Uncommon Projects, LLC.

Marco

info — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:45:47 +0000

Marco Friend Locator iPhone App

Marco (2010)

Since Bikenik, Uncommon Projects has become increasingly interested in local, urban, pedestrian mapping. We’ve decided to bootstrap the development of two mobile products - Marco and Steps - with the goal of refining the last 100 yards of wayfinding.

Marco is a free iPhone app that puts you and a friend on a map so you can find each other fast. Marco is the easiest way to Locate someone. It uses SMS to connect two smartphones to a shared map.

Features:

Recipient doesn’t need the app!
As simple as SMS
Private and “opt-in”
No accounts or social networking
Compatible with iPhone, Android and more

Marco wouldn’t have happened without the dedicated work of a talented team of folks.

Marco Product Development Team:

Josh Rooke-Ley Lead Engineer
Kathleen Watkins Visual Designer
Jeff Kirsch UX Designer
Justin Blinder Engineer
Tarikh Korula Product Manager

Become a fan on facebook!
Follow Marco on Twitter!

TechCrunch Disrupt HackDay

info — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:31:17 +0000

TechCrunch Disrupt Hack Day (2010)

Uncommon Projects Co-Founder Tarikh Korula teamed up with Yahoo! Senior Product Manager Daniel Raffel and Etsy CTO Chad Dickerson to organize the TechCrunch Disrupt Hack Day. Taking place in New York City for the TC Disrupt conference, Hack Day was attended by over 350 of New York’s most talented developers. Devs formed into 60 teams that prototyped their creations in a 24 hour marathon, then presented them in 90 seconds each. Hacks included mobile phone controlled robots, voice playable videogames and numerous web API mashups. Hack Day was envisioned as an open platform for New York’s best developers to team up, prototype and present their creations. Winners presented in front of TC Disrupt’s audience of over 1500 attendees of startup founders, VCs, journalists and digerati at TC Disrupt’s culminating Startup Battlefield.

ZDNet’s “Best-of” Article
Maximum PC overview Article
Winners and Honorable Mentions Article
Flickr Photo Gallery
Montage of marathon Video
Winners presentations Video
Runner Up, Mr. Stabbyphone Video
Honorable mention, API for the World Video

HopeLab

info — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:43:41 +0000

The gDitty from Uncommon Projects on Vimeo.

HopeLab: gDitty/Zamzee (2009-10)

For over a year we’ve served as technical research and development partner to Hopelab, refining the gDitty product for market. The gDitty is a wearable activity meter with an online rewards program that motivates kids to move more. Research with hundreds of kids has shown a 30% increase in physical activity. The success of the project has resulted in recognition by the White House as a model for social innovation.

Uncommon Projects helped HopeLab and Daylight Design take the gDitty from initial concept to real-world experience. We worked closely with Daylight’s incredible industrial design team to refine the user experience of the prototype. Consulting with both companies showed that we needed a modular, flexible and scalable solution that could meet the demands of the rigorous research methodologies and prototyping process. We researched, recommended and developed a technology platform to meet these requirements. Finally, we worked with HopeLab to refine a workflow for their admins - managing mulit-armed trials, registering kids and devices, managing and fulfilling rewards and exporting data for statistical analysis.

The gDitty isn’t about indoctrinating kids into a tedious fitness program. It’s about encouraging kids to be physically active in whatever way is fun for them - and rewarding that healthy behavior. Uncommon Projects is proud to have had a hand in shaping the technology for this innovative product. A commercial version of gDitty, renamed Zamzee, will go to market in 2011.

White House press release.

Highlights:

Technology research and consulting
System Architecture
Front end development (CSS, AJAX, Flash, Bunchball)
Backend development (Pythong, Django, MySQL)
IA for user/researcher workflows
Control panels for management of devices and users
Admin system to easily manage, track and report rewards
Reporting tools for data collection and export for analysis

Bikenik

info — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:45:16 +0000

Bikenik Screenshots

Bikenik (2009)

Uncommon Projects has developed mobile applications for Blackberry and N95. Bikenik is the company’s first foray into the growing iPhone app market. Bikenik has received thousands of downloads on over 30 countries worldwide. Look for a “Pro” version in 2010 with increased mapping, logging and sharing features.

Product description: Bikenik is a trip computer for casual and hardcore bicyclists who like to see their stats while riding. Bikenik uses the iPhone 3G’s built-in location services to give riders real-time stats on their trip and track them over time. Bikenik provides an elegant way for riders to aggregate their trip and fitness data without having to go to a separate website.

Features:

Duration
Distance
Pace
Speed
Altitude
Clock
Neighborhood display
Dynamic Google Map
7 Day Activity Chart
Records screen tracks your best stats
Pause and resume rides
Mount to your handlebar or stick it in your pocket!
No annoying ads!

Product download from iTunes Store

Become a fan on facebook!

RFID Fortunebird

info — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:18:02 +0000

The Amazing Fortunebird from uncommon projects on Vimeo.

The Amazing Fortunebird (2009)

We created the RFID Fortunebird for the Etech 09 conference in San Jose. The Automaton reads your RFID badge and fortune all at once. Then it "Tweets" your special fortune on its Twittergraph. From there, your fortune travels through a series of tubes and lands in your/its Twitter feed.

Pixelmusic 3000

info — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:41:32 +0000

Hello Pixelmusic 3000! from uncommon projects on Vimeo.

