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June 18th, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Events, Gadgets, Technology

Oculus Rift

The concept of “virtual reality” has been around for decades, and has inspired science fiction and popular culture in countless ways, from the “cyberspace” of William Gibson’s novels to “Tron” and “The Matrix.” But with the breakneck speed of technological innovation we’re seeing today, we’re perhaps closer than ever to seeing VR taking hold in the mainstream.

Next week brings the first meeting of the Hawaii Virtual Reality Club, focused on exploring the potential of these virtual worlds. Founded by graphic designer and web entrepreneur Ka’i Kau, the club will convene at HICapacity in Kaka’ako.

“Virtual reality is set to make a comeback and change the world of videogames like the iPhone changed the world of phones,” Kau says. “I want to help establish Hawaii as a hub for software development for this exciting new platform, as I see the potential for any software written right now to take off in a big way.”

The focus of Tuesday’s inaugural gathering will be the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. The device was born on Kickstarter, where it raised an incredible $2.4 million (blasting past its initial goal of $250,000). Kau was an early backer of the campaign.

At the meetup, Kau says, attendees will be able to check out two Oculus Rift headsets and their accompanying development kits. The device has made quite a splash in the gaming and technology community, and perhaps most notably earned oohs and aahs on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”

“We’ll be demonstrating the technology for the local community, and to further stoke interest in developers and designers for the new platform, we’ll have a pair of talks about the Oculus Rift, virtual reality, and how Hawaii developers have the opportunity to get involved early creating for this innovative hardware,” he explains.

The Hawaii VR Club meeting will run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 25 at HICapacity (307a Kamani Street). Anyone interested in attending is encouraged to RSVP online. The hashtag for the event is #hicapvr.

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June 6th, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Media, The Web, Video

PBS Insights

Last week I was honored to be a part of a panel discussion that explored the news business in the era of social media. The venue was the weekly live roundtable program “Insights” on PBS Hawaii, hosted by Dan Boylan (who is also a political columnist for MidWeek). My fellow panelists were Mark Platte, news director at Hawaii News Now, Nick Grube, a reporter at Civil Beat, and Melissa Chang, vice president of marketing and social strategy firm AdStreamz.

It was a great conversation (although as usual I talked too much and too fast). And while Dan Boylan was clearly not as into the social web as the rest of us, he was both delightfully curious and understandably skeptical.

You can watch the hour-long program now on YouTube:

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April 22nd, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Events, Technology

Hawaii Geek Meet

Every year I look forward to organizing the Hawaii Geek Meet. And every year I get so wrapped up in it that I only get around to blogging about it after it’s over.

This year was the sixth year, and I think the most diverse yet. A lot of the perennial favorite groups were there (from professional and amateur astronomers to ham radio operators to sci-fi costumers), but there were some new faces as well, from solar power firm Greenpath Technologies to medieval fighting troupe Schola St. George Honolulu to local players of the alternative reality geolocation game Ingress (which I’ve recently become obsessed with).

Here are my photos from this year’s Geek Meet:

You can also check out photos by Kyle Nishioka (@madmarv), Russ Sumida (@parkrat), and Burt Lum (@bytemarks).

The Hawaii Geek Meet was also featured on Hawaii News Now, KITV, and Hawaii Public Radio!

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March 15th, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Business, Technology

2013-02-18 12.48.57

Earlier this year, retail job postings on the Microsoft web site revealed the company’s plans to set up its first Microsoft Store in Honolulu. Sure enough, shoppers at Ala Moana Center soon spotted the future location of Microsoft’s island invasion, positioned almost directly across from the state’s first and largest Apple Store.

It’s one of six Microsoft Stores opening this year, and only the second outside the contiguous 48 states (along with Puerto Rico), bringing the total number of locations to 50. Of course, that’s compared to Apple’s nearly 400 stores around the world.

Indeed, it also looks like Honolulu’s three Apple stores (Ala Moana, Kahala, and Waikiki) are about to get some reinforcements from Cupertino.

Thanks to retail job posting’s on Apple’s website (spotted by a job-hunting friend), we can surmise that there may soon be an Apple store in Aiea and — at long last — on Maui. (There’s been talk of a Maui location for nearly as long as Hawaii’s had any Apple stores.) The Aiea location could be at Pearlridge Center, which could be a nice leeward counterpart to the Kahala location. And the Maui location appears to be in Upcountry Maui at Makawao… perhaps at Pukalani Terrace Center?

