Interactive multi-touch for sound design, dj-ing, and music creation

NUI-Group member Christian Bannister, a musician, designer, and developer behind Subcycle Labs has been experimenting with music and multi-touch technology and interactions. Here's a demonstration of what he's come up with so far:


multi-touch the storm - interactive sound visuals - subcycle labs from christian bannister on Vimeo.
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"The big picture goal of this project is to bridge the gap between sound visualization and musical instrument. With multi-touch interaction it is possible to manipulate multiple characteristics of a sound—directly and visually. Right now a lot of electronic music involves staring at the back of the performers laptop. This is a shame because in many cases a lot of really interesting things are happening on the computer that the audience is completely unaware of. This project hopes to create a common visual language and experience for the electronic musician and the audience by enhancing the perception of sound and music on both sides...These sketches are built with Processing and Max/MSP networked with OSC on a single computer..." -Christian Bannister



JazzMutant Lemur
The multi-touch tech company now known as Stantum evolved from JazzMutant, Jazzmutant was founded in 2002 by Guilluame Largillier and Pascal Joguet, and joined by Julien Olivier in 2003. The original focus was to create a multi-touch controller for music applications, and the Lemur was born. It is now in version 2, with features such as a gesture object that provides three ways for people to interact with sound, extended scripting abilities, and remote control of your computer's mouse cursor or keyboard.  Stantum recently developed a next-gen multi-touch screen system for use in mobile devices such as smart phones and netbooks.  (I'll discuss this further in a future post.)



Mapping Ableton Live to Jazz Mutant's multi-touch Lemur for sound design:


Additional tutorials can be found the Jazzmutant YouTube channel.


Ableton Live, the software used in the above video, will include Max. Max/MSP is now known as MAX 5:
"In use for over twenty years by performers, composers, artists, scientists, teachers, and students, Max is the way to make your computer do things that reflect your individual ideas and dreams. Version 5 is a dramatic transformation of Max that begins a new chapter in the program's history."

RELATED
Video:  Max for Live
Max is a product of cycling74
Cycling74 created the Make Controller Kit, which includes fully programmable controllers. The kit is networked based. It is capable of working with actuators and can read sensor information into Max.
Jamoma, a platform for interactive art-based research and performance. Jamoma is the prototyping environment for SpatDIF, the Spatial Sound Description Interchange Format, and GDIF, the Gesture Description Interchange Format.
GDIF: Gesture Description Interchange Format, a tool for music related movements, actions, and gestures 
Stantum's Mobile Phone Multi-touch Interface:  Demonstration of precise interactions on a resistive touch screen

How the Stantum's Resistive Multi-Touch Screen Works

Jonathan Kessler's Hand Eye Technologies: Coordinating your cell phone with Interactive TV

Hand Eye Technologies is developing ways to use your smart-phone over remote control driven interaction.  Jonathan Kessler, the CEO of the company, was interviewed by Tracy Swedlow, of ITTV, about his background and his ideas for the future of interactive television.

Podcast Link:  Hand Eye Technologies Interview
Here is a video from the Hand Eye Technologies website:



If you happen to have an HIT-enabled mobile device, near an HIT enabled display, two-way communication is established, via a LAN, WiFi, or wireless 3G carrier. The mobile device's camera is used to manipulate things on the interface, and the set-box takes care of some of the rest.

Interactions include selecting text and objects, "drag and drop", insert/delete, inputting text or annotations, and drwing on the screen. Hand Eye offers a drawing application called Video Graffiti, and traces the movements you make when you move your mobile device.


"Hand Eye Technologies' mission is to create and communicate the premier software platform that enables mobile devices to interact with the digital world around them... any time, anywhere." - Hand Eye Technologies

"It is more about human-computer interface than remote control". -Jonathan Kessler


This looks like it is moving towards the next level of 2-way TV interactivity, much better than what the traditional remote control can do.

