Bug Blogger

1000 Days To Maker's Faire

My personal road to the Maker Faire has actually taken me three years, as last year at this time my son was born, and the year prior I had a 48 hour long trip to Sweden.  But this year nothing shall stop me (despite being in New York instead of San Francisco as I write this). It's an event I've been looking forward to for quite some time, and not only am I attending, I'll be participating the whole time.

My impressions of Makers Faire were formed from reading various blog posts and hearing personal tales over the years.  In my head I picture a huge field covered with bits of silicon, oddly shaped plastics, insanely huge gears and blowtorches.  Not sure why the blowtorches, but I picture many of them strewn about.  It's the place the teenager in me would've hitchhiked just to get to.  Then again, back then my computer had no case and instead  sat on a piece of foam until the one fateful morning when I wiped it out by accidentally touching the edge of my CGA card (yes, you read that right) and shocking the heck out of it.

Part of why I'm excited about Makers is that it gives those of us who look beyond the Web/computer as "the platform for innovation" a chance to share.  Living in San Francisco I feel heavily immersed in online culture, and while there's phenomenal creativity occurring in that culture, I still believe there's so much more to technology and imagination.  Last week I tried playing with Yahoo Pipes for the first time and felt it was pretty impressive that I could so easily "mash up" various feeds and services.  Experimenting with their tools was definitely dabbling in creation. 

I look forward to this weekend where I can have the chance to meet others who are taking their visions well beyond the screen+keyboard+mouse.

Spring Break's Over, Time for BUG+EDU!

I was really searching for a good title for this post.  It ranged from "inauguration" to "freshmen orientation" but none fit that well.  Then I remembered that it was the end of Spring Break and voila!  But now for the important news - we've released all the details of BUG+EDU on the website.  Please take a look and give us your thoughts.  We'd love to hear your comments on ways you think the program can expand and grow in the future.

First time hearing about BUG+EDU?  No problem, I'll take a moment to explain...

In our opinion, children of all ages represent more creative, original thinking that can possibly be harnessed.  When I was young I envisioned a future with all moving sidewalks, and remember sketching out how they'd work (intersections are tricky!) and thinking it through to the nth detail.  Now, that's not completely true, since the one topic that never really crossed my mind were the economics of the situation. 
Which is an unfortunate reality of technology innovation - it tends to be a bit pricey relative to allowances and after-school jobs.

The amazing thing for "kids these days" is the power of computers and the Internet.  They both provide vast opportunities to create new software, applications and web sites.  But all those opportunities are isolated to the digital realm.  Hardware invention/innovation remains frustratingly out of reach for all but the most intrepid youth.  We aim to change that.

BUG+EDU (again, details are all here) is a series of programs to not only get discounted BUGs to interested students, but also provide free units to educational institutions, help participate in creating new class curricula, and sponsor on-campus events and demonstrations of the platform in action.  We've tried to offer a wide enough range of programs to help virtually any type of school, teacher, or student, but if there's something that somehow has slipped through the cracks, please let us know!  In the meantime, good luck on finals!

Announcing the Bug Labs Store Grand Opening!

If this were 1997, this post would be chock full of blinking content as we announced our store's opening with pride.  Instead, we'll be only slightly more subtle as we open the padlocks, and welcome you in to browse around.  I want to take a moment to (and boy is this going to sound odd) potentially discourage certain shoppers:

For those of you who have ZERO programming experience, this isn't a great time to buy a BUG.  It'd be like having a Web browser on your computer in 1988 (which would've been quite a feat, by the way): the platform works, but it doesn't have much going on.  Right now, and for the next few months, our focus is building a developer community.  This is part of why we made the SDK available back in December, as we anticipate working hand-in-hand with programmers to build a huge suite of cool applications for the BUG.  So if the promise of the "Lego of Gadgets" is appealing to you, but you don't have any direct programming skills, we recommend you hold off for a few months.  Stay tuned for updates here as we'll be sure to talk about how the community is evolving the BUG!

