Blog posts from April 2013

Disney continue to make me want to work in their research department with this smart light project HideOut.

Hideout board game by Disney Research.

I found this excellent page of CSS creatures (make yours and submit via twitter): http://bennettfeely.com/csscreatures/

Tom Stuart sent this JavaScript ray tracer (http://zenphoton.com/), which is pretty lovely but does rather warm up my computer.

Here is a topical animated GIF about football that made me laugh aloud:

In 2009 we launched Here & There, a limited edition run of art prints exploring speculative projections of dense cities. The pair of prints show the projection as used in Manhattan, one looking uptown from 3rd and 7th, and the other looking downtown from 3rd and 35th. This post is to announce that they’re back on sale!

I wrote about the influences and research around the project too. We turned off the shop around a year later with a few prints left in stock. I’m pleased to say today that we’re reopening the shop to sell the remaining 180 pairs of prints.

Since it’s launch, lots has happened. We’ve renamed BERG and H&T itself has been on several exciting journeys. A pair of prints were exhibited in the 2011 MoMA exhibition Talk To Me. They have since been incorporated into MoMA’s permanent collection. The projection has formed the basis of a patent for use in the context of mobile displays which is an advanced stage of back and forth with the USPTO. The exciting and intelligent action film, Inception, released in 2010, later released a beautiful alternative poster!

We regularly receive inquiries and requests for a pair of prints, so today the shop will re open for a limited period. The prints are £99 plus postage and are on sale here.

“Andy’s looking a bit Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing,” quoth Helen. (Apparently it’s the black t-shirt.) And thus began our weekly All Hands meeting this morning.

Happy St George’s Day! It’s a beautiful day in Shoreditch. The sun is shining, the windows are open, the scent of blossoming trees wafts on the breeze… it feels like spring is finally here.

The beautiful weather certainly has had an impact on people’s moods. Yesterday at lunch time everyone sat around munching on their sandwiches and looking at their phones. Today people were conversing and joking and lingering. On both days Alice and Phil G were preoccupied with the Guardian’s Cryptic Crossword puzzle. Some things don’t change regardless of the weather.

Here’s the 411 (geddit?) on what’s happening at BERG this week in case you’re interested:

Jack: writing proposals for partnerships around BERG Cloud and the dev kits that we announced last week. He’s also spending a lot of time in meetings, meetings, meetings. (Possibly with you?)

Mark: sales, sales and more sales. Writing a blog post. Handling a small tsunami of interest that followed on from the announcement of the dev kits and #FLOCK.

Joe: doing some fun exploration of physical interfaces.

Adam: working on making the BERG Cloud Bridges more efficient and getting Kachina onto live BERG Cloud.

Alex: working on Remote v2 graphics and behaviours as well as the Dev Shield design.

Neil: doing some more work on #FLOCK. (A lot of people did good work to get #FLOCK into the world. Neil the Night Owl is probably the only one who consistently did so at 2:00am.)

Helen: running lots of numbers and figures around Little Printer second run production.

Fraser: Little Printer customer service & PR and doing some work towards making it possible to sell Little Printer in some more countries than those we are currently certified to sell in. (Fingers crossed!) Also working on the announcement of a product that will soon be going on sale. (Watch this space!)

Phil G: diagramming what happens when you subscribe to a publication for Little Printer and rationalising the code around certain publications. Also working on developing some new pubs.

Denise: planning for future IA around Little Printer and Remote. Also doing some development on the dev site.

Andy: working on the dev boards and Kachina and getting the workshop ready for Luckybite to move into this week. We’re looking forward to having them around!

Alice: working on the web shop for the product that will be going on sale soon as well as some publication changes on Remote.

Nick: chatting with the folks in Slovenia who are involved with Little Printer production (and will soon be playing their part in the second production run), working with Phil W and Andy on dev board firmware, and going to talk to some school kids about promising careers in hardware, software, etc. Here’s to the next generation!

Matt: enjoying a well-deserved holiday! Well, we know he’s on holiday. We trust he’s enjoying it. And we hope he’s not spending too much time looking at his email. (Matt!)

People are BUSY this week!

As for myself, I’m mostly doing my usual mix of customer service, diary wrangling and general studio management. Also compiling a long list of things that Matt has to deal with when he gets back. (It will wait, Matt!)

The forecast is for winter to return next week (ugh), so we’re enjoying the sunshine while we can. That may or may not involved bunking off early to enjoy a pint in the sunshine. I’ll never tell.

There have been a couple of launches this week. So the first link is the announcement of our Dev Kits over at BERG Cloud. Exciting times for us, and lots to build on there.

Joe and I are working on some physical interface stuff at the moment, and Joe sent this video of interchangeable controls for the Teenage Engineering OP-1. We love the rubber band controlled knob at the start of the demo.

More from Malia. We love the work of David O’Reilly and he writes about the changing use of time in animation:

I made these videos to illustrate more clearly how contrast in timing was something that has a clear progression from the 30s to the 90s

I like the annotation for movement in animation he uses too.

