MeeTTable: Kevin O'Mahoney's Multi-Touch Meeting Table Project

Kevin O' Mahoney is a multimedia developer who is working on his Masters in Media Design at Cork University in Ireland. The MeeTTable, pictured above, supports collaboration among 2 or more people who are developing 3D design projects. (Kevin is a member of the NUI-Group.)

More information about Kevin's project, include a video, can be found on his blog.

World Builder: Interaction of the Future?

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

If you've seen this 9-minute video, you won't mind taking another look. It was created by Bruce Branit depicting a man who builds a holographic world sometime in the future. Branit is a visual effects artist, who reportedly used the Lightwave 3D graphics platform for post-production.

The music was composed by Randy Skach.

Softkinetic 3D Gesture Recognition for Games and Rehabilitative Play

Taking 3D interaction further, Softkinetic has developed middle-ware that uses a 3D camera to support full-body gesture interaction with games and other applications. No controllers or devices are needed!



The following video is narrated in Portuguese, I, think, but you can understand the content in any language. I you love the Wii, you'll probably like this!


Here is a video that demonstrate how Softkinetic and Silverfit paired together to develop rehabilitative games for the elderly and others:


The following table is from the Silverfit website:

Game	Movement trained
Puzzle	While sitting down, bend whole body left and right, and stand up. Cognitive/visual component.
Mole	Balance exercise by stepping with one leg while standing.
Catching grapes	Walking movement left and right.
Walking	Walking in place, while avoiding obstacles and thresholds. Activity of Daily Life (ADL) component.
Arm exercise	Arm stretching and reaching in all directions with one or both arms. ADL component.
Picking flowers	Walking backwards, forwards and sideways. Optionally, bending down.
Memory	Arm stretching left, right, forwards and upwards. Cognitive component.

RELATED

Softkinetic and Silverfit Introduce Senior-Targeted Gaming
(Danny Cowan, Gamasutra, 12/19/08)

Softkinetic's Gesture-Based Interactive TV Action:

Interesting 3D Interactive Gesture Recognition System by Atracsys: BeMerlin Product Demonstration of Nespresso Products

Via Core 77:

The following video clip is an example of BeMerlin, an infrared guesture recognition system developed by Atracsys for demonstrating 3D representations of Nexpresso's expresso machines.


The video was taken at the Home + Housewares 2009 show in Switzerland.

PICNIC 2008: Media, Technology, Entertainment, Art & Science

PICNIC, an interdisciplinary conference, is held each year in Amsterdam, with delegates who come from a variety of countries. "PICNIC spotlights cutting-edge products and services at the intersection of media, technology, arts and entertainment, and brings together entrepreneurs, investors, creators as well as scientists, and other industry leaders." PICNIC 2008 was attended by over 8000 people.

One of the fun highlights of the conference: Participants were encouraged to use a RFID-enabled tag, linked to their online profiles, which enabled them to participate in a variety of interactive Social RFID games.

Videos of the 2008 PICNIC presentations and panels can be found online on the Vimeo website. I've selected a few that I found interesting, especially the ones from the "Can You See What I Know" strand about data visualization.

Some themes and videos from Picnic 2008

Can You See What I Know?
"Artist, scientists and designers are exploring a new world of software aesthetics and developing new languages for interactive and visual expression. How can we make information intuitively meaningful?" Presenter: Paul Wouters, program leader of the Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences


Paul Wouters at PICNIC08: Can you see what I know? from PICNICCrossmediaweek on Vimeo.
Quotes:
"How do you mediate the relationships between the arts and sciences, and in fact, more specifically, between academy and commerce?"

"Data is not the end of theory, nor is it the beginning, a mistake made by many social scientists. Data are the result of theory...Massive, bottom-up annotation of our physical and symbolic environment exemplifies therefore not for the end of theory, but for it's proliferation. This does, of course, considerably raise the stakes. It intensifies the social responsibility for all knowledge creators...The answer will be given by how we shape visual knowledge".

"The trouble of cross disciplinary work is difficult. It is a nightmare, and there are reasons for it."

