We met up with co-founder Dave Merrill last week upon his return from the Computer Human Interaction Conference (CHI) in Austin, Texas. After hearing Dave describe hula hoop-like musical instruments, laser clothing and other whimsical high tech projects, we have determined that the future of computers is INCREDIBLE!

Computer human interaction is a part of computer science in which both researchers in academia and industry participate. It’s a fast-paced field of work filled with nearly unthinkable gadgets and seemingly endless possibilities.

While at CHI, Dave manned the Sifteo booth where he showed off the varying capabilities of Sifteo cubes. He was continually approached by scientists and students alike; everyone was eager to test out such an unusual project, which also has the distinction of making it all the way from MIT’s Media Lab to the mass market.

“Academic and industry researchers often work on a lot of projects in the lab that never see the light of day,” Dave said. “So without sounding too grandiose, I think Sifteo is pretty aspirational for the maker community in a lot of ways.”

Dave also remarked that one of the highlights of being at CHI was when a woman approached the Sifteo booth and explained that it was his TED talk about Siftables, a prototype of Sifteo cubes, that had inspired her to get a graduate degree.

Going to the CHI conference was an unforgettable experience. It was wonderful to hang out in Austin for the weekend with such a talented group of peers.

Last night, Sifteo co-founder Jeevan Kalanithi attended the San Francisco Business Times 2012 Tech & Innovation Awards ceremony. All told, it was a pretty terrific night–good food, great company, AND he took home Sifteo’s award for first place in the Gadget/Product category!

After seeing several awards go to bigger companies with hundreds of employees and an established market following, Jeevan was startled but very excited to be called to the stage on behalf of our small startup. For future consideration, here are the takeaways from his moment of surprise:

1. Even if the award seems like a long-shot, have a few comments prepared, just in case;
2. Dress nicer, just in case;
3. When at the buffet table, eat more sliders.

After the ceremony, we asked Jeevan how he felt about it.

“Definitely nice,” he said. “It’s a great tribute to everybody here—I’m really proud of the award because I’m really proud of the work our team at Sifteo does everyday.”

A few weeks ago on Facebook, you voted for our next Sifteo game hero…

…now here he is!

Meet Oscar, the Facebook favorite and bug-gobbling, lily pad-hopping frog. In less than a month, Oscar will be leaping onto your Sifteo cubes! Neighbor, tilt, and press your cubes to help him navigate the pond, avoid obstacles, and snap up those air-borne  snacks. Developed exclusively for Sifteo by Sabarasa, Bug Bound will be free and downloadable to anyone with Sifteo cubes.

This past Saturday, Sifteo joined 20,000 Girl Scouts as they celebrated their 100^th Anniversary at the One Hundred, Fun Hundred Festival in Pleasanton, California. Among the zip lines, wild animals, bottle rockets, and thousands of patches, we had a blast showing off our intelligent game cubes.

What impressed us the most with this event was how excited the Girl Scouts were to learn and explore with Sifteo cubes! There is no better way to spend a Saturday than partying with an amazing group of young leaders and learners.

We will certainly be there for each Girl Scout milestone to come!

Sifteo, a venture-backed start-up creating a next-generation game system (Sifteo Cubes), is seeking a user experience and visual designer. Work will begin on a contract basis, and may transition to full-time.

As the sole designer in our tight knit team, you will lead the design of many user touch points (web, desktop software, and marketing communications). Your design approach will be guided by customer understanding, a high level of aesthetic polish, a desire to create ease of use, all while elevating the Sifteo brand. We’re off to a great start in defining a compelling brand look and feel and creating engaging interactive experiences. We need you to take us to the next level. We truly pride ourselves on aesthetics and user experience – you’ll have fun here.

We are creating Sifteo cubes, wireless blocks with full color screens that interact with each other and respond to motion to unleash a whole new world of play. (We’ve been described as combining the best of the iPhone, Nintendo Wii, and Legos.) The technology has been spun out of the MIT Media Lab and has been featured on the Science and Discovery channels, presented at the TED conference, and has been showcased by The New York Times (David Pogue review), Time Magazine, CNN, Wired, Engadget and more. Adults love us! And kids love us, big time!

Sifteo has received numerous design awards, including “Best in Show” at the IxDA Interaction Awards, IDEA International Design Excellence Award, and “The Year’s Best in Interface Design” from Fast Company. Designers loves us too.

For more information about our product, see http://sifteo.com

Yes, this is a position in a startup!

We’re well funded, and we can pay you. But if the two main priorities in your life are inherent security and the ability to rely on things planned months ahead, please stop reading this now and do something else. If curiosity, ability to suffer, resilience and clear sense of individual responsibility get you going, please continue reading. You’ll find and we expect a sense of truthfulness (towards oneself, each other and reality, learned the hard way), being demanding (is this the best you can do?) as well as extensiveness (have fun really grasping things in their entirety).*

This is a contract position that may transition to full-time, located at Sifteo headquarters in the Dogpatch district in San Francisco. This position reports to the Director of Marketing, and works collaboratively with the marketing team, game studio, and product team.

