Oculus Rift

My dad was a quality control officer who worked in middle east for about 20 - 30 yrs. So we lost our daddy time most of our childhood except his 2 months yearly vacation. But for a trade-off we got beautiful toys our friends never could even imagine. I remember one of my favorite toy used to be VR (Virtual Reality) system where you load circular discs and with a liver when you pull it down the film roles to the next scene. And he used to get us discs of rain deers with Santa, snow time in Europe, desert rides etc etc. For some time we used to enthusiastic about the discs and after a while we get bored, until we get next set of discs. Well that used to be the augmented VR systems of 1980's.

VR systems are developed mostly for gamers or movie viewers to virtually put into the scene. You feel you are in the situation and you are seeing that in-front of your eyes. But it will give you a 40 degree view where when you look up or side ways, the scene move with you. You can't see the environment surrounded, only thing you can see is the scene.

Here is a small company with an Immersive VR system called RIFT which can really virtually put you into that space with 110 degrees viewing angle, if you look around you can actually see what's in the surrounding space. For example you are in a war zone and you see your enemy coming against you and you look around you can see your comrades running with you against the enemy. Now you really feel like you are in a war zone really fighting against somebody. That's the effect of augmented reality systems.

Oculus founded by Palmer Luckey, is successful with their prototype RIFT which raised more than 2 million from funding, set up their office in Irvine,CA. And they are coming up with their first developer toolkit for developers to involve in creating an Eco-system like android before they launch their product commercially. Thanks for display systems which are so light in weight and cheap so that this possible for common man and usual game players who can use this technology which used to cost 100K couple of years before.There is a new game released also called as Doom 3 especially for RIFT.

You can pre-order RIFT for 300$ from their site

GoPro - Hero 3

Sometimes fortune hits you unexpectedly and that's exactly what happened to Nick Woodman. New kid in the millionaire's list. A UC San Diego graduate went on creating his own company funbag. He raised most of his funds through external sources and the company busted in Y2K tech bubble.

But he followed his passion of traveling and surfing. He struck gold while surfing in Australia, he noticed that he don't have camera that can capture under water scenes, checked with his surfing friends and they were facing the same problem. A camera that's sturdy enough so that you can strap it on your helmet or bike. A camera that can take a few beatings, survive the blows and keep working. He decided to capture his small idea into a bigger canvas by starting a new company producing an excellent camera that can be used underwater, while having an adventurous bike ride, snow-boarding, you flying a helicopter or you go hitch-hiking, you can carry this one and it works like charm.

Well here's the real deal, FOXCONN bought a 8.8% of the company GoPro for a kool 200 mils, which made Nick overnight Millionaire. A company he bootstrapped from his mom and he selling belts in CA beach into 200 mils. It may sound surprising, but if you see the video below, you know why in the world its worth so much. By the way this video is a summation of many clips shot by Hero 3 in the 1080p ( Hi Def ). Don't forget to turn on your sound.

Shaka - Unknown 3D Artist

I follow the Art world closely but never heard about this artist Shaka. You would have heard about Nilko and Jaye, Obao, Muto, Opare, Sirius, Popaye etc etc.. I stumbled up on Shaka a year back while reviewing some paintings in a gallery. There was an instant connection to his paintings and that led me to notice him more.

Shaka aka Marchal Mithouard is from Evry, France. Got into painting by doing graffiti on walls but later joined another artist Nosbe to merge his style of painting to create unique 3D creations. According to Shaka, graffiti is illegal and paintings are legal, so he turned into painting pictures and started selling his signed copies of original paintings online. Most of his paintings are pop-art, icons from hip-hop and regular people with usual emotions. And he's amazingly successful in capturing those emotions in his paintings.

He's not sponsored, so if you can help him any ways that will be of great help to him to continue creating beautiful paintings and 3D arts. Here's his mail id : infoshaka@gmail.com

Joe Jin HIS & HER's

Cute Cotton Pillow filled with goose feathers and goose down to go with any bed spread, especially white just giving a crisp white clean look with minimal accessories to decorate your room.. So cute, it should be in our list of things under 50$ gifts for XMAS 2012. Visit them here. They also got a green rug which is also pretty beautiful but very pricy for such a small thing.

Parrot ZiK

If you are a music lover then you know this is a very vulnerable position to be a headphone manufacturer. There is BOSE, Beats by Dr. Dre ( which is owned partly by HTC ), heard 50 Cents ( rapper from NYC ) is launching one, Nakamichi, Sony, JVC, Denon etc etc. And there are tonnes of bud speakers available in the market. But there is one stand out product in this scene too. That's ZiK ( sick in brooklyn means beautiful ) which is the best headphones available to be paired out with your phone.

