It’s been an interesting 2012 so far. And if the world happens to end by december, then I have spent the last days on earth working for nothing. My guess is that the world is not ending. My guess is that a new age is being born, the age where our little friend the micro chip and us will be more intimate than ever.

“Spheres” by Oscar

Since I began my quest to interpret the world and encapsulate my perspective through art, I have found many things that I would never have expected. The first thing that I found, was that art is not just visual, as a matter of fact, its not just physical. Art can be found everywhere from Architecture and Engineering to Medicine and Business. Its all there, staring back at you with the memory of one thousand exponential ancestors. The craziest thing is that the more you know about everything, the more you begin to make sense of things that once were invisible.

“Pythagorean Sky” by Oscar

One of the first artists I knew and my favorite artists till this day is Salvador Dali. I had the pleasure of seeing his amazing work in various part of the hemisphere.

“Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory” Dali, 1954

Most of his work I understood immediately. It was the surreal content that he became famous for, but there was other work that made no sense to me. It was his late work. Fast forward a decade or so, and I have finally begun to figure out where he was in his intellect and his understanding, fascination and frustrations of the world. As I learned more about life in my terms, I began to assimilate to the work he was creating. Is as though every so often when I would figure something out about life, I unlocked a new concept in one of his paintings.

“Gala looking into the mediterranean sea” Dali, 1976

And this is why even after all these years, the madman that everyone carelessly forgot about, resonates so deep in my yet to be made memories. It makes me exited and looking forward to all the new things I will learn as I go.

“The Swallow’s Tail” Dali, 1983

An other artists that inspired me to make the leap into the unknown is Da Vinci. I always wondered how he became so smart and so creative, in ways that seemed more than human. I mean he created art and a bunch of crazy machines and innovations, like the crossbow:

or wings!

He also created “The Last Supper” depiction which brings me to the entrepreneurship…

You are probably familiar with the famous image of Jesus having his last meal with his disciples. But you rarely see this image in the actual wall it was painted on. As you can see on the image above, the image was painted on a wall and that wall contains other images. The images above the last supper are emblems, shields of the family that commissioned Da Vinci to paint the famous painting. What does this have to do with entrepreneurship you ask? Well, the fact that Da Vinci did not create the painting to satisfy his fascination and intellect. He made the painting because his business was art. He was an entrepreneur that got paid to make ideas and then got paid more to make them come to life.

Not all creative people are successful entrepreneurs. The ones that are not fearless enough to make a business of their own art end up becoming apprentices or assistants to the artists that took the leap. One of my favorite inventors was Nikola Tesla, one of the smartest and craziest people that the planet has seen. You would think that some one that smart would be able to capitalize on his creativity.

The truth is that he died a bankrupt, lone man. Some of his innovations were far superior than other innovators at the time, like Thomas Edison. The difference is that Edison knew money and how it worked, resulting in Tesla working under Edison. Had Tesla mastered money the same way that Edison mastered it, the world may have been a bit different. The lesson here is that Ideas are cheap and if anyone got rich by coming up with ideas, I like any other artist would be billionaires. The bottom line is that an idea is worthless in our Capitalistic world. In order for an idea to be influential, it has to make money. Just look at the last supper painting by Da Vinci, its still making money even today.

This brings me to my own endeavors. As I sit here looking for inspiration to keep on going with my bootstrapped ideas, I made an observation that is encouraging me to keep on going. I noticed that the shields on top of the last supper look like badges.

I take this as a sign that the company I co-founded, Badger Media Inc. has a chance to make it. The same way that a noble family made a shield to represent their kingdom, people can create a badge to represent their wisdom.

We are in the process of rolling out a new website that will allow people to explore and participate in the mapping of things easier and to share not only with other people on badger, but with people in other networks like facebook or twitter. There is more coming too!

The truth is that being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. It take more than guts, it takes fearlessness and a bit of recklessness. In today’s society, we are taught to follow rules, stay inside the lines and to take others into consideration. These are good rules, it makes great workers. As an entrepreneur that sees flaws in the current system, I realize that the status quo is wrong. You cannot expect to have a kick ass company if all your “workers” are followers. Its kind of like a team that requires the acknowledgment of its captain before doing anything; that team will clearly not win any games. What you need is thinkers that will talk the talk and walk the walk. Thinkers that deliver. Of course that is all an optimistic point of view on business. So I will seattle for people who are willing to push the status quo just a tiny bit.

