Stage Two's blog

It’s been a while since we’ve moved into the new office and we definitely wanted to celebrate the holidays, so we figured that this year, we’d knock off some long-delayed things to celebrate, including having a nice office “housewarming” party and  to celebrate our third-year anniversary.

To help spruce up our place, we turned to our friends at 1:AM gallery and Quinn Wharton who generously provided art and photography work that is currently hanging on our walls. And not one to leave our friends famished and parched at a party, the fine folks at Work of Art event planning & catering made some delicious hors d’oeuvres and set them up on our very own meat tree – yes, you heard that right…we had an artificial tree that was filled with meat on a stick on the tree. It was absolutely delicious!

Stage Two also made a couple of cool announcements as well, including a new “soon-to-be” website for the company and our next new product called Gunman – the first iPhone First Person Shooter using augmented reality. We encourage you to give it a shot and to let us know what you think.

We thank you for stopping by our office for our Holi-Warming-Versary party and regardless of whether you were there or not, here’s a recap of photos:

Some of the artwork provided by 1:AM Gallery

Photography art provided by Quinn Wharton

Legacy Locker’s Gregg Delman

Stage Two’s Adam Burg & Jeremy Toeman

It’s our very own meat tree!

Decorating the meat tree.

Transforming the Stage Two office.

Ron Hirson of BOKU and Sol Lipman of 12seconds.tv

David Cohn of Spot.us and Stage Two’s Jim Schaff

David Cohn, Dave Mathews, Jim Schaff & Kevin Brown checking out Gunman

Jeremy Toeman with CNET’s Rafe Needleman

And what holiday party wouldn’t be complete without some Foosball? It’s David Speiser, Gregg Delman, Andrew Kippen & Jim Schaff.

To view more photos from our holiday party, please click here.

So the secret is finally out. The hours of playing Call of Duty have finally paid off. Today, Stage Two Labs is absolutely jazzed about the release of the world’s first augmented reality first person shooter for the iPhone – aptly titled “Gunman”.

We’ve been playing for hours around the office, hiding under desks and popping around corners – basically acting like kids again. Gunman combines all the fun of real-world games like paintball and lasertag, without requiring people to carry around any special equipment other than their iPhone.

The result is a laser-tag style game that takes the fast-paced multiplayer action of popular online and console titles and brings the war into the real world by allowing players to target their friends and see who *really* has the most skills.  Once a target is hit, players can save or Tweet “scoped” pictures of their favorite hits to the world – making the target’s shame eternal and proving their dominance as a Gunman. In addition to the local multiplayer version, players can “go Pro” in a solo mode by collecting bounties on celebrities appearing on the Gunman “Hit List”, and even track their prey via location-based service Foursquare (Ashton Kutcher, MC Hammer, Shaq, and 50 Cent should watch their backs). Of course, this is only the beginning, Gunman will receive regular updates such as team-based tactical missions (like capture the flag mode), an arsenal of new weapons, an international leaderboard, and more.

The game uses a variety of high technology services to create a fun and engaging experience for the players.  Some key components include:

• Gameplay involves “augmented reality” by adding layered services on the iPhone’s camera
• Detecting “hits” is done through a proprietary new color detection system.
• Local multiplayer gaming includes automatic peer discovery of other players.
• Sharing one’s accomplished shots incorporates the popular Twitter and Twitpic services
• Finding targets on the leaderboard is integrated with Foursquare for location lookup

Download the game here

Check out the Gunman website here

• Engadget says Gunman “finally makes augmented reality awesome”

Last Saturday, Ardica Technologies had a holiday party at their headquarter offices in San Francisco. To add to the celebration, there was also an awards ceremony to honor the winners of their first-annual “Power to the People” Design Contest. This was a contest where hundreds of entries were submitted and eight finalists were chosen from among young, talented designers & technology aficionados. As part of the contest, Stage Two participated in making this a more interactive program by creating the “People’s Choice Award” and inviting the public to choose which of the eight finalists they thought were the best. The winner was also announced at the ceremony.

The winners from the “Power to the People” Design Contest were:

• First Place: Ardica Voltage Sleeping Bag
• Second Place: Coal Mining Respirator
• Third Place: Backpack for Professional Photographers
• Special Recognition Prize: Ardica-enabled Ski Patrol Vest
• “People’s Choice Award”: Coal Mining Respirator

You can read some of the coverage of Ardica and their Moshi Power Pack here:

• VentureBeat: Battery-charged clothing, anyone? Ardica could convince you it’s worth it.
• CNET: Wearable battery-pack contest unzips winners (photos)

Here are some photos from the evening:

Arriving at the Design Contest to view each finalist’s entry.

After tallying up the votes, the winner of the “People’s Choice Awards” was the Coal Mining Respirator.

Some tech influencers and bloggers that came to the event – Harry McCracken, Marie Domingo, Andru Edwards & Gina Hughes.

Ardica’s CEO Hap Klopp with GearLive’s Editor-in-Chief Andru Edwards

The First Place winners of the Ardica Design Contest – the Moshi-powered sleeping bag.

Ardica’s CEO Hap Klopp being interviewed by VentureBeat reporter Thomas Slater.

You can read the full press release of the Design Contest here. For more pictures from the evening, please click here.

We have some excellent news to share from two friends of Stage Two Consulting, Clicker.com and Boxee. Clicker today has launched their new Boxee app. This app, as you might expect, lets you search for and watch great Internet television content on your actual TV.  Boxee is the 10 foot experience for Clicker.

The Clicker blog post has all the details. Next week, Clicker CEO and founder Jim Lanzone will be joining the Boxee guys at their Beta launch in Brooklyn, New York to get up on stage and talk about the new app.  If  you’re gonna be in the neighborhood, you should RSVP and check out the news (and the free food.)

Boxee and Clicker are both exciting products – both are consumer-facing, sexy, and offer compelling TV-related technology.  The news pickup has been pretty good.  We’ll update the coverage below as it comes in.

• CNET
• LA Times
• Variety
• CrunchGear
• NewTeeVee
• SoCal Tech

Today is the big day. Our favorite real-time online media streaming, Twitter and Facebook feed importing, work day killing,  source for addictive entertainment the web – Redux is announcing that their ground-breaking friend-sourced online media service, Redux.com, is moving out of closed private Beta, dropping the velvet rope, and opening the Redux addiction to the masses. We couldn’t be more thrilled, as the Redux team has a great service on their hands that has generated a ton of cool buzz and built an incredibly strong community. Also, we couldn’t be more terrified for the world’s economy now that Redux has been unleashed.

Head over to the Redux blog to check out this great blog post, “The Redux Manifesto”, written by Redux Founder and CEO David McInstosh: http://blog.redux.com/index.php/2009/12/01/the-redux-manifesto/

With this public launch, the entire world now has access to:

• Friend-Sourced online media fed in a real-time stream to each user only by their friends and those who share their interests – constantly fresh, completely personalized.
• Innovative Redux TV Mode that allows users to watch their personal Redux stream like a television, passively entertained by great online media fed to them by their friends
• Twitter and Facebook feed importing, bringing users’ online lives together and weeding out the boring status updates and blind links to serve up only the best online entertainment from their favorite social networks
• Highly interactive and engaging real-time, media-centered conversation unlike any other service on the web.

Check out some of the coverage from the announcement below (updated as it comes in):

• Mashable
• Read Write Web
• Obsessable
• Internet Video Mag