After iPhone came into limelight, almost all the gadgets are having big touch screens and all the activities are controlled by gestures. Here's a head set which don't have a volume rocker or any buttons like on / off outside the head set, but all controlled by gestures. If you rub your finger up on the speakers volume increases, swipe down, it reduces. Move horizontally it takes the next song or the previous song, all while paired via bluetooth.

Guess what happens when a call comes in while you are listening music, it stops playing the music and starts ringing.. And if you wish not to take the call, touch the headset for 2 secs. Or if you want to pick the call / cut the call, just tap on the head set. Its speakers swell so you can easily carry it around in a bag or briefcase and it won't bump out.

It comes with an app on the iOS and Android to control the effects like theater, movies, arena you can select. App come with an equalizer to set the bass - treble controls. All the while being absolute noise cancelled music.. Now you tell me you love it or not.

Beolit 12

There are plenty of iphone speakers came out in last 4 years. But there a few that wins in their design and sound quality. BEOLIT 12 is listed in the best gadgets to own if you are an Apple fan. You can do lot more than playing just music, if you are watching a movie in your iPad you can airplay that too. If are an outdoor person, still you can carry it around and it will provide you flawless music all across. More over you can't find from where the sound is generated if you keep it hidden. Ain't it cute ?? Its costly though, but you will like it.

This land is mine

An amazing animated history of Palestine.. So much of bloodshed had happened there. Here's the original post by the designer Nina Paley 

Note : Keep the sound on

Anamorphism

Anamorphism is a trick from the renaissance age where you use a contrast of colors to make a picture look 3D. Street artists use this trick to make a waterfall in the street or a raging bull rushing towards you. And it amazingly look real. Here's a small video by which you can draw images like that within 10mts. And for sure it will wake the artist in you.

Thabto Creations UK

Absolutely cute and stand out designs for most simple things you use in life. Some nice picks from them are featured in Newyork this week. This time of the year with ThanksGiving around the corner, if you are looking for some quick gift purchases, this can be one place to look for. Beautiful coffee mugs and pepper & salt tablewares etc etc.  Have a look - Thabto

Mustang V6 - Pony Package 

The Fundamental Shop

Here's a cute design from a German firm Fundamental Design. A cute corner shelf-cum-display stand where you display your costly artifacts and store some small pieces which you keep safely. Nice wooden block design. Check out here The Fundamental Shop

Its Simply Beautiful

If you are looking for furniture with royal touch, but couldn't find fine one's for a good price ( still considerably more than IKEA ), you just struck gold. Here's a small company from Austin, TX producing high quality furniture for much lower price than any famous furniture studios making it.

The problem was that, even if you are willing to you pay top dollars you don't find such a high quality furniture at one place. And the shop owners and mall owners adding their cut, the price is already sky rocketed. Still you have very limited choice, that's the worst part.

What's amazing about this company is, the amount of craftsmanship and details they put into each piece is really phenomenal. And its an order to make, that means they don't have cost of running a shop or maintaining inventory. They ship all across US and US only. And no returns please, so be sure what you want. See for yourself here.

Lo and Sons

Lo & Sons is a true success story in which a mother and 2 sons found a solution to a health challenge Helen Lo faced, and came up with intuitive designer bags. Lo was facing troubles with her back and apparently couldn't find light weight bags for travelling. She thought many other women might be facing same problem and did something daring.

She asked her 2 sons, Derek & Jan to quit their daytime jobs in advertising and product design to join her. They did and altogether started Lo & Sons in Dec 2010. Their first collection was sold within 3 months. Most of their sales are through online even-though they have small shops in Charlottesville and Chicago. 

The threesome work from 3 different locations. Jan take care of the procurement in Beijing & Hong-kong check everything before production. Derek share office in the Nilita office space in New York and Helen Lo work from Germany. They recently ran a show in NYC SoHo house entertaining select customers directly which are very important to them to get customer insights. They briefly meet and discuss in Derek's NYC apartment and next day back to airport to work on next season. Checkout their site Lo & Sons

T

Creativity @ every level

While talking to one of my friend from NYC tech startup seen, he mentioned that the biggest challenge he face today is to find right people and letting them do things @ their best. Its not raising money that's tough, its not finding projects or clients. They are relatively easy while compared to finding people and retaining them.

