Goin’ to Woodstock - with the Droid

November 9, 2009 – 1:19 am

I went to Woodstock for a weekend of live music. Friday was Steve Kimock at the Bearsville Theatre, and Saturday was Levon Helm at his Midnight Ramble. It was a great weekend, and I was able to pick up an awesome Elliot Landy giclée print of the Band. I picked up the Droid on Friday morning as my first ever smartphone purchase. I didn’t realize at the time that the device would play a significant role in the forthcoming weekend.

Ted had emailed me a Google map link earlier in the day which opened right into the Google Maps navigation app. Right away the app navigated from our current location.  Having full blown navigation right in the device is really nice. It has all the voice cues one would expect. It was fast, and I never lost service.

During the drive, Pandora streamed flawlessly. Changing songs was fast; I counted between 1 and 3 seconds to change songs after using it for about a half hour. When there was a navigation update, the navigation voice spoke over Pandora.

When Andrea and I reached the Bearsville Theatre, we met up with Ted, Corina, Suhas and Vanessa. During Kimock’s set break we were outside talking when Vanessa mentioned that she didn’t know all the stars of Orion. What the hell, I figured, and I pulled out the Google Sky. Sky, the app, is amazing. It does just what you want it to do, and since we don’t really have a chance to use it in the city, it was really cool to play with it in Woodstock, since the night was clear and the stars were crisp.

After spending the weekend using the phone in general, I’ve decided that it is an iPhone killer. Apps are friends with each other on the Droid. Nothing has frustrated me yet with the device, though I haven’t reached the 5GB data limit just yet.

Here is a picture of Steve Kimock from Friday. More on my Flickr page.

Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »

Grazia Magazine Preview of Love Machine by Publk

October 5, 2009 – 7:07 pm

Can’t say I’ve ever heard of this magazine, but bless them for covering our app. Graziadaily.co.uk will feature Publk, Inc’s Love Machine in their upcoming issue for print and web. Will they accurately portray what Love Machine is all about? Who cares? We’re published! Here’s a preview of the article.

Posted in 1' 2' 10', BarTalk, Designing Around Place | 1 Comment »

My New Business Card

July 29, 2009 – 11:14 pm

Posted in Etcetera | 1 Comment »

My New Logo?

July 27, 2009 – 10:58 pm

I’ve been messing around with a logo after being inspired by the color palette of the American Spirit Light box. I used those three colors and highlighted the B and E in my last name, because if I try extra hard I can be whatever I want to be! The font is Blackoak Standard.

Posted in Comm Lab, Etcetera | 2 Comments »

Andrew Bird @ Radio City Music Hall 06.18.2009

June 20, 2009 – 12:41 pm

See my Flickr page for more. Some of these images were also published by BrooklynVegan and Gothamist. The photographs were taken with my Lumix LX3 at ISO 1600/f2.8. I used Noise Ninja for stunning noise reduction.

Posted in Etcetera | 1 Comment »

Love Machine: the Power is On!

June 15, 2009 – 11:52 pm

Love Machine, my SMS-based interactive thing for singles nights, released under the name Publk (taking a stab at starting a company that does something specific), is now in use bi-weekly at Hugs in Brooklyn. It’s super easy to use and it’s lots of fun.

When you walk into the bar, you receive a badge with a number on it. You should wear the badge and sign into the system with the number printed on it as your ID. Signing in is optional but has advantages. By signing in you may send and receive private messages from other singles at the event. They’ll be able to identify and pm you by the number you are wearing, so users must be a little crafty in getting that number. This feature is more direct than the winking type feature (when a user receives a messaging stating that someone may have a crush on you, etc), but when a user is only at an event for a couple hours, winking can be a waste of time. Signing in with the badge number also qualifies users for random drink giveaways! Here’s a poster and a chart of how we use the system. Below are the different ways people engage with Love Machine.

Posted in Etcetera, Physical Computing | 1 Comment »

Location-based Playlist for iPhone

April 5, 2009 – 9:30 pm

The location-based playlist iPhone app is in development for Little Computers. You hear music based on your area or the area of your choice. Songs you may here were written by artists in the area, played at venues in the area, reference the area. Additional features and mock-up below.

Posted in iPhone | Comments »

High Resolution Baster Scans

April 5, 2009 – 3:09 pm

Did you know you can use your flatbed scanner as a camera? It produces stunningly high resolution images. Here is a great tutorial that discusses the technique thoroughly. I used a flatbed scanner to produce some high resolution images of the baster.

Full view

Injector plunger

Check valves and T joint

Masterflex silicone tubing

Posted in thesis | Comments »

Twitter + Textmarks = TweetMarks

April 1, 2009 – 7:11 pm

Tweet every text. Text every tweet. Twitter and SMS users connect.

Textmarks keyword = Twitter hashtag

The challenge was to get the most possible users contributing to a communication system from my most possible devices while allowing all users to feel like they are contributing to the same thing and providing an added bonus for smartphone users. The solution is TweetMarks.

TweetMarks is a marriage of regular ol’ SMS and Twitter. It includes the most possible users while adding some cool functionality for smartphone users. Users who opt for the SMS version will receive tweets, and users who prefer the custom Twitter client will receive the text messages sent from the short code. Users are also free to use their preferred Twitter client. However the advantage of using the Twitter client, of course, is the ability to follow people who are at the event but you didn’t already know. It’s a web-based app, so users don’t have to worry about installing anything to their devices when they arrive at a museum, conference, bar, or club and find out there’s a cool communication tool available that they don’t have.

To achieve this I just added functionality to my Twitter client to send tweets as SMS through Textmarks. Likewise, SMS messages are tweeted. Hopefully this includes mostly everyone at an event who wishes to participate in a group communication, and users can use their preferred method of messaging. I’m really excited about this. There are limitless possibilities for this application not only at bars and clubs as originally envisioned, but any large space where people who don’t know each other gather.

On Wednesday, April 8 we will implement this system for singles night at Hugs in Brooklyn. We’re going to project all these messages onto a big screen. The system we customized for them looks great! Have a look. New messages slide in on the projection screen thanks to Scriptaculous. I didn’t do device detection on this one so you can check it out on the web or your mobile device. TweetMarks will also be the engine that drives BarTalk, our 1′ 2′ 10′ project.

Messaging client:
publk.com/hugs

Projection:
publk.com/hugs/projection

Posted in 1' 2' 10', BarTalk, Designing Around Place, Live Web | Comments »

Staggering Fact About Thanksgiving Day Energy Consumption

March 30, 2009 – 4:59 pm

On Thanksgiving day, Americans cook roughly 45,000,000 turkeys. The average turkey is 20 lbs and cooks for 5 hours.

The average home oven is rated at 40,000 BTU/hour energy consumption.

The BTU content in natural gas is 100,000 BTU/therm.

Let’s conservatively estimate that the average cost of gas in late November is $1.00/therm.

Let’s estimate that the average American bastes their Thanksgiving turkey twice per hour, for a total of 10 times in 5 hours.

Let’s estimate that opening the oven adds about 5 minutes each time to the overall cooking time, for a total of about 60 minutes, or one hour.

If a therm costs $1.00, and we consume 40% of a therm every hour we cook our turkey, and we add an additional hour of cooking time by basting twice an hour, we each spend $.40 extra to cook our turkey.

$.40 x 45,000,000 = $18,000,000

That means that as Americans we waste $18,000,000 worth of energy on Thanksgiving day, whereas we could have been eating a finer turkey in less time by simply using the Überbaster!

Posted in Etcetera, thesis | 1 Comment »