More than 1 million Californians are now collecting unemployment benefits that are being covered by a interest-free federal loan to be repaid by 2011. Lawmakers may have to raise payroll taxes to cover the costs and return solvency to the department.

Unemployment insurance is currently funded by a $434-per-employee payroll tax that has not been raised since 1985.

KPIX reports that traffic congestion in the Bay Area is lessened by California's high unemployment rate.

Twitter is San Francisco's new 3-1-1

San Franciscans needing information about city and county services once needed to pick up a phone and dial 3-1-1. Now, they can just tweet their questions to @sfgov311.

Mayor Gavin Newsom recently announced that the city would use the Twitter social networking site as a way of promoting interaction between citizens and government officals.

3-1-1 is manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and someone will be monitoring Twitter as well. Read the city's frequently asked questions about the service.

Follow @ThePublicPress on Twitter for the latest SF Bay Area news.

One man Tweeted his vaction plans to his friends and returned from vacation to a robbed house.

Mapping San Francisco's Emotions

Christian Nold and a group of 98 participants have mapped San Francisco's Mission District's emotional topography.

Nold asked each of the participants to explore the district and use his bio-mapping device to record their feelings about the area.

According to www.sf.biomapping.net:

"The San Francisco Emotion Map is the culmination of Christian Nold’s five-week residency and participatory art project that involved a total of 98 participants exploring San Francisco’s Mission District neighborhood using the Bio Mapping device he invented. During his residency at Southern Exposure, Christian Nold worked in the organization’s Mission Street storefront gallery encouraging visitors to stop by and use the devices during the weekdays and on Saturdays when he conducted intensive workshops. The project invited the public to go for a walk using the device, which records the wearer’s physiological response to their surroundings. The results of these walks are represented on this map using colored dots and participant’s personal annotations. The San Francisco Emotion Map is a collective attempt at creating an emotional portrait of a neighborhood and envisions new tools that allow people to share and interpret their own bio data."