Thoughts from a Bafta nominated Podcaster, Blogger, Writer and Commentator.
O2’s team behind ‘The Lab’ are taking over part of the O2 venue (specifically the IndigO2 stage) for a weekend of “500 developers, 2 days of learning, sharing, and building cool stuff.” It’s on the 20th and 21st of July, so save the date!
So a week or two behind schedule, but here’s the video from “The Ben Collins Appreciation Society",” the team I was involved with in this year’s Over the Air at Imperial College. To recap, I had seen an early prototype of Parrot’s AR.Drone, and at the time I thought that I could do something impressive with the technology at the next Hack Day I attended. So with Over the Air approaching, Parrot popped over the commercial release of the AR.Drone in time for the event, and my brain got to work. The result was two fold – to replicate some
Yesterday at the Over The Air hack-a-thon, I was part of the team that won both the Best Hack in Show and the Paypal X Challenge. This is the story of that hack… Picture by Benjamin Ellis. First up, a huge, huge thank you to the rest of my team at the Hack-a-thon from this weekend’s Over The Air Mobile Development event. My hacks traditionally have a huge vision, and that needs an ad-hoc team with a huge range of skills. So to Simon Maddox, Sam Machin, Rachel Clarke, Robert Lee-Cann and Karl Turner my thanks yet again not only
And now, as promised, the final piece of my Over the Air jigsaw – the Project Holodeck presentation. Throughout the event, as people coded little coffee cups, pretend musical bottles on iPhones and bluetooth powered orchestras, by the stage was the sound of hammering, sawing and general DIY noises with lots of wood, nails and curtain fabric. As I explained to everyone, the team (Leeky, Rachel, Joanna and myself) were building a Holodeck – but thanks to health and safety it had to be inside a Faraday Cage… hence the construction. You can read more on the construction and background
The combined forces of Betavine, Lonely Planet and OMTP have come together for another Over the Air event, a very traditional sounding 24 hour hack-a-thon in London with a focus on mobile development. @torgo popped over a Twitter DM to me today and asked if I could make it (it’s on the 25th and 26th of September this year), and naturally I agreed. And have immediately started to plan… something spectacular. Just for reference, in previous events like this I’ve been involved in: Filming a fan version of the season closer to Torchwood (before it aired)… A Diet Coke and
I’m in two minds about the announcement on the BBC Backstage Blog that there won’t be a Mashed event in 2009. Part of me is upset – the Mashed event in 2008 (and the Yahoo/BBC Hackday the year before) was one of the highlights of the year for UK Developer circles – you put smart people in a room and great things happen. Put smart people in a room with their own DAB TV station and a red button service they can hack away with, and you get some gorgeous results. For those who weren’t coding, it was still a