RELATED


Hand Eye Technologies Management Team
CNET – Hand Eye wants your smartphone to watch TV with you
Venture Beat – DEMO: Hand Eye Technologies lets your mobile phone watch TV with you 
TheWrap.com – Coming Soon: Real-Time Interactivity Between TVs and Smartphones
Ubergizmo -With Hand Eye Technologies, the TV show continues in your handset

Interactive TV Today
About InteractiveTV Today:
"Founded in 1998 by Tracy Swedlow and co-owned by Richard Washbourne, InteractiveTV Today [itvt] is the most widely read and trusted news source on the rapidly emerging medium of multiplatform, broadband interactive television (ITV). We provide concise, original coverage of industry developments, technologies, content projects, and the people building the business. Our readership is mostly made up of hundreds of thousands of executives from around the world."

The Convergence of TV , the Internet, and Interactivity: Updated and Revised.

Yesterday I read an interesting article about the future of television on Experientia's Putting People First blog:
Herkko Hietanen: The social future of television.


In this article, Herkko Hietanen, a researcher at Helsinki Institute of Information Technology, is interviewed about his thoughts  about the future of TV.  He observes that "TV is broken" and thinks that "social television" is a concept that needs to be seriously addressed.  "Herkko ends with the observation that social television isn’t a new concept. We’ve seen lots of experimentation with split screens, which allow chat alongside live broadcast. “But television is a lean-back experience,” Herkko offers – you don’t want to share screen estate with your friends. Instead, he believes that social interactions will be before and after the show."


So what's happening now?  I'm not sure if the people on the technology end of the interactive/social TV scene have thought very deeply about how this will play out in our homes and social networks.  Right now, the only way I can access the Interactive TV channel my satellite carrier is through the user-unfriendly remote, which looks something like this.    



My experience with the interactive TV channel on DISH Network has been frustrating. Why should I be forced to use a complicated remote-control system to interact with content?  Why should I be forced to experience a poorly-designed navigation system?   It is common knowledge that remote control systems are poorly designed, despite the fact that companies such a EchoStar have been involved with interactive TV for at least a decade now. 


What puzzles me is that things have not evolved very much, at least in terms of TV and interaction design. Here is an example -the following picture is a screen shot from a recent promo video about Playin' TV, an interactive TV offering that is the result of a collaboration between Dish Network and Echostar.  From what I can gather from the video, the only way to play the games through the user-unfriendly remote control!

Interactive TV innovations from DISH Network:  Playin'TV- Dish Network-Echostar- Promo October 2009 - Play Games on your TV!

(A list of games available for Dish Network subscribers can be found on the DishGames website.)

From the Playin' TV website, I linked to the Visiware website:

"Expert in casual gaming, Visiware is the world-leading provider of games for pay television. Its game channels are carried on more than 30 cable, satellite and IPTV networks and reach more than 120 million people within 77 countries."   


Visiware is behind Playin'TV, Playin' Casino, MiniKids TV, and Playin'Star. Playin'TV games now available on Internet connected televisions. There must be a better way.  Why not control the games with a Wiimote or iPhone?  Visiware might be working on some changes,  from the information on their User Interface and Design web page:  "It’s time for your New Generation Interface Design : Consumers expect innovative yet simple interfaces Compelling, intuitive U.I. is the key to success (Iphone, WII…)"


Digging Deeper
In the video clip below  Bill Leszinske, GM, from Intel Digital Home, discusses the future of interactive television. Consumers want to take their television experience and augment it with the internet experience.  Bill outlines the different ways this can happen:

• Internet access is built into the television.
• The internet can be accessed through the a set-box from a cable or satellite TV carrier
  
• Interactive internet access can be built into a Blu-Ray box or gaming system
• The technology will support 3D games and social networking.

Consumers want to take their TV experience and augment it with an internet experience.
Intel's Next Generation TV: Social Networking, 3D TV

How will technology support this convergence?