Apple Store Aiea

Apple Store Maui

Job postings don’t necessarily mean a store is in the works, but it’s been a pretty good indicator in the past. I think Maui is long overdue for an Apple Store, given the demographics and typical traveler profile. And I certainly wouldn’t mind having five locations on O’ahu to choose from (though I suspect windward residents will start to feel a bit left out).

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March 8th, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Technology, The Web

Lasso App

The South by Southwest (SXSW) festival is now underway in Austin, Texas, starting with SXSW Interactive, which draws thousands of startups and entrepreneurs hoping to make connections or launch the next big thing. And as usual, there are creative and talented people from Hawaii in the mix.

This year, Chad Podoski and Jason Skicewicz are at SXSW to officially launch their new company, and their new app, Lasso. It’s a photo sharing app with an interest twist: rather than serving as yet another tool to push pictures out to friends on other networks, Lasso is designed to help you request, or pull, photos from your friends.

For example, if a bunch of friends had a party on Saturday, and were connected on Lasso, they could “lasso” each other to get photos taken that day. After getting sets of photos from friends, you can easily browse them in the app, “like” them, add or request more photos, or save them to your own collection.

Podoski and Skiecewitz have collaborated before as Shacked Software, and I’ve enjoyed trying earlier apps like FlickPad, Gube, and TeleTweet. But Lasso is definitely their most complex, and most elegantly designed, app yet.

“We co-founded Lasso with the former founder and CEO of Photobucket, Alex Welch, who happens to be a part time resident of Hawaii Kai,” Podoski tells Hawaii Blog.

You need to make a little mental shift to think in terms of “lassoing” (requesting or pulling) photos from people rather than pushing it to them. And it’s a little odd to start with a largely empty app (as you wait to connect with friends and request photos from them). Finally, I’d actually like to see more “push,” like sharing sets to Facebook or Flickr or simple web galleries of lassoed photos… but that would probably dilute the secret sauce.

Ultimately, Lasso is a promising new way to tackle the “how to compile other photos from an event” problem… a problem that even well-funded startups like the ill-fated Color couldn’t solve.

Even better, Lasso is already available for both iOS and Android, and a Mac desktop client is in the works.

lasso-1 lasso-2 

Lasso isn’t the only startup with local ties in Austin. On Wednesday, Burt Lum and I featured Austen Ito and Ryan Kanno on Bytemarks Cafe. The founding members of HI Capacity, now living in D.C. and NYC respectively, were on two separate teams participating in the Startup Bus program. The challenge? Building new startups while taking a three-day bus trip from New York to Texas. Ito pitched Jobber.io, and Kanno worked on Readin.gs.

While their pitches didn’t earn them passage into the final round, the trip did deliver them to SXSW, where they’re no doubt reveling in the annual maelstrom of tech.

I really enjoyed SXSW Interactive the couple of times I was able to attend as part of the Wondermill team. The energy was so infectious, I rushed to get my own web app built, just to have something to talk about with the interesting people I met. And Austin was a great city to visit. I hope to return someday!

 

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March 3rd, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Events

The sixth annual Unconferenz, a grassroots, peer-driven technology gathering (where the agenda is set by attendees the morning of the event), was held on Saturday, March 2, 2013. Sessions covered topics like planning a Hawaii Maker Faire, the digital media arts industry, open data, and journalism. The grand finale was another set of Ignite! presentation focused on STEM.

In addition to my photos above, you can check out a gallery of Unconferenz images by lead organizer Burt Lum.

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February 27th, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Government, Media, Video

UH journalism professor Gerald Kato recently dug up this old video that SHOPO, the Honolulu police officers’ union, made in 1995 during the fight over the Uniform Information Practices Act (UIPA), or HRS 92F, which defined public records and codified the public’s right to access them in Hawaii. They argued that releasing police misconduct records would mean “the community as a whole would suffer.”

It’s quite a piece of work on many levels: as a Hawaii time capsule (the fashion!), as a quaint example of propoganda (the fake TV newscast!), and as a reminder of the mindset that law enforcement officers are a special class of government worker. A mindset that really hasn’t changed. While most laws presume that the police should be held to a higher standard, SHOPO lobbied that they deserved more protection. Recall that their salaries were excluded from the list of city employee salaries released in 2010.

The video emerged as part of a multi-part special report by Civil Beat, “In the Name of the Law,” focusing on police misconduct in Hawaii. Definitely worth a read.