Responsibilities

• Summary: User Interface and graphic design for the Sifteo website, desktop software, and marketing materials
• Interaction & Visual Design
  • Create wireframes, graphics, and pixel-perfect mock-ups for all web and software updates
  • Develop user flows and experience maps that cover multiple touch points
  • Work collaboratively with the Director of Marketing to define requirements, the marketing team copywriter to develop content, and the web developer to implement and QA.
  • Drive projects forward and ensure your features go live and are well polished
• Marketing Communications
  • Showcase our games and product in the best way possible
  • Provide design direction and visual assets for social media content, online advertising and other marketing campaigns
  • Design and manage vendors to create marketing materials for special events (flyers, posters, banners, t-shirts, etc
• Pitch in above and beyond your job requirements to help out the marketing team and Sifteo at large, as needed (we all wear many hats, most of which are very stylish)

Requirements

• 3+ years related experience (consumer facing interactive design and graphic design for marketing campaigns)
• Polished design style with the ability to follow established visual identities and improve them
• College degree
• Expert in interactive design
• Wizard level Photoshop, Illustrator skills
• Can design for a variety of mediums: websites, software, online banners, print, and more.
• Online portfolio showcasing stunning elegant consumer experiences
• Self-starter, quick paced, versatile, smart, and organized
• Ability to manage ambiguity, work autonomously and multi-task in an agile environment.
• Seeks out and positively responds to feedback
• Collaborative – enjoys working with others to identify solutions and learn
• Excited about Sifteo cubes, and ready to work hard with us

Bonus points for:

• Front-end coding skills: including JS, CSS, HTML (we would LOVE to see you showcase skills here)
• Flash
• Experience in marketing communications/advertising design
• Video editing (Final Cut Pro, etc.)
• Experience working on multi-device projects
• Pixel art
• Copywriting
• User research

Compensation:

• Hourly or project-based pay
• Full-time compensation includes salary and benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, and 401k

Please send resumes in PDF format only to jobs at sifteo dot com with subject “User Experience Designer”

This Sunday, April 22nd,  is Earth Day, a worldwide celebration of our beautiful planet Earth. To commemorate Earth Day, many of us plant trees, go for a hike, or volunteer to help clean up a beach. But arguably the most important part of celebrating Earth Day is making a commitment to learn what more we can do on both a worldwide and an individual scale to make our planet a cleaner, healthier place.

In the last couple decades, the growing public concern for the impact we have upon the environment has increased dramatically, and we’ve seen some really positive changes as a result. Cities are implementing comprehensive recycling and composting programs, and there are incentive programs for carpooling to work. Hybrid and other fuel-efficient cars are no longer anomalous, and more and more businesses are “going green” by incorporating environmentally friendly practices into their operational and manufacturing decisions. At Sifteo, we’re also doing our part!

And it’s actually pretty simple to reduce your carbon footprint in everyday life; even small actions add up to sizable results. Making your habits more eco-friendly can be fun as well as easy! Starting this month, for example, I’ll be shopping at the farmer’s market for local, organic produce. What would you like to do this year?

Whatever you decide to do to help the environment this Earth Day, also take a moment to have some fun answering the related trivia questions below. How much do YOU know about going green? Try the questions with your Creativity Kit: Multiple Choice and pass them on to your friends!

1. The first Earth Day was celebrated in which year?

a.  1980

b.  1970

c.  1950

d.  1901

2. This state will soon become the first in the U.S. to ban arsenic-based additives in chicken feed.

a.  Maryland

b.  Oregon

c.  Iowa

d.  California

3. In 2012, which city was named “America’s Greenest City?

a.  Cincinnati

b.  San Francisco

c.  Portland

d.  Houston

4. One fun and easy way of reducing your impact on the environment is …

a.  joining a gym

b.  buying imported fruits and vegetables

c.  drinking bottled water

d.  joining a carpool

5. Which of these bird species is critically endangered, meaning that its population has decreased or will decrease by 80% in three generations?

a.  Emperor penguin

b.  California condor

c.  Dodo

d.  Bald eagle

6. Which country was not named among the greenest in the world in 2012?

a.  United States

b.  Costa Rica

c.  Switzerland

d.  France

7. Where and when were electric cars first used as taxis?

a.  Chicago, 1945

b.  San Diego, 1981

c.  London, 2000

d.  New York, 1897

8. Which of these is not a renewable energy source?

a.  solar power

b.  natural gas

c.  hydropower

d.  biomass and biofuel

9. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which of these fish is overfished or caught in environmentally unsafe ways, and is therefore not recommended restaurant fare?

a.  Dungeness crab

b.  Mahi mahi

c.  Alaska wild salmon

d.  Chilean sea bass

10. Whose research led to a large-scale ban on the pesticide DDT, which was later shown to have been a leading cause of the near-extinction of the bald eagle?

a.  Al Gore

b.  Richard Ellis

c.  Rachel Carson

d.  Dian Fossey

Happy Earth Day!

