Kevin Warnock

Naked Suits unveiling party June 25, 2011 - Adisa Banjoko, Ming Chang, (guest) Kevin Warnock, Judy Hoang.

On April 27, 2011 I was a judge for the Made for China Entrepreneurial Pitch Competition and Startup Fair at University of California at Berkeley.

This was a fun evening, and I made some new friends, including Ming Chang, CEO of Naked Suits.

Liu Nan had earlier arranged for me to be a judge. I met Nan at the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum about six months ago, and we stayed in touch.

I love judging business plan competitions.

The winner of the Made for China event is a fascinating company with the provocative name Naked Suits. Here’s a video of the team receiving their first place prize at the actual competition. They win at 5 minute marker in the video. (You can see me in the far lower right at the 5:45 marker, taking a picture with my iPhone.)

Naked Suits is a clever name.

The Naked Suits idea is that their suits are so breathable, lightweight and durable that you feel as if you’re not wearing anything at all.

While their website doesn’t say so, I understand they are using fabric that is made with nanotechnology so that it repels water and most stain causing substances.

At the unveiling, Chang set up a testing station with fabric swatches and bottles of Two Buck Chuck, the famous red wine sold by Germany’s Trader Joe’s grocery store.

I personally poured an entire glass of red wine over a Naked fabric swatch and the fabric did not get stained. The wine rolled off and the fabric remained dry once I dusted the droplet balls of wine off the fabric. None of the wine balls absorbed into the fabric. I was impressed, and that’s why I’m writing this post.

I don’t wear a suit more than about twice a year. I will put on a suit for a wedding or funeral, but I never wear a suit for work or for a date. I’m much more into sports jackets and jeans for all but the most formal occasions. So I’m not likely to buy a Naked Suit, at least until they come out with a line of sports jackets.

The suits are nice.

They are handmade in Shanghai, China without fusing, a kind of heat activated glue used on many suits.

There is red piping along the inside lining that just pops visually. It’s very eye catching, and when someone catches a glimpse of the inside of a jacket, this red bead should signal that this is a costly and luxurious product. I’ve never seen such an eye catching detail on the inside of a men’s suit jacket before, and I have looked at a lot of suits over the years. I used to wear a suit five days a week when I worked at Cooley as a programmer.

Naked Suits are a bargain at USD $695. Handmade suits usually cost a lot more. I wish Naked Suits the best of success with their exciting venture. In all my years of judging business plan competitions, I have never seen a team attempt to enter the hotly competative fashion industry. Chang and his team show a flair for the dramatic, so I like their chances. Check out the flyer they put together for their Naked Suits unveiling. This looks like it could have been produced by an established fashion brand. I’m a photographer and I like it.

Naked Suits advertisement, June 25, 2011

The picture at the top of this post shows me with three members of the Naked Suits team.

Jim Buckmaster Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org, photo from boredborg.com

Until recently in order to push a Craigslist posting back to the top of the listings, one would have to delete it and then repost it, a many step process.

I noticed not long ago there is now a ‘renew’ link-button in the ‘manage’ column of options. When one clicks this renew link, the post is reposted to the top of the listings. This is a big time saver.

Thank you Craigslist.

Dan Rather, by Ed Schilpul March 12, 2007

Dan Rather is still out there working hard.

Looks like some lawyers got some egg on their face.

Given that USD $1,500,000,000 was ‘lost’ due to this mistake, and given that JP Morgan and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP are involved, I predict this won’t get worked out for a while.

I suspect the letters LLP at the end of the law firm’s name will be their three lucky stars that will keep them in existence.

When I used to watch television news, I would watch the CBS Eveninig News with Dan Rather.

I thought CBS was horrible to Rather when they fired him over a story he read on air. I doubt he personally verified everything he read on air, so to fire him for something that turned out to be incorrect was wrong.

The issue at hand was not important at all compared to the stature of Mr. Rather.

I would argue the stature of Rather surpasses by far the stature of the US President in charge when Rather was fired.

The Cube Project house - http://www.cubeproject.org.uk/

Here’s a small house that a lot of thinking went into. It’s called The Cube Project.

The Cube Project is an initiative of Dr. Mike Page at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, Page is an engineer and Reader in Cognitive Psychology at the University’s School of Psychology.

Here’s a video tour of Page’s impressive net zero house.

I want one of these in my backyard!

GoAmerica home page

It was 10 years ago today that a mobile product I helped create — Mobile Office — won a CNET/PC Expo award.

CNET was the TechCrunch of its day.

To commemorate the day 10 years ago I wrote the blog post Mobile Office, a product I helped create, wins CNET/PC Expo Best Business Solution Award.

I wrote the post as I would likely have written it 10 years ago, so I assigned it a publication date of June 28, 2001. I disclosed that fact in an afterword at the bottom of the post.

I am writing this brief additional post to alert you to the ’10 year old post’ that you probably would never see otherwise.

Cooley 2010 annual review cover

I just got an email that noted the Cooley LLP 2010 annual review report is ready for downloading.

I worked at Cooley LLP for about five years, so I looked through the report, marveling at the scope of projects that law firm works on.

I’ve written about Cooley before, so you know I like this firm.

I recommend Cooley to my friends running companies.

When I was looking for a job 3 years out of college, I had never heard of Cooley (then Cooley Godward Castro Huddleson & Tatum). I just got supremely lucky to get hired by such a quality firm.

My advice to new college graduates:

Select your employers carefully since you may remain connected to them forever.

Here is a fun video that shows a guy getting on the Internet via his modern laptop from home via a 1964 wooden boxed 300 baud acoustic coupled modem.

Students at my high school were using acoustic coupled modems in 1977. The modems were connected to terminals that I believe were connected to a large computer at University of Chicago.

