My expectations were muddled going in. The convention is singular in its reputation as the gold standard of pop-culture/sci-fi gatherings, and any celebrity whose recent work could be even remotely tied into the event’s content was billed to be on-hand promoting themselves amongst the bravest and most eager genre fans. But I didn’t know how accessible those people and that content would actually be to a media plebian like me, even with my handy press pass. Thus, my mind was promptly blown. 

Below are my own personal Top Five Comic-Con Moments, in order of general awesomeness. Some were unexpected successes, some odd accidents, others the kind of disappointments whose memory will likely have me cringing for months. 

So yes, I’ll definitely be back next year. 

5) Sidewalk Run-in With Drunken “Community” Cast

Not sure why the cast NBC’s hilarious new comedy “Community” fit in at Comic-Con, but no complaints here—the show is one of last season’s best new additions, and it’s one I look forward to weekly. 

Saturday night found us heading past the SyFy/EW party, but when we were about a block away I saw a group ahead of us laughing and clearly inebriated. One woman in the group turned around and I recognized her immediately: it was Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays the bubbly Shirley on the show. We locked eyes, mine widened, and she smiled. “Hey!” she said. “Hey!” I replied, but not before noticing that she was accompanied by Danny Pudi (Abed), Alison Brie (Annie), Donald Glover (Troy) and Gillian Jacobs (Britta). I freaked out, gushed that I love the show and was super excited to see everyone out, and we start chatting as they stumbled toward the party. We talked for a minute, and they revealed that they start shooting the new season Monday (today) and were making the most of the weekend. I wished them a great night, but they insisted on this photo, deliriously dark and blurry though it may be, before heading into the party. Pull my arm, why dontcha… 

 

4) Ryan Reynolds Probably Turns Kid Gay at Green Lantern Panel 

 

Everyone can agree that, despite being a necessary component to Comic-Con, audience Q&As can be pretty damn awkward. Comic-Con seems to have embraced this fact, thankfully, and between a litany of questions posed by a colorful variety of fans, one stood out: a boy, who can’t have been a day older than nine, asked actor Ryan Reynolds (who plays the title character in Warner Brothers’ upcoming “Green Lantern” adaptation, the first from the DC universe) what it was like to recite his famous oath. Reynolds’ smoldering answer, and the young lad’s reaction, is one for the memory books. 

 

3) Round Table with Tina Fey (and Will Ferrell) 

As someone who tends to geek out and freeze at even the most minor celebrity encounter, this Thursday-morning brush with my absolute favorite TV actress/writer, Tina Fey (along with the legendary Will Ferrell) was a quite an emotional hurdle. I was admitted to the roundtable session for “Megamind”, the upcoming animated feature with voice work by the two comedy icons, and within minutes I was seated just feet away from Liz Lemon herself. 

The other reporters were asking questions, but I couldn’t stop staring at her. She’s stunningly beautiful in real life (as are most of the actresses I encountered this weekend) but having spent so many hours watching and re-watching episodes of “30 Rock”, I was more surprised by the how different she wasn’t. Her walk, her facial ticks, the part in her hair… it was all exactly as it should have been, precisely as expected. But there was something about this being “real life” that made that idea seem almost too much to take. She didn’t make much eye contact but there was a flickering second or two when she did look at me. And for now, as I sit wrapped in my Slanket stuff handfuls of Sabor de Soledad into my mouth while watching a “Designing Women” marathon on Lifetime, that will just have to be enough. 

2) Making Charisma Carpenter Look At Me Like This: 

Of all of Comic-Con’s celebrity guests this year, one unlikely name attracted me most of all: Charisma Carpenter, who played the bitchy, self-obsessed cheerleader Cordelia Chase in TV’s “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” and the less self-obsessed but equally bitchy Cordelia Chase in its spin-off series “Angel.” Something about Cordy fascinated me from the beginning; her writing was sharp and smart, her delivery was impeccably timed and she was always—despite her deeply 90’s outfits and a penchant for being unceremoniously abducted by demons—nothing short of drop-dead gorgeous. She’s the epitome of a gay icon, and I loved her instantly. (The 100th episode of “Angel,” which I won’t spoil explicitly, left me a blubbering mess.) 