We're also announcing the BUGbundle today, which is the BUGbase and the first four shipping modules (gps, LCD, motion detector/accelerometer, 2MP digital camera).  It's being sold for $705, but the Early Adopter Discount brings it down to $549 (22% savings!).

Also, we're in such a limited supply right now that we are limiting orders to one per customer.  If you are interested in a bulk order, please send us an email.  Also, we have not yet started the BUG+EDU promotions, which we'll unveil in March.

Lastly, just in case you missed it last week, the BUGbase going on sale now is the "Hiro P" edition, and it has a slightly different interface than you've seen on our site before.  Also, it doesn't have WiFi built-in.  For those of you who don't need WiFi for your gadget dreams, jump on in, we'll also be sending you a free vonHippel module!  Further, if you do want WiFi, but can't stand the wait, we're making a BUGmodule with 802.11b/g and it'll be available to you at our production cost.

This is an extremely exciting moment in the history of Bug Labs.  Thanks for being a part of it, and once you've placed your order, please join us in the discussion forums to get your feedback our way!

UPDATES: A few emails already came in, so I wanted to add a few points (I will do this throughout the day as new topics arise).

International shipping: we are working on a solution, but we don't have it ready yet.  We will have an early adopter program available to international customers.

Future products: we will also have an early adopter program for future products, as they come to market.

Best of CES finalist - PLEASE VOTE!

We are uber-thrilled (which is like "really really really" thrilled) to announce that CNET has selected us as a Best of CES finalist in the "emerging technologies" category!  Thank you CNET editors & judges, we are honored, especially considering the quantity of huge companies we were up against.

Now friends and fans of Bug Labs, there is a "People's Voice Award" from CNET, and we'd love to make a decent showing of it.  You can vote online here, or you can text in your vote (text PV14 to 26381).  Thanks for your support (we're up against humongous companies who spend more on CES than we spend on marketing in a year, so we need the help)!

UPDATE: I just noticed that CNBC/Donny Deutsch show is also polling for their favorite, and we'd love a little help there too!

Our CES booth location

We've had emails coming in asking how to find us at CES, so here's the quick info. 

Our booth is #IP256, in the Innovations Pavilion at the Sands Expo Center inside the Venetian Hotel in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, etc... If you are using the official CES planner, here's a link, if not, here's a picture of the map/show floor:

We'll be there from mornin' til' evenin' all next week, so please drop by and say hello (first-time CES attendees might want to read my tips for the show).  Also, for media who are attending CES, we'll be at table #96 during the Showstoppers event Monday night, and we'll be dropping by the BlogHaus (we think on Tuesday) to say hi to the bloggers there. 

If you can't make it, hopefully you'll get to read about it and see pix (we'll take a bunch, as always) while we're there (or you can follow us, 140 characters at a time, from Twitter or Jaiku). We'll also be on the Donny Deutsch show one more time, reviewing our progress on the road to CES.

Oh yeah, expect lots of updates from us tomorrow!

The PopSci Build-a-BUG challenge is on

In the run up to releasing the BUG SDK last week, we've been working with the kind folks at Popular Science to launch our "Build a BUG" challenge. The basic premise is this: if you can wow the Bug Labs and PopSci teams by building an awesome virtual BUG device with Dragonfly, the BUG SDK, you can win the grand prize of a BUGbase and the first batch of BUGmodules (GPS, camera, touchscreen LCD, and motion sensor / accelerometer).

We want everyone to participate in the contest, programmers and non-programmers alike, so we're also opening up a second-prize challenge. Think up a great BUGmodule that we haven't thought of yet and send us a detailed use case. The best entry will receive a special BUG shirt, a PopSci shirt, and a one-year subscription to Popular Science magazine.

The contest ends on February 15, 2008, and winners will be announced on March 30, 2008. For full contest rules and regulations, head over to the official Build-a-BUG challenge website. We're looking forward to seeing what comes in!

