Uncommon Projects, LLC.

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.

gDitty

josh — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:33:22 +0000

gDitty (2009)

Daylight Design and Hopelab called Uncommon Projects to help take the gDitty from concept to real-world experience. A software and hardware product, the gDitty is designed to motivate physical activity in kids with a wearable device and a web-based application. HopeLab is now evaluating the effectiveness of the product through scientific studies.

Uncommon’s role in the project included integration with the device hardware and software, interaction design consulting, and creation of a web-based activity tracking application. Each study participant receives a device and a customizable home page that allows him or her to track their physical activity and rewards based on their exercise.

Highlights:

Software integration with hardware device that tracks user activity
Design and user experience consulting
Custom-built web-based activity tracking application
Development of software to support online reward system
Administration system to easily manage and track rewards
Control panels for management of devices, users and awards
Custom built reporting tools to help researchers in evaluating the effectiveness of the product

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

Naked Communications

info — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 15:44:02 +0000

Perhaps the New York Post slightly overstated the importance of the arrival of Naked’s New York office: “When British ad upstart Naked Communications arrived in the U.S. last year, the fanfare surrounding it was an ad business version of the 1960s invasion by The Beatles.The firm vowed to shake up traditional ad agencies and bring a new thinking to Madison Avenue.”

Nonetheless, marketing firm Naked Communications deserves their reputation for innovative work, helping craft their clients’ messages by re-imagining traditional agency models of bland campaigns linked to print or tv media buys. Instead, working with clients such as Johnson and Johnson, Nokia and Reebok, Naked has crafted creative, thoughtful, campaigns that provide real value to consumers and yet still resonate with the client’s brand.

Understandably, Naked wanted a creative and unique approach to their web presence, as founding partner Paul Woolmington notes in describing the New York site: “The modest objective is that we live a naked life like we recommend to our clients, and a side benefit will be that we build a community along the way.” New York partner, Noah Brier, elaborates: “You see, this site is a bit of an experiment in transparency. The aggregator (on the right side of the homepage) is actually pulling in links from across the web (blogs, del.icio.us, twitter and flickr). The basic idea is that the people who work here already do lots of blogging elsewhere. They post pictures and save links on other sites, so why not use that for our own site?”

Uncommon Projects and design firm Fangohr teamed up to create Naked Communications’ online presence for their newly opened New York office. The goal was to turn their entire site into a big, ever-changing blog of their individual partners’ work and ideas. To do this Uncommon engineered an ‘aggregator’–essentially custom-coded server software–to crawl hundreds of streams of employee data and synthesize them into the front and sub pages of the site. Thematically, the London office’s site featured a model British townhouse and Fangohr decided to design an American analog–in this case an actual hand-built Levittown-style model house. Uncommon Projects engineered the house and even added interactive web controls and streaming video for investigative web visitors.

Box2

info — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:35:12 +0000

YBox in an altoids tin (Altube) Part II

Here’s an updated Illustrator file, i made 4 changes, documented in the ‘notes’ layer of the AI file.

Updated Illustrator file:

Case Layout w/ board(.AI)

We used two types of cardboard to try to insulate the bottom. This is thin, 3×5 index card material.

This is thicker legal pad style. Both worked fine. While the thicker stock seemed more impervious, especially if we drill holes in the base, the thin stock makes our lives easier for height reasons.

Slip your ybox in RJ45 jack first.

You can bend the LED out of the way if it presents problems.

Afterward you can bend the LED back

With the index cardstock, we did a damn good job of estimating these holes, huh?

The heavier cardstock pushes the components up a bit

I’m a bit off with the RJ45 Jack, I’m going to update the illustrator file.

I’m totally off on the IR hole!

There are 3 holes in the PCB for standoffs. I’ve included nuts, bolts and washers for you, if you feel adventurous.

If you’re going to screw in, lift the voltage regulator and screw under it. It gets too hot to screw down to the board.

Thinking upside down inside the box.

It’s just crazy enough to work!