Announcement: We rocked CityCamp Raleigh! Great work everyone!

Congrats to you all for your great work at citycamp: 

* all teams pitch in final competition

* three selected in top five

* the raleigh retold team is runner up

* the r greenway team wins $5000!

Let's keep up this momentum and build cool stuff this semester. I know it will have real impact.

News from yesterday is below, more as it arrives. 

CityCamp Raleigh Competes for Civic Innovation

The unconference at CityCamp Raleigh on June 2 was amazing. The ideas. The passion. The people. For those of you unfamiliar with the unconference format, we gathered at 9:00 am  on Saturday. The coffee was a little late, so we didn’t start until 9:15 am. We explained the process for the day…which went something like this:

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Attendees were allowed to give 1-minute pitches for ideas, workshops, or projects. There were over 30 pitches Then attendees voted on their favorite ideas. We had five rooms with sessions starting every hour from 10am-4pm. One room was dedicated to TranspoCamp. (Okay, so we started a little late and the first two sessions were at 10:30 and 11:30, but we made up time during lunch.) The group gathered back at 12:55pm to go over the contest rules and address any questions. Then afternoon sessions started and teams started forming.

By the 4:00pm deadline, we had ten teams submit their project ideas. The concepts range from neighborhood story telling to open standards, a greenway application to developing a community health score, a mobile gaming idea for discovering more about Raleigh to searching various Raleigh resources in one place. And of course, QR codes. By the way, we have two teams with elected official on them. Maybe a first for any CityCamp worldwide.

Elected officials enhance CityCamp Raleigh 2012 experience

During Friday’s session, we had eight elected officials attend. Seven from Raleigh: Mayor Nancy McFarlane and City Council members Bonner Gaylord, Thomas Crowder, Randall Stagner, Mary Ann Baldwin, Russ Stephenson,  and Eugene Weeks; One from Cary, Town Council member Lori Bush who was on the government perspective panel and offered some great insights from just over the Raleigh border.

On Saturday, several elected officials returned and were very active during today’s sessions. Mayor Nancy McFarlane and City Council members Bonner Gaylord, Thomas Crowder, Mary Ann Baldwin, and Russ Stephenson. Stephenson even pitched an idea about community health scoring that attracted 20 people to a morning session. Attendees were

Ref: a recent post at the blog we've been talking about, good night raleigh -- on losing what makes raleigh special: it's modernist buildings

If only we could help people appreciate what they have before it's gone. 

Another One Bites the Dust: 401 Oberlin to Fall

A few days ago, three houses were torn down on Clark Avenue, which are adjacent to 401 Oberlin Road. It won’t be long before this elegant mid-century gem is torn down as well in advance of a new mixed-use project.

Lobby for 401 Oberlin

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Subtle Beauty

401 Oberlin was built in the same year (1957) as the iconic Chevy Bel-Air. Like that classic American car, this building makes use of chrome and reflective metal trim, interesting geometric shapes, well-proportioned elegant windows, as well as functional beauty.

It was designed by Leif Valand, who was commissioned to design most of Cameron Village’s buildings early on.

One of the best parts of this building is how it incorporates parking, unlike many of its mid-century modern peers. The building footprint overlooks a busy intersection from a high vantage point, and cars are relegated to the rear of the building. This creates an attractive visual landscape as well as provide office workers with a better exterior view.

No Future For Single Use

It’s easy to dismiss a 60 year old office building as outmoded and outdated in light of mixed-use development projects—such as the one replacing it. However, it’s important to remember that this office building existed in the context of what was once the largest mixed-use project in the South: Cameron Village.

Erasing Cameron Village Modernism

401 Oberlin was built on the outskirts of Cameron Village, on a block with similar-era and similarly designed buildings. Built of brick, with expansive glass, modest overhangs, and long flowing lines of these buildings created a gestalt that existed nowhere else in Raleigh.

Find: Paper, Tweetbot, Mixel, and Piictu creators on designing beautiful apps

The paper guys are exiles from microsoft's never released folio project. 

The Art of Apps: Paper, Tweetbot, Mixel, and Piictu creators on designing beautiful apps

At the Art Of Apps gallery event in New York City last week, seven apps were projected on TV screens to display the best user interfaces iOS has to offer. In front of each screen were the creators and designers behind apps like Paper, Mixel, Tweetbot, Piictu, Path, and the upcoming Cameo. The event was curated by Khoi Vinh, one-time designer for nytimes.com, founder of iPad collage app Mixel, and influential design blogger at subtraction.com. Even the event website, built using Splash, a new tool for creating social-network-integrated show pages, is gorgeous and very focused on "good design."

We spent a few minutes catching up with the team behind Paper, which recently hit 1.5 million downloads, Khoi Vinh, the duo behind Cameo — a...

Competition: International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge

Help people understand science with apps, games, or visuals. 

Announcement: use your gmail address to accept your invitation to this blog

Hey folks,

Unfortunately blogger won't let you use your ncsu address to become an author. Use a gmail address. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Best, Ben

Find: 'Triggers' iOS app - scripting actions in response to sensor events

Good idea. 

'Triggers' iOS app uses your phone or tablet's sensors in simple scripts

We're always open to tools that help with automation or basic tech literacy, so our test of iOS app Triggers entailed a swift journey from joy to disappointment. Triggers uses the same basic idea as web automation tool If This Then That, allowing users to set a condition ("phone hears noise greater than 10") and define an output. Unfortunately, while If This Then That integrates a wide range of social networks, Triggers' inputs are basically limited to the physical sensors on the device. That means you'll be able to set conditions for acceleration, light, hand proximity to device, sound, or system time. It's not a bad set, but it's a shame that you can't set triggers for social networks, app launches, network signal strength, or even GPS...

Find: Nvidia backs cloud gaming with GeForce Grid

Gaming over the Internet for mobiles and tvs. 

Nvidia CEO: GeForce Grid 'will do for video games what cable television did for video'

"The skiing industry would be a lot larger if you could just go do it," explains Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. There isn't a ski pole in sight: it's a metaphor for how he wants to expand the reach of video games to entirely new audiences. Two weeks ago, at the company's GPU Technology Conference, Huang introduced a new technology on stage: a GPU called GeForce Grid, specifically designed to stream video games to any smartphone, tablet, PC, or app-savvy TV. Today, however, at the company's annual investor meeting, Huang has revealed that his company is looking to make graphically potent games more portable and convenient for everyone, not just existing players. "The entire video game market is still relatively small," he says, telling us...