Get social with the Denver Police

Want to know why the police are congregating outside the house down the block? Chances are that if you wander down there and ask, they’ll just growl at you to head home and not to worry about it. But get online and ask Lieutenant Matthew Murray via Twitter. He says…

Twitter Tuesday: Lauren Cook, our featured twit

This week, we asked actual twits why we should follow them. And among the many, many amusing responses we got, the tweet by Lauren Cook (@laurencook) took the prize for its timely nods to two great figures in western history. Find out what she tweeted to sell us, as well…

Five reasons the Internet is like booze

At first glance, the Internet and booze may not seem all that similar. One is a powerful psychoactive drug and delightful beverage, the other is an information superhighway. One comes in a bottle; the other a series of tubes. And I am pretty sure the Internet doesn’t give you hangovers…

Boulder gets boco, its own mini, tech-focused SXSW

This Friday, October 2 marks the launch of boco, a one-day conference in Boulder that combines food, music and tech. Featuring panels with names such as “Handheld Awesome Detectors” to “Autotune your brand?,” plus speakers that include everyone from an artisan chocolate maker to a “cyborg anthropolog[ist]” and hosted happy…

Twitter Tuesday: Inaugural Twitpoll edition

We’ve been doing the Twitter Tuesday thing long enough to fill your feed up with some interesting Twits — so we’ve decided to open things up a bit and have some fun. We’re harnessing the power of the Internet’s latest and greatest darling to answer the big questions in life,…

Only on Craigslist: Desperately seeking circus people

It doesn’t get the same kind of attention hot social-media darlings such as Twitter and Facebook garner these days, but Craigslist is still a pretty decent social network — especially if you enjoy the WTF side of life, as I do. Everyone knows about the classic “Best of Craigslist” section,…

The Facebook campaign to resurrect Boulder’s Mall Crawl

Today, former Westword fellow Melanie Asmar, now writing for the Colorado Daily, brings us a story whose time has come — an attempt to bring back the Boulder Mall Crawl, a Halloween bash on the city’s Pearl Street Mall that proudly celebrated revelry and goofiness until being shut down in…

Twitter Tuesday: All-tech edition

Back again with more great Twits to follow for your burgeoning Twitter feed. As always, follow us at @denverwestword, @cafewestword, @westword_music and @casciato. @MileHighSocialMediaClub: If you’re reading this, you must be fairly interested in social media, right? Or at least very, very bored and possibly cripplingly lonely. Either way, the…

Foursquare turns nightlife into a social-media MMOG

Forget those so-called social-media games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, which are really just a way to junk up your friends’ feeds and irritate them. Someone’s figured out a way to make social media into something like a nightlife MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game). Think Twitter meets World of Warcraft,…

Running the government? There’s an app for that…

Government 2.0 is just around the corner. This week, the White House announced the launch of the government’s very own app store, a place for various arms of the fedeal government to get their assorted IT needs met. It’s an effort to streamline and lower the cost of said IT…

Five ways Nigerian scammers can improve operations

My fiancee and I are looking for a place to live in Denver. Nothing fancy, just a one- or two-bedroom rental, hopefully with a dishwasher and a closet big enough for her shoes, which is to say a closet the size of a Chrysler minivan. Yesterday, she stumbled on an…

DCTC reaching out to YouTube generation

The Denver Center Theater Company is reaching out to audiences with a new tool — YouTube. Using the interactive functions of the ubiquitous video-hosting service, which allow people to click on elements within a video to go to a link such as another video, the DCTC has created a choose-your-own-adventure…

More tweetup do-gooders party for a cause

While ignorant outsiders are busy slandering Twitter as a place to talk about what you ate for lunch, the social networking service is quickly becoming the place to organize informal fundraisers. These aren’t fancy nonprofits, with their fancy high overhead and administration costs. Instead, they’re just regular folks using technology…

Twitter Tuesday: Space station, sex advice, slanket

Back again with more great Twits to follow for your burgeoning Twitter feed. As always, follow us at @denverwestword, @cafewestword, @westword_music and @casciato. @satsight: Growing up obsessed with space travel led directly to my current fascination with the ongoing march of technology. The collision of these things makes me all…

Help get Colorado universal broadband — and see how fast yours is!

The Governor’s Office of Information Technology has joined up with Connected Nation, a nonprofit group trying to create a map of broadband access — and those areas that still can’t get it — throughout the country. If you’ve currently got broadband access, you can test your speed and tell the…

Denver gets $6 million in stimulus money to go green

While it isn’t nearly as cool as neighboring Boulder going all “city of the future” (and yes, we are jealous, thanks for asking), Denver is getting its own energy improvements in the form of a $6 million dollar stimulus check, reports the Denver Business Journal. In addition to boring stuff…

Boulder: City of the future!

According to this report by the Denver Business Journal, it looks like Boulder is all set to become the wonderful world of tomorrow that we were all promised by cheap paperback novels and the old Buck Rogers TV series! Okay, so it doesn’t mention flying cars or robot butlers, but…

Twitter Tuesday: Old media on new media

Back again with more great Twits to follow for your burgeoning Twitter feed. As always, follow us at @denverwestword, @cafewestword, @westword_music and @casciato. @CBS4Denver: I’m not a big watcher of television news, and by that, I mean that except in cases of huge breaking stories (election nights, terrorist attacks, tsunamis…

Happy Birthday, Internet!

September is apparently the month in which indispensable technologies come to life. My evidence? On September 2, 1969, the Internet was born when two computers were successfully linked and sent data back and forth. Sure, it wasn’t used to do anything useful until October of that same year, when the…