Other point he made in that discussion is that most creative people are not in tech, they are in media and ad's industry. This add from IBM 's mainframe team boasts just that. Its the way you communicate to thousands of people without a speech but conveying thousands of words. IBM house a pretty good team for creating interfaces, but this is class apart. Who Says Elephants Can't Dance ?? !!

Invention of the decade - Eole Water Systems

The fastest depleting resource and the most wanted for the existence of human life on earth today is unquestionably clean water. Many parts of world is already feeling the crunch and just stretching into next possible resource to get them for existence. And in many developing nations drinking water provided is already contaminated and people use their own purification mechanisms to make it usable for household purposes. But the point is, there should be water at-least to purify it.

There are many companies providing waste water management systems, but its hard to believe they can make it 100% drinkable water because water can be maligned by various sources and there are many sources getting added daily. Water being lowest level of resource underground, when earth takes bath and wash all dirt on it, its pretty obvious that everything is getting logged into underground water. That make it even more dangerous.

Here's a company which came up with a best possible solution, not to clean the contaminated water but to make it from thin air. Yes, they are successful in it. Eole is a french company founded by Marc Parent. While he was living in Caribbean he found a way to extract water from air-conditioners for his daily usage. He put this idea to make water from moisture when he returned home. Water is collected through a heat exchanger and sent to a cleaning system which makes drinkable water.

Best part is this, its already making 62 ltrs/hr in Abu-Dhabi test site, which means 1488 ltrs/day. That's pretty amazing !! isn't it ?? And this entire system is mounted on a wind-mill which can even produce electricity. Now that's what we call True GREEN. Price is little bit high though, ball park of 600K USD, may be its still in consumption face. But someday somebody can mass produce this concept and save the world.

Fractal 23 bureau

Takeshi Miyakawa is originally from Japan. After a short stint in construction field he moved to Brooklyn New york where he started working for big kahunas in furniture design. Later he founded his own company and started designing beautiful furnitures which are functional too. This simple guy is very accomplished and did very interesting projects in NYC including the Monkey Bar in 2007. Fractal 23 bureau is one of his creation which got international attention.

Rodrigo & Gabriela

Just saw this beautiful creation by 2 great artists who were once up on a time RoCk StArS. Yes they are Rodrigo & Gabriela who started creating a sort of flamingo, Al Mariachi style songs all by guitars. They were part of same rock band and started playing this sort of music part-time.  Later seeing the interest in people they started picking songs by kinds of Led Zeppelin, Metallica etc and added their spanish flamingo style into them, creating this wonderful fusion.

Today they have their own albums and fan followings. They were fillers before for other bands during recess, but now entire rock-concert-goers are flocking to their shows. Seeing the fan following YAMAHA created special guitars for them with transducers and sound sensors, so that they can create that special experience to their fans and also make it sound so crisp and clear.

Interesting part is in this duo band lady is the percussionist and she does it with such an ease and involvement. While the guy could deliver that accurate tune without a vocalist, bass guitars and other crew. Its an amazing band rocking the world. A cute video of one of their classics Tamacum.

Wally Yachts = Luxury * Power

Wally Yachts - is based in Monaco, France owned by an Italian business man  Luca Bassani Antivari. Antivari wanted to buy a yacht of his specifications but couldn't find any in shipyards around the world. So he went ahead and built one. Need is the mother of invention right. Antivari re-invented entire yachts business, once upon a time a boring business to a thriving wanna be business plan. Wally was born in 1989.

From then he perfected his creations in powerboats called Wally 118 which is iconic for the company and often called as "Stealth in  the water" or "The Villain" among the YACHTS with perfect curves and luxury unimaginable. Its worlds priciest production yachts with a tag of 33 million dollars. But you know what, Wally is a beauty and a beast with power. 

NeST - Self Learning Thermostat

The founder&CEO of NeST, Tony Fadell was constructing his house and found that thermostats currently available in market are not helping to conserve energy and reduce power bills. Being an Apple Alum and groomed by design guru Steve Jobs himself, he jumped into designing a thermostat which is in line to Apple's design principles" Very easy to use, efficient and can be interfaced using multiple gadgets". Well the end product is NeST !!

Most programmable thermostat's are little tough to figure out and Tony found out that common people don't have time or expertise to do that. So he decided his thermostat should be ready out of the box and configured within 30mts. He made his thermostat as intuitive as possible by pulling a team of Apple engg's. The calculation shows that NeST helps to save about 30,000$ on average / home over 20 years. Also it learns about inhabitant behaviors and temperature settings on a regular day. Only thing you need to do is to set the temperature according to your needs for first few days and NeST will learn about you and keep adjusting to that. You can also set your home temperature via web or an iphone app. Read more about NeST here.

