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Lisa Brewster

Lisa Brewster is a project manager and startup advisor in San Diego, CA. Her insights into lifetracking and social media have been covered in numerous media outlets including the Washington Post and Adbusters Magazine.

The relationship between copyright and licenseDecember 2 2008

Even though I’ve been releasing my artwork under Creative Commons for several years, today was the first day I really thought about the relationship between copyright and license.

It all started when I received a message on Flickr inviting me to participate in a photography contest on a saltwater aquarium site.  I have a ton of great images from the California Academy of Sciences that I could submit, so decided to check it out.  The rules are pretty standard, but the following declaration they requested gave me cause for alarm:

I YOUR NAME certify that I am the author and sole owner of the material I am submitting to Aquariumslife.com. I understand and agree that Aquariumslife.com may use my material anywhere on Aquariumslife.com. I understand and agree that Aquariumslife.com may resize my material if needed. I understand and agree that I remain the owner of the the intent of all rights reserved, and I didn’t want the stigma of a more restrictive license just because of this contest.  I wrote the organizer back to say that I would prefer that my photos not be watermarked at all, or to use CC-BY-SA if they must add something.  I may be over-drawing the line, but there’s no shame in defending your principles.

@sdjobs: finding jobs so you don’t have toNovember 20 2008

As the economy worsens and more tech companies are forced to lay off workers, I’ve been growing increasingly distraught with the growing number of friends who have lost their jobs or are struggling to find new contracts.  I hear about cool jobs on a fairly regular basis, so today I started brainstorming for a way to help.  An intense sixty seconds later, @sdjobs was born.

What is @sdjobs?
@sdjobs is a Twitter account that publicizes Internet technology jobs in the San Diego area, keeps the community updated on the job market and layoff announcements, and offers general job hunting tips.  I’ll also provide some much needed sanity checks by pointing out how unreasonable some job descriptions are.  Searching for a new job is never easy,  and I want to help keep San Diego’s spirits up and let people know that they’re not alone.

Why Twitter?  Why not just start a mailing list?
Because Twitter is a notification system built inside a social network.  With Twitter, users have more options for where and when they receive updates.  A casual job hunter may only want to check the web page every once in a while, but someone trying to get an interview for a competitive position may want to be updated as soon as possible.  Mailing lists only send email, requiring the user to search for third party too

Where there’s a smoke alarm…October 4 2008

Two of the six fire trucks that were on my street, originally uploaded by Lisa Brewster.

When I came home from work tonight, I noticed a strange burning smell. It got stronger as I walked towards my apartment, and soon I heard a smoke detector going off. I walked around a bit to pinpoint the source, and sure enough I found an apartment that had a funny burning smell (no smoke or flames).

I knew I had to do something but wasn’t sure what the appropriate course of action was, so I called Dave and asked him to txt me the number of the San Diego fire department. But that number only works during business hours, so I decided I had no choice to go ahead and dial 911 (which I’ve never had to do before). I told the dispatcher what was going on, and just a few minutes later there were SIX fire trucks pulling up. I didn’t say it was an emergency when the 911 system prompted me and told the dispatcher there wasn’t even any smoke, but apparently the fire department doesn’t mess around.

Turns out there had been a pot left on the stove, so they turned it off, squirted some stuff to help “eat” the smoke, and vented

Making sense of lifestreamingSeptember 11 2008

So earlier this week, Dave and I were published in a lifetracking/streaming article (thanks to sweet friends Brynn and Chris) in the Washington Post called Bytes of Life. We thought our conference call with reporter Monica Hesse went pretty well, but neither of us expected to get the kind of coverage we did for talking about a little statistics app we’re working on that we’ve tentatively called I Did Stuff, which is basically a combination of every good idea we’ve had in the last year.

The premise for I Did Stuff lies in the belief that we’re tracking so many aspects of our life now that computers need to not only make sense of this data for our own use, but also use it to deliver status on demand. One common example I’ve used is that of the “reverse twitter”…basically to combine Google calendar, IM status, and whole host of other data sources into one remotely queryable interface. And anyone can ask this interface “Where is Dave?” and receive a response like “Well he isn’t in front of IM, but he has class in 10 minutes, so he might be in transit. But his phone is on the charger, so he either forgot his phone or is oversleeping.”

Which was a great idea a year ago, and as far as I know still hasn’t been don

Justifying soybeansAugust 21 2008

Soybeans…lol by ardie96750

More and more I’m noticing health-conscious people say “I don’t eat soy” with the same self-righteousness with which vegans inform their more barbaric friends that they don’t eat meat, saying that something in soy mimics estrogen and can have noticeable effects on the development of children, especially males. Being as distrustful as I am of the American food system, I bookmarked this snippet for further research.

A quick search informed me that the concern is caused by phytoestrogens, which are plant compounds that are molecularly similar to and therefore can have similar effects as estrogen. Flax seed and other oilseeds contain the highest total phytoestrogen content, followed by soy bean and tofu. The benefits of these foods have been touted in the health food circuit for years, and soybeans have been a major staple of the Chinese diet for oh, five thousand years. And they seem to be doing just fine.

Yes, “science works, bitches,” but the history of nutrition science has p