Budcaddell

There are still a few hours left to contribute to the BLEduino Kickstarter campaign, but the operation is already a tremendous success. Not only did it reach its funding goal in fifty-two hours, but it has now exceeded its initial target by more than 430 percent.

This is even more impressive when you take into account that this was the first hardware crowdfunding campaign to ever come out of Puerto Rico. It is the brainchild of Caguas-based startup Kytelabs, whose three co-founders are on a mission to turn their island into a great home for hackers and makers.

BLEduino: Bluetooth made easy

When Jonathan Gonzalez, Ramon Gonzalez and Angel Viera decided to create an Arduino-compatible board that would support Bluetooth 4.0, they were essentially scratching their own itch. While working on a smart umbrella prototype earlier this year, they realized how handy it would be to rely on ready-to-use boards.

Although they soon discovered some Bluetooth-enabled boards in the market, they also noticed that these had several flaws. As a matter of fact, the model they stumbled upon was so small that its capacities and compatibility were limited. In addition, it was still quite hard for the average person to make it work.

This helped them define specs for their own project: BLEduino would have to be small enough for all sorts of projects, but still compatible with larger Arduino shields. It would also have to be affordable and easy to connect, even for newbies.

To maximize its potential, Kytelabs’ founders decided to build BLEduino on top of Leonardo, while adding Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity.

Kytelabs’ solution to size issues is actually a separate component that its founders call the “Shield-Shield.” The team sounds quite proud of this small piece of hardware, which they say offer the wide Arduino compatibility that their competitors promise but often lack. Here’s the explanation they posted on Kickstarter:

“For a board to be fully compatible, you would need it to support both the old Arduino UNO pin layout and the new Arduino Leonardo pin layout. Not only that, the boards would have to support 5V logic (which we do). The layout problem is solved by our Shield-Shield by allowing you to switch between the old and new pin layout by just flipping a switch. In other words, the same Shield-Shield is basically backwards and forwards compatible, allowing it to work with nearly all Arduino shields.”

The Shield-Shield is also quite cheap, and Kickstarter backers will get one for free if they opt for the $49 pledge (vs. $35 for the BLEduino-only reward).

One of the reasons why BLEduino is easy to connect is that it uses BLE, a subset of Bluetooth 4.0, which has many advantages over Bluetooth 2.0. For instance, pairing is only a one-off operation, and the fact that it is low-energy makes it great for passive uses. Compared to wi-fi, using Bluetooth also means that no router is necessary.

As usual with hardware components, BLEduino can have so many applications that it would be pointless to list them all. Still, Kytelabs’ Kickstarter video does a good job at showing potential hacks, from connected LEDs and LCDs to teleguided robots.

Since hardware can be quite intimidating for beginners, Kytelabs’ team has used its software developing skills to create an iPhone app with pre-set modes. While Android doesn’t have official support for Bluetooth 4.0, Kytelabs has already promised that it will also launch its app on Google Play as soon as it does.

This app-based approach is likely one of the key elements of BLEduino’s appeal and accessibility. It is worth noting that the app is open source, and Kytelabs will release its code in August once design details are finalized.

To broaden BLEduino’s reach, the team is also hopeful that the product will one day be distributed in the Arduino Store, which will depend on official approval and the payment of a licensing fee.

In the meantime, the first clients to put their hands on the BLEduinos will be its Kickstarter backers, to whom they should start shipping in November after Kytelabs completes quality assurance and packaging. Since the startup is familiar with the pain of international shipping costs, it decided to offer a flat shipping rate to all non-US clients, even if it may have a negative impact on its margin.

Joining forces

“The main reason we did Kickstarter was to motivate Puerto Ricans to do their own thing in hardware,”Jonathan Gonzalez tells TNW. While the team doesn’t expect to make profits from its campaign, it has also been keeping expenses impressively low. It has only spent $1,500 over the last six months, despite the fact that it needed to buy tools and import components.

This was only possible thanks to engineering company EngiWorks, which gave Kytelabs the free office space it needed to design and assemble its prototypes. For instance, the soldering work is done on-site by Angel, who is in charge of most of the startup’s hardware tasks.

EngiWorks is not the only Puerto Rican entity to support BLEduino, and Kytelabs’ founders were surprised to see how many of their Kickstarter backers come from Puerto Rico – around 25 percent. This share was even bigger at the beginning of the campaign, although most of these early backers made donations rather than try to pre-buy a BLEduino board.

“We were very surprised by the local support we got, because we never saw demand for [hardware] here,” Jonathan says. He still wonders how much of this goodwill has to do with the content of Kytelabs’ work: “Some people even wanted to send money orders after hearing about us, because they didn’t trust the Internet for payments,” he laughs.

Conversely, he and his co-founders were quite thrilled by the international support the campaign has received. According to Kytelabs, it has attracted contributions from open hardware fans from over 50 countries – which means quite a lot in terms of putting Puerto Rico on the map.

Puerto Rico, a place for hackers and makers?

Working on BLEduino from Puerto Rico had its pros and cons. While it helped the team keep many expenses low, the lack of an active hardware community also meant that all components had to be imported. Still, Kytelabs’ initiative is helping many hardware and startup aficionados come out of the woodwork.

“The Facebook community for hardware in Puerto Rico has grown a lot, and we get many emails these days. Even our friends take what we do more seriously, and it is having an impact on the image of entrepreneurship in general,” Jonathan explains.

Hardware knowledge is not uncommon among Puerto Rican techies. All three Kytelabs founders studied at the University of Puerto Rico, Managuez, where they say 70 percent of the Computer Engineering degree focuses on hardware. Ironically, they also report that Arduino has been outlawed for student work, as professors deemed that it made things “too easy.”

Because of this ambivalence, Angel, Jonathan and Ramon disagree on whether their education is directly responsible for their achievements. On one hand, Ramon notes that it was during their studies that they respectively developed custom design projects such as the Pyrobot and the rotary SWORD display. On the other hand, he and his co-founders explain that they learned a lot by themselves.

Jonathan points out that fellow students who didn’t do extra work and didn’t show personal interest in hardware projects would be unprepared to join startups like Kytelabs, whose team has the specificity to be able to combine hardware and software.

As we noted in a previous post on Puerto Rico’s nascent tech ecosystem, launching startups after or before graduating is still new on the island, where computer science graduates often take job offers from large corporations in the continental U.S.

However, Kytelabs’ story shows that things have changed. According to Ramphis Castro from Startups of Puerto Rico, it was the first team that attempted to create a startup straight out of school, and it won’t be the last. “The community has enabled this to now be a real option for students on the island,” Ramphis predicts, in reference to the many initiatives that have blossomed in Puerto Rico.

This is why Kytelabs’ example is so important for the local economy; by becoming role models, its founders can inspire others to follow the same path. They have already contacted their former professors to offer some of their time and will soon start giving presentations on lean startups, customer development and crowdfunding to computer engineering students, while becoming mentors to high school students.

Beyond startups and entrepreneurship, Kytelabs’ ambition is to round up all hackers and makers. “There are tons of makers in Puerto Rico; they just don’t know it yet, or they don’t know there are others like them,” Jonathan says.

To acknowledge this talent, the team is planning to add new events to Puerto Rico’s increasingly busy schedule, such as a MakerFaire and a BLEduino-focused hackathon. It is also hoping to get public support for these initiatives, as Puerto Rico’s government is showing a keen interest in the local tech scene.

This preoccupation was made clear last June during the first edition of Puerto Rico Tech Summit, which discussed how governments can embrace technologies. The event also included a dedicated hackathon, which Kytelabs’ team won thanks to Digidoc, an e-signature solution for government agencies.

Turning this prototype into a product may well be the next item on the startup’s roadmap. However, it will have to wait until the team is done shipping BLEduinos and other rewards to its many Kickstarter backers all over the world.

At 4:06 p.m. Thursday, Detroit filed a 16-page petition for bankruptcy protection. The action was expected, but it came faster than most observers had bargained for--and now everybody's trying to figure out what happens next. Here are the basics.

How is a city going bankrupt different from a company or a person?

Chapter 9 of the federal bankruptcy code, which applies to municipalities, counties, and other public entities like school districts and utilities, differs from Chapter 11--which applies to corporations--in a few important ways.

First of all, it's much rarer, with fewer than 700 cases since the provision was created in 1937, and 36 since 2010. For that reason, case law is still being settled--although Chapter 9 gives a municipality much broader authority to rewrite union contracts, only after the bankruptcy of Central Falls, R.I. did it become clear that cities would have the ability to escape their pension obligations.

It's clear, however, that Chapter 9 forbids debtors from simply dissolving to pay creditors, as a company might. Also, courts tend to have a less active role in the restructuring process, limited to approving a plan and making sure it's followed; the debtor doesn't need court approval to dispose of its assets as it pleases in the meantime.

Is it possible to emerge successfully from bankruptcy?

Yes. A conscious, deliberate, enforceable reconstruction plan can actually put a municipality on a much firmer footing than any other process. Orange County, for example, emerged from its 1994 bankruptcy within a year, and nine years later had a triple-A bond rating.

Is there any way that Detroit could have avoided this one?

Probably not. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder had been pushing for it for months, passing a revised version of an emergency manager law that voters had rejected last fall. Detroit's appointed manager, Kevyn Orr, had only managed to work out deals with two large banks out of the city's tens of thousands of creditors. Its public employees unions, having already offered large concessions, were unwilling to lose as much as Orr says is necessary. With a tax base that's been cut in half over the last half-century, there's simply not enough money to satisfy everyone voluntarily.

I understand why Detroit had to file for bankruptcy. Why would it want to?

Along with gaining the ability to re-shape its contracts with creditors and public employees, bankruptcy grants cities a stay of all collection actions, buying them time to closely analyze their finances and put together a plan.

"This is a tool," said Orr at Thursday's press conference. "I understand that people who don't do this for a living see this as a negative." Instead, he explained, he sees it as a way of turning a city around.

Who gets hurt most?

Detroit is about $18 billion in debt, and will only be able to pay out a fraction of that in the short term. The two main groups of creditors arguing they're entitled to that money are public employees and retirees, and bond holders. The investors are likely to make out better, since more of that debt is secured; the city will continue to pay water and sewer bondholders. Most of the pension debt has no similar backstop.

City residents will likely suffer a lack of anything other than the most rudimentary public services for a long time, but the impact is likely to be felt most keenly by those who lost a large chunk of the retirement they were counting on.

What are unions saying?

They're livid about the likelihood of restructured pensions and health benefits, having already offered large concessions, and say they were trying to come to a solution before Orr raced to the courthouse to file the bankruptcy petition Thursday. And they've vowed to fight any default of the city's obligations ("It's war," says the head of the police and fire pension fund). So far, though, there's been no talk of work stoppages; city services will continue as normal.

What will the city have to do to work this out?

Just because you petition for bankruptcy protection, and even get approved by the governor, doesn't mean you'll be able to go through with it.

Detroit will first have to prove that it is fiscally insolvent and filed the petition in good faith, which many of its creditors will dispute in a series of hearings. If a to-be-appointed judge grants the petition, the city manager will put together a reorganization plan, including cuts to services, the sale of assets, and reductions in what it plans to pay pensioners and bondholders. Then, according to the Detroit Free Press , it will have to put the plan to a vote of creditors. If not enough of them agree, the city manager could pursue a "cram down" procedure, asking a judge to rule that the dissatisfied creditors are not being reasonable. Orr has said he's aiming to bring the city out of bankruptcy by the end of next year, which most analysts view as very optimistic.

If he manages to put together a package of funds for reinvestment, Detroit may manage to become healthy again, but it will require more than just financial restructuring: The whole city needs to be reorganized into a smaller space, because it can't go on serving 60 percent of its former population over the same 140-square-mile footprint.

Will the state or federal government have to get involved?

Steve Rattner, who oversaw the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler, says Detroit's process will be much harder, since the city can't bank on rising revenues like the auto companies could. For that reason, it may have to seek financial assistance from the state just to keep city services running, and Rattner figures the Obama administration won't be interested in helping out. Gov. Rick Snyder, having pushed for the filing, may feel pressure to come through.

What effect will this have on other cities?

The inevitable downside of municipal bankruptcies is that they make cities a riskier bet for investors, so they'll have a harder time raising money for public works like utility systems and bridges. But the stigma of bankruptcy has been fading as more cities go through it, and as the problem of out-of-control pension systems becomes more pervasive. And it's likely that Detroit, with its death spiral of disinvestment and mismanagement, will be considered sui generis--other cities around the country are doing much better, and bondholders may evaluate each on the merits.

"The situation for Detroit is just so unique," said Jack Dorer, a managing director at Moody's Investors Service, on a Reuters panel last month. "They are under dire financial straits, and I think the other high-profile bankruptcy cases that we've seen often involve things like enterprise risk, so it's different."

Other cities in Michigan might not be as insulated, though.

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The New York Times is losing a key contributor today. Statistician Nate Silver, the man who predicted the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections with eerie accuracy, is leaving for greener pastures. The New York Times itself says that Silver is headed to ESPN, where he'll likely chat about sports on a new late-night talk show with Keith Olbermann, among other things. Though Silver does have a sports background, having played moneyball as a baseball analyst before founding his own polling website, FiveThirtyEight, he'll also reportedly still be contributing political analysis for ABC News during political cycles.

Though neither ESPN nor Silver was willing to comment to the Times about the story, it seems like a lock. Silver reportedly...

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In an age where social media seems to drive every aspect of marketing, likes and retweets seem to have become a currency of their own. But being the popular musical artist on a social network doesn't necessarily translate to being the highest seller.

New research shows that oft-forgotten Last.fm actually has more marketing power for artists than Facebook and Twitter. The data seems to suggest that buzz isn't always the best indicator of what's going to sell.

If you have a hard time remembering just exactly what Last.fm is, you're probably not alone. Though the site has been around since 2002, predating many of the major social media networks, it has flown largely under the radar, enjoyed mostly by fervent music geeks.

In technical terms, Last.fm is a "scrobbler." Essentially users download Last.fm, and it tracks all their listening habits—whether they get their music through iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody, or any other number of services. The scrobbler records not just what songs you're listening to but how you listen to them.

Do you binge out on one song over and over, or do you jump around a lot? Does the kind of music you listen to change with the time of day? Last.fm knows and makes reccomendations based on your habits. There’s also a social aspect that allows music enthusiasts to connect and share what they're listening.

Though less popular than Twitter or Facebook, where artists work diligently to cultivate sizable fanbases, Last.fm is more likely to have users that actually care about music. Care about it enough to actually buy it.

That's the finding of Musicmetric, a firm that tracks music sales and marketing tactics. The company found music sales correlated more to Last.fm listens than to Facebook likes.

Musicmetric said that simply being a fan or having buzz won't move albums. Fortune magazine points out that even though Rihanna had the most fans of any artist in 2012, her release, Unapologetic, which was panned by critics, failed to crack the top 10 for album sales on Billboard. In fact, only three artists—Adele, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift—were on the top 10 lists for both album sales and social media fanbases.

Overall, Musicmetric found a general decrease in the growth of fan networks across Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Facebook and Twitter saw the biggest decreases in new fans, with Facebook having 5,000 fewer likes per month and Twitter seeing 2,000 fewer follows. Meanwhile, SoundCloud, a network that lets users record, upload, and share original music saw an increase in fans.

Photo by FWRphoto/Flickr

Homer Simpson, meet Peter Griffin. Fox has announced that The Simpsons will be appearing in a crossover episode of Family Guy. The episode, titled "The Simpsons Guy," will follow the Griffin family on a road trip that ultimately finds them in Springfield, where they come face to face with Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The landmark television event will air in fall 2014, and Entertainment Weekly says the episode at one point pits Homer against Peter as they passionately argue whether Duff or Pawtucket is the superior local brew. The pairing of Fox's two most successful animation shows is a move that will likely be welcomed by fans, but also bemoaned by viewers who feel both have run well beyond their prime. Next year's crossover...

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To mark the launch of a new website for Hermann Miller furniture, Part of a Bigger Plan has created a short animated film telling the story of the illustrious company's 108 years in 108 seconds

Amsterdam-based Part of a Bigger Plan is headed up by Christian Borstlap, who we profiled in our May issue (you can read the piece here). The agency has made a range of charming animated brand films for clients such as Louis Vuitton and Mr Porter.

This latest short was commissioned by Hermann Miller to launch its new digital platform, WHY. It's an animated timeline of the company's history and the designers it has worked with

Credits:
Agency: Part of a Bigger Plan
Direction/art work: Christian Borstlap
Animation: Jos Ngonga Wabeke
Music: Shawn Lee
Sound: Jasper Boeke

Commissioned by Herman Miller, Zeeland Michigan, USA
Clients: Amber Bravo, Everett Pelayo

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The July issue of Creative Review is a type special, with features on the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, the new Whitney identity and the resurgence of type-only design. Plus the Logo Lounge Trend Report, how Ideas Foundation is encouraging diversity in advertising and more.

IKEA is re-launching the original piece of furniture that kick-started the flatpack revolution – the Lovbacken table. It first appeared in the 1956 Ikea catalogue, complete with original IKEA logo designed by founder Ingvar Kamprad

The 1956 catalogue cover features graphics by Gillis Lundgren, who also designed the Lovet table. The story goes that the table was being used in a catalogue photography session but its three-legged, leaf shape proved too cumbersome for designer Lundgren to fit into the car. To solve this, Lundgren sawed off the legs and, at that moment started a flatpack, self-assembly revolution.

IKEA is bringing back the table in August with the launch of the its new catalogue.

Here's a close-up view of that 1956 logo

Buy the current print issue of CR, or subscribe, here

The July issue of Creative Review is a type special, with features on the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, the new Whitney identity and the resurgence of type-only design. Plus the Logo Lounge Trend Report, how Ideas Foundation is encouraging diversity in advertising and more.

Though we can easily record thousands of images and hours of audio just to remember a single moment in time, the memory of a moment's scent — be it the smell of a spring day, or the remnants of a campfire — is still lost forever. Designer Amy Radcliffe wants to change that, and she's built a prototype device that could become an analog "camera" for capturing odors. It's called the Madeleine, and it looks like a cross between a jewelry box and a sci-fi contraption, complete with alien-like cords wrapping around it. It might not work perfectly, but it's one of many attempts over the past several decades to begin recording scents just as we do visuals and sounds. The Atlantic spoke with Radcliffe about the Madeleine's development, and...

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Near-field communication (NFC) has already been used by Ford and ad agency Ogilvy Paris for their Keyfree Login app, which enables computer users to automatically log out of all of their accounts when they’re away from their computer. As consumers increasingly shift their important data onto mobile devices, China’s GEAK has developed a ring that uses NFC to unlock the wearer’s smartphone only when they’re holding it.