The following articles provide an overview of Intel's chip technology, previously known as "Sodaville", called SoC,  System on a Chip: Intel Unveils "Sodaville" Chip for TV Set-Top Boxes (Mark Hachman, PCMag, 9/24/09)


"But putting PC on a TV doesn't work; we know, we tried it," Kim said. "People want an immersive TV experience on their television." People want the power of the Internet on a TV, but they want it "simple," Kim said...What's needed is a pure Internet development framework, Kim said – and the most popular version of that is Adobe's Flash technology. David Wadhwani, general manager of the platform business unit at Adobe, said that the company has opened Flash and removed all license fees, requiring only that manufacturers to open the platform to third-party developers, as part of the Open Screen initiative.
Wadhwani demoed Flash 10 running on an Intel processor, showing full-screen Flash browsing, not to a Web site, but to a custom screen designed by Disney."

"The Sodaville processor uses an Atom core, and Intel has brought "Moore's Law" to shrink the processor to 45 nanometer technology. The Atom Processor CE4100, as it will be formally called, includes a 1080p video engine not to just decompress streams, but also recorded content supplied from another source, such as a hard drive. Intel doubled the speed of its 2D/3D engine, and added support for MPEG-4. The chip uses either DDR-2 or DDR-3 memory."


Intel Technology,  Processing Power Key to TV Revolution (Intel Developer Forum, 9/24/09)
New Intel chips run Web apps on TV sets (Sodaville) (itbusiness.ca, 9/25/09)   Podcast version
In the following video, Intel's work in the area of 3D Internet is discussed:
Intel Introduces the 3D Internet

Intel is also collaborating with Adobe to innovate mobile media production, which most likely lead to some interesting outcomes:


Adobe CS4 and the New Intel Core i7 Mobile
"Rendering is blazing fast." Mobile rendering on the road...anywhere anytime editing...



RELATED LINKS AND THOUGHTS
I previously posted on this topic a few times:
March 2009

Digital Convergence and Interactive Television;  Boxee and Digital Convergence
December 2008:  An Example of Convergence:  Interactive TV: UXTV 2008

In my opinion, there are many factors to consider when thinking about television as we know it, web-based TV, and interactive television.  Technology exists that can support the convergence of the social web and interactive television, but the key players are coming from different directions and with different agendas.  Television still is a "push" medium, and this concept appears to be embedded in the mindsets of people involved with commercial TV programming.

For example, if you watch an episode of your favorite TV show via a network website,  you are forced to watch commercials all along the way.  If you stop the show and resume it after a break, you might even see the SAME commercial again!    This is annoying, just another example of the "push" mentality.  In my mind, this is a form of banner ad and pop-up litter- or even contamination!  Where is the seamless, engaging, innovative UX here?  (There are some examples of progress, such as the ABC's FlashForward website.)


I'm a subscriber to DISH Network, which offers some interactive TV programming.  I went to the DISH Network website to find out more about it, and this is what assaulted my vision:

The website design looks pretty pushy to me. Does this foreshadow the future of Interactive TV?


Here's a screenshot of another DISH Network website:

From this web page you can link to the following web pages: DISH Remote Access: Sling "Your Browser, Your TV"  - links to product overviews:  Slingbox: "Watch your TV anywhere"  SlingPlayer Mobile:  "Extend your Slingbox experience to a mobile phone"  SlingCatcher: " Extend your Slingbox Experience to a TV"  Accessories: "Make your Sling Experience Complete"


An excerpt from Sling's promotional information:
"Founded in 2004, Sling Media, Inc. is a different kind of consumer electronics company - one that's working to demystify convergence technologies and to create empowering experiences for the digital media consumer. The focus of Sling Media is to embrace - not replace - existing products and standards by enhancing them with hardware and software that make divergent technologies compatible and greatly improve the consumer experience. Because, after all, can't we all just get along?! "