An Amazing Washing Machine

The Orbit, an awesome water-less/noiseless/soap-less washing machine concept from an Industrial Designer probably you never heard off, Elie Ahovi. Not only does it promise to shorten the monotonous task of cleaning your dress and gym socks, it could cut down water usage- a good idea since our house hold bills might triple in 30 years by using dry ice.

The Orbit cuts down on water usage by allowing dry ice to evaporate into gas and perform a pressurized blast to lift the dirt off your clothes. The chemical reaction between carbon dioxide in dry ice and grease in your clothes break down the particles of dirt, spinning them into oblivion. After the dry ice has scrubbed your laundry clean in a matter of minutes, the gas is sucked back up and returns to a solid state for future washes. The grime removed from your clothes is filtered through a tube which will have to manually be cleaned and maintained.

Nifty right ? Even cooler is the fact that your clothes won't spin but float. Thanks to a battery-filled ring at the machine's center. The magnetic field would make everything levitate. The drum becomes a electromagnet, which can be controlled automatically by electrical impulses. The issues then would be whether it would trip over by a small accidental push, or if the magnetic fields strong enough to keep the basket inside the whole time.

This design is made for Electrolux and would be available in market by 2030. By the time clean water would be one of the precious commodities for human kind. There are other amazing projects he's doing like Marine Drone to clean the plastic waste from sea water which are worth reading.

Notion Ink

Have you heard this name before, I guess not many. Its an Indian Tech start-up competing in most competitive market of andriod cell phones and tablets. Well as the story goes, this company is located in Bangalore founded by an IIT'ian, Rohan Surana. Fresh out of college and not much corporate experience to boast about, bunch of guys plunged into their pockets and started this company before any VC's even looked into their profile.

After 2 years into market even today this company didn't make much of a name in terms of profitability and product success, but they got an amazing design and lots of accolades to be proud off. Notion Ink Adam is the first tablet to get Pixel-Qi screen on it, that means the screen is transflective. You can use this tablet to read even in bright sunlight when other tablets become a mirror. This is the first tablet which got Tegra2 Processor, full HDMI port, USB2.0, Mini USB, Micros SD slot .. you name it, Adam got an interface. It also got the best stereo speakers you can ever think off on a tablet and the most striking feature, a swivel camera. Can you imagine a camera which rotates on a swivel for 185 degrees to capture front and rear videos. An amazing design from CPDM professor ( IISc product design school ).

What is so unique about this tablet is that, it has the largest developer following. Adam's customized code is open for developers through a forum Notion Ink Conclave. When Apple launched ipod, iphone and ipad app developers made lots of money. Same way when this product hits the peak, it will make lots of people and companies who make accessories rich. Notion Ink took android 2.2 and customized it for Adam, added lots of cool features to make it unique. As the vision goes they want this tablet to be replacing books and the design is made in a way that you can hold this tablet like a book with its 'curve'. It looks bulky but check dimensions its not too far.

What this company lacks are the same for any new startup. Poor marketing, poor customer support, not available in stores, shipping and handling, payment gateway and more importantly delayed at FCC approval because of poor electronic standards followed. But by all means they got a killer design, great support from fans and pretty good feedback from CES 2011. They need to be fast, accurate and careful they are rubbing shoulders with Motorola, Samsung, Apple, Acer, Toshiba & Asus. Notion Ink is still standing didn't weather like Joo-Joo. Wish luck for Adam !!

David's Learning Curve !!!

David, my eldest son went to India for a short break. So I decided to sent him to a play school there so that he can wind up little bit from this apartment life in New Jersey. Honestly saying because of David getting active almost all the time, we don't have a good reputation with our neighbors as their sleeps are disturbed and babies are disturbed from their sleep.

Anyways here are some videos Ben shot for me and I was surprised the change I see in him. Pretty funny videos.

Unknowingly Made Millions

David Choe was unknown until last thursday. Suddenly he's all over media and fame. So what happened here ??  Here's the story. Mr.Choe is a graffiti artist from San Jose, California who was invited to paint art in the walls of FACEBOOK's first office. So ???. After work, then CEO Sean Parker offered Mr. Choe stock options or he can take his couple of thousand dollars payment and leave. At that time Mr.Choe thought FACEBOOK itself is a stupid idea.

Its way back in 2005, at that time even Mark Zuckerberg himself wouldn't be sure what FACEBOOK will turn into. Somehow Mr.Choe agreed to pick the stock options of 0.25% shares of FACEBOOK. He kept that with himself and never sold that, probably forgot about it. Today with the lauch of FACEBOOK IPO in stock market, he's worth roughly 200 Million Dollars. Same thing happened when Infosys got listed, it made many overnight millionaires in India.

It doesn't matter Mr.Choe is a millionaire or not, here's his wonderful art of President Obama. Enjoy !!

Rugs to Riches

Rugs are used to decorate floors, dictate a fashion statement or bring color and aesthetics to a room. Here are some of the extremely creative cool rugs which you can buy.

First one shown here is an exaggerated postage stamp rug. They officially got authorization from queen's office to get this exotic print on a carpet. The wool used is authentic Newzealand wool which is hand crafted in Kathmandu, Nepal. These extremely skilled artists were able to bring 3D effect to the rug which is absolutely awesome. There are various dimensions you can choose from stamprugs.

Here's one more fantastic creation of an icon on a carpet. These are found on modernrugs. They also have a beautiful collection of many floral, figures and icons rugs on their website. Pretty cool site to go through.

Both these companies are in United Kingdom. So you need to get somebody coming from there or pay a handsome shipping and handling charges. 

Gold Biscuit

A French designer Jean Paul Gaultier who was famous for his haute couture is brought into limelight for a totally different reason. He might be famous in the fashion world of Elle, Pierre Cardin likes but was unknown to common man. But this display of unusual talent of putting an amazing design into gold biscuits made him world famous and also into Forbes list of best designers.

Jean never received any formal training in fashion design but used to sent his creations to design houses in his early days. Soon enough was noticed by the best design houses in the world. Although his cross-dressing-type line of clothes weren't made for daily usage, his tailoring skills were acknowledged. He was picked into The House of Pierre Cardin and later to manage their boutique in Manilla.

During this economic turbulence people from different investment firms and hedge funds are considering gold as the only safe bet and gold prices are soaring to new heights. This can be a diverse addition to your investment portfolio. This limited edition design of one-ounce gold biscuits with his sailor flag trade mark on it is available in US through a precious metal dealer ( Dillion Gage Metals - 800-527-7034 ) in New York. 

Mullaperiyar - Kochouseph Way

This is an old story, not a story, a real piece of life. My mom's family is a renowned family from "Guruvayoor" called "Chemmanoor". They are one of the traditional families from that area mostly business oriented. And my mom's eldest sister (Valiyamma) was married at the age of 16 which was common in their generation. She was married to "Chittilappilly" family from "Parappur", a region near "Guruvayoor". They were landlords and stingy rich. They used to have acres of land cultivating paddy and other crops. To irrigate them they used these big motor pump sets.

At times these pump sets used to have some issues and guess who used to come to fix their pump sets those days, Kochouseph. He was in his teens and used to make money through his part time business of fixing pump sets. From there he started a small revolution in kerala manufacturing V-GUARD irrigation motors, Voltage Stabilizers now into garments, resorts ( veega-land , wonderla ) and many of such trades under the brand umbrella V-GUARD.

But the beauty is that he always found an optimized way of doing any business legit and churn profit from that. These characteristics and hard work always led him from success to success. He is a philanthropist, member of kidney foundation and also may be one and only one of its kind who donated his kidney as an example of practicing what he's preaching, which ignited many youths to follow him and help fellow human beings.

That's not the topic here, when Kerala and Tamilnadu State Governments are scrambling for decisions and show who's having control, Kochouseph came up with a master plan which is very much doable and has the support from leading architects. State estimates it would cost 800-1000 crores to fix this dam, Kochouseph is predicting it can be fixed with 55 crores. And as usual he's donating 10% of that cost and technical support to fix the problem which otherwise effect 35 million people.

Wish if he can become the chief minister of Kerala, God's Own Country will be in real. Small video from a press conference.

Indian Designers

Architecture & Design used to be westerner's forte, but time after time Indians are showing their talent here too. These days animation movies, advertisements even the 5 second ballads for these advertisements are given to us. Its not because we are cheaper economically but we are proving that we can be effective in those spaces too. While my short stint in IISc Bangalore, I came to know IISc also have a design school called CPDM. And every year this school hatch 100's of highly talented designers into product designing.

I came to know this very cute design of a shelf by one of the student, Arun Francis. His project on sensational design was small project but got attention from world class designers. Its a single string design, but it will get you looking at it. He is an artist basically and also designed an electric guitar from scratch.

Don't forget to see his other works too here.