Design as a Collaborative Process Presenter: Bill Moggridge, founder of IDEO, a design firm.
"New interactions develop into new design practices; new processes induce new forms of creativity. How can creators involve the people they want to create for in their work?"

Bill Moggridge at PICNIC08: Design as a Collaborative Process from PICNICCrossmediaweek on Vimeo.

Celebrating Collaborative Creativity-Showcase of Creative Production
Presenter: Ton Roosendaal, founder of Blender, an open-source, cross-platform suite of tools for 3D creation

Ton Roosendaal at PICNIC08: Celebrating Collaborative Creativity - Showcase of Creative Production from PICNICCrossmediaweek on Vimeo.

Emerging Real-Time Social Web: Philip Rosedale, founder of 3D online world of Second Life

Philip Rosedale at PICNIC08: The Emerging Real-Time Social Web from PICNICCrossmediaweek on Vimeo.


What Will Google Do? How Google Innovates
Gisel Hiscock, Director of Business development, Google EMEA


Gisel Hiscock at PICNIC08: What will Google do? from PICNICCrossmediaweek on Vimeo.
From presentation:

This is what Google DOES
Start with a clear mission that withstands time:

• Democratising access to the world's information
• The best search engine should give you exactly what you want
• People should have access to information whenever they want and however they want it
• Keep it open
• The litmus test: does it stand the test of time?
  

This is what Google DOESN'T do:

• Traditional product management; incremental features, ROI/Finance-driven, pie charts, etc.
• Think small, niche solutions, short-term thinking, incremental improvement, vertical solutions
• Go it alone- At Google, all information and vision must be shared across all teams
• Forget our guiding principle: users come first, not money.
  

Overview of Google's Innovation Principles:

• Hire the best
• Create a culture of "Do's"
• Everyone can contribute - ideas come from everywhere and all people
• Share all information - objects and plans are posted on line.
• Share your vision at every level. Vision must be shared with the team
• Morph ideas, don't just kill them
• Speed matters (Google Labs with feedback from users and customers)
• Data driven:"We are fully data driven...there is no decision that is made without pure data, and real numbers to back it up.
• Users come first
• "You really have to focus on what the user wants, what is it that they want to do on line,
• 20% is at our core- everyone in the company has time to work on their individual projects.

RELATED
Visualizing Knowledge Spaces - Marco Quaggiotto

Knowledge cartographies / Trailer from Marco Quaggiotto on Vimeo.

Knowledge Cartography (pdf)
Knowledge Atlas: A cartographic approach to social structures of knowledge (pdf)

Interactive Multimedia and Multi-touch at CES

I received couple of interesting links about interactive multimedia applications from Anthony Uhrick, of NextWindow, who is attending CES (Consumer Electronics Show). (NextWindow is the company who produces large touch-screen displays that have duo and multi-touch capabilities.)

Kevin Kennedy and his team at InterKnowlogy partnered with Zygote 3D Human Anatomy and Intermountain Health Care to develop a health care application developed in Windows Presentation Foundation to run on Microsoft's multi-touch Surface computing table.

The application supports collaboration between health care professionals and could also support collaboration between patients and doctors as well. Aspects of the application could be useful for patient education.

I really liked the part that demonstrates how you can zoom deeply into the 3D heart and look at things from various angles.


http://silverlight.interknowlogy.com/Videos/VitruView/default.html

Best of InterKnowlogy Surface:



The above video demos an application that might be useful for teaching history with an interesting timeline interface dial.

Visit InterKnowlogy for more videos and information about what they are doing with Windows Presentation & Silverlight as partners with Microsoft's Surface team.

If you are interested in more 3D anatomy, visit Zygote's 3D Human Anatomy site and 3D Science. If you are an educator, you'll see that 3D interaction has potential for creating more engaging science and health education lessons!

Another interesting link is to TouchTV Networks, which has partnered with companies such as Vectorform, who are also working with multi-touch applications using Windows Presentation Foundation.

Video from TouchTV Networks of CES 2009 Demo:


Vectorform's Virtual Drum Kit application:


Vectorform's Surface at School - demonstrates how this can be used in a classroom:


Vectorform's Surface DJ


Does anyone want to give me a multi-touch table?