I had heard Charisma would be there months ago as part of the “Butterfinger Defense League” campaign with Lou Ferrigno and Erik Estrada, and there was no mention of her appearance in the schedule, but I poked around and figured out when/where she’d be and planned my day accordingly. I arrived as indicated and waited in line for more than an hour (during which I caught my first in-person glimpse of her, looking incredibly hot in a cop-like jumpsuit and perfect hair.) I just hoped to get a photo with her, and squeeze in a few words in about how I excited I was to meet her, and tell her that Cordelia was my favorite character ever on TV, and that I appreciated her time. But we were told at the last minute that there would be no photos allowed, and that we’d barely have time to say anything to the talent. This left me crestfallen and slightly flustered, so in between the awkward seconds in which I completely ignored Ferrigno and Estrada as they signed my photo, Charisma and I shared the following dialogue. 

Charisma: Hi!
Thomas: Hi, Charisma! I’m very excited to meet you.
Charisma (smiling): Oh, great!
Thomas (sincerely, but inadvertently creepily): Like, more excited to meet you than I am to meet anyone else at the whole con…” 

At this moment Charisma’s face changed into a kind of weirded-out sneer (see above photo for a pretty accurate depiction) and I realize I had seriously botched this most important of encounters. This is where I should have followed up with “…because Cordelia is my favorite character of all time,” or something to make me seem less deranged, but Ferrigno is already signing the photo and there was, tragically, no time to save face. It was over even more quickly than it began. 

I was, and remain, devastated over this hack job. I can only hope that one day I’ll get another shot, that she won’t remember me, and that it’ll be a time and a place more conducive to my expression of absolute (but harmless and certifiably un-creepy) adoration. 

1) My Interview With Joss (Fucking) Whedon 

 

Ok, let’s be real here. I’m pretty amateur when it comes to on-camera interviews, especially with celebrities. My fear of embarrassing myself in front of important people, much less my idols, is acute. Crippling, even. It’s something I hoped to work on at Comic-Con. 

Friday night found us at a promo party for “Jackass 3D”, and despite my performance anxiety, I managed to sum up the courage to approach almost all the idiots in the movie (Steve-O, Johnny Knoxville, Wee Man and others) and shoot what amounted to surprisingly not awkward interviews. I left the party drunk on success—and, admittedly, lots of free Bud Light—and we made our way to a red carpet event for “Spartacus: Blood & Sand”, where later, to my utter shock and delight and horror, Joss Whedon himself made his way towards us. 

I wasn’t doing the interviews at that event, but after succeeding with the jackasses earlier that evening, this was one I simply had to do. As a relatively new but no less rabid Whedon fan, I immediately had the questions I wanted to ask (about “The Avengers”, which he just announced he would direct hours before, and about the afterlife of “Dollhouse”, his most recent cancelled FOX show) and before I knew it I was shaking his hand and firing away. 

Joss and I on the red carpet of the "Spartacus" party

The result was a thrilling success. It’s nothing special as far as interviews go, but it’s already one of the highlights of my brief career. I’ll link to the video as soon as it’s posted to the site, but here’s a rudimentary photo as proof. 

I’m struggling to readjust back to life after such a whirlwind experience, but I got what I wanted in retrospect. Celebrity isn’t as terrifying as it was a week ago. These people’s time is more valuable than mine, it’s true,  because everyone wants a piece of it. But ultimately, they’re just people. And that’s nothing to be afraid of. 

Here’s to Comic-Con 2011—may it hold more famous people, more stale nachos and rubbery pizza, and maybe even some Charismatic redemption.

Brian Brock knew he was on to something.

He could see it, because he had many times before. One question led to another, and then another. As a writer working on another man’s memoir, the 48-year-old Schaumburg, Ill. native and 1985 graduate of Columbia’s MFA Film program knew he couldn’t rely on his own imagination.

Brock needed details-those wild, tragic and bitterly ironic details that he knew would be critical. They were all there, just below the surface, waiting to be tapped.

All he needed was a bit of luck.

“What else did you see along that road?” Brock asked again, unrelenting, despite the old man’s obvious annoyance.

At 84, Pierre Berg’s mind was sharp, his memories vivid. That wasn’t the problem. Brock had learned this after almost two years of interrogating Berg for his memoir, which would depict the horrors he experienced in Nazi Germany, France and Poland during World War II.

Berg, one of the millions of non-Jewish “gentiles” who were also persecuted by fascist Germany, survived an 18-month journey through the unspeakable, including a stint as a slave laborer at the infamous Auschwitz-Monowitz and Dora concentration camps, not to mention the long journey home to normalcy afterward.

More than 60 years after Nazi liberation, it wasn’t the state of Berg’s memories of his traumatic experiences that was the problem; it was what Berg chose not to remember that made all the difference.

