Little Spark Media

When you need emergency care, do you really have time to shop around? Well, it could make a difference of more than $180,000, if you happen to have appendicitis. On Monday I found myself at SF General interviewing the amazing Renee Hsia, who had the good sense to access publicly available data about healthcare costs to make a very informative comparison of what people paid for treatment of apendicitis with hospitalizations of under three days. Price tags ranged from $1,529 on the low end to almost $183,000. Hsia chose to look into this condition after a friend of hers asked her about a bill that he thought was unreasonable. She found that it was relatively straightforward to access data on how much people paid at different hospitals in California and made a comparison of nearly 20,000 cases of routine apendicitis.

Hsia hopes to expand the comparison technique to other conditions and is trying to determine the best way to go about it. She feels that, while the market needs to determine certain things, there should be some government oversight of medical costs, especially given the fact that there is little opportunity for sick patients to shop around when they need emergency care. Hospitals are charging multiples of what insurance agencies judge to be a reasonable cost for the procedure, to the point that it looks arbitrary and opportunistic. What should be done? How about a national database exposing costs for different conditions and government actions to make sure that healthcare providers don't go too far off the beaten path?

There's a reason so many movies are filmed in California, and why its coastal hamlets teem with artists and galleries. Along most of Route 1, it's hard to take a bad picture. Beauty is so ubiquitous here that not seeing it means having one's eyes closed. Then you can hear the ocean. I spent last weekend on a road trip up to Ashland, Oregon and down the California Coast. We passed through the Avenue of the Giants, a 31-mile stretch of towering redwoods, then watched the sun set over the ocean to the west of Route 1. Needless to say, I took a lot of pictures. Chispita was a trooper, but she definitely enjoyed the beach more than the car! Back in San Francisco, the storytelling continues. We're in the final stages of a corporate video and photography project and starting on four new television features on topics ranging from wine to 3D printing. More soon...

I spent the last few days working on a story about a new site called Lifecrowd, which offers cool events to help people meet offline in a online world. The company is based in Santa Monica and has the greatest selection of events in the Los Angeles area, including Orange county and San Diego, but they are getting started in San Francisco, where I sneaked into a few fun happenings over the weekend.

Lifecrowd handpicks events that appeal to members of the overconnected X and Y Generations looking for fun new life experiences at a reasonable price. Upcoming SF events cater to the arts and crafts and gardening crowds, with good offerings for gaming and foodie types as well. LA seems to have a few more outdoorsy events going on, and a larger number of events total.

My last event was a cooking class where we learned to make margaritas, salsa and beef quesadillas from scratch. The margaritas were real ones, too, not fruity slush with ice chips. It was fun because I got to participate in the cooking in addition to filming and I can say that the recipes are easy and I can picture making them at home.

The general idea of the site is to help people meet each other through new experiences. While there is an online social networking component with profile pictures and a Facebook-enabled signup, the emphasis is on using the online environment to access cool activities in the real world. It differs from Meetup in that it is based on new activities rather than an interest someone may already have, and it is also curated so that hosts have to be either recruited or accepted onto the site. While SF is already brimming with events and young socialites with overbooked calendars, Lifecrowd's unique offerings and reasonable prices will help it compete. You can check it out at www.lifecrowd.com.

This week has been amazing so far. I went to LA with cameraman extraordinaire Wilfred Galila for a corporate video and photo shoot on Tuesday. It was nice because we got up super early, around 3am, made to a 6:10am flight and got the 4:25pm flight back home. As Bay Area residents Wilfred and I were very excited to be in LA but didn't want to stay there too long. No offense, anyone.

The sunrise flight was beautiful, and while it was cloudy in the city there was perfect clarity above the clouds. One thing we noticed as soon as we landed in LA is that the light has a certain cinematic quality there, and when you are walking around you feel like you could be in a movie. It's possible that this is because we knew that we were in LA but both of us are convinced that the light temperature is warmer there, and I think it's basically the smog that does it. All that particulate matter is like a gentle diffuser, so that everything you do is as if you were in a dream.

This was an action-packed day because Wilfred was shooting video and I was shooting photos, and we got a lot done. We occasionally got in each other's shots, but this was fine since we shot so much. So the double-threat was definitely a success. It was also one of those shoots where you are visiting people in an office and you get the feeling that you being there is exciting for them, maybe even the highlight of their week. We had a great time and met some amazing people, and it seemed like they had fun too.

For the Associated Press, we covered the arrival of two injured sailors from the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, then stayed on for the arrival of their battered ship that evening, working around the clock. Of nine classic clipper ships on a trip around the world, one had been seriously damaged by a freak wave in the Pacific. During the day we interviewed Coast Guard Officials and the British Consul General, and after they came in around 3am the next morning we interviewed the damaged ship's captain and watch leader. Later that week we finished up three more long-term AP stories, reporting on rescued elephant seals, a new parking app, and women combat veterans, all the subjects of previous blog posts.

Our corporate video shoot brought us to San Ramon, where we interviewed bankers who had come to a conference there and prepared b-roll for a subsequent project. This week we are working on a photo project and gearing up for a trip to Los Angeles for a shoot next week. Stay tuned for more from Little Spark Media!

Parking. It is the bane of many a San Franciscan's existence, the source of hours per week of despair, anger, even occasional bouts of rage. The endless circling, only to find a spot that you have to return to in 30 minutes to add change to the meter, which generously gives you a minute per quarter. Even better is when you find a spot and are poised to get into it, only to have someone knowingly dart in front of you and back in to block you. Yes, it happens. It's probably happened to you recently.

How about the $500 towing offense? Anyone? Or the $65 ticket for getting back five minutes late to a two-hour spot in an alley littered with cardboard shanties? Hello, San Francisco.

It's funny, because I'm from the East Coast and we Boston or New York types tend to think of Californians as laid back, welcoming and obliging. That is true in many cases. Parking in San Francisco is not one of them. Watch the California fangs come out!

This has been on my mind lately because I'm working on a video project about a new program called SFpark, which is seeking to make parking in the city smarter. Not free, just more intelligent, so that you know where you can park in a given neighborhood, and where the least expensive spots are. Surprisingly, many of them are in garages, and it's by design - SFpark wants to create a steady level of availability of street parking for quick stops, so they are adjusting prices to make garages more attractive.

Program officials are hoping that helping people park faster will not only attract more visitors to the city and its businesses, but also reduce pollution and speed up bus routes that are hindered by double parking. It could lessen the number of distracted drivers scanning the roadside instead of the road.

Another nice thing about SFpark is that it lets you check out how rates change over the course of the day. The day is divided into three segments, and prices reflect the demand at each time. The app also shows you handy details like tow-away times (which might make you consider avoiding that spot altogether) and free hours.

While its members think the idea is kind of funny, SFpark's team has more of a startup than a government vibe. Maybe that's because they are doing something that's pretty cutting edge. The project is actually 80 percent federally funded and the sensors it uses were developed by DARPA. (Not sure for what but I have some guesses.)

Still startup potential abounds. The data being collected from more than 8,000 sensor-embedded parking spots are available to independent developers, who should seriously start connecting this information with things like restaurant reservations and event RSVPs. Would't it be great to know that the cheapest parking spot near the ballet is actually the Performing Arts garage and not the alley nearby? Wouldn't it be nice to know where to go rather than harboring that anxiety of not knowing whether you are going to be embarrassingly late, only to have to give a generic, if genuine, excuse?

One last thing... they of course ask people to check the parking data before they start driving or after having pulled over. You could also have your passenger direct you. In any case be safe, and relax... eventually you will find the perfect place.

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