Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget!   Rosie Rios, who was one famously known as the economic development division head sacked by then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown in 2003 as part of a "great purge" of Oakland economic development officials friendly to then-City Manager Robert Bobb's support of a downtown Oakland baseball stadium, has resurfaced in an excellent way this year as the person selected by President Barack Obama to be the United States Treasurer, subject to Senate confirmation. The U.S. Treasurer reports to the Secretary of The Treasury Tim Geithner on matters of coinage, currency circulation, and related issues, but her signature also will appear on U.S. currency. In 2001, Rios was appointed Director of the Oakland Economic Development and Redevelopment Divisions   by then-Oakland Redevelopment Agency head Bill Claggett.  Before her stint with Oakland, Rios served as an excellent and well-regarded economic development direc

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Right out of the blue, I get this email from my friend Steve Kloft, who's an established Internet marketing guru, announcing he's created a widget containing links to my SFGate.com postings, my main blog Zennie62.com, my Twitter tweets, and my YouTube videos! Steve, thanks a million! That makes up for the 600 mb Bay to Breakers videos I'm still uploading, the nutso cyberstalkers , and all the crap I've had to deal with that comes with just expressing my opinion! But as I've said before, there are good people out there, fortunately I know them and they have away of just appearing when you need a boost: Steve's an example. Here's the widget: Get the Zennie Abraham widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox ! You can get your own copy at this link: http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/zennie-abraham And thanks again, Steve! That was a bolt out of the blue!

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Coliseum BART Station rendering with connector When BART was opened in 1972 one of the first station stops was at the "Coliseum", a station called Coliseum BART for the well-known sports complex. Almost from the day the station opened many asked why the BART line didn't have a spur to serve Oakland International Airport. These questions continued through the 70s, 80s, and then in the 90s a group of Oakland business leaders strongly pushed for "an airport connector" of some design. It was listed as an objective by the 500 Oaklanders who attended "Oakland Sharing The Vision" or as a few friends liked to call it, "sharing the ham sandwich." Then when BART approved the San Francisco International Airport extention, a number of people in Oakland (including myself) just hit the ceiling. Why them and not us? At any rate, there was always a constituency for the project and it was neve

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Not too long ago in Western culture it seemed we had this mostly unwritten rule that when a performer was at work, we didn't rush the stage to be with them or follow them around, unless of course they asked us to. Well, in this Internet age the act of rushing the stage and stalking has become all too commonplace, with the latest victim being American Idol star Adam Lambert; pop culture icon Britney Spears faced the same incident just two weeks before. And the act of stage rushing isn't limited to popular singers on television; a duo named Matt & Kim from Brooklyn were rushed at the annual multimedia event "South by Southwest" (or SXSW) in March. Who's next, Susan Boyle? In Spears' case the stage crasher, 20 year-old Kyle King , was a man who was whisked off and arrested by security after Britney let out a scream. By contrast, Lambert laughed the whole deal off - you can hear him - as authorit

More at East Bay Express I just saw this over at the Express Blog... “The East Bay Express is moving to Oakland's Jack London Square area on May 16. The Express has been in Emeryville for nearly eight years, after spending its first 23 years in Berkeley. The paper is leasing office space at 620 Third Street, between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Jefferson Street, three blocks west of Broadway.” GREAT! Welcome to Oakland Bob Gammon, but does that mean your newsroom staff will diversify? Would be nice to see a video with some people of color representing the Express. At any rate, welcome to Oakland.

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! On "Crazy Right Wing Extremists." You can't please everyone, especially conservatives. What's interesting regarding the outcome of my Susan Boyle video-blog of two days ago is the reaction I received from some viewers toward what I considered to be a throw-away line at best. I was trying to state that in a news World where we hear about "nasty pirates, mean internet commentators, and crazy right-wing extremists it's great to have some good news in the form of Susan Boyle's performance and story. My blog post was clear as a bell, but I discovered you can't combat the insecurities of the reader; they're going to think what they want to think depending on their background and beliefs. It's literally impossible to anticipate every reaction to what's written, so better to just go for it. As I state in the video, about 15 percent of the commenters focused on the "crazy ri

I just went around Oakland to really get out of the house, which means heading to places like Luka's, Cafe Van Kleef, and other venues. It's to socialize -- some of my best blog story tips have come in this way. But it's also to support the local businesses. In this case, the crowds generated by the successful appearance of Green Day at the Fox went away and downtown Oakland and the Lake was largely full of locals. So I dropped into The Alley really to get a copy of their menu, and then walked over to a drinkery called Smitty's two doors away. I've decided that I'm not comfortable with Smitty's at all. Sorry but some of the clientele look like they're going to take hostages! Hey, I'm serious -- some rough-looking folks hang there and they seem proud of the way they look where I'm heading for the hills! Not that I would not help raise money for an event there, but geez. I've had it with this "We're Oakland and so it's

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! YouTube , MySpace , Metacafe , Blip.tv , Stupid Videos , Sclipo , Viddler and Howcast I just read the news that Simon Cowell, the British entertainment mogul who's terrible bedside temper brings an edge to the popular reality TV show "American Idol" is now considering leaving it . My reaction? YEAH! DO IT! Look, I never really watched American Idol at all -- but I've seen at least once -- and the reason was Cowell. I've got to be honest. I don't like it when people are mean to each other when they're supposed to work together in the real world, and I like it even less on reality TV. Cowell tossed insults at fearful contestants like they're hand grenades then he sits back and watches them cry! Maybe Cowell is the perfect poster child for our fashionably rude society, and if that's the case and his departure would help improve American Culture, then the faster the better. Cowel