“Who cares what I saw?” Berg asked, a clear edge in his voice. “It was a road! What difference does it make?”

But Brock kept pushing. The two sat together every day after work just like this, for up to six hours at a time, Brock pounding away at his laptop and firing questions at Berg. His answers arose either directly from recollection or from the handwritten notes he had frantically jotted down.

Together, the two would slowly stretch the fabric of Berg’s memory until finally, whether Berg knew it or not, it would happen.

It was magic.

“What do you want me to tell you, that I saw a Russian man plowing a field pulled by six German women?” Berg asked.

Brock paused, looked up from his keyboard and smiled.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I want you to tell me.”

Chance meeting

In Sept. 2001, not for the first time in either of their lives, both Brock and Berg found themselves in the right place at the right time. Both were working at the Cannon Theater in Beverly Hills, Calif. Berg as an usher and Brock behind the concessions counter. Berg was a retired cine-technician who had worked in a film post-production lab for more than 40 years, and Brock was a struggling freelance writer.

Brock had heard Berg was a Holocaust survivor, but he didn’t know much about the history of the period beyond what he had been taught in school. He said he wasn’t comfortable approaching Berg, even causally, about his experiences.

He was surprised, then, when Berg approached him.

“He said, ‘I heard you’re a writer,’ and I said, ‘Yeah,’” Brock said. “He said he had written about his time in the camps. I told him I’d like to read it.”

Brock said he expected a short treatment of the story-10 or 15 pages about Berg’s overall experiences. What he got was a 148-page manuscript hand-written by Berg in French and typed his mother in 1948. It had been translated into English several years later.

When he wrote it, Berg had titled the manuscript “Odyssey of a Pajama.” He tried selling the story to several publications in the 1950s but was unsuccessful. So he stuffed it in a drawer and left it there for more than 40 years.

Brock said he read the manuscript in one sitting and immediately knew he had stumbled across something rare.

“It was one in a million, that cliched ‘chance of a lifetime,’” Brock said. “I had read a few other Holocaust memoirs throughout the years, but the stuff he talked about I had never heard before. I knew this chance wasn’t going to come around twice for me.”

Drilling

When Brock told Berg he wanted to help him turn his manuscript into a full-fledged, marketable memoir, he cautioned that it would be a lengthy and painstaking process. He said he wasn’t sure Berg believed he was invested in the project.

But Berg was soon convinced.

“Before I realized it, he had the manuscript all typed up and ready to start,” Berg said. “So, we started.”

Brock started visiting Berg daily, and the two began discussing new content. More stories of Berg’s experiences emerged, each one more dramatic, ironic and horrifying than the last, Brock said. It quickly became apparent to the documentarian-turned-writer that there was more to the story than he ever knew.

“There was a whole gold mine of events and stories that were still in Pierre’s head and nowhere on paper,” Brock said.

Brock and Berg spent the next six months constantly meeting, talking and writing-Berg scribbling in his notebook at work and Brock typing up their discussions on his own time at home until both could bring their notes together on the page the next day.

Because Berg’s most potent stories seemed to emerge from sudden sparks of recollection, Brock decided to use Berg’s original manuscript as a kind of blueprint and allow the structure of the story to follow a non-linear, almost stream-of-consciousness format.

“Every once in a while I would have Pierre go back [in time] and reflect on something,” Brock said. “I would try to have it stay true to how it unfolded when we worked together.”

Berg said he agreed with Brock on this structure decision, which gives the story a distinctively melancholic tone.

“It flowed better by putting a few episodes in between others,” Berg said. “After all, they were all true facts. Sometimes [when I was imprisoned] things would all happen in just a few days, and then months of nothing.”

Though the writing process was well on its way, the two continued to struggle to agree on what kinds of stories and details to include. Both had ideas of what readers wanted and needed from the story-ideas that didn’t always align.

“Sometimes it felt like a police interrogation,” Brock said. “Just like he had a strong sense of how he wanted his memoir to sound, I had a strong sense of what had to be on the page to make it stand out from all the other Holocaust memoirs. I felt that was one of my main jobs.”

One example found Berg recalling how he had once helped move dead bodies on a train from the passenger cars to the open “morgue car” while traveling between camps. He came across a man about his age who had been left for dead but was still alive. When Berg tried to help him back onto the train, an SS officer pulled out his side arm and shot the him in the head. He made Berg drag the man’s body back with the others.