As you can probably tell by my blabbing, I’m clearly a rookie at entrepreneurship. I feel like I’ve been in an internship to learn how to make companies come alive, build them from the ground up. And from the looks of it, i’m only getting started. Stay tuned for more companies. Companies are the new art… or are they the new black..?

…in other news, the Enterprise zoomed by NYC today:
original by rui here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rux-shots-here/6972894844/in/photostream

Among the hundreds of presentations you will find a bunch of awesome ITP (It’s not an acronym for Insane Tech Posse) Alumni sharing all that is awesome about the world of interactivity. Makes you wonder if they put something in the water at the 4th floor of NYU’s 721 Broadway to produce all these innovators, thinkers and artists. Maybe I did not drink enough of it, which reminds me, I need to drink more of that clear tasteless stuff in general.

Anyway, here are some awesome presentations you should not miss at SxSW!

Christin Roman (ITP Alumna ‘07) and Josh Knowles (ITP Alumnus ‘07)
“The Freelance Rockstar”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP11765
Saturday, March 10
12:30PM - 1:30PM
Courtyard Marriott
Rio Grande Ballroom

Yasser Ansari (ITP Alumnus ‘10)
“The Concrete Jungle: Nature in an Urban Ecosystem”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP11236
Friday, March 9
2-3pm
Hilton Garden Inn

Dan Phiffer (ITP Alumnus ‘07)
“The Public is Present: Exhibition Subsites at MoMA”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP11978
Saturday, March 10
5-6pm
AT&T Conference Hotel, Classroom 203

Christina Arnold (ITP Student)
“Using Technology to Thwart Human Traffickers”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP8553
Sunday, March 11
12 - 12:15pm
Hyatt Regency Austin
Texas Ballroom 4-7

Nick Hasty (ITP Alumnus ‘08)
“Preserving the Creative Culture of the Web”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100111
Sunday, March 11
3:30PM - 4:30PM
Austin Convention Center
Room 9ABC

Alex Rainert (ITP Alumnus ’04) and Ron Goldin (ITP Alumnus ’04)
“Design and the Mobile Startup”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP11295
Sunday, March 11
12:30pm – 1:30pm
Hilton Austin Downtown
Salon A

Greg Trefry (ITP Alum ’06)
Social, Mobile, Location-Based Games Panel
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100397
Sunday, March 11
Sunday 5-6 PM
Palmer Events Center

Bryan Nunez (ITP Alumnus ‘97)
representing work developed by Nathan Freitas and Shawn Van Every
“Recognize This! Ethics of Mobile Face Tagging”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP10446
Monday, March 12
11am - 12pm
Hilton Austin, Downtown

Gilad Lotan (ITP Alumnus ‘07)
“The Math that Matters in the Real-time Web”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP12652
Tuesday, March 13
12:30-1:30pm
Omni Downtown

Sally Applin (ITP Alumnus ‘92), Gene Becker
“PolySocial Reality and the Enspirited World”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP11546
Tuesday, March 13
12:30-1:30
Driskill Ballroom

Mark Kleback, Ezer Lichtenstein, Ryan Viglizzo (ITP Students)
“SXSW Create”
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP992393
They will have a 20 minute presentation/performance on DIY musical instruments.
Tuesday, March 13
11am - 6pm
Palm Park
Presentation Tent

Lily Szajnberg (ITP ‘12)
Claire Harlam (Tisch Film | Stern ‘11)
Heather Jack (Tisch Film | Stern ‘11)
Charles Rogers (Tisch Film ‘12)
“TECH UP: An interactive web-series for Subway Fresh Artist”
http://www.ifc.com/sxsw/schedule
Monday, March 12
5-7pm
IFC Crossroads House

SXSW AMODA Laptop Battle
Josh Knowles (ITP Alumnus ‘07) Performing Live Music
http://amoda.org/showcase/showcase.php?EventID=93
Saturday, March 10th, 2012
Mohawk (10th & Red River)
8pm-2am

Its a new year and with that, many new startup ideas. I took a little trip to NYC Mobile Startup Weekend 2012 on January 20 at Microsoft’s Office to check out the mobile scene and maybe help a project go from concept to reality.

