As some of you might know: I own a MacBook and the first generation iPhone. I really like Apple’s products for their ease of use and the outstanding design.

Here is my summary of today’s Apple event! I watched their livestream here.

They presented the new iLife 11. It includes a nice new iPhoto Version which now has Facebook support and many cool features. It looked very good when Phil Schiller presented it. It has an awesome carousel view.
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As You all read in one of my articles I had an awesome summer at Stanford University in California. In the United States there are some awesome things that we don’t easily have access to over here in Germany. But there are many that I really don’t want to miss!

One of them is the internet radio Pandora. It’s a webbased service that plays similar music to an artist you type in. It does that really good and most importantly: It learns when you like or dislike particular songs. I’ve tested many others like last.fm for instance – but Pandora is simply the best.
Unfortunately it is not available in Germany – officially. But of course: To every problem there is a solution! 
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The connection and interest in Stanford really started to deepen when I visited the campus on a vacation with my Dad in Summer of 2009. We took a guided tour that left me very impressed. I already decided at that point that I wanted to apply for Summer College. It was an awesome dream to aspire to. But still it seemed to be a bit over the top.

Anyhow: It happened to become reality pretty soon: When I got the admittance letter from Stanford this spring, I coud hardly believe it. It was such a joy after all the hard work I had put into my application.
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Yes! I really met Mark Zuckerberg, shook hands and talked with him for a while. This was on Wednesday, August 18 to be exact. How it came to this? I’m gonna tell you:
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During my time at Silicon Valley, while attending Stanford Summer College, I had the pleasure to get to know the founders of Alphonsolabs and creators of the very successful news app “Pulse” for iPhone, iPad and other devices.
I wrote an article about the exhilarating 30-minute interview I had with CEO Akshay Kothari. For more information about Pulse, visit http://www.alphonsolabs.com.
It was amazing to talk to them and really got me to feel what the entrepreneurial spirit in Silicon Valley is like. They’ll both be an inspiration to me that I won’t easily forget. Thank You guys!?

Enjoy reading!

Two Stanford students having the time of their lives with an own Silicon Valley start-up

On a sunny day in July, I met Akshay Kothari (CEO) and Ankit Gupta (CTO) of Alphonso Labs in their new Palo Alto office. They have both just received their Masters Degree from Stanford this summer. It had been hard to find time with them, due to their tight schedule. But that day I finally got to talk to Akshay in an exciting 30-minute interview. For Akshay and Ankit it all started in the Stanford course LaunchPad.

The approach of this spring quarter class was different from others: Rather than just talking about starting a company, the focus was on actually launching one in the course of 10 weeks. Students had to team up and apply for it with very good ideas to be accepted.

Akshay and Ankit recognized that they were reading news mainly on their mobile devices and were barely keeping themselves up-to-date on websites. But as it turned out, all the news apps that were available on the phone were poorly designed and looked and felt like usual inboxes, – not a way to enjoy news reading on the go. And indeed, a way to enjoy news in a nice visual manner, was totally missing on mobile devices.

They drew up their idea and instantaneously started working on it: The first goal was to develop a version for the brand new iPad at that time. After just 2 weeks they had their first working prototype and already in the 6th week they released their finished product to the Apple AppStore.

In the early stages they got a lot of user feedback and were able to rapidly implement a lot of new features. At the same time the whole code structure was improved, leading to better performance and stability.

Ankit and Akshay were able to realize their first working version so fast, just because Apple’s Development Kit made it easy. Achieving the favored visual appearance right from the start, all the ongoing changes were to happen mainly in the background.

Their first important update was released just two weeks after app introduction. It carried many improvements and marked a significant point in the evolution of “Pulse”.

However, now their public attention and downloads started to skyrocket all of a sudden. It didn’t take long till they were featured on TechCrunch, The New York Times and other media.

But the best was yet to come: Akshay was just coming back from vacation in Hawaii and Ankit from a trip to New York: Following the course of Steve Jobs’ annual keynote at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference online, Akshay had obviously missed the start: But that wasn’t the iPhone 4 revelation. Eventually he received a call by a friend, telling him the mind-blowing fact that Steve Jobs had just shown and praised the Pulse iPad App at this momentous keynote that annually draws all media’s attention. When it comes to design and technology, Jobs is considered one of the most renowned and influential persons in the world.

Akshay and Ankit were both totally excited and rushed to San Francisco, trying to get in to the event – without success. Nonetheless has this been their most thrilling achievement up to now. Could there be a better acknowledgment of a startup’s work? It was simply the best thing that possibly could have happened to them.

Hence, the userbase grew even faster and Pulse climbed to the top of Apple’s AppStore charts, staying on the pole position amongst all news apps for 7 days.

Akshay and Ankit had cooperated on some projects before, but the foundation of Alphonso Labs was the true beginning of their first business together. Whereas Akshay’s skills lie in design and the creation of visual concepts, Ankit is the one with great software engineering knowledge.

Starting their own business, they were challenged with many things that needed to be taken care of: No matter if it was managing the payroll, taking care of health insurance, approaching companies for partnerships or engaging in marketing of their product, they did it all on their own.

Living the Silicon Valley Dream

They really have the time of their lives right now. And there is no doubt about that, seeing the glow in Akshay’s eyes when he talks about it. Everything went totally smooth and they can barely believe having such an incredible success. But on the other hand they clearly state owing a great deal of their success to Stanfords excellent support and their encouraging mentors.

The area was as well of critical importance: The Silicon Valley is the only place in the world where failure is so strongly embraced, tells me Akshay. Opposite to elsewhere, the appreciation of someone increases with failure, because the large gain of experience is highly valued.

