hustler of culture

Arduino the Cat, Breadboard the Mouse and Cutter the Elephant

Arduino the Cat, Breadboard the Mouse and Cutter the Elephant from hmt on Vimeo.

Queen Bohemian Rhapsody Old School Computer Remix

Tweenbots

Stylish New Yorkers, college kids, and good residents of Manhattan help this wee robot navigate its way through the park. How can something so simple (a wind-up cardboard box on wheels) make people want to help it out?! More about Kacie Kinzer's Tweenbots project here. [Thanks danah]

WiiSpray

WiiSpray Teaser from Martin Lihs on Vimeo

Leave it up to Martin Lihs, a graduate student at Bauhaus University to create something so damn cool.  Game developers, will you look at this?! Forget about games as art. Imagine the hours of  non-trad game play?!  More geek graffiti, FTW! I can't get enough of WiiSpray 2nd edition:

WiiSpray – a technical experiment

Wii Spray was developed in the course of the “Information Places” project in the spring of 2007 by students Martin Lihs and Frank Matuse of the Media Department at the Bauhaus University Weimar. However, the original idea of the project was founded much sooner.

Hitachi Wooo Phone

March 19, 2009 - 1:39 p.m. - Burbank, CA

SXSW 2009 - EMV BBQ

March 16, 2009 - 7:56 p.m. - Driftwood, TX

We returned to The Salt Lick for our third annual EMV SXSW BBQ. The who's who in the world of tech, entertainment, journalism, and creativity were in attendance and everyone was in great spirits. Thanks to all for another beautiful barbecue! See you next year!

Watchmen: Justice is Coming iPhone MMO

Silvio's secret project has finally been announced! His studio, Last Legion Games created Watchmen: Justice is Coming, a multiplayer online adventure fighting game developed exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Inspired by the Watchmen film, pretty soon players will be able to chat and battle other players while wandering 1970s New York City.

The game is still under Apple's thumb (waiting for approval) and will be available at the iTunes App Store in March 2009. Check watchmanjusticeiscoming.com for more deets! Please spread the word. I'm not sure anyone knows about this IP yet and I'd really like to give the film and its accompanying game a little press!

UPDATE: The game is now available at the Apple Apps Store!

Welcome to the Twitterdome!

I believe that birds of a feather, flock together.

Thanks to all my readers who told their friends about Hustler of Culture over the past five and a half years.  Much to my amazement, HOC's readership is still growing. To help broadcast my posts, I've relaunched the Hustler of Culture twitter feed and in the past couple of days, hundreds of subscribers have hopped on board (thanks, guys)! This is all due to the fact that I'm a part of a pretty supportive arts and culture-based community. Recently, the sassy C-Monster (name purposefully withheld), Barry at Bloggy, and Christina at Glowlab re-tweeted links of mine. And in the past 48 hours, Marc at Wooster Collective gave my feed a shout out and the lovely Jean at NOTCOT blogged about my awesome EG win. Welcome, everybody!

Follow the peeps above @cmonstah, @bhoggard, @glowlab, @marcschil and @notcot and support arts and culture!

Oh, and for the record, I've had a separate private Twitter account for some time now with over 3,630 random and personal observations. But please don't try to add yourself to that feed unless we're IRL friends. Otherwise, I'm going to have to reject you and feel a lil bad about it. Nothing personal, if I really don't know you, right?!

As always, mega thanks for all your support. And for those of you that read through this and said to yourself, "Huh, what's Twitter?", check this out.

Singing Car-aoke; review of iKaraoke by Raina Lee

Hey karaoke kings and queens!  Check out Raina's review of Griffin Technologies' iKaraoke for your car! If you're going to foolishly cruise down the freeway singing your heart out, might as well hook your ride up properly. The karaoke dominator gives this product a thumbs up. Enjoy cartoonist/graphic novelist John Pham's cameo appearance at the end!

SF - Lawrence Lessig Book Event (01.14.09)

LAWRENCE LESSIG
talk & booksigning for Remix
Wednesday, January 14 at 7:30 pm

In Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, Lawrence Lessig shows how we harm our children - and almost anyone who creates, enjoys, or sells any art form - with a restrictive copyright system driven by corporate interests. In this new book, the acclaimed author of Free Culture reveals the solutions to this impasse offered by a collaborative yet profitable “hybrid economy.”

NYC - The Open Planning Project (01.14.08)

The Open Planning Project
349 W. 12th St. #3
New York, New York

Wednesday January 14, 2009 at 6:00pm

Twitter bots, aggregators, social software, mobile apps - we use these things more and more in our daily routines to make our lives better. But can we also use them to remake our cities altogether?