"Sling Media, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS), is a leading digital lifestyle company offering consumer services and products that are a natural extension of today's digital way-of-life. Sling Media's product family includes the internationally acclaimed, Emmy award-winning Slingbox that allows consumers to watch and control their living room television shows at any time, from any location, using PCs, Macs, PDAs and smartphones and the revolutionary new SlingCatcher, a universal media player that seamlessly delivers broadcast TV, Internet video and personal content to the TV. Sling Media is also the company behind the video entertainment web site, Sling.com, offering consumers a wide variety of popular TV shows, movies and other entertainment free for viewing online or on the TV using SlingCatcher."


I managed to find information about DISH's interactive TV offerings  elsewhere on the web:
DISH Network(R) Premieres Interactive Television Experience for New History Series BATTLES BC
DISH Network (R) Announces Winners of 8th Annual Interactive Television Awards


At any rate, here is a smattering of related articles and video-clips related to the future of TV that I'm presently contemplating:
Interactive TV Today:  "InteractiveTV Today [itvt] is the most widely read and trusted news source on the rapidly emerging medium of multiplatform, broadband interactive television (ITV)" 
TV's Killer App?  Guess What, It May Be An App
Joe Mandese, Media Daily News 10/2/09

Ensequence
Video games, Interactive TV, and Cheats


Interactive TV/Internet at the hospital: Interactive TV Gives Patients Access to Movies and Internet
Skylight Internet Access Patient System

I'll add information about the next generation of remote control technology soon.

CRISTAL: One Giant Remote Control Multi-Touch Coffee Table; ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2009 in Banff, Canada

Via Wired Gadget Lab Priya Ganapati 8/14/09

What is CRISTAL ? Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living Spaces and acronym for a project at the Media Interaction Lab at the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences, Digital Media.

Watch the videos:




"CRISTAL simplifies the control of our digital devices in and around the living room. The system provides a novel experience for controlling devices in a home environment by enabling users to directly interact with those devices on a live video image of their living room using multi-touch gestures on a digital tabletop." -mediainteractionlab, YouTube

The CRISTAL project is a collaboration between several people, spanning across a few universities, according to the Media Interaction Lab website:

Christian Rendl
Media Interaction Lab
Florian Perteneder
Media Interaction Lab
Thomas Seifried
Media Interaction Lab
Michael Haller
Media Interaction Lab
Daisuke Sakamoto
University of Tokyo
Jun Kato
University of Tokyo
Masahiko Inami
Keio University
Stacey D. Scott
University of Waterloo

CRISTAL received the Best Emerging Technology Award at the 36th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH 2009)

Below is a sample of the Interactive Media Lab's publications:

M. Haller, P. Brandl, C. Richter, T. Seifried, J. Leitner, and A. Gokcezade, 2009.
"Interactive Displays and Next-Generation Interfaces." Springer, 2009. [bibtex]




C. Köffel, W. Hochleitner, J. Leitner, M. Haller, A. Geven, and M. Tscheligi, 2009.
"Using Heuristics to Evaluate the Overall User Experience of Video Games and Advanced Interaction Games." Springer, 2009. [in press] [bibtex]


M. Haller, C. Forlines, C. Koeffel, J. Leitner, and C. Shen, 2009.

"Tabletop Games: Platforms, Experimental Games and Design Recommendations." Springer, 2009. in press [bibtex]

J. Leitner, C. Köffel, and M. Haller, 2009.

"Bridging the gap between real and virtual objects for tabletop games," International Journal of Virtual Reality, vol. 7, pp. 33-40, 2009. in press [bibtex]




J. Leitner, M. Haller, K. Yun, W. Woo, M. Sugimoto, M. Inami, A. D. Cheok, and H. D. Been-Lirn, 2009.
"Physical Interfaces For Tabletop Games," Computer Entertainment, vol. XX, p. XX, 2009. [bibtex]