After pitching a potential project I began to talk to people about their project and ideas. A few people were interested in my idea, but then I decided that I was not going to go forward with my idea. Since its not something that people would see as a “business” which is the key to winning these things.

I went home and came back the next morning feeling out which team might be worth joining. The weather was awful and I was beginning to wonder if I had made the right decision by leaving my bed.

After talking to all the groups again, I realized that they where all lacking a key element in their concepts; how to make money. I began to rally some people together to develop my own project and then towards noon, I began talking to a guy named Keith Fiore who had an idea that seemed to make sense but was not very scalable at first sight. It had to do with selling stuff at golf courses. After talking to him I realized that in reality he was trying to tackle a problem in the current market, how to sell more via the mobile phone. After sharing my ideas with Keith we realized that we where on to something so I scrapped my project and continued working with Keith. Kerry Craig also joined our team and the zenplaya team was formed.

After lots of talking and strategy talks we decided that zenplaya was to be presented as a platform for mobile commerce triggered by location. In other words, a platform that serves offers according to the venue that you are physically located at. This “narrow-casting” is a very clever idea because it allows the advertising of products to be served with-in context. And the zenplaya app allows for a one-click purchase with various delivery or pick-up options.

I developed the UX (user experience) for the MVP (minimum viable product) along with the Interface and the design. The UX was very important to me not only to figure out the architecture of what is needed but also to make sure that people navigate through the information flawlessly. I printed out a few screens with the information wireframed and tested the interactions with real people. I call this rapid prototyping with user feedback:

Once the wireframes and UX was satisfactory, I masterminded the MVP as a flash prototype, which we used for the presentation of the concept.

After all 17 teams presented their ideas, the cream rose to the top and zenplaya came out as the winner of the NYC Mobile Startup Weekend! All that tedious work paid off.

Back in August the first Photo Hack Day took place at General Assembly, NYC. There were over $10,000 in prizes and lots of interesting companies sponsoring the event including Aviary (who organized the whole thing), Etsy, Face.com, Foursquare, Shutterstock and Bigstock, Twitpic, Imgur, Instagram etc.

After giving it a little bit of thought I decided to join the hackers and see what the fuzz is all about.

After watching all of the introductions and introducing my project, I realized that 1. I thought my project was not something that was fit for this hackathon and 2. I felt that I needed to do something more experimental that others would be exited about. After talking to a bunch of designers and developers I was at a loss since I felt that some projects were trivial and the fin project already had a large team. So I posted a tweet that I was looking for a teammate to do a cool project. And Mason Du replied saying that he did not have a project yet.

Mason Du was looking to do something with education around picture taking. I wanted to do something with location and scraping exif data. After talking we came up with the concept of a picture helper, which we called “The Prettify App” since our philosophy, was that in order to get really cool pictures you need to help the photographer and not the picture. Once the picture is snapped, a computer can only do so much to make it better.

On Saturday night we realize that we needed a name and after realizing that our hack needed more personality, I convinced Mason that the product should be called Photobot and that it should be based around three bot personalities that try to make you a better photographer according to the data we get from the image uploaded. After some thought, Mason agreed Photobot was born!

Photobot was truly the product of Photo Hack Day, two guys scraping code, hacking stuff together to get a prototype of something that no one has ever seen.

The presentation went pretty well and judging by the quality of questions by the judges, we were optimistic.

It was a real surprise to find out that out of 44 projects submitted, Photobot came in at the Winner of the whole enchilada!

This win yielded a lot of geek cred and a lot of prizes. What a great event.

And this Weekend is Photo Hack Day 2!!

Press Release:

“Jackoon” 2008 and “Jackoon v2.O” 2009, Wood, acrylic and electronic components, 8″ × 12″ × 5″

Rush Arts Gallery
526 W 26th St # 311
New York, NY 10001-5521
(212) 691-9552
January 5 - January 27, 2012
Opening Reception: January 5, 6- 8pm

Electronic artist Oscar G. Torres creates art machines or “artbots” made from hacked toys, open-source code and simple fabrication materials. As the artbots travel autonomously, they lay color on the canvas with the brushes attached to their robotic arms. Simple materials such as wood and tape are used to build these machines, which contrasts the high-tech computing systems that make them function.

