Check us out on Engadget this week. You heard about it in John Prolly’s blog, then again on our blog. And a few smart commenters correctly guessed that the prototype would involve telepathic shifting. Ding ding ding! As you now know, Patrick and Matthew worked on technology to outfit a bike for the Toyota Prius Project. Patrick reports, “It was fun. And going to Parlee was pretty sweet too.” Read more about the project here on the official project page.

In December, we launched the ParkPGH app with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. It provides real-time parking availability for Pittsburghs Cultural District and serves over 2 million visitors to the area on iPhones, the ParkPGH.org website, and text messaging. This week, readers of Pittsburgh Magazine voted the app “Best Local App” along with Beerby. Check it out:

Headed toward the Cultural District? Looks like the Convention Center and Grant Street Transportation Center are your best bets! Here’s a peek at the ParkPGH website we built:

Nathan was invited to see President Barack Obama speak at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center. The mission? To personally deliver 2 Deeplocal tshirts designed by local artists to the President.

Nathan arrived early on Friday, tshirts in hand. As you can see, he was surrounded by men in business suits. Our noble leader remained unfazed, however, because Heather had prepped him well. If anyone accused him of being underdressed, Nathan would stick to the plan: either flash his fancy watch or shrug and point to the press. And then mumble something about nose hair…

The sun shining through the American flag was a symbol of hope that maybe President Obama would score some new threads that day and spread the message of innovation to Americans everywhere. Or he’d just wear them around the White House and get lots of compliments from Malia and Sasha on his newfound fashion sense. We’re cool with that.

Overall, the President’s speech was enjoyable. He made some supportive remarks (mostly under 140 characters that we suspect were conveniently written to be Tweeted): “The stuff we made, made America” and “We are inventors, we are makers, we are doers.” But after the closing statement, it was time to deliver.

Nathan caught President Obama’s eye in the crowd. The President was probably wondering why the tall dude in the button-up shirt was thrusting a handful of fabric in his direction. Nathan explained that the tshirts were made by local artists, and Obama mouthed “Deeplocal.”

You can see the Deeplocal lettering from the press side. Trib Total Media has an awesome photo* of Obama, Nathan, and the Deeplocal tshirt.

*that we can’t post here due to copyright protections. It’s okay- we support photographers.

The Secret Service quickly zero-ed in on the action, and snatched away the tshirts for clearance. They took down Nathan’s information, and assured him that the President would actually be keeping the shirts.

Way to go Nathan! Mission accomplished.

As an innovation studio, a post-digital shop, and a boutique design and development company all rolled into one, sometimes it can be hard to give a name to the work that we do at Deeplocal. So when Osha Gray Davidson recently described Nathan as “a Willie Wonka with a tool kit from Mythbusters and a punk rock soundtrack turned up to 11,” in Forbes, we think he got it right. Thanks Osha!