Archive for July, 2009
NYConvergence ORIGINALBy: Gloria SinLast week, the Arts, Culture and Technology group crammed into one of the ballrooms at the Roger Smith Hotel in Manhattan, to learn how local arts organizations are using mobile technologies to enhance cultural experiences to appeal to next-gen audiences. The presentations' source materials, which were available through the group's Web site, ranged from design theory to actual case studies:
- Koven Smith, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: He talked about his recent paper, “The Future of Mobile Interpretation”, in which he argued mobile museum guides should design around the visitor’s actual needs and museum-going experience. In Smith’s opinion, future platforms should offer Web-like contextual information on the entire collection, user-generated micro-updates and mapping capabilities.
- Peter Nofelt, Perk Mobile: As a consultant and developer of Blackberry and iPhone apps, he highlighted some opportunities for artists and arts organizations to go mobile.
- Jeffrey Inscho, Mattress Factory Art Museum: He discussed the museum’s MFSCREENtxt project, which allows visitors personalize their experience by live texting and sharing photos using BrightKite on their cellphones. Now, the museum is taking the lessons learnt from MFSCREENtxt to developing an iPhone app for visitors.
- Michael Epstein, Untravel Media: He shared some of the documentary storytelling opportunities for mobile devices, as discussed in his paper “Moving Story”.
- Sonali Sridhar, wearable technology artist: She demonstrated ways an individual artist could explore the mobile space to "create objects that carry a narrative in them." Her previous work has featured mobile technologies from GPS, Bluetooth to even mobile hacking techniques.
What other ways can arts organizations take advantage of mobile technologies to improve your cultural experience? Share your thoughts below.
NYConvergence ORIGINALThe New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) is requesting proposals from NYC-area institutions to "host, develop and manage" the "NYC Media Lab," a component of Mayor Bloomberg's NYC Media 2020 plan. Its purpose, like those of MIT and Stanford University, will to to be to serve as a "research center for companies and universities to create advanced new media technologies." The proposal is available online here and the submission deadline is September 21. Previous:> Reactions to NYC Mayor's Media NYC 2020 Plan Mixed
NYConvergence ORIGINALBy: Gloria SinIt was all about the business model at the Fashion 2.0 Startups Showcase this week, where five New York-based entrepreneurs got to strut their stuff before four venture capitalists and the fashion community inside W Hotel’s Audrey Lounge. The startups at this month’s meetup included:
- StyleHop: A social fashion game that generates unbiased wisdom-of-crowd consumer advice and industry analytics.
- ProperCloth: An online retailer of custom and made-to-measure dress shirts for men.
- Mona Lisa Style: A Web site that connects fashion designers with buyers.
- Pier Eleven*: Offers works of wearable art for retail with prices that fluctuate depending on demand.
- IStyle Media: iStyle is a Facebook app that tells your friends what brands you wear through photo tagging.
While VCs Owen Davis from NYC Seed, Mike Brown from Virgin Ventures, Bill Gilroy from Global Reach Capital and Michael Sheldon from Nexam Capital grilled the presenters on the viability of their companies, the hundred-strong audience also weighed in through Twitter (#fashion20). The twitterati were sold on the targeted market intelligence StyleHop would provide, and iStyle’s simplicity and sales and marketing potential for retailers, but were unconvinced that Pier Eleven’s demand-dependent pricing would encourage sales in this retail climate. Unsurprisingly, the all-male panel of VCs found ProperCloth’s business and presentation “amazing.” Which of these startups would you invest in? Share your thoughts in the comments below. *This site will be live on August 3; in the meantime, use the password “whoareyouwearing?” to access the site in closed beta. Related:> Fashion 2.0 & the consuMEr in the MEconomy (Darren Herman)
NYConvergence ORIGINAL
The NY Video 2.0 Meetup met last
night in Uris Hall on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia
University to network and to hear presentations from MTV, Brightroll, Howcast, and ZapMyTV.
The presentations were as follows:
- Brightroll discussed its
interactive video ads, allowing viewers to jump back and forth between
the video and the publisher’s site.
- Howcast showed off its “sizzle real” instead of demoing and talked about how-to videos generate traffic for the company's partners.
- ZapMyTV demonstrated its picture-in-picture capabilities and informed attendees that they're currently allowing beta users to view programming from four networks for free while they're testing the technology.