3D Monitor from iZ3D, Designed for Games

I haven't set eyes on this 3D monitor by iZ3D. I'd love to give it a try soon!

Here is the news release:
3D Monitor has gone Mainstream- Sets Price for Wide Holiday Distribution: iZ3D has taken a bold move to make 3D mainstream this Christmas (pdf)
World's First 3D Monitor for Gamers Now Available in Retail Stores pdf

More Info:
The iZ3D 3D monitor solution includes:
- 22-inch wide screen 3D/2D keyboard switchable LCD monitor
- 3 pairs of passive polarized 3D glasses (5 other models are available online)
- iZ3D Stereoscopic 3D and Anaglyph 3D software drivers (other drivers are available
online)
- Power and video cables
- Quick-start guide
- Free membership into iZ3D’s upcoming 3D gaming network
-$399.00

Monitor specifications are:
- 22-inch wide screen LCD
- 1680 x 1050 resolution
- Up to 170-degree 3D viewing angle
- 5ms response time
- 700:1 contrast ratio
- 16.7-million colors
- 300 nits

Supports 64-Bit Windows OS

"The iZ3D 22-inch monitor has a new manufacturers suggested resale price of $399.00 and is currently available at Fry’s and Micro Centers as well as online stores including www.staples.com, www.newegg.com, www.amazon.com, www.pcmall.com, www.criticalbuy.com, www.iz3d.com, and other online shopping sites."

Supported Games
User Submitted List
Detailed whitepaper

If you've had a chance to play a game or two using this 3D system, please let me know your thoughts.

Rome Reborn Update: New Google Earth layer of Ancient Rome - Great Idea for Engaging Interactive Whiteboard Activities

Steven Musil's recent article in CNET discusses Google Earth's 3-D view of ancient Rome. The project is an outgrowth of Rome Reborn, the effort of an interdisciplinary, international team of people, including computer scientists, artists, archaeologists, and historians from UCLA, the Politecnico di Milano (Italy), and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Visitors can explore inside the city's buildings, and obtain related historical information through pop-up windows. The 3-D interaction is great on the large screen or interactive whiteboard.

I posted about the Rome Reborn

Below is the "how-to" video:




Google Earth's Ancient Roman Holiday

Rome Curriculum Competition for Educators
Prize Package:

Apple MacBook laptop
Digital classroom projector
Digital camera
3D Navigation mouse
$500 in gift cards to Target or Office Depot
Engraved Google "Top Educator" plaque

"We're accepting curricula from all grade levels and K-12 subject areas including art history, math, social studies, physics, and philosophy, so whether you teach 5th grade art or high school engineering, there's glory and a nice prize package waiting for you."



Related:
Digital Rome

CNN's Holographic Technology: Wolf Blitzer and Jessica Yellin, Anderson Cooper and Will.I.Am, and the music video.

CNN is doing a good job of exposing the masses to emerging technology!

Here is a video clip of CNN's holographic technology used to transmit a 3-D video image of Jessica Yellin, speaking with Wolf Blitzer on Election Day, November 2008. A partial transcript is included below. Before you get too excited about this technology, know that the correspondents see the image on a plasma TV, not in "real" 3-D, according to Gizmodo.



Jessica Yellin:
"There are 35 high-definition cameras ringing me, in a ring around me, I'm in the center, and they shoot my body at different angles, and I'm told that transmits what looks like an entire body image back there to New York. These cameras, I'm told, talk to the cameras in New York. So they move, and they know when to move when the cameras in New York move, and it looks a little different from a real person there, but it is pretty remarkable."

Wolf Blitzer:
"It's still Jessica Yellin, and you look just like Jessica Yellin, and we know you are Jessica Yellin....You're a terrific hologram, thanks very much Jessica Yellin is in Chicago, she's not here in New York with us... but you know what, it looks like she was right here with us, it is pretty amazing technology."


Here is the clip of Anderson Cooper interviewing Will.I.Am's hologram, beamed in from from Grand Park in Chicago.



