In case you haven’t seen it already, but OnLatte was featured in an article for the popular New England weekly newspaper Mass High Tech. This interview was particulary fun since MHT reporter, Galen Moore, came by and proceeded to jump all over the furniture to find the best angle for the video and images that you see in the article. Galen asked some great questions about the company and its vision, and I strongly urge everyone to check it out. Enjoy!
On November 19th, OnLatte will give a Demo Session talk at the invite-only executive retreat for the Future Forward conference.
According to their website:
“Future Forward explores the ways that innovative technologies are developed, and then deployed effectively in the real world. Since 2001, we’ve brought together New England’s top CIOs, CTOs, entrepreneurs, and investors for unvarnished conversations about creating competitive advantage and achieving breakout success.”
Thanks to an invite from FF founder, and Boston Globe columnist Scott Kirsner, OnLatte will be speaking about how the company was founded and its plans for the future. Afterward, during the cocktail reception, we will set up the printer and print the conference sponsor’s logo on Guinnesses for the guests.
We are extremely honored to be invited to this event, and being able to receive feedback from New England’s top executives and VCs is an incredible opportunity for our company. Who knows, maybe we will run into an investor with extra cash burning a hole in his/her pocket.
fxguide, the number one information source for high-end visual effects professionals, provided great coverage of SIGGRAPH 2008 in multiple episodes. Episode #31 covered some of the new technologies, including OnLatte, Inc., 12 minutes into the video. Great episode, and toward the end you get to see the latest version of the Latte Art Machine prototype in action.
Aug 16, 2008 - Coverage from SIGGRAPH 2008 continues with a look at announcements from Autodesk and eyeon, as well as having fun killing time in the new technologies exhibit.
OnLatte, Inc. on National Public Television in January
A few weeks back, the Latte Art Machine was filmed for an upcoming episode of Make: Television. Make: Television is a new program that will be nationally syndicated on PBS and is produced by MAKE:.
For this shoot, Lex and I met at the apartment of the camera man, Jason. Along with him was Emily Goldberg who was in charge of making it happen. Jason and Emily filmed several takes of the Latte Art Printer in action and interviewed Lex about the invention. According to Emily, Make: Television will be airing around the New Year so we will keep you updated about when you can check it out.
To see what an episode of Make Television is like, have a look at the highlights from the first episode:
What is Make Television? Each week, Make: television shows the best projects from Makers who submit their videos, a segment of the show called Maker Channel. This segment features the videos made by Makers themselves - a showcase of the “best of the best” of YouTube-style videos.
So, if you’ve built something inspired, useful, imaginative, ingenious, or just plain clever, share your genius with the world. Produce a one to three minute long video that shows the best thing that you’ve made and send it here.
How did we got on the show? Make Magazine blog was the first venue to pick up on my original YouTube video. Shortly after the post on Make blog, I got a call from the Creative Director of Make:TV, exploring the opportunity of filming our Latte Art Machine. Soon, we scheduled the time for the filming of the short episode in Boston. I hope it comes out all right, since I was high on coffee / low on energy toward the end of the interview.
We are very happy to announce that OnLatte has made a page 1 article on the Wall Street Journal! Journal reporter Cari Tuna has written a fun article on Latte Art, and Lex was featured in both the article and the video. Here is a link to the article “Foam Sweet Foam: ‘Latte Art’ Heats Up in Home Kitchens“, and below is a little snippet from the article:
“Not everyone wants to suffer for their art. After seeing a latte-art video, Oleksiy Pikalo, a 31-year-old electrical engineer from Somerville, Mass., decided there had to be an “engineering approach.” Using a kit and spare parts found on eBay, he built a programmable computer printer that stamps designs — such as words or corporate logos — on foamed drinks in edible brown ink. One design shows a kingly figure saying, “Can your latte do this?”
Mr. Pikalo presented his invention at a national computer-graphics conference this week and has started a company, OnLatte, to sell his machine, at a tentative price of $1,500. His YouTube video has drawn more than 818,000 views and 2,500 comments.”
Now, while there is a bit of inaccuracy in the article (we haven’t finalized a price for the units yet), it is a great article that shows the Latte Art community. The best part, however, is the video which really shows the machine in action and how it compares to traditional Latte Art techniques:
Lex and I had a great time hanging out with Chris Mascari of Gizmodo today, and he took a turn printing out a custom logo. Seems like a fun line of work (although timing it seems like timing is everything) and Chris was a great sport throughout. Here is a link to his post on Gizmodo, and here is a photo of him and his creation.
On Monday, the BBC stopped by and did nice little spot on the Latte Art printer that we have on display at SIGGRAPH ‘08. We aren’t too sure when the spot will be aired yet, but they said it will mostly likely be on the Thursday evening news. We will update the post when we know more information, and when it’s on bbc.co.uk.
We are taking thousands of pictures and videos of the latest version of the Latte Art Machine at Siggraph 2008, in Los Angeles Convention Center. Soon, we will be uploading them to the website. Thank you for checking in with us!
I was contacted by several reporters from different media venues, requesting high resolution images and videos. Now, in order to make them, one has to buy very expensive equipment. So I got a nice HD camera, and took another video of the first prototype at work. The video is rather long, since the first prototype only accepts vector format (HPGL). Only one nozzle of the jet is firing.
The most difficult part for me is to release something out into public that is not fully baked. But I figured it is now or never, so I went ahead and published a video on YouTube.
I have done little promotion of it, if any. It was interesting to me that the video did not get any attention at all, until one sunny day, when it got posted on Make blog, and I got 20′000 views in one day. All of a sudden, tiny blogs all over the world started writing little notes here and there, and the numbers started crawling forward, regardless of how dorky the video was. The numbers were going up steadily, and around 200′000 views something magical had happened.
I checked my email in the morning and this time it took an unusual amount of time: around 20 minutes to fetch 2000+ messages. For those who do not know, every time a person comments on the video, you get a little note from YouTube about it. Something was clearly going on. I went on youtube.com, and here we were - numero uno:
One day I will figure out who was the kind soul who made us a feature.
In the following few weeks we got over 700′000 views and more than 2000 comments. Thank you YouTube and Google!
