Ksso.net - Notes of a tech entrepreneur

Alternative Distribution Channels for games

I was lucky to have been selected to speak at the iVentures conference in Toronto over “Alternative distribution channels”. Heather Anne Ritchie was an amazing moderator and my fellow panelists were awesome ( Jonathan Chan Sean Karoonian Tim Martin). I tried to share a few personal beliefs during that session: Each channel targets a different audience. Finding the right audience and the right channel for your game is essential to get it off the ground. The most important thing for a game is to be played. This should be the ultimate…read more

Tech as a Key Differentiator for Game Studios

At the core of a great game are often outstanding game mechanics that one would enjoy doing over and over again. The mechanics are then intertwined into a story, adding art and music to make those mechanics sexy for as long as possible. Every new generation of hardware has enabled new game mechanics, thereby creating new generations of games. More recently, touch devices have brought us swiping, for instance allowing the throwing of Pokeballs or the slicing of fruits. Just as the Wii and its Wiimote brought us endless fun playing bowling or the Xbox…read more

Domain Names are Dead

Wikipedia has an entertaining list of super-expensive domain name transactions. Over the past fifteen years it was indisputable that you needed a good name when launching a new business, including the associated .com and all the main local extensions in order to avoid trolling, if you wanted to succeed. A couple weeks ago as I was negotiating a domain name and the seller brought up that he had a complete extension collection, which is really rare. Last year I acquired 30+ extensions for actvt. A year later I feel stupid. I believe extension trolling is dead and…read more

Fighting Vertical Video Syndrome

I believe vertical videos are one of the worst ideas ever. The field of view only captures meaningless details and does not match how your eyes work. The video below makes an excellent point about why vertical videos are bad. The only reason vertical videos exist is because it’s the most natural way to hold a phone while filming, and unfortunately that’s a fact. Holding a phone horizontally is obviously clumsy and unnatural. That being said, there are a few solutions: Get phone manufacturers to rotate the sensors in…read more

360 Degree Video: Wait ‘Til It Really Comes Around

This post was initially posted on Mediapost Over the last few months there has been a lot of hype surrounding an immersive new type of video. Commonly referred to as virtual reality or spherical video, it allows the viewer to get a complete 360 degree view of an environment, and freely move their point of vision by tilting and turning their device. The buzz surrounding this trend is palpable — it feels like announcements of new 360 camera hardware, software, and videos come out of the woodwork on a daily…read more

Video as the Next Expression Challenge

For those who know me, you know I have little talent when it comes to creating art. I’ve been working on it though, focusing on photography, learning techniques and recipes that have definitely helped me go from producing basic utilitarian memory-keeping pictures to more elegant images that actually convey some level of emotion. Some of them can be found on 500px.com and show that just by following a couple of rules anyone is able to create some eye-candy. Erasing time by Alexander Casassovici on 500px Recently I’ve been faced with a new challenge:…read more

Entrepreneurship: Survival & Patience

I’ve attended LeWeb in Paris since the second edition back in 2005 – and year after year you get to reconnect with amazing people and update on their businesses. This year I was impressed by two entrepreneurs who launched their startup over 10 years ago and kept it going despite the ups and downs. They had to pivot a few times until they found their product market fit this year. Their business is scaling at exponential speed. On Techcrunch or other startup-savvy publications you often read incredible stories about startups that experienced immediate growth,…read more

Citizen Science Project: Cosmic Ray Particle Tracking

Posted by Alexander CASASSOVICI in citizen science

I am passionate about citizen science. I believe that crowdsourcing data and leveraging on communities not only helps in understanding patterns and behaviors, but also in supporting scientific purposes. I believe that people are only waiting for opportunities to get involved to make the world a better place – and simple actions brought at scale can have massive impacts. We did exactly that at Diveboard. Marine species identified by divers worldwide are published as open data for scientists to use in their research, thereby giving them access to real-time occurrence data at scale. This kind of…read more

From Cybernetics to Discovery

Discovery has become one of our main area of interest at Diveboard. Of course discovery isn’t a new idea – helping someone stumble onto something that will get him excited has been on the mind of every marketer forever. What has changed greatly though is the means we can leverage on to get there. Discovery actually dates back from the 50s as a part of Cybernetics. For those like me who were born after that discipline stopped being taught, we may have a wrong idea about what cybernetics is. Cybernetics…read more

Building an Automated Home with Z-Wave in 2014

Ah, home automation – what an overworked subject. It’s been hot (or not) for 20 years. Truth is, home automation needs to be shelved as a meaningless buzzword that encompasses way too many ideas. As we just bought a new home, I was faced with the challenge of dealing with rewiring it so it matches today’s electrical standards (which is a very versatile concept). Fact is, wiring a home is a nightmare. You need to figure out early on which switch connects to which plug and then embed it deeply into your…read more