When I say dumb terminal, I mean pretty dumb, because they didn’t have video displays. They were essentially electric typewriters hooked to a large computer that could support multiple users at once.

You would type a command, which would be printed on the fan-folded computer paper in front of you. The command would be sent ‘quickly’ over a 300 baud modem, and the textual response would be printed on the same green bar computer paper for you to read and act on.

Sadly, I never got to use these terminals, as they were for older students. I was in 9th grade at the time.

Here’s a video of one of these old DEC computer terminals in use with an old DEC minicomputer.

I wonder what advanced technology students at my high school are using today. I have little doubt they have access to supercomputers and exceptionally fast Internet connections. I’ve only used an exceptionally fast Internet connection for a few days, and it was like being on a local network. I downloaded a 500 megabyte file from 6,000 miles away in less than a minute. This connection was at a Dutch military college in The Hague, Netherlands, where I was staying during the ConTeXt conference in 2009. We had to plug our laptops in to jacks as there was no Wi-Fi available due to security precautions.

I understand residents in Hong Kong have similarly fast Internet connections for a low price. We should have these connections in the United States — why don’t we?

Below is a picture of a DECwriter III terminal like I remember from high school.

My mother Martha Warnock used to use at work a DEC PDP/11 minicomputer, but with a video terminal. I used to program on a DEC VT320 video monitor hooked to a DEC VAX minicomputer cluster. My brother Andrew Warnock used to help my mother program her DEC, and I remember to play video games on the DEC he needed a way to press the Enter key rapidly to make the game easier to play and more fun. He took apart the keyboard and soldered wires to the Enter key connections. Then, he made a motorized switch with rotating contacts that would make and break connection with each revolution of the motor. He attached this switch to the wires from the keyboard he had installed and now he could press Enter as fast as required by his game. This might sound rediculous to my readers, but this was in about 1979 or 1980, when the Commodore VIC 20 was considered a hot computer. My brother had one of those, but getting to use a DEC PDP/11 that cost tens of thousands of dollars I suspect was more exciting than using the VIC 20.

LA120 DecWriter III (from http://decpicted.posterous.com/)

Greenerati.com blog post about aquaponics at PCBC June 22-24, 2011

Blogger, writer and consultant Keith Rockmael wrote the post Aquaponics Outside PCBC and West Coast Green about my aquaponics system that’s been on display this week at PCBC in front of Moscone Center in San Francisco, California USA.

Here’s a screen capture of just the first part of the post… please be sure to click on this link to send him some traffic.

The house in the background is by New Avenue, Inc.

Moscone North is to the immediate left, as this house is sitting in the driveway in front.

New Avenue personnel staffing the New Avenue eco house told me that representatives from three other trade shows asked about getting an aquaponics display for their shows. If these trade show representatives are reading this post, I am interested in helping out, even though I am not in the aquaponics business.

I’m a software entrepreneur that’s simply fascinated by aquaponics.

My friend Kevin Casey at New Avenue, Inc. got the PCBC Home of Innovation installed on time for the opening two days ago of the 2011 PCBC convention in San Francisco, California USA.

This was a fantastic effort on Casey’s part because the show gave him a short deadline to complete the ambitious project. I’m not privey to the exact timeline, but I am pretty sure he had under a month to build, deliver and erect this ~750 square foot house inside the Moscone Center, the largest convention center in Northern California.

I wrote last week about this house being delivered to Moscone.

Today I shot a walk through video during the public hours of the show. Today is the final day of the show, so there are fewer attendees than there were the first two days. This makes for a cleaner video.

As you watch this video, remember this house was designed, built, delivered and assembled in about a month! If you work for a trade show and need a demonstration structure built quickly, I suggest you consider working with New Avenue. I have no connection with that company, but Casey has allowed me to show off my aquaponics system at one of his other houses, which I appreciate.

2011 PCBC Home of Innovation, June 24, 2011, San Francisco, California USA

In my blog post from yesterday, June 17, 2011, entitled New Avenue brings two of its homes to Moscone Center for the Pacific Coast Builders Conference June 22-24, 2011 I wrote about the spectacular delivery of two houses to the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California USA.

I used my Canon 5D Mark II camera to shoot high definition video of the delivery process. HD video takes time to process and upload, so the clip wasn’t ready by the time I published yesterday’s story.

As promised, here is the clip I assembled of the houses arriving from San Jose, California.

The first part of the video shows 3 large semi trucks driving up 3rd Street and descending down the loading dock adjacent to Moscone South. Moscone Center is composed of 3 large halls – South, North and West, built in that order over years. I follow these trucks into Moscone South, which was the incorrect hall, as workers told me the South hall is undergoing renovations and thus shows aren’t currently being held in it. Even though this was a mistake on the truck driver’s part, I include the video because most readers of this article will have never seen the South hall totally empty, like it is in this clip. The South hall is the most impressive of the three halls because there are no support columns in the middle of the room. It’s nearly a square block of unobstructed space, and it’s stunning to behold devoid of all the commotion present when it’s occupied.

Off video the trucks then snaked through the tunnel underneath Howard Street into Moscone North, which is where the PCBC conference will take place June 22-24, 2011.

Before we see the houses inside the North hall, the video switches to the driveway for the North hall, on Howard Street. A 4th semi truck brings a second house, complete with deck and my aquaponics system, and parks it parallel to Howard Street and the entrance to the hall.

The video concludes with a clip showing one of the semi trucks inside the North hall driving out from under one of the parts of the first house after that house was temporarily set on blocks. Although it’s not shown in this video, the house pieces were later lowered from their blocks onto their ‘foundations’ and the house pieces were put together to form one elegant ~750 square foot home that will be a featured attraction at PCBC next week.