Brock said Berg told him he “could still see the man’s face.”

“I asked him how it made him feel, and he said he didn’t feel anything,” Brock said. “I knew it had impacted him more than he wanted to deal with.”

Brock said he would return home from these sessions with Berg and “meditate on different kinds of emotional responses.” He’d try to place himself in many different scenarios as a young man separated from his loved ones and fighting for survival. Brock would reflect on his own reaction to these situations and use his notes as a springboard to try and tap into Berg’s psyche.

“Sometimes it would take weeks until something would just … crack,” Brock said. “Either [Berg] would let his guard down or be so exhausted by my questions that he would just let go. A lot of times I would get my best stuff out of him when we were out on the porch having a beer and smoking a cigar. Maybe it’s because we weren’t just sitting around a laptop.”

Slowly, after another year of constant revelation, revision and addition of details, a solid first draft started to take shape.

The pair decided then to re-name the manuscript Scheisshaus Luck, translated to “shithouse luck,” referring to Berg’s job carrying buckets of waste from a scarlet fever quarantine ward to its outhouse in Drancy, France. Berg’s immunity to scarlet fever (he had already contracted it as a child), not to mention his ability to speak five languages, including German, helped secure his job in Drancy, delayed his early deportation to Auschwitz and probably prevented his death. The writers said it was an effective-if inelegant-way to relate how bad luck often saved Berg’s life.

The co-authors took another six months to re-tool a second draft into something ready to market.

Brock contacted Dr. Joseph White, an associate history professor at the University of Maryland University College and a research assistant at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He had been looking for information about British prisoners of war, which Berg had encountered during his ordeal, and White had done research on the topic.

“I became absolutely engrossed in [Berg's story],” White said. “I told him immediately that it was publishable.”

Brock sent White a draft to edit, and White interviewed Berg to help confirm some of the historical details. He said his changes were “mostly cosmetic,” dealing with German phrasing. He also fact-checked extensively.

“With Holocaust memoirs, you have to be very careful not to allow eloquence to replace complexity,” White said. “This account neatly balances those two aspects.”

No room for “Luck”

Once they had a solid draft, Brock and Berg were able to find a literary agent in New York. But after months of more editing and waiting for the book to be pitched to publishers, the agent backed out of the deal, leaving Brock and Berg back at the beginning.

After the authors located another agent, the book entered a “painful” cycle of pitching and rejection as its writers tried different national publishing houses. Brock said the constant refrain from publishers was that though Pierre’s story was a powerful one, there was no market for another holocaust memoir.

“That’s when I started to sweat it,” Brock said. “It just seemed like after everything, we were running into nothing but brick walls.”

It took almost a year before AMACOM Books, which specializes in non-fiction works from various genres, agreed to publish Scheisshaus Luck.

Brock said the editing process with the publisher was “a dream.”

“I had always heard how terrible the editing process can be, but we didn’t have to cut anything from our manuscript,” Brock said. “There were no arguments, no us trying to defend why something needs to stay in. We actually ended up adding more.”

Lucky Break

Berg said when he wrote the story, he hadn’t been serious about selling it. He said he didn’t intend to try and push for his story to be told until he realized how much misinformation was being spread about the Holocaust.

“I’ve seen white supremacists parading around meeting halls with swastikas on their shoulders, claiming none of it ever happened, claiming Hitler was a god,” Berg said. “It convinced me I should write a rebuttal. And considering I’m not Jewish, a lot of people say it makes much more sense.”

Berg still works as an usher, now at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles, to keep himself busy. Brock is working on another nonfiction book with a World War II British prisoner of war who survived two years in the Auschwitz POW work camp. He’s using the expertise he gained while working with Berg and White, which he would have never been exposed to if he hadn’t been stuck behind a popcorn stand trying to make ends meet and directly in Berg’s path.

One of the critiques Brock and Berg received while trying to get published was that there were too many coincidences and instances of brutality in the story. Berg said that’s exactly how it should be.

“Of course there is brutality-if 90 percent of the people who went into Auschwitz died there, it wasn’t a country club,” Berg said.

White said the element of coincidence in the story reflects the madness of the period.

“Too often survivors are asked the question, ‘How did you survive this?’ Pierre’s account makes it clear that strategy had nothing to do with it,” White said. “You can see, and I think the title is appropriate in this way, that arbitrariness worked to his advantage, and also his disadvantage.

Berg, an atheist, said he’s never lost touch with how and why he survived when so many others did not.