How can software designers, architects, urban planners, sociologists and citizens work together to design a better New York City?

How can we transform urban spaces, changing them from the centralized, hard-coded things they are today into finely-tuned, fluid, user-operated systems that are efficient, sustainable and fit for life in the 21st century?

This will be the first NYC DIYcity meetup. Are you interested in helping with this stuff? Then you're invited! Come out to get to know each other, exchange ideas and help plot our future direction. Please also join our discussion group at DIYcity.org: http://diycity.org/groups/diy-new-york-city

DIYcity NYC is the local branch of DIYcity. For more information visit diycity.org.

How to be a Tummler - Designing for Conversation

Insightful comedian Heather Gold recently spoke at Google Tech Talks. Check out what she's got to say about productivity, connecting with peeps, and communication.

Eye Spy 2008

(almost) a photo a day by hustler of culture and silviothemilvio.

RELATED: Eye Spy 2007, Eye Spy 2006

'The Twitter Film' by CSK

the twitter film (racing north, chased by tweets, chasing tweets) from svanes on Vimeo.

Christian shot his road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco on May 30, 2008. He recently finished his short film about a time lapse journey by car. Christian meant for the clip to move time forward on three levels, "the actual travel that is recorded on film that can be measured in distance and time, while the twitter postings provide an additional register of the day’s progression." Two of my tweets are used in the film, "check your IM chat log PUNK ASS. May 23rd. 6:56 p.m. APOLOGIES good for the next 24 hours," and "according to GOOGLE MAPS, there are 7 car accidents waiting for me on my commute home. looks like i'm taking surface streets from BURBANK!" It's a fun clip, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Chabot Space & Science Center

December 14, 2008 - 1:59 p.m. - Oakland, CA

Having grown up with the National Air and Space Museum in my backyard, I'm a sucker for all space-related museums. While up in the Bay Area, my family friends took me to the Chabot Space & Science Center for an afternoon with their kids. It was nice. Very interactive. But not as glamorous as its Washington DC cousin. Nevertheless, I had a lovely nap during the Search for Life screening. Laying back with the stars spread across the Megadome screen in front of me, reminded me of falling asleep in the backyard as a kid. I highly recommend visiting this museum on an evening where a clear sky is predicted so that you can take advantage of the observatories' powerful telescopes.

Entertainment Gathering 2008 Recap

Entertainment Gathering 2008 was incredibly inspirational and moving. I was at times, welling up witnessing what was on stage. But mostly, I was in awe of the human spirit and all the exciting projects and things people were up to. The company was top notch! So many creatives. So much talent. So nice people! I am grateful to have seen and heard what had transpired over a few days in Monterey, California and I look forward to attending the event again in the near future. Thanks EG 2008 for all the story-worthy memories.

Matt Groening + Hans Wegner = So Best!

December 13, 2008 - 5:33 p.m. - Monterey, CA

At Entertainment Gathering, I happened to win a Hans Wegner Wishbone Chair. I asked conference attendee Matt Groening to sign my "winner" card. He graciously doodled Lisa Simpson on it for me. Best win, ever! Thanks Steelcase/Coalesse, thanks Mr. Simpsons Creator, and thanks EG 2008 for the opportunity!

Marvin Minsky... Just Think About It

December 12, 2008 - 6:37 p.m. - Monterey, CA

With the help of Emotiv's co-founder Tan Le, Marvin Minksy demonstrated how a new headset for human computer interaction worked at Entertainment Gathering 2008. The Artificial Intelligence godfather and co-founder of MIT'S AI Laboratory wowed the audience by rotating a cube and making it disappear simply by thinking about it. Just, so future... now. Emotiv hopes to develop this technology for future game play. I can imagine so much more. Want!

Entertainment Gathering 2008: Jill Sobule

December 11, 2008 - 8:40 p.m. - Monterey, CA

Boston Bound Team BL

December 9, 2008 - 9:49 p.m. - Venice, CA

Gilad and danah are moving to Boston. We dropped by to pick up some plants and say goodbye (for now) while they were packing. Look at danah's dissertation certification for her Doctor of Philosophy in Information Management Systems from UC Berkeley! w00t! I'm going to miss our neighbors. And now I'm going to have to find a replacement for Gilad -- my dependable pho and dim sum buddy who was willing to drive 40 miles into the suburbs with me for authentic Asian fare. Later pretty smart people, enjoy traveling east!