kurt

building steam with a grain of salt

at the beginning of 2006, i moved to mountain view and started a company with 2 partners. the whole thing was like an experiment: what happens when you quit your job to bootstrap a startup on the foundation of a modern web application that you have neither tested nor written a line of code for yet? the short and dirty answer is that you take a crash course in software development, business and finance. you also memorize the exact amount in your checking account and learn to calculate how long you can survive without additional funding based on your current "burn rate". so i installed SVN and made friends with the Terminal.

well 9.5 months later trackingshot is ready for some attention.

after a good conversation at a STIRR event and the feeling that we were ready for some traffic, over the weekend we gave CNET's Rafe Needleman permission to blog about the site. he gave us a fairly positive mini-review which was nice. i wonder what kind of response we'll get?

then, without warning, Lifehacker picked up the story and because the gawker empire likes to keep it in the family we got a post on Gizmodo too, which inevitably leads pneumatically to the Digg... boom.

and of course that promptly beheaded our server in the afternoon.

but at 3:30am, the migration code was finished and we came back up. phew. not that we were ever in "stealth mode", but now we have a very public face for a small yet highly critical web population.

so please try out trackingshot, check out my public movies and if you have the time, send me some feedback at kurt.zero [at] gmail. thanks.

Daily Trojan on MobZombies

Thanks to Celeste DeFreitas for reading we-make-money-not-art.com and then writing this article for the Daily Trojan.

A Life Less Interactive

You might be wondering what graduates from the Interactive Media Division do over the summer. Or you might ask yourself, where do the professors go?

Perhaps some of the answers can be found in the images of this photo set over on flickr:

follow_me

Collaborative filtering gone awry

Sometimes collaborative filtering systems can reveal surprising connections, like how people that enjoyed Kill Bill, Volume 2 might also enjoy The Passion of the Christ...

CLICK

So long, and thanks for all the fish

I just wanted to thank everyone that participated in the first MFA thesis show last week.

Take a look at my flickr site for my perspective on Pass Through and Commencement.

My expectations were far exceeded and I expect that the following years will excel and surpass the standard that the first class has set.

Thanks.

CHI 2005 Portland

I'll be flying to Portland tonight to participate in the Engaging the City workshop at CHI and present the projectCAR work that Kellee, Susana and I developed.

Later this month I hope to speak to the division about the workshop experience and research direction that our group would like pCAR to take during the summer.

The Professional

I was asked once for a definition of professionalism.

Reflecting on events over the last week, I have it now:

Professionalism is respect for the person, the fundamental unit of
human interaction, upon which all interpersonal relationships
are built, forming the foundation of value, culture and civilization.

or simply

Professionalism is acting with concern for the individual.

20 Bullets

Introduction/Pitch
  Insert a really good one-liner here
Prior Art
  Ken Burns, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, etc.
Digital photography
  New ways to view, share, use images. More personal and dynamic media.
  What makes this better than a slideshow?
  What makes this really innovative?

Collaboration
  Industry research lab + cinema/media arts university
Development Process
Bruce Block aka Visual Components and Contrast/Affinity
  A formal system that can be used effectively in video generation
Cinema Metaphor
  The screen is a set as viewed by the camera and the images are actors.
System Design
  Specs, workflow
Metadata Design
  Subjective metadata, hand-tagging, similar or different from Flickr.com tags?
Controlling the performance
  MIDI controller, linear mapping to the 8 sliders, why those controls?
Searches on the metadata db
  SQL, "google-like" searches v. boolean searches
Cinematic Language Design
  Descriptive vocabulary for putting images on the screen
Shot Design
  XML for writing shot techniques, additive effect of combining
shots, solo techniques

Structure of the Performance
  "a day in the life", rising intensity, BB graphs
Los Angeles images
  1000+, a personal POV into the city, from the car, from the street
Music selection
  There is definitely going to be a question here about integration
and interaction with music.
Practicing the performance and iteration
  How much serendipity v. sensitivity?
  Retagging to correct for undesirable outcomes
The Performance setup
  Audience, projector + screen, 2 computers + 2 monitors, speakers

Video of the Performance

Future
  Improved interface for tagging, tech. design and performance
  Live tweaking of shots' characteristics
  Better tagging: automatic and manual
  Integrate music - how can this be done uniquely
Consumer version
Pre- and Post- production automated

Acknowledgements

GDC2005

I don't regret missing GDC this year, that said I enjoyed reading the transcript of Satoru Iwata's talk:

We call these standards the four “I”s. First, is it truly innovative—something different from what has come before? Second, is it intuitive? Does control of the game, and the direction of gameplay, seem natural? Third, is it inviting? Do you want to spend time in this world? And finally, how does it measure up in terms of interface? Can the player connect in new ways?

Full article here.

and also the recount of this year's developer's challenge:

Wright envisioned that the agent could be sold on USB memory sticks, in order to cleverly "backdoor" the program to unsuspecting customers. "USB Emily," as Wright dubbed the agent, would then interact with the user via IM, e-mail, and pop-up messages. USB Emily might snoop into the user's programs and documents in order to find keywords to comment upon or send poems about. Over time, the user would "slowly bootstrap a relationship with her."

Full article here.

If only Nintendo and Will Wright could truly lead the industry into an era of innovative and expressive games... wonder if there is a DS Sims game in the future?

100% Legal Software

I have no idea if movieadvanced.com is a quality movie download service, but this seal really makes me feel safe: