Sunil's Blog

Our field trip to the ROM brought back memories from grade 6, when our ancient civilizations class went on a field trip to look at various skulls of early humans. Clearly the ROM has changed a lot since grade school, the most dramatic of which is the addition of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal . It’s somewhat sad to see that the shuttered McLaughlin Planetarium which has been slated for demolition, is currently being used to store furniture.

I expected to see some cool interactive displays not unlike ones we’ve see in class before by Zach Booth Simpson, where kids play with virtual butterflies or virtual calders. While the dinosaur exhibits did have some “touch” displays to present content, they were by no means pioneering. I understand the challenges the ROM faces when it comes to keeping up with changing needs of new media.

Our class met with Brian Porter, who is the senior director of new media at the ROM. He came to the ROM in 1999 with a journalism background, and helped transition the museum from analog to digital.

The ROM is a charity that receives funding from the government and private donations. The work environment is “cultural” as opposed to “corporate”.

Obstacles to developing leading edge interactive content:

- debt of the Crystal outweighs the support for the New Media Department

- no room or resources for research and development

- hard to do “cool” things with old technology

One of the ROM’s current projects is to create a digital photographic archive of their over 6 million specimens. Proposed business models would be licensing the photos like stock photography or using the archive for an e-learning extension where teachers to find curriculum materials.

After the ROM, we visited Steve Mann‘s workshop. While I had heard of him being billed as the “human cyborg,” it didn’t register with me until he open the door with his head gear on.

I was interested to hear him explain what he was seeing/recording/filtering with his head gear, but it appears as though his current research focus is away from cyborgism.

Steve presented Nesse, a interactive multimedia flute that uses water instead of air. You get wet while playing and listening to this instrument!

Pachelbel’s canon

The tone of the instrument shifts when the user blocks one or more of the jets. The “soft” keys can be pressed in a multitude of different ways to produces subtle changes in volume, tone and timbre.

The largest of these installations can be found at the Ontario Science Centre:

FUNtain

After polling the class, I’ve come to recognize a lot of the obstacles that arise in developing a mobile applications. A majority of the class don’t have Flash Lite capable mobile devices, and the few that do don’t use flash lite applications because data plans are too expensive.

If we tech geeks aren’t using these applications, what are the chances of the general population adopting them? I guess that’s the challenge we as developers must face, if Flash Lite applications are to EVER become popular.

James Eberhardt the Technical Director of “Insert Company Name Here,” came to speak to the IMM class about developing applications for a mobile platform. He demonstrated a few mobile applications (Flickr Upload, QR Codes) using a wifi enabled cell phone.

He’s done work for “The Border” television series on the CBC, which uses QR codes as part of a mobile scavenger hunt – theborder.ca .

QR codes – save time typing; seen on tourist locations, wine bottles, ads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code.

There are some major obstacles for creating mobile content.

• In Canada to download 1 megabyte of data outside of a data plan costs $20. An average mp3 download would cost $80! The CRTC has recently opened up a new spectrum of radio waves that will allow for new carriers to enter the market http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/12/24/tech-yearahead.html?ref=rss . More companies would allow for competitive pricing. Another option for developer’s is to create content that is “on deck” with carrier. “On deck” content is treated separately from regular data, and billed at a discounted rate.
• Flash Lite – doesn’t support AS3!! Only As2. This is a major gotcha for me, because in IMM we’ve being programming all our projects in AS3. If Flash Lite 3 (recently released) isnt’ capable of AS3, it would be a couple years before hardware and software for phones catches up. James showed us an example of the Flash Lite 3 that supports alpha tweens and transformed video.
• GPRS not available on Flash Lite.
• 100′s of different devices with varying interfaces

In order to bring GPS-like capabilities to non-GPS type phones, there is WPS – Wi-Fi Positioning System from Skyhook Wireless. WPS uses terrestrial based Wi-Fi access points to determine location. The iPhone uses this network to triangulate 20 meter position accuracy, in conjuction with cellular network towers.

http://www.skyhookwireless.com

Murmer is a project that allows users to retrieve oral historical accounts about specific geographic locations from their cell phones.

http://murmurtoronto.ca

Our guest speaker today was Simon Conlin. He works as a consultant and acts as a liason for companies who wish to branch out into interactive multimedia. He is connected to a talented pool of designers, and is co-founder of FlashintheCan, one of the largest Flash developer globally held events in North America.

The multimedia industry is trending towards to more interactive content. Users are spending more time interacting and having fun with content, rather than being “sold” a specific brand or message.When a need arises for a certain application, then the technology becomes mainstream.