M. Haller and M. Billinghurst, 2008.
"Interactive Tables: Requirements, Design Recommendations, and Implementation."

D. Leithinger and M. Haller, 2007.
"Improving Menu Interaction for Cluttered Tabletop Setups with User-Drawn Path Menus," Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems, 2007. TABLETOP 07. Second Annual IEEE International Workshop on, pp. 121-128, 2007. [bibtex]




D. Regenbrecht, M. Haller, J. Hauber, and M. Billinghurst, 2006.
"Carpeno: interfacing remote collaborative virtual environments with table-top interaction," Virtual Reality, vol. 10, iss. 2, pp. 95-107, 2006. [bibtex]

One of the people involved in the CRISTAL project is Stacey D. Scott, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo. She is also the director of the Collaborative Systems Laboratory. The Collaborative Systems Laboratory focuses on fundamental interfaces and interaction techniques for shared large-screen displays, such as multi-display environments and social-supporting digital tabletop interfaces, and also collaborative and decision support interfaces for complex, time-critical team environments.

Dr. Scott is also one of the program co-chairs of the upcoming ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2009 Conference will be held November 23-25 in Banff, Canada.

Mark your calendars!

The following topics, as they relate to interactive tabletops and surfaces, will be presented:

• Applications
• Gesture-based interfaces
• Multi-modal interfaces
• Tangible interfaces
• Novel interaction techniques
• Data handling/exchange on large interactive surfaces
• Data presentation on large interactive surfaces
• User-interface technology
• Computer supported collaborative systems
• Middleware and network support
• Augmented reality
• Social protocols
• Information visualizations
• Sensing and input technologies
• Human-centered design & methodologies

Here is the "who's who" of interactive tabletops and surfaces- the Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces program committee:

Patrick Baudisch	Hasso Plattner Institute Potsdam, Germany
Francois Berard	University of Grenoble, France
Peter Brandl	Media Interaction Lab, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences, Austria
Andreas Butz	University of Munich, Germany
Francois Coldefy	Orange Labs, France
Morten Fjeld Chalmers	University of Technology, Sweden
Kentaro Fukuchi	University of Electro-Communications, Japan
Tovi Grossman	Autodesk Research, Canada
Mark Hancock	University of Calgary, Canada
Petra Isenberg	University of Calgary, Canada
Yuichi Itoh	Osaka University, Japan
Karrie Karahalios	University of Illinois, USA
Hiro Kato	Osaka University, Japan
Hideki Koike	University of Electro-Communications, Japan
Frank Maurer	University of Calgary, Canada
Max Mühlhäuser	TU Darmstadt, Germany
Christian Muller-Tomfelde	CSIRO-ICT Centre, Australia
Miguel Nacenta	University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Patrick Olivier	Newcastle University, UK
Jun Rekimoto	Sony / University of Tokyo, Japan
Meredith Ringel Morris	Microsoft Research, USA
Daisuke Sakamoto	Tokyo University, Japan
Yoichi Sato	University of Tokyo, Japan
Chia Shen	Harvard University, USA
Masahiro Takatsuka	University of Sydney, Australia
Lucia Terrenghi	Vodafone Group R&D, Germany
Bruce Thomas	University of Southern Australia, Australia
Melanie Tory	University of Victoria, Canada
Edward Tse	SMART Technologies, Canada
Fred Vernier	South-Paris University, France
Andy Wilson	Microsoft Research, USA
Massimo Zancanaro	Bruno Kessler Foundation (formerly ITC), Italy

If you are a university student researching interactive tabletops, multi-touch surfaces, and/or gesture interaction, I hope this post helps!

Haptic/Tactile Interface: Dynamically Changeable Physical Buttons on a Visual Display -

I came across an interesting video clip while researching haptic and tactile interfaces.

Chris Harrison , a Ph.D. student, and Scott E. Hudson, his advisor, are researchers at Carnegie-Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. They've been working on a variety of methods to provide tactile properties for visual displays



The paper can be accessed on Chris Harrison's website.

