Last week I attended the first meet up for the Austin chapter of the Online News Association.
Robert Quigley, senior lecturer with the University of Texas journalism school, and Cindy Royal, professor at Texas State University, are cofounders of the Austin ONA chapter. The first meeting had a great turnout.
In addition to other journalists, I met with some people in the technology community to brainstorm story ideas for SiliconHillsNews. (We really drank a couple of beers and talked about some of the cool companies in town.) One of the names that came up was William Hurley, known as Whurley. He runs one of the most innovative companies in Austin called Chaotic Moon, a mobile application development company.
This week, the folks from Chaotic Moon Labs, a division of Chaotic Moon, are at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. They are showcasing their “Board of Awesomeness,” an electric skateboard controlled via a Microsoft Kinect and Samsung tablet computer.
Chaotic Moon announced that it plans to invest another $6 million into its lab division this year to work on more projects.
“The labs team has clearly demonstrated that with the “Board of Awesomeness” we can transform an interface previous confined to your living room and make it fun and useful for transportation in the outside world,” said Ben Lamm, CEO of Chaotic Moon Studios.
A Samsung tablet hooked up to Xbox Kinectic controls the skateboard which can reach speeds up to 32 miles per hour. ” With video recognition, speech recognition and hand signals, a rider controls the director of the board and its speed and direction.