This weekend, Dirk+Weiss was at A Better World By Design conference in Providence Rhode Island. Held at the RISD and Brown campuses. The conference had workshops and speakers covering all aspects of design, systems, and critical thinking. Exhibitors showed off their new projects, and crowds piled into hear some of the newest, freshest solutions to some of the worlds largest problems.
I had the pleasure of co-facilitating two workshops with Project-M‘er Marc O’Brien, and Ben Gaydos and Karen Stein from GoodGood Design. Workshops: Thinking Wrong and Rapid Prototyping; each workshop deals with staying open, and creative, to all possibilities when working on projects and initiatives. Energy was through the roof, and the paradigms of design were blown wide open. Participants started projects on Friday with a Think Wrong session, and then brought their projects to life on Sunday with Rapid Prototyping. Projects varied from education reform to marine life that can help produce renewable resources for cities and towns.
Dirk+Weiss would like to thank Marc O’Brien for inviting us, and all of the staff and volunteers that made A Better World By Design 2011 a huge, inspirational success. Here are some photos:
Our own Matthew White has been teaching design and app development like crazy over the last 6 months or so. His app development class at a local community college as made some major waves, and landed him an article in quarterly publication for Bunker Hill Community College.
Check out the article and photos over at the OurDesign blog – http://www.ourdesign.us/2011/07/05/course-on-designing-mobile-apps-bhcc-magazine-publication/
Share ]]>What? That’s right, DW is potentially teaming up with Speed Club this summer to aid in the production of a feature length documentary! We are traveling along side of two friends as the journey across the US on choppers! 4000 miles of never ending road, days of HD video, and a huge chopper rally in Southern California. We are very excited to dig into this project but note, we said “potentially.”
Unfortunately, funding for this project has somewhat dried up in the last few weeks. We are reaching out to any and all our visitors to please review their request and make a contribution in any way possible. Keep in mind, everyone who makes a contribution gets something in return. Whether it’s getting you name listed on the site, getting a free copy of the DVD, or a free T-Shirt, EVERYONE IS A WINNER! Click here to review the project in its entirety and to find out how you can contribute.
Share ]]>While we still believe HTML/JS developers have lapped Adobe and flash in terms of efficiency and delivery viewports, this video from Adobe shows a glimmer of hope. This prototype “Wallaby” application converts Flash to HTML5, keeping animations and graphics, but losing some things like blending modes and other fancy special effects. Hmm… Very Interesting!
A start for Adobe. We’ll probably have to wait until CS6 to see this implemented. We also speculate that this is a re-working of the previously anticipated Flash to App converter that was to be part of the CS5 suite (now available since Apple lifted third party bans on dev). Can we beta Wallaby? It might be energizing to see old flash projects on my iPhone.
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Last week we launched a new application called “Baby Loves Music”. That same week we received our first Cease and Desist letter from Baby Loves Everything to stop all infringing acts of the name Baby Loves Music, as they claim common law ownership over the name.
After some digging at the US Patent and Trademark Office, we found that a patent for the name Baby Loves Music was listed, but dead. We feel we are outside the definitions of goods and services, but none-the-less (even though the patent is dead) we are not here to bust anyone’s chops.
We have designed a solution to this issue, and it is as follows: We have changed the name of the application “Baby Loves Music” to “Baby’s First Music”. We have changed all instances of the name across websites and iTunes. A update to the application has been approved for sale, and all owners of the application will receive a push notification of the update’s availability.
We wish the owners of the “Baby Loves..” line of products would accept our sincere apologies if they feel we have infringed on any trademarks (living or dead), and want you to know that in no way did we wish to profit from or harm your brand. We also wish to state that Dirk+Weiss has no affiliation with the name Baby Loves Music, or company Baby Loves Everything, LLC.
Thank you to everyone for your cooperation!
View all the documents related to this event >>
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Baby’s First Music™, the application for mommies and their “Buns in the oven” is now available for download from the iTunes App Store. Click to get a copy now!
Baby’s First Music™ allows mommy and daddy to play beautiful, stimulating, classical music for your little one (in the oven) right from your apple device! Yup, its that simple. Place the Apple device directly on your tummy, use headphones or even rest it in the babies crib (but watch out for drool!)
