We've been a big fan of Willo O'Brien's design work for several years now. She's got the chops to hang with the code geeks, but she's also a hell of an illustrator, drawing funny animals like bass playin' polar bears, ice skating bunnies...and you should see what she can do with a pumpkin. We usually run into her at shows, but when we heard she was branching out and had launched her own line of......

We know there's no shortage of young, successful, smart people in this town, but we still turn a little green with envy when we hear about guys like Ben Keighran. The Australia native is only 25 years old. After successfully launching bluepulse in his native land in 2002, he took the show on the road and ended up here in the Bay Area. Like another young tech-maestro we recently spoke to, Keighran houses his company in Silicon Valley (in fact, in YouTube's former quarters), but lives here in the city by the bay....

Andrew Frame was recently named by BusinessWeek as a "top entrepreneur under the age of 30". He's aiming to fulfill that promise with ooma, a company he founded in 2005 that has a whole new take on telephony. It enables unlimited U.S. domestic calls to any wireless or landline phone number . ooma's gotten media play for a couple reasons -- for one thing, much has been made in the press and on the podwaves about the involvement of Ashton Kutcher in the company. ...

Sasha Cagen's been mentioned in these pages before. She's the author of books Quirkyalone and To-Do List. Even with those cool accomplishments under her belt, she's gone on to found (with co-founder Adam Souzis) something astonishingly addictive -- StyleMob. A very nice SFist reader sent us an invite during the "invite-only beta" -- which comes to a close today! If all goes as planned, today will start the "public beta," so cruise on over and join the 6,000 current members. StyleMob is an online community "for street fashion inspiration" where you can see "how real people put together their outfits." There are all sorts of voting, networking, and community tools....

Officer Andrew Cohen made headlines in recent years for the videos he produced spoofing the SFPD. The videos were intended to be a humorous sendoff to former police captain Rick Bruce and poke fun at the officers at his station. They were also intended to be internal -- but they got out, and things got out of hand. We wanted to take this opportunity with Cohen to ask about more than the "VideoGate" scandal, rather than just rehashing what most of us already know. We sought the 12-year-vet's opinion on the state of policing in the city, his perspective on local politics and political figures, and what comes next for him....

We told you a few weeks ago about Platinum Studios' "American Idol"-style contest for comic creators, through which the winners will get a "multimedia development and publishing deal" based on their concept. At that time, we spoke to local guys Kevin Buckley and Marcus Thiele about their entry. We've just talked to another local writer/artist team with an entry in the Top 50: Navin Prasad and Chris Weiermiller....

Andrea and her pal hit the park. Photo courtesy Andrea. Our recent "3 Questions" subjects have included Megan Marrone, Kevin Rose, Phil Bronstein, and the founders of Yelp -- all pretty darned high-profile people. However, as compelling as we find those folks, our goal with the short-form interview was always to intersperse folks on the street; the folks you meet in your real life, who really are as interesting as, well, anybody. Andrea F.......

Platinum Studios, a comic book publisher (KISS 4k (yes, about the band) and Hero by Night) is hosting a sort of "American Idol" for comic creators. A few of those contestants are from right here in the Bay Area. Kevin Buckley is the writer on this project and an artist in his own right, though Marcus Thiele, his partner, is the artist on their pitch: "The Strange and Many Eyes of Dr. LeFaux." Kevin and Marcus took a few minutes to talk about their art and living in the Bay Area. ...

We enjoy Yelp quite a bit. During our rare moments of free time, we often have fun slogging through the site's multitudes of oft-useful, oft-comedic opinions on local services, establishments, and especially restaurants (feel free to check out our vast [6] amount of reviews ). We were interested to hear more about the genesis of this community-based Web site, and wondered how Yelp's growth and evolution looked to those behind the scenes. The site's founders, Jeremy Stoppelman (who's the CEO, and talked to SFist once before) and Russel Simmons (the CTO), took a few minutes to answer three questions for us. Hey -- six answers for the price of three!...

Phil Bronstein is the Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Mr. Bronstein agreed to answer a few questions for us. His responses directly address issues brought up by SFist and SFist's readers a short time ago. Notably, you'll see from his answers below that he'd appreciate more of the same. Here's a chance hear and be heard from one of the most important drivers behind news coverage in our area. See what he had to say to us below -- and let him know what you think....

You know who Kevin Rose is, right? He used to be on television quite a bit. Now, he's all over the podwaves, both audio and video, behind the scenes, co-hosting, and making guest appearances. And he's the founder and chief architect of a little operation called Digg. Digg.com, in all seriousness, is a very, very popular Web site that socializes news stories by allowing users to both submit and rank them. But, as you're on the Internet right now, you probably knew that. ...

You may remember Megan Morrone from TechTV -- or you may have heard her filling in on a podcast here or there. We've recently become reacquainted with her works through Jumping Monkeys, her blog, wherein Megan relates stories about her life as a parent of three children. She, with Leo Laporte, has just launched a new, affiliated podcast of the same name, of which one episode (basically an introduction to this "show for geek parents") has been published. We listened to it and were so anxious to hear more that we hit Megan up for the "Three Questions . . ." treatment. To our delight, she complied. ...

The other day, we told you our impressions of Naia Gelateria (nutshell: pretty good overall; you should particularly dig it if you enjoy having a ton of varieties to choose from). We wanted to know a little more about this Bay Area company, so we approached Trevor Morris, the company's general manager. He's been running the company since 2003, and had prior experience in the restaurant industry before that. He took the time to answer a few questions....

Yesterday, we posted a contest in which we're giving away a copy of Matt Silady's "The Homeless Channel," a new graphic novel. Matt, a Berkeley resident, was both the writer and artist of this creative yet grounded fiction about the woman behind a 24-hour broadcast network devoted to covering the homeless. This Friday, the Isotope turns into party central (as it often does) to celebrate the book's launch, which anyone can attend....

We enjoy visiting Charles Hogkins' web site, Burritoeater. Not necessarily for the opinions within his numerous reviews of taquerias, more because we just like his writing. He's got a funny, quirky style that, in our opinion, trenscends simple food reviews. He obviously enjoys doing it, but doesn't seem to take himself too seriously. And, hey, his ratings system is based on 10 mustaches. That's just funny, as are the use of terms like "burstage abatement," and his description of Papalote's burritos as "rendered with such mechanical consistency, some have wondered if there’s a mustachioed robot assembling them in an unseen corner of their tiny kitchen." We chatted briefly with Charles about his favorite food and another hobby of his, hiking....

Michael Mascha is very, very interested in water -- and knows a ton about it. We first spoke to him at a water tasting event that kicked of the publication of his book, Fine Waters. Here's a guy that knows more about water than we do about anything -- and he's happy to share some knowledge with us. ...

It's mostly this guy's fault. Jackson West, who was the first editor here at SFist, got the ball rolling with this post, "The City that Knows How." He helped to grow the site with his wit, feel for the city, and a small group of contributors. As we zero in on SFist's third anniversary, we thought it would be a great time to see what Jackson's been doing since he last graced these pages,......