On the road to Donny Deutsch

CNBC's show, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, is featuring a series of episodes entitled The Road to CES.  Each segment brings in different companies and different experts discussing how to grow the businesses from their various stages.  Bug Labs was selected for Episode 2: Becoming a Household Name.  It was a two-day shoot, and I took a bunch of pictures for our own little "behind the scenes" blog post here.

We arrived at the CNBC studio in Jersey Tuesday morning, were brought to our green room, then into some briefings.  The week prior to the show involved quite a few discussions about the show and Bug Labs as the segment producers went to work on creating a good flow for the episode.  A discussion guide helped get all the other panelists quickly up to speed on the company so they could be comfortable talking about what we do on the air.  The other panelists included executives from Kodak, TASER, Travelocity, and some independent consultants. Each brought a different perspective, from sales to marketing to PR, etc.

While watching the group chat, led by Donny himself (who was really engaging btw), I'd say as it started Peter was at about a C, maybe C minus.  Now sure, it's a little nerve-racking being under a massively lit up stage, seeing the world through blurry glasses-free eyes (not even for posterity), and knowing you're the little guy in a roomful of people about to pounce on your startup.  But it's another thing altogether to be told in the first 5 minutes that they don't like your name, your slogan, and your appearance could 'use some work'.  We'll see how the edit comes out, but there was a moment where I'm pretty sure Peter felt like he had been sucker-punched. 

That said, Peter really did rally through the second half of the shoot.  Also, the execs from Travelocity and Kodak were extremely supportive and encouraging of the company's vision.  It was also interesting listening to us getting told we need to talk to bloggers and local media if we want to have a good story!  Anyhow, with his A-game on for the end, I'll call the overall performance a B.  Not bad for Peter's first time on nationwide TV.

Yesterday I met with a production crew at Bug Labs HQ (NY) early in the morning for them to load in 3 tons of equipment into the office.  The series of tables and workstations was transformed into a mini TV studio.  Lights, camera, legos!  (you'll see).  The team that came out was really great to work with, and Peter had some great 1-on-1 interviews over the course of the day.  I got to see a sample of the output that we could expect and the production quality was stunning.  You'll see it air tonight, but it looked like one of those "behind the athlete" stories from the NBC Olympics coverage.  Only with less tights. Here's some shots of the action:

The show airs tonight on CNBC at 10pm EST.  I think the production quality will somewhat exceed our internal videos, but hey, ya never know. Hope it gives you another good bit of insight into the world of Bug Labs!

SDK now available for download

Before anything else, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who met up with us at BUG+NY last night! We had a great time, good conversations, and some pix are online now.  Now onto the stuff you really care about.  I will start with a little note from Ken, the head of software for Bug Labs:

Many moons ago Peter and I met in a crowded starbox on a dark and stormy evening.  He had some wood blocks and visions of a computer program that made creating user-designed consumer electronics easy. There were some pictures and various notes.  Well, I'm proud to announce that the software that resulted from those early conversations has been publicly released!

Called the Dragonfly SDK, it is an Eclipse-based software development kit for the BUG.  It's designed as an easy-to-use embedded development environment with a built-in web application sharing website.  While we have not released the BUG hardware yet, a virtual one is included to play around with.  Install directions are here  or if you're an Eclipse pro here is the update site URL.  Also, we've included a minimal getting started guide here.

(thanks Ken!)

We consider the SDK in an open beta now.  Accompanying it are also discussion forums, a wiki, and BUGnet is now live (click here to register).  If you are wondering what these things have in common, it's the beginnings of our online community.  We are building out numerous components to really enhance the community experience in the future, including a BUGmodule recommendation/voting system and more.  Most important to us is that every aspect of our communications become two-way.

So, please comment on the blog, post on the forums, contribute to the wiki, and build applications for BUGnet!  We want to hear from you, tell us what you think, what you want, and what else we can do to make the BUG experience as good as possible.

