One of our favorite projects has officially launched this week:  the Blu Dot Real Good Experiment.

Blu Dot and Mono, a branding consultancy in Minneapolis, approached us and Supermarche to help with a project to celebrate the one-year anniversary of their showroom in SoHo, NYC.  They would do an experiment on “curb mining.”  25 Real Good Chairs would be placed around New York City.  10 of them would contain concealed GPS tracking technology.  Each would be picked up by a random passerby, who in turn would be pursued on foot and on an interactive online map – all the while being filmed for a documentary to premiere at the anniversary celebration.

Well, who are we to turn down a design-related and secret-agent-like challenge?  We created a website and outfitted 10 chairs with GPS tracking technology, cleverly concealed beneath the seat (along with a notice to defuse potential suspicion regarding concealed electronics).  As each chair was taken by a pedestrian, its journey was tracked live on the website and via hot pursuit – all the while being filmed, stakeout-style, for the documentary.  Chair-taker interviews will be happening this weekend.

Topping things off, this project has been receiving a lot of really good press in the last couple of days.  Yes!  We had a blast working with Blu Dot, Mono and Supermarche and can’t wait to see the film!

UPDATE: Get involved in the project and download the software from the Google Code project: http://code.google.com/p/nadamobile (sorry, for the moment it requires compiling some code)

1. Introduction (2008 Demo: 1 of 4)

Tellart’s 2008 Research and Development annual demonstrations. This Introductory chapter picks up where NADA (sketchtools.com) left off and takes Tellart’s sketching and prototyping tools into the mobile realm. This short video is a demo of Tellart’s RunSketch application working with Apple’s Dashcode on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

2. RunSketch (2008 Demo: 2 of 4)

This second of four chapters demonstrates how Tellart’s RunSketch application is integrated with Apple’s Dashcode to quickly and easily create applications that utilize all of an iPhone/iPod Touch’s functionality. Creating these applications is made extremely simple by RunSketch–requiring only Javascript to create sophisticated mobile applications and prototypes.

3. I/O Backpack (2008 Demo: 3 of 4)

This third chapter demonstrates the NADA Mobile hardware and software toolkit by Tellart. The hardware involves a custom designed circuit board that communicates to a computer via a wireless radio link. The board allows for both sensors (light, heat, motion, force, etc.) and actuators (lights, motors, etc.) to be integrated with the iPhone/iPod Touch’s hardware and software. The goal for Tellart in making NADA Mobile was not to extend the functionality of the iPhone as much as to create a sketching and prototyping platform that would empower designers to quickly and easily imagine and test new concepts for interactive products and services.

4. 1/8″ Jack (2008 Demo: 4 of 4)

This chapter demonstrates Tellart’s 1/8″ Jack (Eigth Inch Jack) software and hardware toolkit. 1/8″ Jack allows analog sensors to be connected to an iPhone or iPod Touch without the need for additional circuitry or power source. The system allows for fast and simple prototyping of new mobile concepts and requires only a basic understanding of Javascript to implement.

Try it yourself:

What is going on here?
That was recorded live, including the falling snowflakes. Flash can “see” the pattern on each card–depending on the pattern, the computer plays a different note. The result is that you can use pieces of paper like instruments.

How did we make it?
We put this together using FLARToolkit and Papervision3D.

Read on for more of the technical details.

FLARToolkit is a Flash port by Saqoosha of the computer vision package known as ARToolkit . You can learn more about what ARToolkit is and how it works over at Washington University’s home page for the project.

We were playing with the native Windows version of ARToolkit in the studio back in 2001 and could hardly contain our collective glee a couple weeks ago when a Tellarter dug up Boffswana’s demo of the new system running in Flash. We’d like to thank Saqoosha, Tarotaro.org and Boffswana for sharing their wonderful AS3 classes, and the Papervision crew.

Sometimes it’s a good exercise in paying attention to try to figure out how something strange, like a computer, sees the world.

Download the source code here (GPL)

Peace,
Tellart

Our favorite new iPhone hack, the duiPhone, will let you know for sure whether you should hand the car keys to a friend after a long night in the bar…

Once you blow into the mouthpiece, the application will determine your blood alcohol level – either telling you you’re good to go, or that you should consider calling a cab.

We built this from a store-bought-and-hacked breathalyzer attached to a 3G iPhone – our first experiment with Tellart’s newest Sketchtool: NADA Mobile.

Yes, this video was taken at our office. Yes, those are real 40s on the table.

No, Jasper was not allowed to drive home.
(no Tellart employees were harmed during the filming of this video.  Photos after the jump.)

[ed: Yes, the video shows an iPod Touch--which is a lot less expensive to test with than an iPhone--but the demo runs over WiFi and works on any device running iPhone OS]