Have you seen seen the viral WII Video on Youtube that’s been viewed nearly 4 Million times? It’s called “Why Every Guy Should Buy their Girlfriend WII fit”. Personally I think it’s a WII commercial cleverly discussed as a viral video but either way it was surprised to see one of our portraits in it.

We just wrapped up the Montreal Design Show (SIDIM) last week. It was one of the best shows we’ve done all year. We met some great people including fellow designers, architects, interior designers and clients. As a VIP guest of the event SIDIM even put me up in the new OPUS Hotel. If you are ever in Montreal I encourage you to check out this very luxurious, unique and modern boutique hotel.

This year we decided to get creative and design a booth that was built from recycled materials and could also be 100% recycled. Mission accomplished. Nothing in our booth was wasted this year. The booth was made 20% from cardboard and 80% from wood. All the wood was donated to a local farmer and the cardboard was tossed into a recycling bin at the end of the show. Even the metal hardware was recycled. The Booth space was worth nearly $10,000 but the booth only cost us around $300 to make and we recieved a lot of looks and great feedback from the attendees.

Mnay thanks to our design intern Anthony Chimbuya for all his hard work and dedication and to our friends at Spade Magazine for making the event possible.

I just received my DNA Ancestry DNA collection kit from dna.ancestry.com (a division of Ancestry.com).  I ordered my kit online. The process was straight forward and very easy.  I ordered the “Advanced Paternal Lineage Test (Y-Chromosome 46)” kit for $199.00 USD. Pricing starts as low as $149 for the less precise and indepth Chromosome 33 test.  For some reason they recommend the less expensive Chromosome 33 test on the site but I wasn’t totally clear why.

The kit arrived by standard mail about two weeks later. The packaging is elegant and simple and just as easy to use as the site. It included:

In a few weeks I will be receiving my results by e-mail. I am very eager to see how this turns out. I will be posting my results for everyone to see.

For a complete overview visit dna.ancestry.com

The media coverage keeps rolling in! On April 11th, 9am EST our DNA art is featured on The Rachael Ray Show“.  The Show’s co-host of the segment called “The Dish” (Lara Spencer) loves our concept and shows viewers how they can get their own custom DNA Portrait made.

Click here to create yours!

After placing numerous harassing persuasive phone calls to BBC Click (one of my favorite programs) we finally got featured on their segment called “Webscape: Best of the Web”. Many thanks to Kate Russell for covering us.

If you want to see the clip and read about some other interesting web sites go here.

The BBC has been great to us. earlier this year we were also featured on James May’s 2oth Century.

I was invited to speak to CNBC a few months ago during their popular Powerlunch TV show to talk about DNA 11 and our recent growth. The interview  was live from my second home city- Miami. When we started DNA 11 not too long ago I never imagined that we would appear on CNBC. The response was fantastic. Today the interview was featured on their site along with some other very innovative companies. Check it out the video by following the link below.  Our video is the 5th one down…

Go the CNBC Video Roundup here

One of our clients Jason Sutton just had his modern home featured in Seattle Metropolitan Magazine.  Jason’s DNA 11 portrait is placed predominantly within the design of the house and serves as a focal point. The house was designed by John DeForest,  a Harvard-trained architect.  The “Zipper House” design is a direct reflection of Jason’s laidback personality combining modern elegance and simplicity. Click here for the full article and more pictures.

You know you’re becoming part of ‘pop culture’ when you appear on CSI. The producers of CSI: NY contacted us to ask if we wanted to participate in an episode. At first we were a bit concerned how it was going to be used- but we couldn’t say no- we knew it would be a great opportunity to share our idea with the world. In this episode called “What schemes may come” a suspect’s DNA portrait is used to match her DNA to a crime without the need for getting a warrant.  This of course could never happenin real life.  The images we produce, although generated from our customer’s DNA and completely unique to each individual actually hold no forensically valid data. Also the sequences that we target are not disclosed to anyone outside of our labs.  We take mutiple steps to ensure the privacy of our clients.  So you don’t need to worry if you’re planning on doing any major crimes.

It was really cool to work with the producers of CSI and to see our art on CSI:NY.  Hopefully we can post a video clip in the next few days.

Our friends at the Xprize Foundation invited us to be sponsors of this years event and we happily accepted the invitation. Last week Nazim and I flew down to San Francisco to attend the prestigious event and do some serious networking. We got to meet some very interesting people and rub shoulders with the likes of Richard Branson (Virgin media mogul), Google co-founders Larry Page (chairman of Xprize) and Sergey Brin, actor Robin Williams, and Al Gore’s wife, Tipper.

Over 2 Million dollars was raised at the event. DNA 11 contributed by donating our art for the silent auction and awarding each “vision circle” board member with their very own DNA 11 portrait.

DNA 11 founders with actor Robin Williams

Anousheh Ansari’s DNA portrait was presented to her on stage

More coverage from and images from CNET, Mercury News

Yesterday DNA 11 was featured on The Today Show on NBC. The audience was over 4 million viewers. It seems like each week we are getting more and more publicity. Could Oprah be next? Stay tuned….

The best part of this video is when Al Roker says he loves our art.

YouTube Video Link below (might take a few seconds to load):