BUG+NYC (The Voyage Home) and CES 2008 (Viva La Vegas)

As we wrap up 2007, we look back on how far we've come since we introduced Bug Labs over four months ago. There's been lots of awesome coverage about BUG, Peter has captured the hearts and eyes of adoring fans everywhere, and our BUG+ events have brought together several hundred people to share in our vision of Community Electronics - and also help consume over a thousand beers in the process.

So, especially after an awesome BUG+SF, Bug Labs is celebrating a fantastic 2007 by bringing BUG+ back to our native New York. We are hosting BUG+NYC on Monday, December 17 between 6-9pm at Verlaine, a Bug Labs favorite located on the Lower East Side. Come by, see the BUG and SDK in all their working glory, chat it up with your fellow tech chums, and have a drink on us. This is our last BUG+ gathering of 2007, so we hope to see you one more time before the holidays consume us all.

Also, Bug Labs is exhibiting at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas between January 6th through 10th. This is our first time exhibiting at CES, otherwise known as the world's largest tech exposition, and we're very excited to show BUG to the over one hundred thousand people (!) expected to attend. If you plan to be in the crowd (here's my CES tips if you've never been there before yourself), stop by our booth (#IP 256) in the Innovations Pods area located in the Sands. We'll have a station where you can play with the BUG and SDK, and perhaps for the first time in CES history, you can help us create a new device right there on the show floor. There's no better way to start off 2008!

Planning BUG+SF and BUG+NYC

As a dual citizen let me wish my Canadian comrades a belated happy Thanksgiving and to my fellow Americans, an early happy Thanksgiving.  We are quite a bit swamped getting ready for launch and CES, not to mention prepping our turkey and stuffing and all that.  But we can't let the year run out without a couple more BUG+ events, so we're doing one in San Francisco at the end of November, followed by New York City in December.

BUG+SF is at Swig, a cool bar near Union Square (we call it the TenderNob, but that's not too official or anything), on Thursday, November 29th.  The event starts at 6:00pm and goes until 9:00pm.  As always, all are welcome, and there's no special VIP/l33t passes - all you have to do is show up.  We are using Upcoming to try to track RSVPs, which is always helpful, but again, not required.  Drinks are on us, and Peter (Bug's founder and CEO) is flying out to hang with us West Coasters.  And he's bringing a working unit, so this time we can truly get our geek on.  It's been a long while since our first discussions in SF this past Summer, and we're looking forward to meeting anyone who can join us for a fine beverage.

We are still firming up the timing and location for BUG+NY, but it's probably going to happen around the 2nd week of December.  We'll of course post here when we have the deets, but if you'd like to suggest an interesting spot, please comment away!

BUG+SXSW - thanks!

We're in, and we have you to thank for it!  For those of you new to Bug Labs, last month we entered Peter Semmelhack as a speaking candidate for 2008 South by Southwest (SXSW for short), and we found out yesterday that he made the cut! Peter's proposed session on "Hardware Mashups: The Long-Tail of Gadgets" has been placed in the preliminary program.

If you recall (and you probably don't, but we sure do!), we submitted our idea to the SXSW PanelPicker just four days before voting was scheduled to end. But thanks to the efforts of the BUG community, we amassed enough votes in such short time to be selected as one of 42 preliminary finalists, out of over 730 submissions!

If you're planning on attending SXSW 2008 (March 7-16 in Austin, TX) drop us a line! We'd love to see you at Peter's session, and share in the excitement of all the music, film and interactive sessions that will be taking place. And watch this blog for more on our BUG+SXSW plans.

See you in Texas!

Don't forget - BUG+Boston tomorrow!

Peter and I are already here in Boston at the MCPC 2007 conference, and tomorrow we're looking forward to seeing some of the rest of the team RV their way up from NY to Boston.  And not just them, but hopefully you!  Details:

• WHAT: free booze, good discussion
• WHEN: Tuesday, Oct 9th, 6-9pm
• WHERE: Middlesex Lounge, Cambridge (google map)
• WHY: because we want to
• WHO: team Bug Labs + you
• HOW: hmm.. not really sure what to say here...