Anderson Cooper:
"Let's see if we can beam him in now. There we go. Will, thanks very much for being
with us. How is this night for you?"

Will.I.Am:
"Ah, this is great. We're at an eve of a brand new day in America, and it feels great being here in Chicago. All this technology, I'm being beamed to you, like in Star Wars and stuff..."

Anderson Cooper:
"Yeah, it looks like, especially like, exactly like in Star Trek, when they'd beam people down, that's what it looks like here....We are doing this interview with you this way because it is a lot quieter than having you in the crowd, its very hard to hear in this crowd, and we appreciate you being with you..."

Will.I.Am goes on to discuss the song he created from an inspirational speech by Obama.

Related
How the CNN Holographic Interview System Works
-Gizmodo

Election Night TV: Networks Aim to Dazzle With Gagetry
-Edward C. Baid and Jon Swartz, TechNewsworld

Behind the hologram:
Vizrt
"Vizrt creates leading-edge content production tools for the digital media industry - From award-winning 3D graphics & maps to integrated video workflow solutions."
SportVU


FYI: Here is the video of the song, We Can Change- (My first view of this video was today, after the election.)





picture via engadget

MellaniuM: Virtual Reality, History, and Digital Heritage

Joe Rigby, from MellaniuM, focuses on the use of interactive virtual reality technology to create environments that support the learning of history. This concept is also known as "Digital Heritage". Applications are in the works that combine high-polygon modeling with scaled photo-realistic textures, incorporating multi-user avatar interaction within 3D archaeological visualizations.

MellaniuM will be presenting at VSMM' 08: Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia Dedicated to Digital Heritage. Instead of a PowerPoint presentation, participants will be provided with a walk-through of the Theatre of Pompeii.

A future workshop, sponsored by ADSIP, the Applied Digital Signal and Image Processing Research Centre, will feature an EONREALITY multi-wall immersive system to display the latest version of the Theatre of Pompeii district. Public VR and Anne Weis ,from the Department of Art History at the University of Pittsburgh, are collaborating on this project.

The original Pompeii Project, was built at Carnegie Mellon's Studio for Creative Inquiry, during the mid-1990's. Links to the Virtual Theater District (VMRL) and 3D models can be found at http://artscool.cfa.cmu.edu:16080/~hemef/pompeii/project.html

If you have an interactive whiteboard, download the 3D models of Pompeii. You'll have to install a free VRML plug-in in order to view them on a web browser.

Wouldn't it be great if all students could learn about history via interactive virtual reality someday?

Microsoft's Photosynth: Immersive Learning Possibilties

I just came across an interesting article in the on-line MIT Technology Review, written by Jeffery MacIntyre, about Photosynth, developed by Microsoft's Live Labs:

Microsoft's Shiny New Toy: Photosynth is an application that's still a work in progress. It is dazzling, but what is it for?

I think that the PhotoSynth application would be very useful in education settings - K-12 and also at the university level. More classrooms now have interactive whiteboards that connect to the Web, providing a broader range of possibilities for educators to create engaging, immersive learning experience for their students. Young people would have the opportunity to experience virtual field trips and collaborate with students around the world. An application such as PhotoSynth, coupled with an information/data visualization component, would be quite useful in high school and university classrooms.

From the TechReview Article:


"You are here: Photosynth, an application in development at Microsoft’s Live Labs, offers an immersive way to view photos of a given thing or place. The software has not yet been released, but Microsoft is demonstrating it online with photo collections such as this one of Venice’s St. Mark’s Square." Credit: Courtesy of Microsoft Live Labs

Below are links from the TechReview article:

"Watch Photosynth stitch photos together." "View images from Photosynth and see how it works."

From Microsoft's Website: "Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space." "With Photosynth you can: walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle; seamlessly zoom in or out of a photograph even if it's gigapixels in size; see where pictures were taken in relation to one another; find similar photos to the one you’re currently viewing; explore a custom tour or see where you’ve been; or send a collection to a friend."

If any readers have thoughts about the use of PhotoSynth in educational settings or situations, please leave a comment!

Microsoft's PhotoSynth website

Johnny Lee's Wii Hacks: Can the Wii be configured to provide immersive learning experiences?