This phase of work, work, work is not done (and this is part of it) but not yet taking its toll. To make sure that doens't happen, I did two things: 1) I went to the gym and 2), I went out to just relax. The first thing, the gym, I do every day, or try too. I'm working to keep by weight below 200 pounds. I find I feel best at less than 196. Yesterday I was at 198. The second act was just plain going out. I wound up, as they say, at Luka's and ran into my neighbors and their friend who can dance up a storm. So, for the first time in a a while, I danced to some combination of "house" and reggae. Then, once enough sweat was produced to make think of my desire not to sweat a lot, I stopped, and fortunately so did they, and left. That was fun. It's also a blast to do it with people from your hood. Then I wound up at another place called Mua and ran into a couple I generally see at Cafe Ven Kleef. They had a friend in West Oakland who had a story tip f

  News is coming in that the election season has started early in Alameda this year and it looks like islanders are finally going to get a chance to make something exceptional happen out at the city’s run-down old Navy base. The backers of a plan to clean up and reuse the old Naval Air Station at Alameda Point today submitted the initiative language to the city. Now they will start collecting signatures to place the plan on the Nov. 3 ballot. This is frankly great news for Alameda. That old Navy base has sat unused and neglected for a long, long time. Finally a plan that someone can pay for is coming forward to get the place cleaned up and ready for real public use again. A lot of ideas have come and gone out there, but this is the only one makes any damn sense at all. Look, this has been a long time coming and I’m sure voters are going to get an earful from professional nimby’s who will oppose anything that even resembles a plan that could actually be achieved. And see my vid

I attended my first meeting of the Sports and Entertainment Task Force last Thursday, and which was its second meeting.  It appears that we're on track to produce a document by the April deadline, and I don't write this because I'm on the task force.  I do want this thing to work, and by that I mean we have to create a set of recommendations for the Mayor that's workable and doable.  But I must explain many of the task force members fear the "politicians" will not do anything.  More on that in a bit. This is where we are:  the first meeting was used to explain what the task force is, and what the Mayor expects to see.  We're a collection of concerned citizens who represent various concerns and backgrounds, from restaurant owners, to Internet business owners (me), to activists like Steve Lowe, and journalists like Chris De Benedetti, who's the chairman, to the Mayor's office, who has a staffer that records the action.  What the Mayor expects to s

http://oaklandfocus.blogspot.com - At his 50th birthday party hosted by Phil Tagami, Oakland City Attorney John Russo officially says he is not running for Mayor of Oakland because of his family obligations to his twin sons.

John Wolf spent 226 days in jail to protect his videos and sources, and caused the creation of a new law protecting video-bloggers. Now Sierra Choi is directing and producing a documentary - the trailer is here as part of my video blog. At the time in 2006, I met Josh when he worked for the television division at Peralta Community College. He was also in the middle of his battle with the Federal Government, but even then was still focused on his work, and didn't spend a lot of time fretting about what could happen. Then Josh defied San Francisco U.S. District Judge William Alsup's order to turn over the videos Josh had taken from a anti-G8 anarchist protes heldt in San Francisco on July 8, 2005. Wolf feared that the U.S. Government in the form of the FBI simply wanted to identify the people who were protesting and not solve a crime they claim had been committed against a police officer. Wolf's videos did not contain any footage of a police officer being harmed. S

The iReport at CNN team wants to know what my do-over-day would be. Well, the one I was thinking of, when I -- as Chairman -- wrote an email to the board of the Oakland Super Bowl Bidding Committee.

For me this was a ton of fun to do. But it's even better when someone takes time to let folks know you did a great job. Such was the case with the CNN iReport and CNN.com, who contacted me regarding my question for CNN's Ali Velshi on what he thought of giving $3,500 to each American taxpayer under $100,000. Here's the video: Embedded video from CNN Video This is what CNN iReport's Rachel8 wrote : Would you go head-to-head with CNN's top economic expert on an economic stimulus plan? How about live on the air? Fearless iReport superstar Zennie Abraham did. After submitting an iReport suggesting a taxpayer stimulus package, he discussed his plan with CNN chief business correspondent Ali Velshi on CNN.com/live. Velshi said the plan -- which calls for a $3,500 stimulus check to those making less than $100,000 a year -- was not targeted enough to work. But Zennie courageously defended his idea. "I disagree, with all due respect," he said to Vels

I had the pleasure of sharing my iReport story with CNN's anchor Richard Lui who's a fellow Cal=Berkeley graduate like myself. The original video on CNN is below and I told my story live today at CNN Headquarters. Thanks to the CNN iReport team and to the  producers at CNN.  Original video:

Happy Holidays! I'm Zennie Just saying 'hello' to the Seesmic Community! After months of thinking about doing it, I finally did it: contributed a video on Seesmic.com  , Loic Lemur's video conversation venture, featuring my friend Cathy Brooks, who was one of his first staffers. I remember when Cathy was totting around a laptop showing Seesmic at work; that was last year, 2007 at a STIRR Founder Hacks Meetup! Wow, how time flies!

I asked Microsoft Founder Bill Gates this question which was selected to be used in Wolf Blitzer's inteview with Gates on CNN's The Situation Room   today: The Huffington Post, a website, was valued at $100 million, more than many newspapers. What should newspapers do to survive in the 21st Century? What do you think? What should newspapers do?  This is the iReport version: Zennie62 on CNN  

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