This work was also highlighted in a recent article in Popular Science:

Your Next Touchscreen Might Bulge With Inflatable Buttons: Latex overlays inflate to provide the tactile sensation of pressing a button -Dan Smith, 7/21/09

I'm not very fond of buttons, but if something like this could be configured for my remote control, I could control my TV effortlessly while viewing in the dark!

Haptic Tactile Feedback for the iPhone? MacRumors says, "YES!"

According to a recent MacRumors.com article written by Arnold Kim, Apple's future versions of the iPhone may offer haptic tactile feedback:

"Multi-touch display screen with localized tactile feedback"

"Apple proposes including a grid of piezoelectronic actuators that can be activated on command. By fluctuating the frequency of these actuators, the user will "feel" different surfaces as their finger moves across it. As an example, a display could include a virtual click wheel which vibrates at a different frequency as the center. Users could easily sense the difference and use the click wheel without having to look at it."

Arnold links to another patent application that will enable use fingerprint signatures to control and interact with a device. Apple will have all devices cornered, from what I can tell...

According to the description, "The present invention can be employed in any electronic device or system that permit user control, including any portable, mobile, hand-held, or miniature consumer electronic device. Illustrative electronic devices or systems can include, but are not limited to, music players, video players, still image players, game players, other media players, music recorders, video recorders, cameras, other media recorders, radios, medical equipment, calculators, cellular phones, other wireless communication devices, personal digital assistances, programmable remote controls, pagers, laptop computers, printers, computer mice, other computer accessories, cars or portions thereof, or any combination thereof. Miniature electronic devices may have a form factor that is smaller than that of hand-held devices. Illustrative miniature electronic devices can include, but are not limited to, watches, rings, necklaces, belts, accessories for belts, headsets, accessories for shoes, virtual reality devices, other wearable electronics, accessories for sporting equipment, accessories for fitness equipment, key chains, or combinations thereof."

There is a provision for multi-user interaction:

"Furthermore, while the processes described above illustratively register, detect, and respond to the fingerprints of one user per device, a device of the present invention can be configured to register, detect, and respond to the fingerprints of multiple users."

Arnold links to a third patent application:

Touch Screen RFID Tag Reader

Comment:
The US Patent Office & Trademark Patent Application Full Text and Image Database is a great place to explore if you have lots of time on your hands!

(Cross-posted on the Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blog).

ElderGadget Blog

Via Technology-Supported Human World Interaction

Today I came across the ElderGadget Blog when I was searching for technology that might be helpful to my father, who recently spent the last few weeks in an intensive care unit.

Here are a few things I found on the blog, including what I found when I followed a link to the bindependent website:

Smart Table: A Broadband Communication System for the Elderly


ID Studiolab, Delft University of Technology, NL
"The smart system is aimed to prevent possible social isolation between elderly people and their social contacts. It consists of the Smart Table and the Smart Messenger, which provide easy and intuitive way for elderly people to benefit from the advantage of communication technology and improve the satisfaction of their social activities."

"During the design research, a working prototype is made and evaluated by a user test. The Smart Table offers people a way to use broadband communication without the need for a computer. The television will be used for video communication (web-cam) and the table as user-interface. On the table contact persons can be selected and images and video can be shared. The elderly person can capture images that will be shared instantly. The contact person can select images from his or her computer, which will be projected on the table of the elderly person". (TU Delft - Faculty Industrial Design Engineering - Master Design for Interaction - Project Interactive Technology Design - Vincent Steurs & Juin-Yi Huang)


Demy Kitchen Safe Touchscreen Reader



Photo Watch


Clarity-C900: Amplified Big Button Cell Phone

911 Guardian: "Tiny wearable speakerphone"


Extra Large TV Remote Control

SmartShopper: Electronic grocery-list maker



Bierley's ColorMouse Video Magnifier

Voice Pod: Digital recording and playback system

RELATED

Live from CES - Dakim's Brain Fitness Keeps Seniors Sharp

Dakim Brain Games

Previous post: Ubiquitous Computing - Grandpa and grandkids use a webcam and Skype across the miles