Users can store their device’s password on the ring, which automatically grants access when it comes into near-contact with the handset – ie. when the owner is holding it in their hand. When the handset is moved away from the ring, the phone is locked as well as having to option to go into standby, saving battery life. Users can also store their contact details on the ring and easily copy them to another device simply by holding it. The GEAK ring currently only works with the company’s own Eye and Mars smartphones, although it is set to add compatibility with Samsung, Xiaomi and Oppo by November.

While it’s unclear what – if any – security the ring will have against NFC cloning, it could be a convenient and fun way for smartphone owners to interact with their devices. Priced at a fairly inexpensive CNY 199, could this idea be developed as a genuine solution to secure mobile data?

Website: www.igeak.com
Contact: www.igeak.com/aboutus/contact

Spotted by: Murray Orange

The Vatican has taken another step in its efforts to embrace social media by offering "indulgences" to followers of Pope Francis' (@Pontifex) Twitter account. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reports that the church will reduce the time Catholics have to spend in purgatory if they follow official Vatican events on TV, radio, and through social media.

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I am super excited to announce that next month I will be teaching a class on Skillshare! In case you’re unfamiliar with the site, they offer both in-person and online courses in a huge range of topics. They have an entire School of Design which offers a ton of amazing classes that I’m sure will be right up your alley. New classes are added all the time.

For my class, entitled Beyond the Logo: Crafting a Brand Identity, you will learn how to develop a visual brand identity system using an existing logo. It will entail developing the color palette, typography system, and other supporting elements, so that in the end you will have a comprehensive brand identity that’s ready for client presentation. It’s for designers who have the logo design process covered, but aren’t completely sure where to go next. If you don’t have a logo you want to work with, not to worry; I will provide a set of sample files that you’re free to use.

We will officially start on August 26th, but it is a self-paced course, meaning you can watch the videos and work on your project at your own pace.

Here’s a couple of examples of where you may end up when the class wraps up…

Teaching is definitely a new thing for me, but I’m excited to dive in. I have been following Skillshare since they launched, and taken a few classes myself, so I am honored to be a part of the community. If you’re interested, you can sign up for the class and get more information right here. Don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions, and be sure to tell your friends!

P.S. Over the weekend we also launched a temporary new placeholder page for Seamless Creative, where you can get a sneak peek at some of our recent work and new branding.

Negative reviews aren't always written by dissatisfied users or crafty competitors, but instead by dedicated fans who love a company's products. According to a new study, the review box has apparently been commandeered by loyal customers disenfranchised by a company's new products. These users see it as a way to provide company feedback by playing the role of brand manager — and even attack items that haven't yet been sold.

Researchers Eric Anderson from Northwestern University and Duncan Simester from MIT studied the sales and reviews data from an unnamed private label apparel retailer. The data was controlled, since the company uses no third-party vendors, and online reviews were analyzed directly against registered user's sales...

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The documentary film, in theaters next week, details the dark side of keeping killer whales in captivity. That dark side also includes the mistreatment of humans.

Tilikum, "star" of the documentary Blackfish.

Via: Suzanne Allee/Magnolia Pictures

"I'm a mother who took her kids to SeaWorld," says Gabriela Cowperthwaite, but that was in another life, before a SeaWorld trainer named Dawn Brancheau was killed by an orca named Tilikum in 2010, and before that death led Cowperthwaite to make a documentary film about the events leading up to the moment that whale dragged his longtime trainer into the pool. Cowperthwaite's film was conceived as the story of one woman's drowning, but it turned into a documentary about the 49 years since people first put orcas on display, about the three people Tilikum has allegedly killed, about the trainers who risk their lives to do stunts with 10,000-pound animals that may or may not be psychotic, and about the corporation, SeaWorld, that doesn't seem to care. Many of the frightening clashes between trainers and whales are caught on the shaky handheld cameras of park-goers. The film is called Blackfish, and it is harrowing.

