April 2010

Tentacle robot!


Tentacle robot!

These Doc-Ock-like robotic tentacles by German tech firm Festo are given the fully cheesy industrial film treatment, but there is tons of cool here as well. For starters, the tentacles are covered in touch sensors (or something similar) and can be manually guided. The project is a continuation of Festo’s biology-inspired robots like the fun AquaJellies.

More:

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Posted by on April 21, 2010

ITanagramTeamMember you = Factory.GetEmployeeByTrait(“Creativity”, “Intellect”, “Capability”);

We need talented developers!

List<ITanagramTeamMember> tanagramTeam = Tanagram.GetTeam();
tanagramTeam.add(you);
var coolNewProject = tanagramTeam.KickAss();

Who you are:

You are someone who has impeccable skills in the realm of technology, communication and thought. Perhaps you have or do refer to yourself as a developer, but hopefully that title feels a bit constraining at times. Ideally you have a keen eye, if not a hand, for good design and a desire to realize it. Object Oriented Programming should be an important concept to you, but you should be actively interested in functional and dynamic languages as well. You should be passionate about the language you prefer, but not tied to it as you understand that there is no single language that can really solve all problems we technology experts face. Most of your work will be development focused, but we’d love for you to be interested in and aware of the architecture of the system you are contributing to at all levels. You will discover challenges on a daily basis, they will require creative and strategic solutions. Subsequently, you should be able to communicate such issues to others not only verbally, but be able to work through them in front of a whiteboard with other technology experts. Communication is key, as we’ll be building what we consider a meaningful digital experience but never at the expense of our personal relationships.

Required Skills:

  • Degree – Computer Science, Math, Physics or Engineering degrees work well, but an intellectual in any field works for us.
  • Microsoft Platform – Microsoft technologies will be heavily utilized, but we appreciate(and use) other technology platforms and we will consider your experience in them meaningful.
  • SQL Server 2008 – Databases are commonplace, please know at least one platform well or be willing to learn SQL Server 2008.
  • .Net Framework – An ever-evolving framework that is currently in the 4.0 state, be up to date, or ready to get there.
  • C# – Will be used extensively, know it or know another OO language so well you can easily pick it up.
  • WPF/Silverlight/XAML – Will be used extensively, knowledge of it will be looked upon favorably.
  • XAML – Will be used extensively, knowledge of it will be looked upon favorably.
  • SOA/SaaS – These words should be understood not as the shallow marketing terms they represent most often, but as the conceptually important patterns that they represent.
  • Communication – This is a tough one. We are extremely collaborative and to participate you MUST have excellent communication skills.

Bonus Skills:

  • Design Patterns – Being able to talk through the formal Design Patterns gets you extra credit.
  • MEF – Knowledge of PRISM, ModelView ViewModel, and their heir MEF also gets you bragging rights.
  • WCF – We think there is some seriously good stuff in WCF, telling us about it would get you more bragging rights.
  • Entity Framework – There are lots of good ORM tools, talking through them gets you bonus points, knowing EF gets you bonus points as well.
  • Unit Testing – Being able to talk about Unit Testing for good and/or bad gets you more extra credit.
  • Self Documentation – Writing self documenting and expressive code would be a great way to impress us.
  • Design – If you know how to make things that are inherently sophisticated more simple without sacrificing capability then we want you…Now!

Don’t just sit there! Send your resume and a creative cover letter to: careers@tanagram.com

Posted by on April 20, 2010

A tip-of-the-hat to IDEO: Toy Lab for their partnership with Sesame Street and the resulting cool iPhone apps.

via ideotoylab.com

We like to pretend we compete with the ginormous-brained folks at IDEO but the truth of the matter is they have no idea who we are.. (we pretend we will sneak up on them and… BOOO!) Regardless, we are huge fans of the IDEO: ToyLab Balloonimals app and are now quite smitten with Elmo’s Monster Maker. It’s obvious they did some real thinking on the user experience (UX) as it is dead simple and perfect for kids who just want to touch things (like noses). Throw Elmo into the mix and you’re guaranteed to witness a kid-neuron supernova. 

Nice job on this guys, and thank you. My daughter is going to love playing with this. You can get yours here: http://ideotoylab.com/sesamestreet/ It’s $4 on the AppStore (ouch). 

One last thing… Can we get an iPad version? Thanks!

Posted by on April 6, 2010

Chicagoans, join us in supporting a great local institution the St. James Food Pantry. $10 goes a long way! http://bit.ly/cKKnuE

St. James Food Repository

Awarded “Most Outstanding Agency in 2009″ by the greater Chicago Food Depository – photo on their Facebook page.

See them here.

Posted by on April 5, 2010

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