- MTV's digital research arm, Digital Fusion, shared the results of its research on the types of advertisements which visitors to the Web site were most comfortable with, discovering that most favored brief, five-second pre-roll clips over thirty-second clips and slide-out advertisements. MTV decided to conduct this research on its own because it wanted to use real-world situations rather than pay for the research of another group conducted in a lab.
NYConvergence ORIGINAL Subscribers to Verizon's high-speed FiOS Internet service in the New York area will now have access to free wi-fi, including about 200 locations in Manhattan according to an e-mail NYConvergence received from a company representative. If you're a subscriber in NYC, you can find a hotspot near you by going to this Web site here and entering your zip code.
NYConvergence ORIGINAL NYConvergence reader Simon Owens informed us via e-mail of a new, Digg-style Web site for NYC-related stories called NYC.is developed by a as-of-yet unidentified 24-year old Columbia University graduate student Susannah Vila. According to Owen, the site allows visiting NY users to vote "up" or "down" on a story to get it onto the site's front page rather than use the "editor-curator" approach. Related:> More NYC Area Hyperlocal News Sites Coming Soon
NYConvergence ORIGINALBy: Gloria SinFor just $10.99, 40 lucky entrepreneurs got some affordable legal advice from prominent intellectual property, securities and corporate attorneys at the July Q&A hosted by Ultra Light Startups at NYU’s Polytechnic Incubator on July 21. Ultra Light Startups is a community dedicated to supporting tech companies launch quickly and economically. Panelists Stephen Chin of von Simson & Chin, Sam Guzik of Guzik & Associates and Jon Freedman of Freedman Legal Group LLC offered entrepreneurs a crash course on legal basics. Freedman kicked things off by explaining the importance for startups to limit personal liability, Guzik highlighted some of the ways mismanagement of legal issues can get in the way for future financing and acquisition, and Chin offered a general timeframe for registering trademarks and establishing copyright. Did you get your money’s worth from this month’s #ULS legal panel? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Related:> Ultra Light Startups Tackles Legal Issues Surrounding Startups> Ultra Light Startups — Navigating Legal Issues for New Companies
NYConvergence ORIGINAL
Livestream, the NYC-based "Web video streaming leader," has launched a new product called Twitcam. According to a press release received by NYConvergence, Twitcam enables users to add live streaming video to their Twitter feed. Users log in to Twitcam using an existing Twitter account and click "Go Live." Twitcam
automatically detects the camera, creates a page and live video player
for the broadcast, and posts the link in the user’s Twitter feed so
followers can join in live. Previous:> Livestream Partners with Fox 5 for Video Streaming
Sunday, July 19th, 2009
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By murat at Centrl's Blog
When writing an LBS application, you have many different options when it comes to map tiles.
At Centrl, we have licensed map tiles from Microsoft (data supplied by Navteq) for use on the iPhone and BlackBerry. We pay Microsoft per transaction, which is 8 map tiles downloaded from their map tile servers.
And we use Google map tiles (data supplied by TeleAtlas and more) on our website and on the Android (through the native Android Maps component).
Now there is one more option on the new iPhone 3.x SDK: a native Maps component that comes with map tiles from Google. We think this is going to make writing LBS apps on the iPhone much easier since there will be one less issue to worry about.
But no matter where you get your map tiles, you will find that, somewhere in the world, some user will definitely be dissatisfied with the accuracy, detail and zoom level of your map tiles. So you will have to go that country, find a local partner and customize your map tiles for that location to satisfy your customers.
It’s interesting that nobody has thought of creating a network of local partners that someone can just go and choose from, like a smorgasbord of high-quality local content that is aggregated very conveniently.
Furthermore, there are even companies that will fly over a specific area for you and create super high-precision map tiles for you. Now imagine all this were offered as a single menu where you could purchase from 
NYConvergence ORIGINALBy: Gloria SinWeb usability "guru" Jakob Nielsen and his Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) are wrapping Usability Week 2009 today in Midtown Manhattan. Everyone from designers to user experience engineers has gathered to look at the Web through the user’s eyes, in sessions that demonstrated how words and content organization can influence online user behavior:
- Writing for the Web 1 with Chris Nodder
- Writing for the Web 2 with Chris Nodder
- Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability with Jakob Nielsen & Kara Pernice
- Information Architecture 1 with Garrett Goldfield
- Information Architecture 2 with Garrett Goldfield
For non-believers who still question the value of user tests and user-centered design, Chris Nodder, one of the instructors and NN/g director, has this to say: “If you’re happy with your [Content Management System], you’re in the minority.” What is your take-away from this year’s Usability Week?
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