Pixelmusic 3000 (2008)

Behold the Pixelmusic 3000, the music visualizer on a microcontroller. The PM3K was created as a project and article for Make Magazine. This means the schematic, parts list, code and a photo/text walkthrough explaining the build are printed for anybody to make or modify as s/he wishes. The PM3K is intended both as an ode to a forgotten technology–in this case the Atari Video Music–and as an entree for folks interested in the wonderful world of microcontrollers, hardware and software prototyping.

ybike

info — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:09:01 +0000

The Purple Pedals ybike (photo courtesy Lomokev)

ybike (2008)

Yahoo’s Buzz Marketing team asked Uncommon Projects to research and develop 20 photo taking bikes in 10 weeks. Uncommon was responsible for developing the underlying technology to make the bikes work. The bikes were designed to operate both domestically and internationally and were shipped to 12 locations including Tanzania, Denmark, Tokyo, Lebanon, and England. When ridden, the bikes automatically snap photos and upload them to flickr every 60 seconds. Every photo is tagged with the bike’s GPS location so it can be viewed on an interactive map. Each bike is: Weatherproof, Location-aware, Net-connected, Solar-enabled and works for up to two weeks on a single charge. The research, fabrication files and source code have been freely shared for anyone to use and modify.

Highlights:

10 weeks from concept to delivery of 20 Bikes
Deep research on location-based technologies
Live photo uploads and mapping
Robust, custom application and dedicated hardware development
Modular design for remote support
Documented and shared research, prototypes and final design
Presented at Hackday and Maker Faire

Entrepreneurs Kiosks @ MoAF

info — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:40:34 +0000

Entrepreneurs Kiosks at the Museum of American Finance (2008)

C&G Partners designed the exhibition space for the Museum of American Finance at their flagship location in the former Bank of New York building at 48 Wall Street. Uncommon Projects was tapped to develop the hardware and software solution for 10 touchscreen kiosks highlighting interviews with a unique group of 16 entrepreneurs. The interviews play on three 42″ Plasma and seven 19″ LCD touchscreen column displays.

Features:

Minimal, intuitive interaction
Designed for ADA accessibility requirements
Subtitles for hard of hearing
Three 42″ interactive plasma screens
Seven 19″ interactive column displays
Robust, custom application and dedicated hardware development
Browsable HD Video Library of interviews with 16 entrepreneurs
Each interviewee split into five browsable chapters
Customized admin app allows for easy configuration
Machines cold boot and self recover if problems occur
Dynamically generated, seamless animations and transitions

Uncommon Projects was hired to both consult on and create the hardware/software solution for the bank of 10 interactive screens that serve High Def video interviews with 16 entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs represent a diverse set of interests and backgrounds and include:

Steve Hindy, Founder and President, Brooklyn Brewery
Liz Lange, Founder and CEO, Liz Lange Maternity
Drew Nieporent, Owner, Nobu Restaurant
Jacqueline Novogratz, Founder and CEO, Acumen Fund
Princess Jenkins, Co-founder, The Brownstone
Jeremy Allaire, Chairman and CEO, Brightcove
Robin Chase, Co-founder and Former CEO, Zipcar
David Neelman, Founder, Chairman and First CEO, JetBlue
David Wender, Founder, Whentech
Elisabeth Stock, President and Co-founder, Computers for Youth
Ray Kurzweil, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Kurzweil Technologies
Kay Koplovitz, Founder, USA Networks
Donald Burr, Founder and CEO, People Express
Anthony Pereira, President and CEO, altPOWER
Muriel Siebert, Founder, Chairman and President, Muriel Siebert & Co.
Felix SenciÃ³n, Founder and Creator, FÃºtbol Mundial

Announcing uplog: freeform R and D from uncommon projects

info — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:06:22 +0000

In case you haven’t heard, we’ve just started a new section of our site: uplog. It’s a place for us to try out ideas and just have an excuse to build stuff. Read more about it here.

Subscribe to uplog:

Yahoo @ Maker Faire

info — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 23:05:52 +0000

Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Yahoo! @ Maker Faire (2007)

Yahoo! co-sponsored O’Reilly’s 2nd Annual Bay Area Maker Faire, a two day family-friendly tech convention with over 40,000 attendees. The hands-on event features hundreds of backyard inventors gathering to share their projects, ideas and eye-popping creations. The Maker Faire is a celebration of the resurgence of grassroots invention that has both influenced and been inspired by the thriving tech community in Silicon Valley.

Yahoo! asked Uncommon Projects to consult and help construct a meaningful experience to engage the Maker Faire’s unique audience.

Uncommon Projects created both kits and workshops built around the ybox–their invention that took 2nd place at Yahoo’s first Hackday. Uncommon designed and engineered 100 custom kits for the event. Kit’s were given away free in 4 intensive, hands-on workshops taught by Uncommon Projects co-founders Josh and Tarikh over two days. Men, women, girls and boys of all skill levels participated in the popular, standing room only workshops. Live video was broadcast for workshop and participants walked away with their very own, working, hand made ybox to take home and develop further. All source code and hardware specs for the project were posted on a website created just for the event and where development still continues.

The ybox is a hardware and software prototype for an ethernet enabled, web configurable, thin-client set-top box with NTSC output and was originally designed as a proof of concept for Yahoo’s first Hackday.

Images

Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Photo: Tarikh Korula