For the past few months I’ve been working with the team at AutoSport Labs on an awesome new product called RaceCapture/Pro, an open source race car telemetry systemand wireless race car telemetry system. I’m super excited it’s officially for sale now!

My primary work has been on business development, system design, graphical work surrounding the system, publicity, and well frankly a bunch of catchall stuff. Oh and I get to test driver things too!

Most of all, my years of virtual racing experience, combined with my real life racing experience, and firm belief in race coaching finally has a great application. Combined with my design thinking we’ve been able as a team to innovate some new features that systems vastly more expensive than ours (by a factor of 25 in some cases) cannot do, while utilizing open source software our team has created. We construct the system in our facility in Seattle (so made in the USA is a bit of an understatement, it’s made, coded, designed, and tested in the USA!) Stay tuned for some videos detailing just what the system can do. It’s really something!

RaceCapture is the product of original work by Brent and Kelley Picasso at AutoSport Labs.  Over time as more people joined the team we ran an Indiegogo campaign, and have now switched to public availability. Unfortunately most products like this cost over $1,000 and don’t offer any type of real-time wireless streaming. RaceCapture/Pro is definitively the first of it’s kind. Inexpensive, expandable (multiple analog and digital in/out ports PLUS Lua scripting on board), open source and real-time. Check it out!

I just came across Kustom note today, and wow. It really adds some depth to Evernote in that it allows for pre-formatted notes. What a great addition to an amazing system!

I also came across Chime, a plugin for nearly every social network that works inside of Chrome (search for Chime in the Chrome Web Store).  It’s lovely, and simple and has a nice scrolling feed of all the updates as they come in. It can be a lot (sip slowly from the firehose) but very useful already.

I’m looking forward to using them together more.

I warmed the plastic, after first wrapping my phone in saran wrap (since getting it wet/crushed/horribly deformed by sticky plastic seemed a bad idea).

I then used a 1/4 x 20 threaded insert I had (fits on standard tripods) and wrapped it onto the plastic as I formed it.

I pulled the phone (eventually, keep in mind any odd/non-drafted areas,, like the headphone jack may make it hard to remove,, think about that FIRST!)

Then came back in and used my dremel tool (I destroyed a flex shaft,, arrrgh!) to cut out the holes and openings to use the home buttons, volume, camera, flash, and power buttons.

Voila, when it was all ready (and still rather hideous) I’m able to put my camera on any tripod and fire away!  Next up,, making a quickie steadicam so I can shoot action easily,, and maybe finishing/painting my contraption to reduce the hideousness.

Oy, vey. A standing desk would be great. However, that’s not happening any time soon, unless a  Turnstone.com piece magically appears (not likely). Probably need to build one in the coming year to get away from the current folding table. Then on to dealing with the pink little girl’s room paint. This one isn’t bad either (but in standing form).

Alas, till then.

Infographics (for a renowned tech blog)

2d wireframes (for a future IndyCar race team)

WordPress Sites (for local businesses looking to be known worldwide)

Social Media Launch programs for crowdfunding

Business planning and development.

But that’s just the last week.

Next week should be exciting too!

I hope that makes you want to chop something up, fix something, or make a quick change on a product of your own to make a more effective use of your own materials and resources.

Tools: X-acto #11 blade, Straight Edge, Elmer’s glue

[simplemap]

Then that means the rover Curiosity is,,,

How To Reimagine Product Packaging – PSFK.

Here’s a great bit from the designer of the Nooka Watch with some choice thoughts about packaging, waste, and product processes.

His work strives to incorporate minimalism along with reuse or recycling. Additionally he brings up a great point about how products used to be simply tied to their location or have a little price tag hanging from them only, like when you visit an antique shop, or go to a yard sale. That’s as much info as may truly be needed. How little can you use to convey use, cost, and other issues when bringing items to market?

Do take a look a PSFK they have a great design blog with lots of great new posts daily.

We’ve had our first packaging design webinar, what’d you think?

We’d love some feedback and suggestions in the comments for what we can improve next time.

Of course you can find us right here for direct consulting as well!

Thanks again for coming to the webinar. We’ll see you at the next one soon.

For continuing questions for your new or existing packaging solutions, contact us!

(also, if you attended, look for the special consulting discount bonus in your email!)

Visit us here for even more information on direct packaging design consulting solutions.

The Method Method 

Method Urchin soap Link from Wired Magazine

The HUGE takeway here is, there are many ecofriendly ways you can do fun things with your packaging materials by sourcing available existing materials. This doesn’t mean what they’ve done is simple, or wasn’t offset by flying their employees to Hawaii to pick up the plastic, but it is a clever step in the right direction to use existing refuse and turn it into useful, original packaging material.

Learn more about creating your own useful and original packaging materials for your next product’s packaging at our webinar! For the low low cost of Free!!