{"id":9691,"date":"2016-03-20T19:31:15","date_gmt":"2016-03-20T19:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/?p=9691"},"modified":"2017-08-18T17:56:37","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T17:56:37","slug":"near-future-laboratory-seldom-dispatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2016\/03\/20\/near-future-laboratory-seldom-dispatch\/","title":{"rendered":"Near Future Laboratory Seldom Dispatch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enough curious things and publications and prototypes and robot news and VLOGS are currently happening in our different bureaux that we need to issue a\u00a0 dispatch with a note from each of us.<\/p>\n

From Julian<\/h4>\n

\"OMATA\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Together with Rhys Newman<\/a> \u2014 a friend and colleague from back at Nokia \u2014 we started a company 14 months ago called OMATA<\/a> to build a beautiful analog GPS bike computer. We launch our product in a few weeks on Kickstarter. It’s something Rhys and I had been talking about for a good long time and the wind-down of the Advanced Design studio at Nokia gave us the impetus we needed to start a company and build a product.<\/p>\n

A bike speedometer? Why this, you might ask? What ever happened to weird future algorithms, catalogs and robots? What about workshops and consulting to future-starved clients?<\/p>\n

Making “things” has always been a passion as followers of the Laboratory will understand. Making “things from the future” is a driving motivation for all of us here at the Laboratory. OMATA is an opportunity to do that on the terms that Rhys and I set, without the slow, arduous, punishing, soul-crushing briar patch of decision making protocols found in large, old-fashioned consumer electronics companies.<\/p>\n

Aside from my passion for cycling, this product is, in many ways, a deviant object from a future where people have given up on the assumption that everything needs to be fully digital, have a touchscreen, be a nebulously defined “thing” of the Internet, and be a receptacle for distracting alerts\/updates\/notifications\/etc. This is a focused object, designed to show what matters most while riding a bike: how fast, how far, how high and how long. It’s incredibly modern on the inside \u2014 very sophisticated GPS, ARM processor, BTLE, beautiful mechanics and world-class industrial design. It just ends up looking more beautiful on the outside then your typical connected digital thing.<\/p>\n

You can follow along on Instagram<\/a> and sign-up on the mail list on OMATA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From Herr. Foster<\/h4>\n