See you tomorrow night!

BUG+Boston and a couple of conferences

Attention gadget-developing community of Boston.  We are comin' to town!  Tuesday, October 9th, team Bug Labs is hosting drinks at Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge, from 6-9pm.  No RSVPs required (although you are welcome to comment!), no special guest list, no hidden links.  All are welcome, and we look forward to seeing you there.

Whilst we arest therest, Peter Semmelhack is giving a presentation during the 2007 World Conference on Mass Customization and Personalization.  His talk occurs during the session "4.5  Enabling Open Innovation & Customization in Consumer Electronics" and is entitled "Exploring the Long Tail of Devices: How an open web services and hardware platform can enable the creation of truly personal consumer electronics".  It occurs at 3:50pm on Tuesday the 9th, in room 32-123.  This is my first time at the MCPC and it looks like a really interesting event.  If you are in the Boston area (say, to attend BUG+Boston?), you might want to register and attend the show!

In addition to the MCPC presentation, Peter was just selected to participate in the Defrag conference in Denver this November.  Peter will speak on "Defragging Gadgets: Community-driven Electronics" at 2pm on Monday, November 5th.  Also a new show for me, but checking out the agenda puts this squarely on the "way more interesting than most" list of conferences!  Anyone in the Denver area up for a BUG+ in a couple of months?  Let us know by commenting here...

Want to see us at SXSW 2008? It's up to you!

As we like to emphasize here at Bug Labs, community is the foundation of the BUG experience, and the term "community electronics" is part of our grand vision in creating a new standard for personal devices. It's with you­ the developer, the hobbyist, the user­ for whom we rely on to use the BUG platform and create innovative devices and applications. And after receiving hundreds of requests to participate in the BUG+Beta program, we're excited to see so many people interested in sharing in this experience.

That said, Peter has been selected as a potential speaker at the 2008 South By Southwest Interactive Festival (or SXSW, if you prefer) to wax poetic on "Hardware Mashups: Introducing the Long Tail of Gadgets." If you are unfamiliar with SXSW, it's a collective of music, film, technology and interactive events spanning several days in March in Austin, Texas. For the tech crowd, it¹s a gathering of innovators and influencers, introducing new, exciting ideas and services via a series of interactive sessions. Sounds like a great fit for Bug Labs!

In an excellent "twist", the community-at-large is responsible for voting in speakers via the SXSW Interactive PanelPicker. So far, well over 700 panel ideas (wow) have been submitted, ranging from the philosophical (The Web That Wasn't) to the technical (God (and Design) is in the Detail) to the... uh... hmm... other? (Pink Ghetto Blasters: Destigmatizing Sex via Online Community Building).

So we're relying on you, the community, to help send Peter to Austin (don't worry, we'll pick up the tab for the airfare) and share his thoughts on community, electronics, and community electronics!

If you like what you've heard so far, head on over to PanelPicker, sign up and vote, and help spread the word. We look forward to seeing you in Austin, Texas (where we'll pre-commit to a BUG+Austin)! Registration takes about 45 seconds, and voting ends this Friday September 21.

A Midsummer Day's Update

As you may have read (we appreciate the coverage guys!), thanks to our stellar Web and QA team, I'm excited to share that the Bug Labs web site (yup, it's a .net) is now live.  We've updated the site to include more details and information, so please browse away.  We've put a priority on getting out BUG product and platform details, and you can expect to see more added in a few weeks. 

Next up, the beta program.  Big thanks to all the beta program applicants so far.  We're going to keep the application live online until next Wednesday, September 5th.  At that point we'll close the sign-up form, then take a couple of weeks to sort the list out into the multiple waves of testers.  Just to keep the process optimized, we'll notify individuals as they are selected for each wave.  This means even if you aren't in the first round of testing, please don't assume we aren't interested, we just have a limited number of slots to fill at a time. 