Here at Sifteo, we make Sifteo cubes and downloadable games that are fun and challenging, and that you can feel good about playing. We believe play and learning should go hand-in-hand, and we often collaborate with places like the Children’s Creativity Museum and Exploratorium. Most recently, we’ve teamed up with Galileo Learning to offer the Sifteo Scholarship to Galileo Summer Camps.

At 31 site locations, Galileo Learning programs are diverse, exciting, and so much fun. They offer camps on the Art and Science of Music, SF Art and Bridge Engineering, Fashion Design, Digital Photography, Extreme Go-Karting (!), LEGO Robotics (!!), and Video Game Design (!!!), to name just a few. There are tons of other cool topics to choose from, and they all offer immersive, hands-on experiences shared by a small group of encouraging campers and experienced staffers.

Are your children entering grades Pre-K through 8th and living in the Bay Area? Please encourage them to apply to the Sifteo Scholarship to Galileo Learning summer camps! Camp tuition, lunch, and extended hours care are included in the scholarship. Of course, parents are welcome to provide a bit of assistance with the application.

Here’s how to apply for the scholarship:

1. Read up about Galileo Learning and decide with your child if it’s something he or she would want to do.
   • If your child is between Pre-K and 5th grade, he/she is eligible to attend Camp Galileo;
   • If your child is between 5th and 8th grade, he/she is eligible to attend Galileo Summer Quest;
   • 5th graders have the option of choosing to attend EITHER Camp Galileo OR Galileo Summer Quest.
2. Follow this link to the application.
3. Have your child answer the questions to the best of his or her ability. (Make sure you enter your email address in the final question so you may be contacted if your son or daughter wins!)
4. Hear back from us shortly after the contest ends on May 18^th.

It’s that simple. And even if your child doesn’t win, we still want to encourage his/her innovation! 10 participants from each category (20 total) will be randomly selected to win a FREE set of Sifteo cubes to keep the experiments and new ideas coming.

Don’t wait to apply! Deadline for all entries is at 5pm PST, May 18, 2012.

Read the Official Contest Rules for more information about eligibility, prizes, etc.

Bonfires, friendship bracelets, Jell-O, relay races, and cheesy camp songs—ahh, summer camp!

Practically everyone has a few great childhood memories at summer camp, and if not, you’ve probably seen at least a dozen or so movies (The Parent Trap? Wet Hot American Summer? Friday the 13^th Part VI?) in the bottomless American film genre dedicated *exclusively to* summer camp.

Next to a few choice Hollywood destinations of the imagination (à la Camp Cucamonga), Sifteo thinks the most awesome summer camp around is at Galileo Learning.

The Galileo Learning approach to summer camp is a lot like Sifteo’s Intelligent Play approach to video games: their camps offers all the fun stuff of summer camp (friends! face paint! water balloons! playin’ in the sun!) while offering campers an immersive learning experience related to a topic of his or her choice.

We like Galileo Learning camps so much, in fact, we will be offering 2 Sifteo Scholarships to their camps this summer. Later this week, check our blog, Facebook page, and Twitter feed to learn more about how your son or daughter can win the scholarship!!

(You can also find out more about Galileo Learning on their Facebook page!)

Sifteo recently received the Major Fun award for “an innovative interface…inviting minds and fingers to many hours of deep, intelligent, and often major fun.”

Of course, we’re psyched! And we want to share the news with our community by giving our users more of the good stuff that makes Sifteo fun major: cubes! LOTS and LOTS of them!

Want to spell longer words in Word Play or enhance your multiplayer experience in Creativity Kit? Did you download Miami Heist and then realize it requires 4 cubes but you only have 3? Feel like getting even more lost in your Sifteo maze games? Enjoy having an extra cube on hand for starting interesting conversation at soccer practice, pancake houses, and the dentist’s office?

Now is your chance to win a free cube!

Email us a picture of you and your friends or family playing Sifteo cubes and having some major fun! (Trivia night? Game night? Study power hour? LoopLoop jam session?) Be creative! Be silly! If we love your picture, we’ll post it in an album on Facebook. The first 100 people to submit valid, shareable photos will receive a discount code for use in the Sifteo Shop worth $45, equivalent to a FREE Sifteo cube! Send your picture as an attachment to fun@sifteo.com and we’ll email you back with the discount code for your new cube!

Submissions will be accepted through 4/25/2012. Limit 1 per household. Photos should have a max file size of 500k. Jpg format preferred. By submitting a photo you are granting Sifteo the right to use the photo for promotional purposes and you have the rights to the photo and the permission of all people in the photo. The content of the photo needs to be appropriate for sharing to qualify. The Sifteo Store is available to customers in U.S and Canada only. Discount codes will expire on 5/31/2012. Sifteo reserves the right to discontinue this cube giveaway at any time.