Uproot

‘Who are you?’ and ‘What are you doing?’ were the main questions the web tried to answer in the last decade. As we move into a new era in technology, it’s clear now that ‘Where are you?’ is now the focus. This simple query is growing from a need to know where friends are into a platform to help people find products, services and information related to their local needs.
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Until recently, many sports fans in the US had never heard of The Score. The Toronto-based sports network is making their presence known however through their successful ScoreMobile app.
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At Uproot we are very interested in expanding our understanding of interactivity to more than just the web. Enter the Arduino! A tiny Italian made computer that is 1000 times less powerful than the iMac i am typing this on. To program it you just have to learn the Arduino proprietary language (not too difficult for anyone who knows javascript) and you can make all kinds of interesting devices that can be interacted with in the real world. You can make your device interactive by using varying kinds of sensors (i.e. light, sound, movement etc).

We decided to build a floating balloon installation with LED lights inside the balloons. Our first step was to make a materials list. First we wanted this thing to float so we needed some helium, second we needed to put the helium into something: balloons, third we needed to attach the balloons to the Arduino: wires, fourth we needed to make it visual: lights (LEDS), finally we needed to power it: 9 volt battery.


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It’s not every day a country gets a new national mobile service provider. However, today Wind Mobile, a company born out of the overwhelming consensus that the Canadian wireless market needed more competition, is open for business.
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During a trip to our local Apple store a couple of us in the office recently picked up the new Magic Mouse from Apple. Having heard mixed reviews I was eager to give it a go. A week after using it, the magic is gone.
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You didn’t think we were serious, did you? While we received some praise for our temporary site, the reality is shameless self-promotion is a necessity. Ask Jeffery Zeldman:

Self-promotion may appear revolting, but it’s the only promotion that’s guaranteed in this business. Do it right, and only haters will hate you for it. To get, you must give.

Our new site better defines Uproot as a digital partner, helping organizations execute their vision in pixels and bits. We’re ecstatic about the feedback we’ve received so far and look forward to this site being a step toward helping even more people solve some interesting problems.

A short but important note of thanks
The effort in putting this site together required the whole team putting in extra hours on top of the extra hours we’ve dedicated to our clients. Hats off to them for their hard work.

In a recent issue of Wired Magazine, Mathew Honan lead a call for submissions to redesign the world’s most popular classifieds site. Invited to the party were a slew of great designers including Khoi Vinh, Design Director of NYTimes.com and Scott Thomas aka SimpleScott, Director of Design for Obama for America.

Wired also opened up the submissions to the general public. Given our love for Craigslist, we wanted to take a stab at what we believe the next version should look like.
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I read a great post this morning about the Google Android Marketplace by Matt Hall, our buddy over at Larva Labs. In short, Matt used a month’s worth of their sales data to illustrate how little market share Android has at this point and why he feels Google is somewhat to blame.

However, what caught my attention in this post was the conversation about why the iPhone has had such success versus Android-based handsets, even when adjusting for Android’s late-arrival to the game. I’ve had the opportunity to play around with one and my thoughts echo the comment from Hamranhansenhansen on Matt’s post:

A good designer throws a ton of stuff away and saves engineers a million hours. For example, somebody at Apple chose a 480×320 3.5-inch screen and threw all the others away, and every developer on the iPhone platform, both inside and outside Apple, has been 100% focused on engineering for that screen…

Android, of course, is meant to scale to different screen sizes. And therein lies the issue. Designers are trained to focus on specificity, while engineers focus on scalability and ubiquity. At Google, that engineering mentality applies to their product design as well. Instead of building a great mobile device, Google is focused on building a great operating system that can be used by various mobile devices. Does any of this sound familiar?

If Android is going to be successful, and therefore a viable platform for applications, Google needs to be aware of the pitfalls when designing for ubiquity.

As Mashable’s Josh Catone aptly points out, there are a few killer features for Firefox 3.5, but the one that stands out for us (improved JS engine aside) is location-awareness. The possibility to provide truly local services, updates, media and more is really intriguing.

Location-based services are coming into their own, first with mobile (geo-tagged camera phones, way-finding with map applications, and social tracking like Google’s Latitude service are examples) and now the desktop.

We’re hoping to see (and do) some cool things with it.

We’re a growing family here at Uproot. As of this week Chris Baigorri, a very talented Flash Developer, has joined the crew. Chris’ talent, expertise and eye for design is a perfect fit for our focused, agile team of creative technologists. His work includes developing cutting edge Flash experiences for clients like GM, CBC and EA Sports. We’ve crossed paths with Chris before and we jumped at the opportunity to work with him again.

Chris is already hard at work on really slick project we’re working on for a prominent television series. Follow him on Twitter @cbaigorri to keep updated on his latest marathon runs, site suggestions and technical advice. Chris will also be contributing to the @uproot feed from time to time so drop him a shout out to talk Flash or just say hello.