We're planning the next few BUG+(blank)s now, upcoming cities include San Francisco and Boston.  Our goal is to increase the frequency of the events, and I'll use the blog to announce each one as we finalize plans and dates. 

Lastly, if you look on the Bug Labs web site, you may notice we're hiring!  All positions right now are in the New York office.  If you are a software engineer (esp w Java, Ruby on Rails, SQL, and design skills), embedded Linux developer, or a product or manufacturing process manager, get in touch!

Thanks, talk to you again soon!

</update>

Getting Beta All the Time

Ah, nothing like a terrible pun to start a blog post.  But, since we're chock full o' good news, I figured I'd get a pass on that.

As the subject line implies, Bug Labs is ready to start beta testing the platform.  We need to test out the SDK, the environment, the interfaces, the APIs, and, yup, you guessed it, the hardware too.  Now to set expectations right off the bat: we don't have nearly enough units to go around (yet), so there'll be quite a bit of testing in a software-only environment (which is a-okay, as we have a full emulator that gives you a Virtual BUG!).  Also, we're going to use a bit of a "staged" approach, so we will start small, then slowly expand the pool of testers as time goes on.

We've also decided that we're going to "open up" the beta to the community as much as we can.  Testers will be welcome to blog about the process, or even consult with their peers regarding technical challenges they face.  Our objective here is to engage with developers so that we can launch with not just a polished platform, but one that has had real hands-on use from the very people who would be interested in using it!

Also, in case you are thinking "well, why don't they just let everybody in if they really want the best feedback" please let me explain.  Bug Labs is still a small team, and we need to have the ability to really learn and grow from this process.  While we'd love to include "everyone" in the program, we simply don't have the resources to effectively manage the feedback we'd get.  Whereas, with a smaller group we can have a lot more "hands-on" and interactive time with the testers.

If you don't get picked, we're sorry we couldn't get you involved yet, but remember we'll constantly be increasing the beta pool over time.  Also, we are launching the products this Fall, so it's not really that far away!  Finally - huge thanks in advance to anyone/everyone who is interested, we sincerely appreciate it!

UPDATE: We stopped taking new entries on Wednesday, Sept 5th as we begin the process of culling the list. Fret not, however, as we'll have numerous open-invites and ways to get involved in the coming months. Keep an eye on the blog or website for more updates.

Bug+(BLANK)

One of the big themes here at Bug Labs is inclusion.  With get-togethers, this can be a bit of a tricky thing to do, since it’s not really practical to have a hundred people at a dinner discussion, and we’d have a tough time convincing the landlords to install all-plexiglass walls in the building.  But, we DO want to get out and in front of everyone/anyone interested in chatting.  So we'll be setting up events around the country that we're calling "Bug + (BLANK)".  Each one is a public, everyone's-invited activity of some sort.

BLANK will include words like “campus” – when we show up at a school and meet with students and teachers who are interested in learning more.  BLANK could be “Austin” – for finding an interesting venue in that fine town to have hands-on demonstrations and coding workshops with the Bug platform.  BLANK could even be “the mall”, but we’re having a tough time seeing how that would fit.

BLANK right now is going to be “bar+NYC” (I almost said "booze" - which I’ve always found an attention-grabbing word), and by that it means we are going to have a night at a bar in New York City, where a few people from the company will be on hand to chat about whatever topics come up, whether related to Bug, open source hardware, cool gadgets, or Call of Duty 2 strategies.  In fact, I’m of the opinion that all of those topics will come up and might even make a small bet on it.

So please join us on August 14th at Punch Restaurant (upstairs) in Manhattan for an open bar from 6-8pm.  As soon as we can logistically set up more BLANKs, you’ll hear about them here.  Got a BLANKing good suggestion?  Comment on the blog or shoot me an email, we’d be happy to BLANK with you anytime!