In SeaWorld's official statement on the film, the company maintains that "Blackfish fails to make the most important points about SeaWorld: The company is dedicated in every respect to the safety of our staff and the welfare of animals." SeaWorld's representatives have not yet seen the film, which comes out July 19. Tilikum, who is still in Orlando and still being used for breeding, was involved in the deaths of Keltie Byrne in 1991, Daniel P. Dukes in 1999, and Brancheau in 2010.

Early on in the movie, Carol Ray, one of eight former park employees interviewed for the documentary, memorably says that although she thought you'd need special training to work with whales, "It really is more about your personality and how good you can swim."

The film centers on both the morality of keeping whales in captivity for entertainment (the movie comes down firmly on the side of "immoral") and the workplace hazards faced by the trainers who work with these animals.

"I would say there's more than just whale exploitation going on," explains Jeffrey Ventre, a trainer at SeaWorld until 1995 who appears in the documentary. Several of the trainers said they participated in the film to prevent another death.

The film started as Cowperthwaite's investigation into the dangerous labor practices that led to Brancheau's death (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration also thought SeaWorld was a dangerous work environment, and in August 2010, six months after Brancheau's death, it cited SeaWorld for having unsafe working conditions), but the film evolved into a cross-species investigation.

"I backed into the whole whale issue," Cowperthwaite says. "I guess I knew that I couldn't tell the story of the trainers without the whales, and I couldn't tell the story of the whales without the trainers."

"They're both victims of the system," she adds.

Cowperthwaite and the trainers all describe being "mesmerized" by the park and its consistent message of these whales are our friends, and they are happy to be here. The wild animals swimming in the tanks don't always fit that profile: In the course of researching her film, Cowperthwaite says she came across a video of a group of killer whales breaking off in the middle of the "Shamu" show to rip apart a pelican.

"This doesn't really sell Shamu dolls," Cowperthwaite says.

"I did two tours in the Shamu Stadium," Ventre says, referring to the experiences in the parlance of war. Footage of whale captures, he says, are his version of battle scars — he cries whenever he watches them. On his first "tour," he recalls, he still had his "naïve dreams" of being friends with the whales. The second time around, he had learned a little about orcas, and about how they swim up to 100 miles every day in the ocean, a difference from the small circles they swim in the pools at SeaWorld.

Former trainers also say they were underpaid for the dangerous work they were asked to do. Samantha Berg, who worked with Ventre as a trainer at SeaWorld, says she made just $7.50 an hour when she started in 1990 — and eventually earned $12.50 an hour after three and a half years working at the park.

"The pay scale has changed…but it's still, for the danger that people put themselves through and the physical abuse...," Berg begins, cutting herself off to describe the bruises and the sinus troubles, the injuries and the pains involved in leaping off whales' faces and diving into pools.

"I would not say that that was well compensated, for what we did."

None of the trainers in the film are current SeaWorld employees — several left the park in the mid-'90s. In Berg's case, it was only hindsight that made her lose her rose-colored glasses.

"Up until the point where Dawn was killed, I was generally proud of being a SeaWorld trainer," she says.

Brancheau's death also moved Ray, who says it was like "a call to action."

"Ultimately, why it happened is tied to the conditions that the animals are living in," Ray says.

Both Berg and Ray say the movie will have an impact on current SeaWorld employees "if they see it," skeptical about whether dedicated trainers will want to acknowledge the film or simply turn a blind eye. They both say they lost SeaWorld friends over their participation in the movie, and Berg says some park employees she knew refused to read Ventre's article "Keto & Tilikum Express the Stress of Orca Captivity" because they didn't want to know.

"The same people who were in charge when we were there are still in charge," Berg says.

Berg, Ray, Ventre, and Cowperthwaite all say they want a change in the structure of the park, a shift away from entertainment and toward education. They don't know if that will happen. But when they screened the movie for high school students, the teenagers "got it," Berg says. So, cautiously, they are hopeful.

