Global Nerdy

Remember this, mobile and IoT user experience designers and developers.

Click the comic to see it at full size.

File this under “funny because it’s true.”

I had the privilege of participating in Startup Bus 2019 on the Florida Bus — and the team I was on, Hyve, made the top three! Here are Hyve’s official videos from our adventure…

Meet Team Hyve!

In addition to the pitch competition that took place in clear view, there was also a behind-the-scenes game in which all the Startup Bus teams could partake. The game was made up of activities that teams would perform for points, and the bus that earned the most points would receive special mention at the finals. The activities were effectively a checklist for teams to follow as they created their startups and applications on their buses.

One of the activities was to make a team video, where team members would introduce themselves and explain why they’re participating in Startup Bus. We recorded this on Wednesday night at NC State in Raleigh.

Pitching Hyve to a stranger

Another action item in the behind-the-scenes game was to pitch our idea to a stranger in one of the towns where we stopped. We pitched the Hyve concept to the Lyft driver who took us from NC State to our hotel. Here’s how it went…

Practicing our pitch

In addition to building the business and the app on the bus, we practiced out pitches at regular intervals. Here’s Tracy practicing his pitch as the bus raced towards New Orleans:

The qualifying round

The qualifying rounds took place on Saturday, July 27th at New Orleans’ Propeller Incubator, where all the teams from all the buses — the Advancing Black Entrepreneurs, Florida, Mexico, New York, Ohio, Silicon Valley, and Washington DC teams — made their pitches.

Every member of every team had to be ready to pitch, because in the qualifying round, the judges chose two people from each team to make their pitch, one at a time. They tend to choose the least confident-looking team members, and a couple of them already knew me. We did well, though, with Rina doing the “set ’em up” pitch and Tracy doing the “finish ’em off” one:

The finals

We’d have to wait until the next day to find out who made it to the semifinals, but we were among them! Even better, we made it to the finals. We re-worked our pitch for the finals judges with the help of the Florida Bus Conductors — Akira Mitchell, Nick Price, and Shane Needham — and here’s the result:

The winners

Once all the finalists made their pitches, the judges sequestered themselves, and shortly afterwards, they made their announcements, which included Hyve!

Just the bit about Hyve

Just because I love that bit about walking the line between good and evil, here’s just the part about Hyve:

Beginning ARKit video course (RayWenderlich.com, April 2019)

Beginning ARKit is a video course offered at the premier mobile development tutorial site, RayWenderlich.com. It introduces iOS developers to building augmented reality apps for iOS with Apple’s ARKit library. In 41 bite-sized videos spanning 2 hours and 22 minutes, I take you from the AR version of Hello, World! and show you how to build:

1. Happy AR Painter: A Bob Ross-themed AR painting app that lets the user “paint” in 3D space using geometric shapes that can be animated.
2. Raykea: A version of the popular IKEA Place app that not only lets you place AR furniture in the room you’re in, but also draws posters on vertical surfaces.
3. BaedekAR: An AR guidebook, or Baedeker, for paintings and photos in galleries, museums, or any place that displays 2D art. It does this using ARKit’s ability to recognize and detect known 2D objects.
4. Into the Third Dimension: In which we take the BaedekAR app and turn it into an app that can recognize and detect known 3D objects.

Not only did I narrate the videos, but I created the script, and all the code and most of the graphics for the course.

The course is available only to RayWenderlich.com subscribers, but some excerpts have been made available for online preview. I’ve included them below:

ARKit workshop and Getting started with ARKit tutorial (RWDevCon conference, April 2018)

RWDevCon 2018 was a mobile development tutorial conference covering iOS and Android development held from April 5th through 7th, 2018 in Alexandria, Virginia. I was the only speaker to have two sessions:

• A four-hour pre-conference workshop on ARKit, and
• A two-hour introductory tutorial on ARKit.

These sessions were the two highest-rated ones at the conference, based on attendee feedback forms. It was this feedback that got me an offer to create the Beginning ARKit video course.

