New Role for Josh

Growing OnLatte

I am very happy to announce that Lex and I have agreed upon a partnership in which I will take on a new role as Director of Products and Services at OnLatte. Up until now I was mostly helping out in my spare time for events like Siggraph, but now I will take a more focused and committed role to help grow this exciting company. My first goal is to establish our exhibit and event show beverage printing service, but one thing that is very dear to my heart is to create a vibrant community for everyone who has shown interest in our product to try out original designs and have an open forum to give feedback.  I will post more on specific projects as they come up, but please feel free to contact me at any time if you have something on your mind.  Until then it’s time for me to roll up my sleeves since there is a lot of work to get done.

Best,
Josh
josh-AT-onlatte.com  (replace the -AT- with an @)

Patent Filed

Image Creating Apparatus and Methods of Use

We just finished filing our major US patent, Application number 12/211042 and International PCT Application number PCT/US08/76566. Until now we were protected by the provisional patent application 60/973040, which will go public in about 6 months.

This impressive 28 page document attempts to go wide and broad, carefully protecting both the device and the method. Unfortunately, I cannot share with you the most interesting bits and pieces until we hear back from USPTO. All I can say, the last three figures of the patent application make my heart beat a little faster every time I look at them.

Our First Customers

Pictures of the good people at SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH presented us the opportunity to find our first loyal customers. They are artists, designers, corporate executives and academics. Thank you all very much for your enthusiastic support at the conference, for your beautiful designs and great suggestions.

The rest of the images: (more…)

fxguide features OnLatte, Inc.

Yet another video coverage at SIGGRAPH

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.

Watch the episode | Forward to Latte Art Machine (slow)

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.

You can see other episodes here.

PBS Episode- Shoot for Make TV

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.

Selected works at SIGGRAPH 2008

Designs from the first two days at the conference

Designs that were a hit

In short time we will be uploading all of the photos from SIGGRAPH, but we would like to highlight a couple of designs that were a hit at our booth. The first drew a very large crowd and opened many debates on the true meaning of Latte Art. For this design we took a picture of ???? (Help us Josh Pines since I didn’t grab her card) on the spot and then printed it on a latte. The response was overwhelming and it was great to make it happen.

Both Lex and I agree that the best free hand design (we had a stylus at the booth) was done by Irene Strychalski. Not only is it a great sketch, but it really proves the point that we are not only trying to create a great printer, but also establish a new artistic medium.

Irene's Kitten

The Connector

In Malcom Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point” there is a description of a person called a connector. Basically this person knows a lot of people and inherently tries to link people together. At SIGGRAPH that man for us was Joshua Pines (sorry Joshua but I can’t find a better link for you), and Onlatte is extremely grateful to have met him. Joshua is the VP of Imaging Research & Development at Technicolor and is a pioneer in visual effects for films. This man seemed to know everyone at SIGGRAPH and, at times, he was literally directing traffic to our booth. We had at least a hundred people come by and this was the typical conversation:

Attendee: “Oh, so this is the Latte Art Printer booth. One of the smartest guys that I know who I deeply respect told me to come by.”

OnLatte: “Wait, let me quess. Was that guy Josh Pines?”

Attendee: “Yes!”

Being able to meet Josh Pines at the conference was a remarkable experience and will serve as a reminder as to what we need to do as we develop new versions of the printer. Thank you again, Josh, for your enthusiasm and support at SIGGRAPH.

Best,

Josh (not Pines)

P.S - One other person that we would also like to mention was Henry Santos who was a regular at our booth, and is truly one of the nicest guys you could meet. If you ever need a character animator please look him up at www.sitesantos.com. Thanks Henry!

WSJ - Page A1

Cari Tuna writes up on Latte Art

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:

WSJ video of the Latte Art Printer and OnLatte

We are very excited about this press coverage, and it just further validates our vision.

A glimpse into the future

It has always been Lex’s vision to be able to create a new artistic medium with the Latte Art Printer by walking into your local coffee shop and expressing yourself on a specialty coffee. One of the great things about SIGGRAPH is that we have the ability to test how the consumer will use the product, and fortunately our booth was next to Starbucks to make it happen. What you see below is a custom design on Johannes Behr’s latte that he purchased next door.

Sorry for the poor photo quality, but I hope you start to see the intent and vision behind this product. Next stop: time to raise some funding to make it happen.

Best,

Josh