Your monthly non-spammy-gif-heavy newsletter from your friends at oio.

Hello oio friends! Still catching the last of this year’s warmth? Don’t get too cozy, as this is a VERY SPECIAL ISSUE™ of oio news. In facts, we celebrate the launch of a little experiment we’ve been cooking for the past few months. It’s called Walkcast — an ever-changing podcast, constantly generated as you walk. The best part? It’s actually working. Or it should be. Sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s not just all about the generative coolness! In this issue you’ll find more stuff, like a throwback to sunny days at the recently-concluded oio school 🏝️, and most importantly — welcoming our newest member to the oio team 👽.
 Don’t skip until the end, where you can find the usual cool links at the bottom. Number 7 will shock you! 😱

oio news™

a peek into the oioverse.
btw did you know you can find oio news on oio.news?

💫 Launching Walkcast

When was the last time you truly lost yourself in the simple act of walking? No destination, no urgency — just the curiosity of letting your feet lead you. We don’t remember either, and that’s why we created Walkcast!

Walkcast is an ever-changing podcast generated as you walk, revealing the hidden layers that surround you. Each step might unlock a new fact about the street you’re on, or sometimes, it just makes stuff up. But does it matter if it’s real, as long as it’s a good story?

You can watch the launch video here, or embark on a visual journey on our Instagram highlights, but most importantly, try it on walkcast.fm! A couple caveats—it’s a web app, so on iOS you may have to add it to your home screen to use it properly, but it’s all explained in the app.

How does it work?

Well, this is where things get interesting. You see in order to create an ever-changing experience, generated on the spot, we couldn’t just make a traditional app. Also that would be too easy, and boring. So we spiced things up and created what we called “A storytelling engine”.

But in order to keep it running consistently, we created a series of “agents”. Agents are intelligent entities, powered by language models (like chatGPT, or Gemini), and they can have different attributes, skills, and even personalities! Imagine Walkcast being run by a virtual team, a series of intelligent agents—Curator, Editor, and Host—each with a distinct role in the creation of every story.

The Curator digs deep into your surroundings, finding facts and points of interest. The Editor weaves these into a dynamic script, sometimes adding creative tangents and surprising twists. Finally, the Host delivers the story, always in the perfect tone. This loop continues as long as you keep walking, transforming every step into a surprising moment.

Why Walkcast?

If you've been following oio for some time, you'll know that our core focus is experimenting with future interactions, and lately, that involved a lot of artificial intelligence design work. From last year’s experiment the malleable web, to our most recent collaboration with Google Gemini on Ad-hoc UIs, much of our recent projects were about redefining how we engage with AI, exploring new metaphors and mental models beyond the familiar chat interface.

While most of this work remains under wraps, lately we’ve been collaborating on products used by millions globally, reimagining how people can radically engage with AI. But we're not alone—from OpenBMB’searly tests with virtual offices (or full-scale simulations) to the concept of a simulated web, many are working to reinvent AI collaboration from the ground up. Everyone is trying to answer the same questions—what does the next interaction look like? What's the right metaphor?"

We've been working on this topics for white a while now, and Walkcast, with its Storytelling Engine, is just one of the many experiments we're about to launch in this space. I did a talk at Hatch Conference last month where I tried to explore this space a bit more in depth. It's currently behind a paywall here, but hopefully it will be available on YouTube soon. WATCH THIS SPACE! 👀

But as someone said, the best way to steal a dog is to invent it, and that’s why we’re launching Walkcast today. After all, we are on a mission to make products and tools for a less-boring future, but let's face it, the world’s gotten a bit too predictable. Same routines, same headlines, same old paths. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The stories are out there, hidden just beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered—or, sometimes, invented.

🍎 oio school highlights

A week-long of tech, design and collaborative learning ended with a blast! Participants flew from all over the world to spend a week building AI products and interactions with machine learning, together with the oio team, in the beautiful setting of an Italian villa in Southern Italy. Work hard and play hard they say. Now with a pool, on the seaside, and Italian aperitivos.

We’ve put together some quick highlights, you can find them here on Instagram. We are also working on a longer-form documentary that will go more in details, so stay tuned!

👋 Welcome Normz!

This month, we welcome Norman to the oio family, who is joining as a Content Creator. Normz is a Taiwanese visual designer who enjoys cooking, dancing, and snoring 💤. He will be bringing you the latest content, project launches, and exclusive moments behind the scenes, along with the occasional marvel of the internet.

🍧 Cool links

Your monthly supply of fine goods, carefully handpicked from our beloved Discord community (missing out? Join now💨)

🌐 Free, public pics (public.work)
☎️ Final call for the Internet Phonebook (https://internetphonebook.net/)
🧑🏽‍💻 Morse code by slamming your laptop (github.com)
⛰️ Monument Valley returns this winter (polygon.com)
🔮 “Imagine” what you can buy (arcade.ai)
🤳🏽 Selfie with a traffic cam (trafficcamphotobooth.com)
⌨️ Google Tokyo’s gboard update (google.co.jp)
🚙 Waymo’s famous parking lot (youtube.com)
🧟 No, I’m not a human (youtube.com)

Want to share your cool links? Hop on the train and join our Discord!

📈 Monthly stonks

🌐 www: world wide web of windows
🕹 game: squirrel with a Gun
📁 are.na: corporate fetish
📚 wiki: acoustic kitty
🔧 tool: keka

✏️ words by matlo & normz

keep walking