But it had additional resonance for me, as this battle over 92F was going on when I was getting sucked back into journalism in college. After trying to flee newsroom burnout at UH Hilo, I ended up running the student newspaper there, then coming back to run the then-daily, then-independent student newspaper on the UH Manoa campus. There, our motley crew of troublemakers got into information access battles of our own (including with the campus security office, which fortunately worked with us most of the time).

Even after all that practical experience, it would take me four more years to get my journalism degree. I’m proud of that degree, and those crazy college newspaper days, even though I never had what it took be a journalist for a living. And I still enjoy putting on my muckraker hat from time to time, and still support sunshine laws and other transparency initiatives.

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February 10th, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Links

When I’m not blogging, I’m browsing. Here are sites and pages that I bookmarked on February 5th:

Check out all my bookmarks on Delicious.

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January 25th, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Hawaii, Pop Culture, Television

scott-chelsea

Scott Caan, star of the CBS crime drama reboot “Hawaii Five-0,” appeared last night on Chelsea Handler’s late-night talk show “Chelsea Lately.” And not surprisingly, they talked about what it’s like living in Hawaii. Caan says that he can take Hawaii about six days at a time, but that otherwise, “I like to hustle and there’s no hustle there.”

Chelsea: She gets to live in Hawaii now, you like that right?

Scott: No I don’t. She doesn’t either. That’s why she should get the purple heart. She’s just sticking it out…

Chelsea: What’s wrong with Hawaii? There are no snakes in Hawaii?

Scott: Everything’s very slow motion. I pick up the cup, and they slowly pick up the cup, you know what I mean. Everything’s too relaxed for me. I like to hustle and there’s no hustle there.

Chelsea: There is no hustle there, that’s for sure. And there’s a lot of crystal meth there.

Scott: A lot of crystal meth. Which, you know, is not my thing.

Chelsea: I once went there. It’s not my thing, either. I went there. And the driver offered us, ’cause usually the driver, the guy at the hotel, will offer you weed or something, but the guy offered me crystal meth. And I was like, What? First of all, Now that I know you’re on crystal meth, I don’t want you driving us, A. And B, what does my face say to you that I like crystal meth? What kind of impression am I giving you? I had to really look at myself that weekend.

Scott: I don’t think it’s personal. I think that’s the routine.

Chelsea: Did you at least learn how to surf while you were out there?

Scott: I’ve been surfing my whole life.

Chelsea: I can tell by your hairdo that you’re a surfer.

Scott: Thank you. This is what I try to do, I try to paddle out and not get it wet.

Chelsea: How does that work out for you?

Scott: It never works. But surfing in Hawaii is different. It’s more like survival. It’s different. Here surfing is surfing, there it’s…

Chelsea: You grew up in Malibu surfing, right?

Scott: A little bit, yeah.

Chelsea: Well, there’s no other beach to surf at, so I don’t know …

Scott: On the planet, I think it’s the greatest place in the world. But literally…

Chelsea: Well, yeah. Surfing in Hawaii is like serious stuff.

Scott: Yeah, they ask you how was your surfing, and you say, “I made it, I’m here. So that was a good one.”

Chelsea: I mean swimming in Hawaii can be difficult, so surfing is very difficult.

Scott: I like that aspect of it. And I like Hawaii as a place, but for about six days at a time.

Chelsea: Yeah, I know, I know, it’s very slow. And the food isn’t great.

Scott: It sucks, yeah.

Video:


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January 5th, 2013 by Ryan Ozawa · Food, Video

One of my favorite New Year’s traditions is mochitsuki, or mochi making, which is a Japanese tradition that’s common in Hawaii. Last Saturday, the Jodo Mission of Hawaii in Makiki (where I serve on the Board of Directors) held its annual mochitsuki, or mochi making event, which puts out hundreds of pounds of mochi that’s sold to temple members, their families, and the broader community.

For a brief few minutes, they pull out the traditional stone mortar (usu) and long wooden mallets (kine) and let people pound mochi the old fashioned way. But as you see above, most of the conversion from rice to mochi is handled by the temple’s 50-year-old machine. It’s an electric, belt-driven grinder, and suffice it to say, they don’t make those anymore.

Still, the operation requires dozens of volunteers spread across several steps to make the mochi, and I confess, people almost twice my age were able to hustle much longer and harder than I could. Even our youngest son, Alex, gave it his all, trying his hand at every job.

You can also view this video on Vimeo or Blip.TV. Music is “Chillin’ with Jeris” by Copperhead. Also, here are some photos from the mochitsuki event:

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