From Helen, wringing out a water-soaked cloth in space.

Bunny Huang writes about the $12 feature phone he found in a market in China.

We need someone with a cat to get one of these.

Matt Webb pointed us towards an interesting Kickstarter. Dropbox meets Bittorrent meets local private storage.

Denise unearthed this video explaining Japanese research project looking at gesture based UI and projection. It’s great to see a different tack in the area of the Lamps project we produced last year.

Welcome to week 410. It’s almost like spring outside which means of course, that by the time you read this we’ll all be buried under 6ft of snow.

Oh well. Onwards!

This week, the general plan of action is:

Meetings:
Matt, Jack, Mark

Kachina:
Neil, Andy, Adam
(Hopefully we’ll be able to tell you what this is soon)

BERG Cloud:
Nick, Matt, Alex, Alice, Me

Little Printer & Remote:
Alex, Alice, Fraser, Kari, Helen, Phil, Me

NPD:
Joe, Jack

Another coming-soon thing that is currently nameless:
Helen

Admin:
Kari, Helen

So if you need us, you know where to find us. See you there.

Stop-motion fruit and veg in a music video. DJ Yoda Feat. Roots Manuva and Kid Creole & The Coconuts – U No Likey Like That

Projection mapping ahoy. Willow – Sweater

Colourful cables from Tricot Light

Processing extension for Illustrator drawscri.pt

Cloud Party! Looks like Second Life; works in your browser!

Hyperlapse is all over the web this week. Awesome fly-throughs of Google Streetview journeys.

Drawnimal App. Gorgeous!

Welcome to week 409.

Phil is now officially in the building. Described as notorious we’re glad he’s found a new home here at BERG.

Lots of projects keeping us busy in the new office, not least Kachina which is coming to a head next week, and Sinawava which we are hoping to move on to the next stage.

What’s keeping most of us busy are plans for the new Dev Boards (more to come on that soon) and a refresh of bergcloud.com to give a better overview of how we talk about BERG Cloud.

Matt is mainly lunching and emailing and pivoting

Nick is mostly conducting end to end testing on Kachina, dev board meetings, and was last seen heading to an IoT event at Imperial College

Alice is starting a new BERG Cloud sprint, new publications display for remote and was receiving some sage advice on how to win at panels

Andy is dividing his time between Kachina and putting up shelves

I’m meeting clients working on our sales plan for the next 18 months and drinking lots of tea

Fraser is working his way through Zendesk emails and preparing a blog about submission process for publishers

Helen is going global on Little Printer fulfilment and looking at sales in other countries outside of the EU and US. Ambitious.

Adam is making sure Kachina talks to everything it needs to

Jack is doing sales and NPD and researching new components in his spare time

Alex is fixing up a new version of remote and preparing the new pages for bergcloud.com

Neil is making and making and making on Kachina

Phil is learning Ruby and making publications, publications, publications

Denise is harmonising all of our sales and marketing

Joe started the week a poor ill person, but has bounced back like Tigger by time of writing

It’s week 408 and the new studio is looking nice. With bunting aplenty and BERG bits occupying all corners of rooms it’s now much less like an office and more like a home.

Here’s a few interesting facts about the new place for you:

– It’s opposite (what looks like) a castle and next to a strip club.

– It has two front doors and EIGHT windows. Real windows from which I can see birds. Sadly there are no birds outside today because it is snowing, again.

– Yesterday there were 19 pints of milk in the fridge. Today there are only 11. Oh and here’s a not very interesting fact about Old Street for you: Nowhere sells Nesquik.

– There is a very tall building which I can see from my desk that glows lilac in the evening light and has, on top, two very beautiful bright red lights. (Shame my  iPhone camera fails to captcha this).

–  Newspaper Club are here too! (They brought bunting as well). I sit with them. They laugh a lot.

Interesting facts aside. In this week’s All Hands, we discussed Weeknotes. What are Weeknotes? Why do we do them,? Who reads them? Should they continue?

Well, apparently Neil’s Mum reads them and this is as good a reason to continue as any, so here’s what’s happening this week…

– Matt is meeting people in the flesh and on the internet (Skype, not dating).

– Jack has also been in and out of meetings and will be spending the end of the week in Russia.

– Alice is busy with the shop, the remote site, and the future of BERG hack days.

– Kari is Zendesk-ing, emailing and wrapping up bits from the move.

– Fraser is also Zendesk-ing but accompanying it with outreach and writing blogs.

– Adam is making exciting things work for Kachina.

– Joe is Kemp.

– Nick is push publication-ing all over the place whilst tweaking networks and Kachina-ing.

– Neil and Andy are prototyping prototyping prototyping.

– Alex is doing some IA and Little Printer things whilst chasing suppliers about paper.

– Denise is Little Printer all the way.

– I have been doing things I haven’t done for three weeks and, last but not least, we hope Mark is having a wonderful time on a well earned holiday with the fam.