Growing coffee trees in California

In this day of the $6 cup of coffee, when bragging rights mean knowing not only the varietal but the beans’ latitude, anything exotic gets the antennae waving. Which may explain why Jay Ruskey of Good Land Organics is inundated with requests to visit his north Santa Barbara County farm, where he is the only person cultivating …

Sneak preview of “La Luna” – Pixar’s Oscar nominated short premiering with Brave

Pixar’s Oscar nominated short, “La Luna,” will premiere in front of Brave — in US theaters June 22. La Luna is the timeless fable of a young boy who is coming of age in the most peculiar of circumstances. Tonight is the very first time his Papa and Grandpa are taking him to work. In …

Have you downloaded the new Facebook Camera iPhone app?

Today, we’re introducing Camera, a new mobile app that makes using Facebook photos faster and easier. See friends’ photos all in one place When you launch the app, you’ll see a feed of just great photos from the people you care about. You can swipe to see more of any album or tap to enlarge …

An explanation for the multi-million dollar books on Amazon – algorithmic pricing

At first I thought it was a joke – a graduate student with too much time on their hands. But there were TWO new copies for sale, each offered for well over a million dollars. And the two sellers seemed not only legit, but fairly big time (over 8,000 and 125,000 ratings in the last year …

Bill Gates invests in the future of electricity storage – Liquid Metal Batteries

Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, an MIT spin out that’s developing new technologies for electricity storage, has raised $15 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Total and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. The technology behind the company was developed by Dr. Donald Sadoway (his famous TED Talk), a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was …

New Guinness Record for largest chocolate sculpture – 18,000 pound Mayan temple

A California dessert and pastry school, located in Irvine, has just broken the Guinness World Record for the World’s Largest Chocolate Sculpture: To celebrate our 30th anniversary, Qzina Specialty Foods, has broken a Guinness World Record for building the largest chocolate sculpture. The sculpture models an ancient Mayan temple and weighs 18,239 pounds, far surpassing the previous record set in Italy …

New Yorker to release famous author’s short story as serialized tweets

I do like the idea of serialized stories, similar to Charles Dickens in the 19th century. Starting Thursday night, the New Yorker’s Twitter fiction handle, @NYerFiction, will post a new tweet of text from Jennifer Egan’s 8,500 word story, “Black Box”, every minute between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. The tweets will continue for 10 …

Pixar’s best kept secret – the Cereal Bar

If you happen to own Toy Story 3, one of the bonus features is a short video entitled “Pixar’s Cereal Bar.” In the video you’ll hear Pixar employees like Tia Kratter, Pete Doctor, and Andrew Stanton talking about the importance of cereal during a workday, and showing off an animated representation of how the Pixar …

Pixar’s newest movie – Día de los Muertos

Pixar’s “Toy Story 3” is the highest-grossing movie of all time in Mexico, where the animated adventure tale collected $59 million at the box office in 2010. The follow-up from “Toy Story 3” director Lee Unkrich and producer Darla K. Anderson is also likely to have strong appeal with Mexican audiences — and to boast …