“That’s why I call it ‘Scheisshaus Luck’,” Berg said. “This is all one big coincidence.”

A new study aimed at improving the quality of life for patients suffering from the mental disorder schizophrenia is underway in the Chicago area. Researchers hope a new medication being tested will offer hope to those suffering from the crippling symptoms of mental illness.

The independent Uptown Research Institute, sponsored by drug developer Sanofi-aventis, is looking for patients in Chicago to participate in the ongoing study, which started last year and is taking place in dozens of cities all over the United States. The study tests a new and undisclosed investigational drug for safety and effectiveness in improving cognition-which includes awareness, perception, reasoning and judgment-among schizophrenia patients.

Hal Coxon, a spokesperson for the institute, said the study is “uniquely different” because it doesn’t require subjects to stop taking their current medication. Instead, the investigation drug is added to patients’ existing antipsychotic treatments. It’s targeted at improving cognition, not psychosis.

“This removes one of the barriers of entry for people,” Coxon said. “One of the reasons is that people don’t want to alter their current regimen, so instead of altering, this drug will be a supplement to it.”

The study will also use a relatively new evaluation tool called MATRICS (Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia) to measure the subjects’ progress during the study. MATRICS is a complex battery of tests used to measure memory, attention, reasoning and social cognition in everyday tasks.

John Sweeny, professor of psychiatry, neurology and psychology at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said though it isn’t perfect, MATRICS is a solid way to measure development in patients with mental illness.

“It’s a reasonable way to look at cognition outcomes with drug trials,” said Sweeny, also the director of UIC’s Center for Cognitive Medicine.

Dr. John Sonnenberg, Uptown’s executive director and the study’s principal investigator in Chicago, said MATRICS aims at measuring the progress in skills that are most challenging to patients.

“They’re looking at skill sets that are relevant to [schizophrenic patients], like the ability to handle money, or to predict a social reaction or response, or the ability to handle medications independently,” Sonnenberg said. “These skills are often extra challenging to a schizophrenic individual. Assessments like MATRICS can determine where an intervention, whether pharmacological or behavior-based, can actually bring about change.”

The study is best suited for stable patients whose symptoms are already being successfully treated with anti-psychotics, Sonnenberg said. Though symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations, voices, depression, isolation and lack of emotional awareness, the most difficult part of treating patients is getting them to seek treatment, according to Carolyn LaGioia, president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Northwestern Memorial Hospital branch.

After seeking treatment, LaGioia said the next hurdle is getting patients to take medication.

“If someone tells you that you have a broken leg, you don’t think less of yourself, but if someone tells you have a broken brain, it’s different,” LaGioia said. “There’s a stigma attached to it because many people feel that mental illness is something they should be able to control. But in fact it’s biologically based. It has nothing to do with will or behavior.”

Greg Coughlin, 54, of Lombard was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which is a combination of schizophrenia and mood disorder symptoms, when he was 20. Since then, he’s battled drug addiction, depression, paranoia and social anxiety. He said he’s been sober for 23 years, and thanks to a combination of two anti-psychotic medications and a mood stabilizer, he lives a relatively healthy, normal life.

“My medications have worked extremely well, for the most part,” said Coughlin, who works as a consumer specialist at the DuPage County Health Department. “I still have delusions. It takes all of 15 or 20 seconds, and then it’s over. So the medication is definitely affective, but not completely, and not for everybody.”

Sweeny said it’s common for patients to try multiple medications or combinations of medications before they find a recipe that works. He said there’s no clear reason why.

“Some of them work for one person, others for another,” Sweeny said. “That causes a lot of difficulty for patients. You try talking a paranoid patient into taking a drug that will change how his or her brain works. There will be a lot of resistance.”

LaGioia said the institute’s new study will likely have a greater response because it supplements rather than replaces existing medication. She said there are mixed reactions among many of the schizophrenia patients she works with at the concept of altering treatment regimens.

“There are people who have been through 16 different medications and are tired of being subjects,” LaGioia said. “But if there’s anything out there that can make life better for these patients, there are plenty of people who would be willing to try.”

Coughlin said though he tried at least 11 medications before settling on his current prescription, he would be interested in participating in the institute’s study only because there isn’t a risk of losing what he’s worked for years to achieve.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m not comfortable in my own skin, or like I can’t connect easily enough. There are a lot of things that need fine-tuning in my people skills, and I think that cuts me out of a lot of life, a lot of enjoyment,” Coughlin said. “But I’ve come so far in my life, and I don’t want to risk putting everything on hold while I go on other meds. If it doesn’t work I have to get back on and try and re-stabilize.”