The term “Postanalog” is used by Torres to encapsulate society’s current pseudo-symbiotic relationship with digital technology that is used in everything from the alarm clocks that wake us up in the morning, to the life support systems in hospitals that literary keep people alive. Digital technology has even infiltrated the deepest and most personal places of a person’s life as embodied by the mobile phone. Machines have allowed us to see new things by extending our limited, five-sense, perception of the world. They allow us to travel far beyond the limits of space and to understand that even “thin air” is a sea of complex matter. Society is dependant on digital technology. Machines are the cradle to our civilization and their absence would result in collapse. “Postanalog” is a term that suggests the embrace of technology as a tool to help humanity thrive, and now, a tool for art.

Time is funny, sometimes it passes by very fast. Other times it passes by really slow. Either way, the only time you have to do anything is the present, so that is the time you have to make the best in life.

What else can I talk about other than playbadger.com and electronics? Maybe I can talk about #occupywallstreet or other political events that are important in this day and age. I think I’ll just talk about Badger.

Badger has definitely been a good project to develop. I have learned a great deal about people, business and technology. The most beneficial part of it all is the actual finding of things that interest me. Which is kind of nice since working so much for so long has fogged these things.

How many times have you been asked through out your life what are the things you like to do? This was especially true, in my experience, during Middle School and High School. Teachers, parents, parents friends and anyone who knew about you would ask about your interests in hopes of giving suggestions for possible career paths. This was the time when the sky was the limit and the only thing holding you back was interest.

What am I interested in?
What do I value?

Playbadger.com has shed some light into that question. Through badger I have re-discovered a lot of interests that I enjoy. Aside from art related topics such as Street Art and Gallery Openings or Typography, I have re-enforced my admiration and intrigue with Bugs! Specially Bees. Another thing that I realized through badger is that the reason I take so many pictures is to compensate for my really awful short-term memory. Now when I go to an event or party and for some reason leave my bike over night, I “badge” it with my personal tag. “Badging” a picture of the bike takes less than a minute. I take a picture of the bike in its environment and plot the location. The next day when I wake up and freak out because I forgot where I parked my bike, I look at my phone and boom there it is. I found that this works well with parking my car in the city.

I noticed that Badger also answer the questions “Where did you see that?” and it also helps you keep track of the location of the things you shared.

An other cool development is using pictures from Badger for interactive installations. At my birthday party the other day, I projected the latest pictures that where uploaded to Badger. The software would grab the latest image and use a microphone to make pixels grow according to the intensity of the music. The result was people taking pictures of themselves to be projected with pixels that got bigger to the music.

Here is an example of what people saw:

Image from Badger:

Image processed with low sound:

Image processed with high sound:

It was a pretty cool experience. And best of all this little experiment is opening the door for more interactive installations in the future!

Long story short, I am looking forward to have people upload bugs to my bugs badge since I enjoy looking at them so much! Also Halloween, it would be cool to see Halloween pictures from all over the country.

I noticed that sparkfun stopped selling the ioio module for some reason. After researching possible causes, I realized they had just updated the module.

While looking into the possible causes for the [non-exitent] demise of the ioio, I found a bunch amazing projects! The cool thing about the ioio is the ability to control hardware with software, in this case with your android phone! First you have the good old “hello world” which is usually a little blinking LED like this:

While looking for hello “hello world” videos of ioio’s I found this new little micro-controller by GHI Electronics called the FEZ Domino, a .NET Micro Framework module to interface with the Android. It looks like a nifty little MC and its open source, as far as i can tell.

Weather its the FEZ or the ioio, after your Eureka moment, there will be a flood of possibilities crossing your mind. Soon you will be making little interesting projects with your Android’s accelerometer and the voice recognition apps:

And sooner than later, you make the leap to making a robotic contraption with an algorithm that can actually solve the most difficult of puzzles like the V-cube 7:

This brings me back to why I’m writing this blog post.
1. I love opensource hardware
2. I love mobile
3. I began a project called Badger that has sucked my time and would like to tell you about it!

Badger is a website (and soon an iPhone App) that allows you to make badges of anything that interests you. These badges become Visual Hash Tags that are used to group picture and videos that people upload into blogs and maps.

This is a map of the stuff that I uploaded to Badger from my Desktop, Android (via picture text message) and iPhone App (The Beta).

Badger gives you a place to upload pictures of interesting things that you encounter. Even if they may seem like silly mundane thing that nobody cares about.

