Results tagged “thechron”

Local tech news in a compact, digital format.

Good morning, Houston. Suppose you're trying to keep up with piles and piles of government reports. How can you tell when there are too many? Simple: You ask for a report, of course. That's what the Texas State Library and Archives Commission did — and in a 668-page report, the commission has declared that the state is over-reported. The commission looked at more than 170 state agencies and universities and found more than 1,600...

Somewhere, Marvin Zindler is rolling over in what is no doubt a very lavish coffin. While this article in the Chron todaylooks into the health inspections at sports venues makes no particular mention of slime or its proximity relative to the ice machine, you can be sure that Marvin would've known and would've shouted it from the rooftops. Or at least from somewhere near Dave Ward's elbow. The stadiums reviewed under the auspices of the...

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Socially Speaking The Chron picks up this article about Houston web based startups and their Houston connections. If you've been reading Houstonist and Tech Buzz, you've already heard about most of them! Phone + Podcast = Phonecast Found over at abc13.com is this story about listening to podcasts on your phone. It's Houston based phonecasting.com and by visiting their site you can get phone numbers to...

Good morning, Houston. Looks like there's another tropical disturbance out in the Gulf of Mexico — this one is called Invest 90L, and it looks like it could be headed for the upper Texas coast. The Chron's Eric Berger is keeping an eye on the system, which is located west of Florida and is headed in a general northwesterly direction; Berger reports that it could become a tropical storm by tomorrow, but isn't likely...

"Biggio" is the word on many bloggers minds this week, so this'll be a pretty Astros-heavy week here at the blog roundup. - Orange Whoopass is putting together some of the most poignant tributes to number 7. Here are a couple of them. - Biggio didn't break the all-time hit-by-pitch record (he came two short, but still holds the modern-era record). Plunk Biggio breaks it down with a great tribute, and some finger pointing. -...

Good morning, Houston. If you've ever been to Rich's, the dance club in midtown, you probably won't be surprised to hear that the crowd there Saturday was sporting "feather boas, glittering hair accessories, sparkling dresses and tutus." But exactly who was in the crowd might take you by surprise: It was a bunch of kids there for Baby Loves Disco, part of a national series of dance events that benefit childhood cancer research. (In...

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. StartUp Weekend Houston "Startup Weekend is an idea, an experiment, a chance to gather the tech community and create a company over one jam packed weekend." If that interests you, head over to houston.startupweekend.com and get your reservation. StartupWeekend Houston is limited to the first 100 participants and space is limited. Andrew Hyde, Startup Weekend founder will be on hand along with Gwen Bell of Blogger,...

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Comcast Raises Your Rates In October Get ready to dig deeper to pay your cable bill because the amount you pay will be going up. Yes, that's right, Comcast will be raising your cable rates starting with your October bill. How much is this rate increase? Comcast says bills are going up 6.1% for all its subscribers. What are you getting for this 6.1% increase? Increased...

Good morning, Houston. The Chron's Eric Gerber points out something interesting: a Washington Post story that says people hold onto utterly untrue myths even when they're faced with factual information that disproves them. An example: A University of Michigan psychologist showed people a CDC flyer stating that myths about the flu vaccine aren't true — such as the story that the side effects of the vaccine are worse than the flu itself — and...

Lucy, the hottest old lady in the whole entire world, is getting written up everywhere: Forbes, Time, The Washington Post and of course The Chron. The 3.2 million year old hominid from Ethiopia is about to go on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science on Friday with much fanfare and attention. The fossil is so very old and rare that paleoanthropologists are concerned about the damage that international travel, display and a potential...

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. City WiFi Still On Hold It's been a few months since Mayor Bill White approved a multi-million dollar deal with EarthLink to provide over 640 square miles of wireless service to Houston and we are still waiting. Earthlink should have already started installing wireless nodes on light poles around the city but has failed to do so. EarthLink is still within time constraints set by the...

Well, at least some new Mike Jones music came out this week. In spite of his oft-delayed second album, Adidas, MLS, and Jones teamed up to create an anthem for the Dynamo, entitled Houston Dynamo (Don't Play). The song is part of the "MLS Represent" album, which matches all 13 MLS teams with a local band or artist to create a fight song for the team. You can find the song here: you'll have to...

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Compaq Gets A New Logo Houston based Compaq unveiled a new logo for the company at a technology conference in India. HP/Compaq has modernized the font and given the trademark Compaq Q a weird new look. Houstonist is still on the fence about this logo. Dwight Silverman over at The Chron covered this story in a Tech Blog post and you can see the graphics he...

Lawyers on both sides of the Ashley Benton murder trial are in court this morning for a hearing in which prosecutors were expected to say whether the intend to retry Benton on the original murder charge, try her on a lesser charge or drop charges altogether — or, perhaps, to accept a plea counteroffer from Benton's attorneys. Lawyers for Benton, who is accused of murder in the stabbing death of gang member Gabriel Granillo at...

The Chronicle reported this weekend on the current state of the former AstroWorld site — and it's not too good: The site's new owner, Angel-McIver Interests of Conroe, has been cited by the city for letting the 104 acres become overgrown. Angel-McIver last week was given 30 days to clean up the site or face a city cleanup bill and a fine of up to $1,500; officials with the company blamed the recent rainy weather....