The four-hour conference is available only to RayWenderlich.com subscribers, but the two-hour tutorial was made freely available online and shown above.

Augmented Reality UX presentation (Tampa Bay UX, June 2018)

Based on the success of the ARKit sessions at RwDevCon 2018, I did a presentation at a Meetup of the combined Tampa Bay User Experience / Front-End Design Meetup with my wife, Anitra Pavka. We talked about build good user experiences for augmented reality, using both commercial applications as well as the applications I made for the RwDevCon presentations.

The slides from our presentation are below:

Tech editor on ARKit by Tutorials, first and second editions (2018 and 2019)

I was a tech editor on the first and second editions of the RayWenderlich.com book ARKit by Tutorials, and am currently tech editing the third edition, due for release this fall.

Augmented Reality in Android with Google’s Face API (July 2017)

My AR portfolio isn’t limited to just iOS — I also have an article on Android AR: Augmented Reality in Android with Google’s Face API, a tutorial in which I show readers how to build Snapchat-style filters that draw comic images over detected faces.

Would you like to know more about my augmented reality work? Feel free to contact me at joey@joeydevilla.com.

In case you hadn’t yet heard, I’m on a Startup Bus team, Hyve. We built an anti-email abuse system that uses virtual disposable email addresses (DEAs) — in three days, and on a bus.

Hyve is based on a long-standing email security principle: use different email addresses that are dedicated to single uses. The reason that most of us don’t do this is because it’s a cumbersome, painful process. Hyve automates the creation of virtual email intermediaries that you use to connect to or sign into services, and you can mute them if you need a little silence or delete them if you need to cut off spam, annoyances, or other email abuse.

You might be asking: “Does Hyve’s underlying principle actually work?” Don’t ask us — ask the security experts below.

Spoiler: YES.

Huffington Post: The Simple Email Trick that Identity Thieves Hate

Email is personally identifiable information — why are you using it as the way to identify yourself to parties who are likely to sell it? Don’t use your primary email address to log into services — create a secret one solely for that purpose.

Wallethacks: Why I Have a Secret “Classified” Email Address

The author’s use of different email addresses for different kinds of services is borrowed from a U.S. government security principle: use classified and unclassified systems, and keep them separate. This means creating separate email addresses for secure and sensitive purposes such as banking, and never using these addresses for anything other than their designated purpose.

Lifehacker: Use a Unique, Secure Email Address Solely for Password Recovery

When you click “I forgot my password” on a login screen, you’re often sent a password recovery link via email. With the prevalence — and profitability — of social engineering attacks, it makes sense to use an email address that nobody else knows.

Securosis blog: Consumer Security Tip – Use Multiple Email Accounts To Reduce Fraud And Spam

Lots of interesting ideas in this article. The main idea behind this article is to use different email addresses for different purposes, such as:

• An address for buying online when you don’t trust the store: Another Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail address you use for risky online purchases, and nothing else. That way, if a site you use is compromised you can easily change addresses without too much difficulty. These are the smaller online retailers you don’t really know or trust as much as Amazon and Ebay.
• An address for trusted retailers: This is your Amazon, Ebay, and Apple address- one you use to buy things from major retailers. This can be the same as your permanent address. Let’s be realistic, I use a few major retail sites and have never had any problems with spam or fraud by letting them use my main address. Yes, it’s a risk if they get breached, but it’s one I’m willing to take for a small group of stores I use more frequently. If you do this, make sure you opt out of any of their marketing emails. This is in your account preferences when you log in.
• An address for email subscriptions: This is for newsletters, fora, and other sites where your email might not be private.

Sign up for Hyve today!

Despite the fact that Hyve came into being over a three-day trip on a bus taking a zig-zag route through the southeast U.S., we have a working product that we’d love to have you try out! Come to our site, Hyve.email, and sign up for the cure to spam and other email bad actors.