YouTube Vlogger: Geriatric1927

Geriatric Gripes and Grumbles

Interactive Displays 2009 Conference: Tuesday, April 21 -Thursday April 23, Hilton San Jose, California

The Interactive Displays Conference, sponsored by Intertech Pira, will highlight an interesting mix of existing and emerging interactive display technologies and applications. The conference will be held at the Hilton in San Jose, California, from Tuesday, April 21st through Thursday, April 23rd.

The pre-conference seminar will feature Sakuya Morimoto, of CANESTA, who will present his company's innovative single-chip 3D image sensor technology that supports gesture interaction.
Keynote speakers will be Jeff Han, of Perceptive Pixel, and Steven Bathiche, of Microsoft US.

Some Highlights:

Pre-conference Seminar: Gesture Navigation in the World of Digital Contents, Enabled by a Single-Chip 3D Image Sensor Presenter: Sakuya Morimoto, Senior Director, Business Development in Asia, CANESTA, Japan

Related:
Hitachi at CES 2009: Use of Canesta's 3D sensor to control television and home systems using hand gestures.


"With the wave of a hand, with the shake of a hand, you can control volume, you can actually change the channels, watch your favorite program...the most exciting thing, I think, is that you can actually control your temperature and the lighting in the room, the environmental lighting. So..it is very unique technology that is out there.."

Another demonstration of Hitachi's gesture interaction using the Canesta's 3=D Depth camera:



When a TV Remote is Just Too Much Effort, Wave -Jennifer Bergen, PC Magazine
CANESTA Corporate Fact Sheet (pdf)

How does Canesta's Electronic Perception Technology Work?
"Canesta’s electronic perception technology forms 3-D, real time moving images in a single chip through patented methods which use light photons to “range” the image, similar to radar. The silicon sensor chip develops 3-D depth maps at a rate in excess of 30 frames per second, and then performs additional processing on these depth maps to resolve the images into application specific information that can easily be processed by embedded processor(s) in the end-use device or machine. Since Canesta’s software starts with a three-dimensional view of the world, provided immediately by the hardware, it has a substantial advantage over classical image processing software that struggles to construct three-dimensional representations using complex mathematics, and images from multiple cameras or points of view. This dramatic reduction in complexity makes it possible to embed the processing software directly into the chips themselves so they may be used in the most cost-conscious applications."


I will highlight some of the featured presentations in future blog posts:

Steven Bathiche, Director of Research, Applied Sciences Group, Entertainment and Devices Division MICROSOFT, US
Guillaume Largillier, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder, STANTUM, France
Jeff Han, PERCEPTIVE PIXEL, US
Mark Fihn, Publisher, VERITAS ET VISUS, US
Derek Mitchell, Conference Producer, INTERTECHPIRA, US
Vinita Jakhanwal, Principal Analyst, Small/Medium Displays, ISUPPLI CORPORATION, US
Joseph Carsanaro, President and CEO F-ORIGIN, US
Tommi Ilmonen, CEO MULTITOUCH OY, Finland
Stephen Sedaker, Director of Component Sales WACOM TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION, US
Brad Gleeson, Managing Director, Business Development TARGETPATH GLOBAL LLC., US
Henry Kaufman, President and Founder, TACTABLE, US
Christophe Ramstein, Chief Technology Officer, IMMERSION CORPORATION, US
Mary Lou Jepsen, CEO, PIXEL QI, US
John Newton, Chief Technology Officer, NEXTWINDOW, New Zealand
Herve Martin, CEO, SENSITIVE OBJECT, France
Scott Hagermoser, Gaming Business Unit Manager 3M TOUCH SYSTEMS, US
Bob Cooney, Vice President, Business Development, ECAST, US
Brent Bushnell, Chief Technology Officer UWINK, US
Stephan Durach, Head, Technology Office, BMW GROUP, US
Jeff Doerr, Senior Manager, Business Development Self Service Solutions Group, FLEXTRONICS, US
Andy Wilson, Senior Researcher, Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group, MICROSOFT, US
Mats W. Johansson, Chief Executive Officer, EON REALITY, US
Lenny Engelhardt, Vice President for Business Development, N-TRIG, Israel
Dr Paul Diefenbach, Director, RePlay Lab, DREXEL UNIVERSITY, US
Andrew Hsu, Technical Marketing and Strategic Partnerships Manager, SYNAPTICS, US
Dean LaCoe, Business Development Manager, GESTURETEK, Canada
Keith Pradhan, Global Director of Product Management, TYCO ELECTRONICS, ELO TOUCHSYSTEMS, US
Jerry Bertrand, Managing Member/Acting CEO, MICROSCENT, LLC, US
Frederic Kaplan, CEO and Co-Founder, OZWE, Switzerland