Sonnenberg said the study will continue for at least another six months, or until Sanofi-aventis has finished its research. He said he hopes it will result in another medicinal option for patients who want to take the focus of their lives off of their sometimes-debilitating disorder.

LaGioia said NAMI supports the study but that even if it does result in new treatment, it won’t be a panacea.

“Some patients will have tremendous success, and others it will not affect at all,” she said. “Subscribing medication to people with mental illness is an art, and it takes time.”

I’ve just returned from my trip to Europe and am in the process of uploading my photos to Flickr. Check some of them out here. It will be awhile before I get them all uploaded, but I’m making progress.

Also, check out my Video page for the Mugglenet.com news reports I filed from Scotland last month.

What Apple didn’t expect was how the iPhone would change the Internet itself.

In a burgeoning movement to better meet the needs of the more than three million iPhone users, many popular web sites are developing new “iPhone-friendly” versions of themselves. Unlike the stripped-down pages available on pre-existing mobile web platforms, web developers say these new iPhone sites pack the same punch as a regular web site in a leaner, meaner and faster format.

While your home or office version of CNN.com, for example, provides full videos, photo galleries, and advertising, the iPhone version offers a simple, easy-to-read layout full of mostly stories, links and essential photos. Minus the multimedia, the content manages to cross over.

Because the iPhone is the first mobile device capable of accessing full versions of all web sites, its users are changing their habits. In a recent third-party study of more than 450 iPhone users, 77 percent said they’ve increased the amount of web browsing they do on the go because of the iPhone’s unprecedented capabilities. Almost a third said they’ve even stopped toting their notebook computers in favor of the iPhone’s handheld convenience.

According to Scott Kleinberg, iPhone expert and host of ChicagoTribune.com’s weblog “iPhone, Therefore I Blog,” none of this was ever supposed to happen.

“The web on the iPhone was supposed to be the regular web, there was never supposed to be an iPhone version,” Kleinberg said. “But people got lazy.”

The iPhone is capable of viewing almost any web site because it uses the standard Apple browser, Safari. But iPhoneS can’t display many video and animation programs like Flash, which are necessary to view some website content. Also, users say the size and shape of the screen can make navigating around a page difficult.

In response, many popular websites — including Facebook, Digg, Google, eBay and Amazon, as well as many news sites like CNN.com and FoxNews.com — have cleaned-up their act. They’ve made text and graphics larger and clearer, removed animation that requires Flash, and listed separate pages in simple, easy-to-tap tabs, all without watering down content. iPhone browsers are automatically directed to these sleek new pages whenever they navigate to their favorite optimized websites.

Though the sites are simplified, the fact that the iPhone uses Safari means the changes don’t require a new programming skill set. This makes for a much more natural learning curve for web designers ready to start building.

“That’s the real beauty of it,” said Jason Fried, president of Chicago-based web company 37signals, which provides web-based organizational calendars and to-do lists. “Designers don’t even have to learn anything new. They aren’t designing a mobile web site, they’re just designing a website.”

Because the iPhone doesn’t have a built-in task manager or to-do list program, Fried said his company was perfect to fill the void. Shortly before the iPhone’s release, Tadalist.com – which Fried launched in 2005 as an online task management service – was quickly “iPhone-optimized” by 37signals web designers. Now users can access the site quickly and conveniently by adding an icon link to Tadalist.com on their iPhone desktops.

When Tadalist users visit the site from their iPhones, they’re directed to a simple login screen and easy-to-navigate layout with all the same content and capability their home or office computers would provide. Bolder fonts, wider margins and simple, organized lists and tabs make using the site a snap – or rather, a tap.

Fried said the iPhone is the only mobile platform that developers are seriously exploring today.

“The passionate, enthusiastic developers aren’t building things on Windows Mobile or Palm, they’re on the iPhone,” Fried said. “Before the iPhone, the web on cell phones was a terrible, miserable, depressing place to be.”

Unlike the iPhone sites’ combination of full content and ease of use, most mobile web sites offer only limited access to the sites’ features, are poorly laid-out and are difficult to navigate. Users fed up with tiny fonts, awkward navigational arrows and slow text entry capabilities say these platforms can leave much to be desired.

Rhea Coffern, 21, of Chicago said she never used the browser on her old cell phone. But since she bought her iPhone three months ago, she said many of her daily tasks are “a million times easier.”