Adobe Interactive Installation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-NRdyUx8Lc

This installation allows multiple users to create musical content using a multi touch music wall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qmmdGonQW4

MESO is a design team comprised of four designers and one computer engineer. They tout themselves as torn between art and technology, which allows them to bring innovative solution for clients. They do commercial work, while maintaining an artistic base. George Michael used massive interactive stage sets with realtime audio analysis and position tracking in his last Live25 world tour. http://meso.net/GMI25Live

Alexander Calder was an artist that employed the use of balance and motion in his world renown mobile installations. One of Zach Booth Simpon’s complaints is that when museums display these works of art, they don’t allow patrons to touch or blow on these works of art, interaction which Calder had originally intended. This frustration, led to Simpson’s virtual Calder’s: http://www.mine-control.com/zack/balance/balance.html

Webcamtastic is similar to the Photo Booth that come preinstalled on a Mac. It is a Flash web application that accesses your webcam, allowing you to manipulate photos by using distortion and blur filters. http://www.webcamtastic.com/

Potential applications:

Imagine going to a Japanese restaurant, and being able to order sushi from an interactive menu. This would eliminate the need for wait staff and give patrons and detailed description of the menu items.

Today our class went on a field trip to visit GestureTek Technology, located downtown Toronto.

Vincent John Vincent started GestureTek, to support performance art involving virtual instruments. The early iterations of their technology employed an Amiga with 16 colours, laser disks that contained background video and multiple video formats and cables.

GestPoint allows human interaction with electronic devices and machines by allowing intuitive, eyes free interaction with computers and machines using hand gestures.

Their current technology is used in museums, science centres, sports and education. One of the pros of a no-touch interface is that it is less likely to break, because of lack of moving parts.

Some of the exhibits we saw:

Holopoint involves two cameras forming a video matrix. It is a portable system, and is able to accommodate large screens.

Japanese game show where actors are immersed within a virtual environment.

Interactive Table:

This table houses internal cameras beneath the glass. Similar to Microsoft Surface, the table we saw has multi-touch capability and allows up to six users to manipulate virtual objects.

IR Floors:

These floors react to anything that is different from the original animation. A particle engine drives particle interaction, and different applications are run at a time in intervals. Flash games have limitations with respect to particles.

Mobile Devices:

Katamari Damacy Mobile is a video game for the DoCoMo’s 904i series of mobile phones by Mitsubishi developed by Namco Bandai. It is a spin-off of the Katamari Damacy series, the second game on a portable system and the third game produced without the involvement of series creator Keita Takahashi.

This version of the game uses a unique method of control, by making use of a new software technology called GestureTek EyeMobile to make phones capable of detecting tilt and vibration via the built in camera. The player will be able to move the katamari ball forward, backwards, left and right by merely tilting the phone.

Nintendo’s Wii videogames to treat patients who have movement and balance problems. Occupational therapists are guiding patients through golf swings, tennis serves and baseball strikes to help them not only gain lost movement, but to teach their brains to respond quickly to fly balls or swinging fists.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2007/05/11/wii-therapy.html

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=5ff7f35b-e86b-4264-b3e6-19f6b5075928&k=63173

$2 multitouch – A simple multitouch pad made from a plastic bag, some dyed water, and a camera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzNh31q61gc

Microsoft Surface prototyping began in 2001. Allows multiple people to work on a project without using a mouse or keyboard. The future the form factor of this computer can be part of a countertop, wall or refrigerator.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Touch screen technology is not perfect. One problem that arises is that as you put your fingers on a device you obscure the screen. One company is suggesting that using a device that using a touch interface behind the device allows for more accurate performance without obscuring the screen.

LucidTouch – a see-through mobile device:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aASuL7RHJHM

PlayStation3 – Eye of Judgment

http://kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/eye-of-judgment-online-impressions-302228.php

Playing Knockout on the PlayStation2 with EyeToy:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=6829556

So here’s my first attempt at creating 3D panoramas in QTVR and Flash using the Interactive Multimedia Lab as a demo. I used a “point and shoot” Canon PowerShot and a tripod.

Things to note:
- Flash file isn’t optimized for the web
- The top and bottom panels are blank
- Limited to a cube, which forced me to squish the photos
- The QTVR file is a lot lighter in file size

QTVR: (Needs Quicktime Plugin)
http://www.suniljohn.com/projects/panotests/qtvrs.html

Flash w Papervision3D and AS2:

http://www.suniljohn.com/projects/panotests/simplePanorama.html

I would like to figure out how to shoot the ceiling and floor to make the cube complete.