and build 61 electric taxis and four robotic battery swap stations to put freshly juiced cells in place -- just like Better Place has been doing with Tokyo taxis since April 26th. Yellow Cab Cooperative and Yellow Checker Cab will operate the zero-emission vehicles, though CNET reports that they've yet to choose a particular type -- perhaps we'll finally see Mitsubishi's i MiEV with a steering wheel on the left-hand side? PR after the break.
San Francisco considers displaying phone radiation levels next to price tag
If the San Francisco Department of the Environment gets its way, starting as soon as next month Bay Area residents might start noticing the radiation levels of cellphones displayed prominently next to their respective price at retail outlets. This is, of course, despite no definitive research that the handsets cause harm and the FCC's insistence that the devices sold to consumers are safe. The proposal is being endorsed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who as it's noted is not about to stop using his iPhone anytime soon. Not to worry, Maine, you'll still keep the top spot for most ridiculous cellphone warning label.
Child's Play & Harmonix rock San Fran for charity Dec. 9
Harmonix and Child's Play have announced that they're banding together for a charity benefit Rock Band night at San Francisco's DNA Lounge the night of December 9. "Ümloud!" is an all-ages event organized by GameLife's Chris Kohler, Gamehelper's Joe Markert and Telltale Games' John "Seg" Seggerson, and staffed by a number of Bay Area games bloggers, including yours truly. The party kicks off at 7PM PT and runs through 2AM PT on December 10, with a suggested $10 donation for admission. Everyone who attends will automagically be made eligible for a chance to win some of the many raffle prizes that'll be awarded throughout the night, but those who wish to donate more can sign up for two different "band packages" -- which include reserved songs and the chance to play on DNA's main stage -- at the Ümloud! site. Proceeds from the event will go to provide toys and video games to children's hospitals nationwide, including the local Oakland Children's Hospital.
Video: Better Place's automated electric vehicle battery switch station is faster than Melvin Dummar
It's massive, costs $500,000, and is just a prototype; but you're looking at a possible solution for swapping out heavy car batteries from future electric vehicles. Kind of important if you're hoping to take your EV on a trip a bit further than the supermarket or city center without having to stop for a lengthy recharge. This switch station, unveiled in Japan by Better Place, can swap out a spent battery in less time than it takes to refuel the tank in that baby-killer of a car you hold so precious. These battery swap stations are just part of the enormous infrastructure required to support Better Place's subscription approach to electric vehicles -- infrastructure easily estimated to cost $250 million or so for countries like Israel or Denmark on up to the $1 Billion already pledged by San Francisco Bay Area mayors. Better Place admits that the swap technology is a work in progress but hopes to have 150,000 charging stations and about 100 battery swap stations deployed in Israel by 2011. Check the video after the break.
Local news on WoW lingo
This is pretty silly, but we do have to give them credit: Bay Area NBC may have done a report on how incomprehensible our game's jargon is, but at least it's not a report about how WoW breaks up marriages or ruins the lives of children. But yeah, portraying WoW players as aliens with a foreign language all their own is a little far out -- the game's got jargon just like everything else, and what they don't do in this report, unfortunately, is show the etymology of all of these words ("QQ" means to cry because it looks like eyes crying, and "kek," as you know if you've ever been Alliance facing the Horde, is what "lol" translates into from Orcish). Not to mention that it's too bad she comes so close to the "I'm a girl, I don't get videogames" stereotype -- maybe if she sat down in the starting area for 20 minutes she'd know a little bit more about how it all works.But maybe we're asking too much. Let's not forget that this is the media showing World of Warcraft played by a normal dude with a reporter girlfriend and a nice apartment. Sure, they're didn't spell "pwnz0r" quite right, and the guy isn't exactly "top 10 out of 12 million" -- he does have Ashes of Al'ar, but his guild is actually number 11 on the Greymane server -- but at least they're telling the story instead of trying to write it for us.
Better Place's $1 billion electric vehicle grid headed to Bay Area
Need another reason to live in America's other bastion of social liberalism and homelessness? How about a $1 billion electric vehicle re-charging infrastructure in the Bay Area? Palo Alto's Better Place is finally bringing its ambitious, city-wide electrical grid and battery exchange service home after staking plans to do the same in Israel, Denmark, and Australia. The plan just endorsed by the San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco Mayors (without coughing up any money), is expected to result in 250,000 charging ports (for topping off charges), 200 battery-swap stations (for trips over 100 miles), and a driver service center by 2012 -- network planing and permitting will begin in 2009 with infrastructure deployment set to kickoff in 2010. Here's how it works, customers will receive a discounted price on electric vehicles when they subscribe to drive a certain number of miles -- Better Place will own the batteries. Besides clearing the way of government bureaucracy, the mayors have agreed to offer incentives for companies that install the plug-in stations. Now get this, Better Place expects to lure electric vehicles from the usual suspects like Toyota, Renault-Nissan, and GM in addition to, get this, Tesla Motors. Oh yes. Almost makes us want to hug an Upper Haight, teenage, poser hippie. Almost.Update: Coincidentally, Tesla is considering a small, swappable battery for its Model S sport sedan that, according to Elon Musk, could be changed "faster than you can fill a car with gasoline." Ah, synergy.[Via San Jose Mercury News, Thanks KKH]
AT&T gets official with U-verse Total Home DVR
No surprises here, but AT&T is doing the right thing by getting official with its Total Home DVR -- which we've been expecting for like, ever. A number of loyal U-verse users received word of the change last week, but now the provider is rolling the software out to the Bay Area at no additional charge; as for everyone else, expect to receive it before 2009 dawns. So, what's so fresh about Total Home? Oh, just the ability to watch five HD programs simultaneously throughout the home, among other nice extras listed in bulleted fashion after the jump.
Comcast launches six new HD channels in San Francisco Bay area
Stressing out over taxes? Sure, a new half dozen HD channels on your EPG isn't apt to solve your problems, but at least you'll have something to look forward to when you're done fighting the lines at the post office, right? Comcast has announced that six newcomers are headed to the San Francisco Bay area today: Sci-Fi HD, Food Network HD, Animal Planet HD, The Learning Channel (TLC) HD, CNN HD and AMC HD. Users in the region will also have access to over 400 high-definition on-demand choices, but the release does note that certain parts of Santa Rosa, Hayward, San Leandro, Sunnyvale, Los Gatos and Saratoga will sadly be left out of the upgrade. Here's to hoping The Man isn't holding you down, eh?