In Badger people like Jacek (Co-Founder) made a “Street Art” badge to upload all the street art that he sees. Since badges are collective, anyone can submit content to the badge. Natan (Co-Founder) and I started uploading pictures to the street art badge which is becoming an interesting game/conversation around this topic. I cannot see street art now with out having the need to “Badge” it and I did not even know I liked street art this much!

In Badger everyone cares! All the pictures are public, which means that everyone interested in similar topics is looking. You can share the silly pictures you take (which Badger takes very serious), like that nice lamp you saw at the restaurant that was serving the fancy drinks! Or maybe it was a bug that you stumbled across while taking a break from riding you bike around town.

Badger is about all those moments when you are behind the camera, not in front of it. We are hoping that Badger becomes the central venue to go find a map or a blog of pictures about anything! And a place to perhaps connect with a group of people that are interested in the things that you might find weirdly appealing… or not.

Fell free to sign up to the Beta Site and poke around at the content. Every picture has a badge associated to it and you can see more pictures that are similar by clicking on the badge associated to the picture. You can make your own badges once you sign up. Try it out and send us some feedback if you like, at info [at] playbadger.com

Here are some projects that have great potential. They are just beginning to scratch the surface and is a sign of the greater things to come.

The first trend that’s happening is the use of androids to interface with PCs. Here is a little hacked software that allows the android phone to act as a mouse controller for a computer.

RemoteDroid demo from Joshua Sera on Vimeo.

Sooner than later you will have software on your phone to control just about anything with an internet connection and digital controls.

An other little device that will certainly enable hackers and techies to do some rapid prototyping is the IOIO (pronounced yoyo.)

The IOIO is an open-source micro controller that connects to your android phone. The little micro controller is packed with 16 analog inputs, 9 PWM outputs and an astonishing 48 i/o digital pins. This will allow you to make gadgets control via mobile device:

If you think that these innovations are already too cool for their own good. You have not kept up with ubuntu news. Just a few weeks ago the news spread like wildfire about the Raspberry Pi:

I mean just look at what’s packed into this little computer that is no bigger than a pack of chewing gum or a USB stick!

- 700MHz ARM11
- 256MB of SDRAM
- OpenGL ES 2.0
- 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
- Composite and HDMI video output
- USB 2.0
- SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
- General-purpose I/O
- Open software (Ubuntu, Iceweasel, KOffice, Python)

With all this, what else do you need to make your very own terminator…

Here is a good resource video with lots of helpful links in the video description:

I guess you would need the generative titanium and the living tissue colonies etc. but that’s besides the point. The tools are there to make just about anything and it fit in the palm of your hand. Plus when you add the additional open source software, you have an arsenal of tools that is unmatched aka hackarsenal…

Sooner than later, you will be able to build your own mini helper:

Or just buy one for your self and then customize it:

I predict that by next year this time, we will have fully functional personal computers the size of your cellphone that you can carry around everywhere like a laptop, but pocket sized.

It reminded me of the automated system in the commercial fashion world. Mass production of clothing is now a job for robots so why not give them a shot at making fashion too… Actually this performance is more that just a fashion statement, its a reflection of society and the integration of technology in our life.

Trends in fashion mirror trends in society. The current state of humanity is the adoption of technology to enhance our lives. Mobile technology, algorithms and micro-computing are allowing us to patch our personal flaws. Having bad memory is easily solved with a smart phone which can remember things for you or help you google something on the spot, so remembering something becomes a little trivial…

Embedded technology will be the next generation of mobile tech. Just imagine a pice of clothing, kind of like Elizabeth Fuller’s “Life Dress” but who’s capabilities go beyond just emission of light. What if it was a reception-emission model. In other words, what if each little light in the dress also had sensors that would study your environment for you and then the dress tells you what it found out.

Maybe its co2 sensors that tell you that you may be in trouble like Kristin O’Freil’s CORSET which reacts to high levels of CO2

Maybe its like Nike+ that has a little accelerometer in one of the silicone squares. Maybe every little square is a different sensor!

The bottom line is that the embedding of technology in our garments has great potential to extend our abilities to comprehend our world. It will also let us know great correlations from the data gathered from our behavior.

Sooner than later we will see Smart Clothes which will be replacing our dumb clothing. I can’t wait for my self drying vest to go with my hover board!! =)

Great thanks to Mr. McQueen for laying the foundation for this great movement in the fashion world.