Talking Ted

Talking Ted was built with Ten 5 Studio for NBC Universal to promote the movie Ted, starring Seth MacFarlane.   It charted #1 in Entertainment for over a week and has over 8 million downloads to date.

I designed a flexible interactive animation system for the app, directed the animation team and developed key components of the final app.

  

 

JukeSpot – Spotify Music Apps Hack Weekend

What a hackathon!  Filled with distractions both good and bad (the best one was an open bar each night).  Things got pretty loud, what with the live bands and all (is this a hackathon or a concert?) prompting some unique coping mechanisms – from gchatting 3 feet apart to the seclusion womb (pictured).

Geoff, Alex, Clay, Marc and I built a sweet app called JukeSpot that’s a better jukebox for bars.  Bar owners just run the JukeSpot venue app and then everyone can see what’s playing at nearby bars before they go, and pay to insert songs into the queue.  Of course there’s more bells and whistles, bar owners can control what music is available, paying more can move your song up the queue – and you can even buy out the queue at every bar within 10 miles and rickroll all of NYC (if you can afford it).

  

So how’d we do?  After a disastrous first presentation in which our laptop ran out of battery mid talk we went up again and were able to finish showing it off.  GoGrid awarded us unlimited server usage for a year and we’re enthused enough about the idea to finish it up and get it out there.

We built JukeSpot to use Spotify’s music library since it was a Spotify sponsored event – but in the future we’ll be switching to use the local music library on the bar owner’s laptop or iOS device.

If you’ve got a bar and you’d like to be an early adopter of JukeSpot just comment on this post – and stay tuned for more.  We will be officially available in a few months.

iGrill 2

iGrill 2 was a chance to apply the lessons learned in iGrill 1 – and apply them we did!  I specced the project in extreme detail this time and the new specs, along with new communication approaches, resulted in a much smoother dev process.

This time we’d had a chance to cook with the iGrill and knew all the device’s capabilities going in so we were able to hone the user experience, making it easier while adding more features like a smoking mode, detailed graphing and a special screen designed for reading at a distance.

Geoff designed a new look with iDevices’ chosen colors focussed on maximizing legibility.  Subtle background textures keep the surfaces from feeling monotonous while the UI elements are custom without being foreign.  Overall iGrill 2 was a Continue reading

iGrill

In the Spring of 2010 entrepreneur Chris Allen was seeking app developers for his bluetooth cooking thermometer project “iGrill.”  I was working on Telephony Media at the time, a contract app-dev studio when Chris found me through a recommendation.

An iGrill in the wild. (iGrillInc.com)

Right from the get-go it was clear that the iGrill would be a neat project.  We were to design and build the iPhone and iPad apps while other companies did the hardware.  We went with a high end kitchen appliance aesthetic and Geoff did a beautiful job of it – it was his first app!

The first big challenge was to Continue reading

Project Timer

My friend Kevin wanted an app to track billable hours that would allow you switch tasks in one touch.  Everything on the App Store at that time was overly complicated or too slow to use, so I built Project Timer.  It’s not the most beautiful app (I wrote it mostly on the bus back and forth between Providence and New York) but it does the job and every few weeks I get a nice email from a customer.  Project Timer on the App Store.

    

Skate Test Dummy

Built this summer 2009 for Brooklyn Workshop’s awesome FreeRider SkateCycle.  Skate Test Dummy is a 3d physics based sandbox game.  You tilt the phone to gather momentum until you can jump out of the sides of the bowl and pull different tricks in the air.  It’s complimented by great DJ scratching sound effects by Tim K.

The biggest challenge was tuning the physics to feel natural.  Unity 3D’s built in physics system is great but from time to time a safe landing would result in a wipeout.  Eventually I wrote my own physics system and the extra effort produced much smoother results.

Pardon the pixels, iPhones were a lot slower back then!

Elie Tahari Runway Show

In the Spring of 2009 Elie Tahari contracted me to make an app to show off their Fall clothing line.  It was my first experience working for a big company and all that comes with it – like learning to invoice properly.

One development challenge involved finding a clever way to preload and cache the images – scrolling through them normally resulted in a little pause each time the next image loaded.  We ended up making 3 Elie Tahari Runway Show apps, Fall 2009, Spring 2010 & Fall 2010.

  

Funny note: A scope-change sent us over-budget and Elie Tahari paid me the difference in clothes.  I like to think that the few good shirts I ended up with made the difference in future meetings.

Mr.Shuffle

Mr Shuffle on the App Store

Mr.Shuffle was the first iPhone app I built and it was pretty fun!  Josh from Magnetism Studios reached out to me in Spring 08 before the App Store was out.  Josh found me through Escort Wing, my winning entry into the 2005 Original Mac Games contest, and offered me a job building Mr.Shuffle.  It was the excuse I needed to ditch my ancient camera-less fliphone for the iPhone.

  

Through the course of Mr.Shuffle I learned how to do custom UI, multi-touch rotation and scaling, camera access. saving files and interacting with the photo roll.  It was a tough first project but we finished in time and it was available the day the App Store launched.  Thank you, Josh, for taking the chance on me – you put me on a great path and I will always be grateful.