Coffern, a junior at Columbia College Chicago, said she uses the iPhone’s simplified version of Facebook to do almost everything she’s used to doing on her computer – updating her status, browsing pictures and other profiles, and posting on friends’ walls – without missing her computer.

Coffern said the iPhone-optimized sites are just another example of how the Internet is evolving to fit users’ needs.

“That’s what sells them,” Coffern said. “People will always want something that’s quick and easy, because it’s never enough already.”

The San Francisco-based Meebo.com, which provides web-based instant messaging service for big clients like AOL and Yahoo, was another company to look for ways to utilize the iPhone’s technology the day the device was released. Meebo’s developers responded to the iPhone’s lack of instant messaging capabilities by retooling their own software to fit inside the iPhone’s touch screen in a user-friendly way, much the way Fried reworked Tadalist.com. Now, just eight months after launching its iPhone version, Meebo is regarded by many technology forums as one of the top iPhone-optimized websites running.

“Users seem to like it a lot,” said Seth Sternberg, Meebo’s CEO. “A good web browser should work on any computer, including mobile computers. Apple recognized this, and knew it would bring a lot of innovation. We’re just following their lead.”

Kleinberg said this is an example of how companies are striving to understand how the iPhone will affect future business – both online and otherwise.

Kleinberg said the iPhone represents a convergence of tools and abilities that could reshape a variety of markets. E-book capabilities on the iPhone could impact publishing markets; its remote control capabilities could affect everything from home theaters to automatic car locks. Users could even order Frappuccinos ahead from their iPhone browsers, have them ready on arrival at Starbucks, and pay for them automatically through iTunes.

Klienberg said the possibilities are endless.

“I don’t think there’s any company that doesn’t feel threatened by what the iPhone can do,” Kleinberg said. “Even if they can’t think of a physical link to themselves right now.”

Coffern is all for strides toward greater convenience for users. She said this proves that despite what she once thought, the Internet can be both portable and useful at the same time

“Mobile web is definitely the future,” she said. “The two are going to have to grow hand in hand.”

Members of the Local School Council of Galileo Scholastic Academy spent more than an hour discussing a new plan to help rid before- and after-school periods of what one council member called “absolute madness” created by aggressive parent drivers.

Altercations among drivers have nearly come to blows, one parent said, which prompted the Council to consider police involvement.

The plan, which sets guidelines and timetables for when and where parents should pick up and drop off their kids, is the most recent of the LSC’s many attempts to fix its loading zone glitch.

Galileo, which is located on the 800 block of South Carpenter Street, is surrounded by narrow through streets, and only limited street parking is available to the public. With 10 school buses lining up in front of the school twice each day (between 7:15-7:45 a.m. and 1:15-1:45 p.m.) and children often darting across the two-way streets to meet their parents, the roads surrounding the school can be treacherous.

The problems don’t stop with messy traffic jams and dangerous areas where speeding is the norm, said Dawn Zamora, a parent who attended Monday’s meeting. She said arguments between parents inside and outside of their cars is the biggest problem.

“They’re practically fist fighting out there,” said Zamora, who has been sending her two children to Galileo for nine years. “It’s the whole ‘Me first’ mentality. ‘My time is more valuable than yours, so I don’t care about your rules.’”

Parents are advised to only approach the school headed south on Carpenter, so as not to disrupt the flow of traffic where that road intersects with Arthington Street. This will allow a more steady and fluid traffic situation, LSC members said said.

The board members also request that parents not drop off or pick up students while school buses are loading and unloading. Instead, Galileo school officials ask parents to drop off their children before the buses arrive in the mornings and pick them up after the buses have left in the afternoons.

Also, instead of parents parking their cars, often illegally, or lingering to see their kids safely in the school building, parents should stay in their cars and leave as soon as their kids are dropped off. This point, said LCS parent representative Stuart Adelman, is where the plan starts to unravel.

“I want to watch my second-grader walk through those front doors,” said Adelman, 46. “I don’t want to keep moving. Frankly, I’d rather get a ticket.”

Adelman knows this could very well happen. According to Assistant Principal Blanca Miarka, if Galileo’s problem persists, the 12th District Police Department has agreed to dispatch an officer to help monitor traffic during peak hours.

“Police will give you a ticket if you are double parked or otherwise parked illegally,” Miarka said. “But we know people will be hard-headed about it. Parents are going to do what they have to do, and we’re going to do what we have to do.”