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Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has never been shy about voicing his opinions on digital media, but now he's taken things a step further: he's pulled his various side projects off streaming music services altogether. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Yorke and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich took to Twitter on Sunday to announce that they were removing Yorke's solo album The Eraser, their joint project Atoms for Peace, and the debut album from Godrich's band Ultraísta from Spotify and its ilk.

Godrich wrote that streaming services are "bad for new music" in that they don't pay up-and-coming artists enough money. Yorke expressed similar sentiments, warning music consumers that any new favorites they discover on streaming services...

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If you're looking to sell something online, where do you go? eBay? Craigslist? Etsy? In Kuwait, it turns out you might look somewhere else: Instagram. In an interview with Mousse Magazine, Senegalese artist (and Kuwaiti resident) Fatima Al Qadiri describes how everyday Kuwaitis establish "Instagram businesses" by simply sticking prices on items, snapping photos of them, and uploading them to their Instagram accounts. And it's becoming a big deal: Jason Kottke's kottke.org notes that the American University of Kuwait recently hosted an "Insta-Business Expo" for Instagram-based companies. It's probably not the direction Instagram — a service best known for its square, filtered cameraphone photos — expected users to go, but why fight a...

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I’ve read many posts in the past asking how to get started learning to code, or asking what people should do next after they’ve finished Code Academy. I wanted to give my story thus far to help others get started, because I’m currently on a “progress high” from how exciting it is to make an app.

“No experience”

It would be a lie to say I had absolutely no experience, but the experience I had prior to this process was limited to my engineering 101 course, where we learned how to draft algorithms and make small programs in C++ and Matlab. If you can make a game of life then you are at the level of familiarity I was at when I began. I also dabbled in learning Ruby, Rails, CSS/HTML but literally had only done the code academy web fundamentals track.

Timeline

Week 1 – Lynda.com objective-c course completed. I originally went for the Lynda iOS SDK course but in the first section it tells you to do the objective-c one. Not completely necessary if you’re familiar, but helps get you comfortable with the environment (Xcode). I have a free account on Lynda through my university, otherwise it’s $25/mo.

Week 2 – Lynda.com iOS SDK course completed. Great videos that come highly recommended. All done through screen capture so you can watch them code in real time, as well as copy/paste or reference source files.

Week 3 – I took this week to brainstorm and draft a practice app. This may be a very difficult step for some and can be skipped but it helps keep you motivated to learn more. You will immediately discover something you want in your app (paged scroll views) that you don’t know how to implement. So Google it and begin learning. I can guarantee someone has already tried it and there is a tutorial available.

Week 4 – Complete a decent, testflight-able app that you can share with people and use. Mine was an app that helps you make decisions. The user was prompted to enter the options they’re comparing (i.e. competing products, iPhone vs. Galaxy), their criteria (i.e. price, graphics, etc.) and how much they care about each criteria, then an algorithm I created would tell them which was the better product for them. Reach out to me (email link) if you’d like the source files.

Week 5 – Here is where I hit roadblock #1: Paged Scroll View. I reached out to one of my developer friends and he sent me to Ray Wenderlich’s site which has tons of very helpful, very specific tutorials. Several other roadblocks and tutorials followed throughout the week.

Week 6 – I completed Stanford’s iPhone App course on iTunes U. This is very informative with a good instructor but you don’t get access to homework or grading so all you can do is follow along. Still worth watching.

Week 7 – I completed Nick Kuh’s Foundation iPhone App Development book. This was a great read, and walks you through making a Birthday Reminder app in 5 days. Still using it as a reference, and was probably the best tool I used in the process.

Week 8 – if you haven’t already started on a legit app, do it now. This is ultimately the best way to learn to code. Although that is said over and over again, I still don’t always do that and I understand it is hard. But thats why we do it, right? to make stuff we would use. So make something. In the end, the cycle of having problems, finding a suitable solution, and implementing it, is the truest way to learn.

I just finished my first app with the help of a designer friend and I’m submitting it to the app store after this post!

Image Credit / Shutterstock

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