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True Story: Natalie (an eager mommy to be) started a conversation with Brian (her proud papa bear) about an article she had read regarding playing music through her tummy.
“Apparently it has been known to have very positive effects,” she said. Daddy’s mind began to imagine. Maybe hanging huge stereo speakers from the ceiling on a sort of pulley system might work? “Nah, too awesome,” he thought. Suddenly he glanced to his iPhone and thought…. got it! A few hours in front of his computer and Baby’s First Music™ was born!
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Why buy this App?
Great question. Brian and Natalie and now proud parents of a strapping young lad by the name of Jameson (sonny). Mommy had the bright idea to start considering Jameson’s college fund, and daddy thought others could enjoy this app just as much as they did.
We love you Sonny and hope that this App will help you on your way someday.
xo – mom and dad
Many thanks to Dirk+Weiss for your programing assistance.
Note: Dirk+Weiss, Baby’s First Music™ are not affiliated with Baby Loves Everything, LLC.
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We have released a new update to the Art Institute of Boston app today. This update brings a new interface, that loads faster and acts more efficiently. There are now four blogs included of different departments at AIB.
App features include:
- - News from the AIB Facebook feed
- - Shuttle Schedule from all the Lesley Campuses
- - Mobile view of student artwork
- - Library searching
- - Links to department blogs
This app update has been rebuilt from scratch on an HTML5 and CSS architecture, using the PhoneGap open source web-app framework. This allows for faster, more efficient design, usability and updating.
If you already own the app, update today! If you are interested in the Art Institute of Boston, download the app to see all that AIB has to offer.
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Here’s a little treat we created at the DW lab almost 2 years ago! It’s an iPhone/iPod/iPad app by the name of “Baby’s First Music™.” We (DW) created it for my wife while we were pregnant with our son, Jameson. Simply put, the app plays a collection of Mozart (either via internal speaker or external headphones) directly onto mommy’s tummy. Hooray for early childhood development!
My wife recently had the bright idea to post the app to the iTunes store with hopes of generating a little extra savings for Sonny’s college fund. What a smart mommy! The app is currently awaiting approval in the itunes store and proceeds from each purchase of Baby’s First Music™ are being saved in Sonny’s college fun!
Share ]]>If you have every walked, driven, biked or ran through Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA, you have probably spotted those large groups of tourists being lead around by tour guides wearing straw hats and carrying signs. This is the Hahvahd Tour, and now they can say, “There’s an app for that”.
Today, a new application that we created went live into the iTunes App Store. Trademark Tours Presents: Harvard University, is a campus tour application for the prestigious institution, and is filled to the brim with great, rich content.
Creature Features
- Integrated Google Maps and GPS
- “Live Tour” footage
- Bonus Content Galore!
- Streaming Audio
- Harvard Square Business Directory
- Free Souvenier Map
- Integrated video in the app, no buffering
- Ability to jump to a stop anytime you wish
Development Insight
This application was built using PhoneGap, an open source framework that allows for developing mobile applications natively using HTML/CSS and JavaScript. The benefit of using PhoneGap over Apple’s own XCode Environment and Objective C programming, is the portability to other devices such as Android OS and Blackberry Apps. 
When developing this way, you can easily develop lighter-weight “Web Apps” that actually just use the browser framework that is native to the platform, rather than writing a code base from scratch. This elevates errors, but is not without some higher performance drawbacks. While things can run incredibly smooth in the web framework of these mobile devices, any more advanced animations, gaming or hardware intense acceleration is better off inside the native language.
This app also uses JQuery along with PhoneGap to create animations and navigation. Video and audio are using HTML5 standards.
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We are looking for students in the local Boston and or Cambridge areas that are interested in getting into iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch Applications. We have some current and future projects that require beta testing in focus groups, and let’s just say, we’re pumped!
Beta Tester Requirements
- A college student with an interest in mobile application design/development
- Have an iOS compatible device (Preferably iPhone or iPod Touch)
- Access to the T or public transportation
- Signing of a Non-Disclosure Agreement to Begin (this just says what you’re testing and it’s results are confidential and may not be shared with anyone except DW)
If you love apps, design, technology and “enjoying the sights” of Boston/Cambridge, then let us know. Send us a message on our Facebook Page or @dirkweiss on Twitter, or just plain email us. – mw [at] dirkweiss [dot] com
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