Spending time in the Silicon Valley and talking to young founders like Akshay and Ankit, the entrepreneurial spirit can be felt all around. This is such an utterly inspiring experience that it becomes easy to grasp why so many prosperous businesses come from this particular area.

Despite the fact that they are already 5 people in their Palo Alto office, the actual workload is still tough to manage. But they are already on the look-out for some bright minds to hire. Their success leaves them well-off and enables them to pay good salaries. Furthermore they have a good potential to grow. But even more impressive is that they have needed no cent of venture capital yet.

They don’t even outsource any work, they do it all on their own. But of course this business is their only focus at the moment.

Akshay is very satisfied with their work and while having the weekends off, it is hard for him not to work, because there are always so many exciting things happening. But one thing he keeps in mind is definately getting back to a good work-life-balance as soon as possible.

At the moment they’re adding more functionality to Pulse and already expanded their offerings to versions for Android and the iPhone, which got going very well. One of they’re next goals is to make the user-experience even more social. But not just that: There’s already some new exciting plans for an app in their pipeline. They can’t focus on that on their own right now, but will hire people to create it. This will expand their ventures to a presumably lucrative new market field, while keeping most main ideas and principles.

The user base has already reached an impressive number and is trusted to reach one million until the end of the year.

This is an essay I wrote for my successful application to Stanford Summer College. It is about the impact of Personal Fabrication, a topic I’m highly interested in. The exact assignment was: “In 500-700 words, write an essay that discusses some issue of local, national or international concern and its importance to you.”. I was very satisfied with the result and think the essay really helped to get accepted, besides an excellent letter of recommendation and a very good list of extracurricular activities I had.
Enjoy!

How Personal Fabrication might change the World

Today’s industrial society is dependant on mass production. Lately, more people are becoming “prosumers” who want their products individually designed, even personalized. However it is challenging to produce a small number of tailor-made widgets, despite the fact that the industry is partly shifting toward customization on a mass scale. The answer to this problem might be personal fabrication, now that its technology has advanced to a high level and costs are rapidly decreasing. It is an area in which I am keenly interested.

Various personal fabrication machines are currently available. First and foremost are 3D printers, which can guide the building of a computer designed object using different types of extruded plastics, even bio-degradable ones. These are broadly referred to as fabricators or “fabbers”. Secondly, there are laser cutters that can cut or engrave a wide variety of different materials. Third, appliances are being produced that build up objects from layers of laminated paper or even melted metal powder. Eventually coming into play will be the already widely-used CNC (Computed Numerically Controlled) machines that can process particularly hard materials. Today, fabrication machines are commonly used to print objects ranging from industrial models, prototypes or prostheses to more mundane items like coat hooks and custom-fit replacement stove knobs. Already under development is the capacity for printing of electrical circuitry. In the near future, the cement-jet printing of entire buildings could become a possibility.

When fabbers become more widely accessible, many people are likely to eschew shopping in order to make an item themselves. Fabricators would be supplied with either downloaded or self-made designs and the requisite raw materials. “Personal fabrication will bring the programmability and flexibility of the digital worlds we’ve invented to the physical worlds we inhabit” says Neil Gershenfeld in his book FAB – The Coming Revolution on your Desktop – from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication. Professor Gershenfeld is the director of MIT’s “Center for Bits and Atoms” and is the originator of the growing global network of Fab Labs (fabrication laboratories).

Fab Labs are likely to become popular first in Developing and Third World Countries, where the growing number of Fab Labs, currently 35, is empowering individuals, developing skills, furthering innovation, educating children and prototyping new product ideas. Fab Labs bring people together to work, to learn from each other, to share knowledge with the global community, and to develop into a highly-skilled local workforce. Local problems can be solved and living standards increased. Outcomes already range from solar and wind-powered turbines in many locations to local telecommunication infrastructure in Afghanistan, to cheap computers in South Africa. Mostly run by universities, city councils or foundations, Fab Labs employ coaches to assist their operators and are globally coordinated by the “Fab Foundation”.

“It’s a really great time to subvert the dominant paradigm of centralized corporate manufacturing” says Bre Pettis in summation. As a founder of Makerbot Industries, Pettis is passionate about invention and wants to bring manufacturing to the masses with an “affordable, open source 3D printer”. And he is only one significant example representative for a whole movement.

The consequence of all this is the beginning of an industrial revolution for our digital age. Just as the mainframe eventually became the personal computer, we will see an evolution from mass to desktop manufacturing. And in the future, globalization could be replaced by localization. When personal fabrication technology advances far enough to produce common articles of daily use, and tool prices drop, then fabbers will certainly reach critical mass and the whole movement will gain momentum.

My personal enthusiasm lies not only in personal use of fabbers but most avidly in the opportunity to work on their further development. I would like to complete a technological course of studies that will enable me to work in this emerging field, in development and research ranging from 3D printers to eco-friendly electric vehicles. This could lead me toward specialization in either electrical or mechanical engineering. An ancillary goal is one day to set up a Fab Lab in a Third World country, as part of my overall aim to facilitate world change by helping to advance personal fabrication technology.

© 2010 – Moritz Bappert

Dear Readers,

I’ve finally managed to set up my very first own blog! Not that I technically wasn’t able to create one for all the time… Actually I had the wish to have my own blog for a very long time. But as it turned out: I didn’t commit to that goal strong enough – so it just didn’t happen. And today – when I sat at a Coffee Shop in town – it just popped into my mind: Hey! Let’s create a blog right now. And that’s about it. Here it is! My blog that will be filled with articles on many different topics I’m interested in, just as they come across my way.

Have fun reading it!

Moritz Bappert