More on the story of the 21 guns that turned up missing from HPD's property room: The Chronicle reports today that independent police department investigator Michael Bromwich had warned city officials two years ago that conditions in the property room could lead to lost evidence. "The property room currently uses a number of forms to track chain of custody," Bromwich wrote in a June 2005 report. "The forms are cumbersome and archaic and increase the...

We start off this Tech Buzz with a list of The 50 Most Important People On The Web, Houstonist isn't on the list, but we know our 11 readers love us! We hope by now, you have changed your clocks for Daylight Savings Time. Jay Lee over at The Chron lovingly refers to DST as Y2K7 and reminds us to patch our systems and devices. Looks like we missed BarCampAustin at SXSWi this weekend....

Houston's red-light camera system may not be paying off as expected, according to today's Chronicle: Between Sept. 1, when the cameras went online, and the end of the year only a quarter of drivers ticketed by the cameras had paid their citations. More than 14,000 citations were issued during that time from the 20 cameras in operation, which means around 3,500 of those citations were actually paid. At $75 per citation, that equals $262,500. The...

Local school districts' already complicated job of deciding whether to call off classes because of this week's bad weather has been made more complicated, the Chronicle reports, because people have pulled a list of school closings from 1997 off the newspaper's website and sent it around as though it's current. And, amazingly enough, it seems people have read the old article — which clearly states it's from Jan. 14, 1997, and refers to a particularly...

The Chronicle reported yesterday on an interesting dilemma facing people who want to make Houston a more urban, walkable city: In many cases, they can't, thanks to existing development ordinances that defer to the almighty car. The Chron article focuses on Midtown, where a lot has been done in the last 10 years to create pedestrian-friendly districts. Even so, "a lot" is relative — the area has gone from a no-man's land of abandoned warehouses...

Today, much local and national media coverage will deal with the 9/11 anniversary. Here are a few things you might want to check out: The Chron carries an AP article on national remembrances; if you're looking for more extensive coverage, check out The New York TImes, where you can read articles from today, revisit coverage from the days after 9/11 and get into the excellent Portraits of Grief sketches of the World Trade Center victims....

City Council voted today to expand the city's "civility ordinance" to more neighborhoods, including Montrose and the Sixth Ward Clara Harris, the woman accused of running over her husband in a hotel parking lot, has filed an appeal and hired a new lawyer Ralph Sampson, a former Houston Rocket, has agreed to plead guilty to mail fraud related to a vehicle purchase; he will spend two months in jail in Atlanta In a campaign stop...

The Chron's Rad Sallee takes a look today at the question of right of way in the Richmond rail debate, focusing on comments from Metro Chairman David Wolff about some property owners along Richmond Avenue "stealing" the public right of way. What Wolff meant was that some people have put things — lawns, parking spaces, driveways — on the right of way, which usually isn't a problem until the land needs to be used for...

If you didn't see Jeff Skilling's interview with The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, here's what you missed: He thought about killing himself, became resolved to live when federal prosecutors went after him, thinks he helped convict himself and maintains he's not guilty. "I've come to the conclusion that life is better than the alternative, which was not a conclusion that was real clear to me for a period of time," Skilling told the Journal....

The Chron's Nancy Sarnoff reported yesterday that about 700 properties will be affected along Highway 290 and Hempstead Road when TxDOT begins acquiring land to expand the two highways in a few years. Highway 290 is slated to be rebuilt between Loop 610 and FM 2920, while a tollway or HOV lane is planned along Hempstead Road. Real estate appraiser Mark Sikes told Sarnoff that the move will mostly affect commercial properties — which isn't...

Those enterprising Chronicle reporters keep testing Houston's technology: First they monitored Main Street surveillance cameras, and now they're pretending to drive Metro light rail trains. The Chron's Rad Sallee recently had the chance to play with a light rail simulator, and he reports that driving the trains isn't as easy as you'd think, especially with a simulated car that keeps trying to cause trouble: Sometimes the car darts from behind a building and jumps...

The Chron's features staff takes an amusing look at surveillance cameras today in light of HPD Chief Harold Hurtt's call for citywide cameras. As the paper notes, Metro already has cameras focused on Main Street, so writer Lana Berkowitz decided to monitor one and see what went down. She watched the view from the cam at Main and McKinney for an hour, and she didn't see any suspicious goings-on — or did she? Some selections...

Cindy Sheehan led a protest in Houston yesterday targeting Barbara Bush, who protesters hoped to convince to tell her son to stop the war in Iraq [video] A woman has been arrested for selling drugs at a South Houston bakery; her boyfriend, the bakery's owner, was arrested in 2004 for doing the same thing Closing arguments resumed today in the trial of Max Soffar, who spent 25 years on death row but had his conviction...

As the so-called "trial of the century" (at least by Houston standards) gets rolling today, the techno-crazy Houston Chronicle keeps us up to the second with two new blogs: Legal Commentary, in which attorneys give insight into the legal wranglings of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, and TrialWatch, which gives Chron staffers the chance to tell us what's going on at the courthouse, right now. From TrialWatch, we learn that reporters from Bloomberg were the...