Related

Visionary Jeff Han and Microsoft's Steven Bathiche to Keynote at Interactive Displays 2009

An Example of Convergence: Interactive TV : uxTV 2008

I missed this one!



Jeremy Vaught, the administrator of the New Media Facebook group, posted about the the First International Conference on Designing Interactive User Experiences for TV and Video, held October 22-24, 2008 in Silicon Valley, California. The conference was sponsored by Microsoft Mediaroom, and ifip (International Federation for Information Processing).

According to the conference website, the papers from the conference can be found in the ACM digital library, AICPS: UZTV'08.

Featured speakers included Jakob Nielson (usability guru), Elissa Lee (Sr. Director of Research, TiVo), Gunthar Hartwig (User Experience, YouTube), and Dale Herigstad (Chief Creative Officer, Schematic).

Here is a sample of the topics covered during the conference:

Designing for User Experience: What to Expect from Mobile 3D TV and Video?
(Satu Jumisko-Pyykko, Mandy Weitzel, & Dominik Strohmeier)

The Concept of Interactivity - revisited: Four new typologies for a new media landscape
(Jens F. Jensen)

The Interactive Television User Experience So Far
(William Cooper)

Absolute Pointing and Tracking based Remote Control for Interactive User Experience
(John Sweetser, Anders Grunnet-Jepsen, and Gopal Panchanathan, ThinkOptics Inc.)

Network Analysis of Massively Collaborative Creation of Multimedia Contents: Case Study of Hatsune Miku videos on Nico Nico Duoga (Masahiro Hamasaki, Hideaki Takeda, Takuichi Nishimura)

The uxtv08 website has links to information about the various demos that were presented at the conference. To save you time, I've linked them below:

Demos

Data Driven Interactive 'Lower Third' - Vikram Singh

Dynamic TV: a New Inter-tainment Paradigm for Television - Marina Geymonat, Rossana Simeoni, Monica Perrero, Elena Guercio, Maurizio Belluati, Agnese Vellar and Roberto Montanari

Interactive advertising on n-tv plus - Kathrin Damian, Christian Bopp, Lars-Eric Mann

Interactive Live Demo of Fraunhofer FOKUS Media Interoperability Lab - Oliver Friedrich, Robert Seeliger, Benjamin Zachey, Christian Riede and Stefan Arbanowski

Microsoft Windows Media Center - Linda Chan

Microsoft Mediaroom - Linda Chan and David Giusti

Multi-dimensional Direct Pointing Remote Control for Interactive User Experience - John Sweetser, Anders Grunnet-Jepsen and Gopal Panchanathan

Tarae: Prototype of new interface design for digital TV browsing and navigation system - Hyun Suk Kim, Joung Young Lee and Sang Pil Hwang