Zamora said she wouldn’t mind dropping her kids off without seeing them to the door as long as she knew they would be seen safely into the building.

“If I knew there was a teacher there consistently, not just once in awhile, someone responsible that I knew I could trust, this plan could work,” she said.

The new guidelines, which are being sent home with students and delivered in progress reports to ensure parents receive them, include an illustrated map instructing parents of the new process.

Galileo LSC co-chair Kali Plomin said she’s willing to give parents ample warnings and reminders about the new plan. She said she prefers self-monitoring, but if warnings don’t deter aggressive drivers the council will take more serious measures in the interest of students’ safety.

“If this new plan doesn’t work, if people know about this procedure and decide to ignore it, then we’ll have to find another solution, and that may involve a lot of parking tickets.”

According to Miarka, more than 70 percent of Galileo students live below the poverty line. Traffic tickets would put more strain on students’ families, which according to Plomin would be felt indirectly by students and could possibly hinder their performance in school.

“We shouldn’t have to do this,” Plomin said.

The Galileo LSC plans to meet again April 14, when members will decide how to proceed with the new traffic plan.

Though the plan has its problems, Adelman said the school has to start somewhere, and it has to start now.

“Someone’s kid is going to get hurt,” Adelman said. “Without a plan, you know it’s only a matter of time.”

The students used voice recorders to capture the 30-minute district 1834 meeting, which was held at the Cityfront Place apartment building on the 400 block of N. McClurg Court. Afterward, several students said they were confronted by a sergeant who said they had broken a rule against recording public meetings

Margaret Smith, a freshman at Columbia covering the meeting for a class assignment, said she’d never heard of such a rule.

“We were under the impression that at a public meeting like a CAPS meeting, we were allowed to record,” Smith said. “When the officer also saw that three other students in the room had tape recorders on, he started getting really angry.”

Monique Bond, director of news services for the Chicago Police Department, said no department rule exists that prohibits the video or audio recording of CAPS meetings. She said that while the sergeant was technically wrong, there are guidelines that allow community members to decide whether or not they are recorded during such meetings.

“We discourage recording because we want citizens to feel uninhibited and comfortable talking about crime,” Bond said. “We don’t want them to feel like they’re being monitored, watched or taped. In the event that someone wants to come inside with a camera or tape recorder, we seek the permission of and consult with the community. We ask, ‘Would this make you feel uncomfortable?’ The majority of time they say yes.”

Smith said of the two members of the public at Wednesday’s meeting, none voiced opposition to the students using recorders.

She said Sgt. Banaszkiewicz, who refused to give his first name, tried to intimidate her and the rest of the students, promising to “throw them out” of the next meeting if they used recorders again adding, “You guys are journalism students…you should know the rules.”

Smith said she was bothered by Banaszkiewicz’s demeanor.

“He talked to us like we didn’t know what we were doing, which is what you get a lot as a journalism student,” she said. “It’s something we’re used to, but because of the fact that it was a police officer who was treating us like this, we felt it wasn’t appropriate at all.”

Heather Kimmons, assistant public access counselor for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, said CAPS meetings are covered by Illinois’ Open Meetings Act, and recording should be allowed.

“[Police] are allowed to have and enforce reasonable rules so the decorum of meeting isn’t interfered with, but to ban all recording altogether would be violative of the act of the public body,” Kimmons said.
Section 2.05 of the Open Meetings Act states: “If a witness at any meeting … refuses to testify on the grounds that …his testimony is to be broadcast or televised … the authority holding the meeting shall prohibit such recording during the testimony of the witness.”

Though this ensures the rights of individuals to decide whether they can be recorded, Kimmons said it doesn’t translate to mean police can institute a blanket ban on recorders based on an informal vote.

“When they wrote this act, legislators wanted the public to record these meetings,” Kimmons said. “This interpretation violates the spirit of the act.”

Bond said officers aren’t necessarily fully educated in department policy regarding rights of the media, and that Banaszkiewicz was likely mistaken. Banaszkiewicz couldn’t be reached for comment.

Bond said inconsistent enforcement of the rule is a serious problem.

“Officers are confronted with varying levels of response [from the media], either about cameras filming or about being recorded or interviewed,” Bond said. “We have the right to reserve the privacy of the citizens, but this is something that should be looked into.”

Smith said while journalists should be responsible and use good judgment when using recording devices, their right to use them shouldn’t vary case by case.

“I know it’s a small thing, but this is where it starts,” she said. “We just need to make sure we are all on the same page.”