Thousands of people have been following Johnny Lee's progress as he hacks Nintendo's Wii system. Johnny Lee is a graduate student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie-Mellon, and he has come up with the most amazing, creative uses for the various components of the Wi.

Take a look at Johnny's recent video of his work creating desk-top VR using a large-screen display:

"Head Tracking for Desktop Virtual Reality"


Although the Wii is a game system, the possibilities for the Wii as a platform for immersive educational experiences in the classroom - as well as in the family room - are endless, provided that a few people in educational technology are willing to contribute to this effort at the same level demonstrated by Johnny!

Since more classrooms are getting large-screen displays in the form of interactive whiteboards, there might just be a chance for teachers to use a few more tools to invigorate and engage their "digital native" students!

I think that learning activities utilizing the power of the Wii and Johnny's present (and future) hacks might also be very effective in reaching the needs of students who have disabilities. Visual and kinesthetic learners would also benefit, as well as kids and teens who are considered to have hyperactivity.

Johnny provides the code and instruction for all of his hacks on his website at http://johnnylee.net

You can subscribe to project updates at http://procrastineering.com

Johnny Lee's work is creative interactive multimedia technology at its best!

iSocial: A Virtual Social Space for Youth with ASD, built with Croquet

iSocial is a 3D environment developed to support conversation and positive social skills for young people who have autism spectrum disorders. iSocial is a work in progress, designed by a team of researchers at the University of Missouri.

iSocial runs on Croquet, an open-source 3D SDK/tool designed to build 3D virtual collaborative environments. (EduSim applications also run on Croquet.)

iSocial Video

3D Collaborative Applications for Interactive Displays and Whiteboards: Croquet, EduSim

EduSim is an application for use on interactive whiteboards and displays, created using Croquet.

According to Julian Lombardi, Duke University's Assistant Vice President of Academic Services and Technology Support and Senior Research Scholar with the Information Science + Information Studies, "Croquet is a powerful new open source software development environment for creating and deploying deeply collaborative multi-user online applications on multiple operating systems and devices. Derived from Squeak, it features a peer-based network architecture that supports communication, collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation between multiple users on multiple devices. Using Croquet, software developers can create and link powerful and highly collaborative cross-platform multi-user 2D and 3D applications and simulations - making possible the distributed deployment of very large scale, richly featured and interlinked virtual environments."

EduSim "How To" Videoclips

EduSim Videos
Croquet Screenshots

Related Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, edited by Richard E. Mayer, provides a good framework to support the importance of learning and interacting with multimedia.

According to information from the book, "Multimedia learning is defined as learning from words (e.g., spoken or printed text) and pictures (e.g., illustrations, photos, maps, graphs, animation, or video)... Multimedia environments included on-line instructional presentations, interactive lessons, e-courses, simulation games, virtual reality, and computer-supported in-class presentations...The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning seeks to establish what works (i.e., to determine which features of a multimedia lesson affect learning), to explain how it works (i.e., to ground research in cognitive theory), and to consider when and where it works (i.e., to explore the implications of research for practice)".

Novint Falcon Haptic Controller video -

My Novint Falcon haptic controller arrived the other day! What is a haptic controller? Watch the video...

( I purchased the controller to work on games for young people who are visually impaired.)

Realistic 3D technology for artists - from ID games

Here is a quick link to a video of John Carmack, from ID software, that highlights some of the latest 3D graphics technology for games.

Wouldn't it be nice if ID could put together a workshop for some art K-12 art teachers over the summer? I'd like to see more computers used for art creation in our schools. I think the students would, too.



Direct link to the full video stream from Apple: http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/d7625zs/m_99427722_650_ref.mov

Link to info about a "super touch screen" for Google Earth - it has multiple uses.

Watch this video about a "super touch screen" for Google Earth from Perceptive Pixel! More information about this can be found on the TechPsych blog, and from the Google Earth Blog. I think this application would be great for visual learners.

Applications like this are immersive and engaging. If you are an educator, think about the ways you could use this application in your classroom!

Link to related article.

-Lynn