In response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the team at Ideum has created a free version of their multi-touch-enabled Google Map and Flickr mashup application to educational organizations, including museums and aquariums. The information included on the map includes oil spill and fishing restriction data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), along with pictures taken at the scene in and around the region of the spill.
Ideum is a company that "designs and creates interactive computer-based exhibits, multitouch installations, rich Internet applications, and social networking sites for museum and Web visitors. We work closely with museums, nonprofit organizations, and socially responsible companies to create memorable visitor experiences." Ideum uses their own multi-touch framework called GestureWorks to create interactive applications.
Jim Spadaccini is the director and founder of Ideum. He formerly was the Director of Interactive Media at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
Ideum is working on a version of the program optimized to work on 3M's 22" multi-touch system. A single-touch version for the web might be available if there is interest.
In 2007-2008 there were a handful of multi-touch concept demo videos created, accompanied by upbeat music. The song in this video would be great for the Glee iPad/iPhone app!
Visual Planet’s ViP Interactive Foil has been innovatively used by a student from King’s School Sixth Form in Rochester, UK to create an aesthetically pleasing and extremely creative coffee table inviting interaction from the family.
It is about time for an update about touch/gesture- interactive technologies.
I've been researching the latest in "touch" screens and new developments in interactive multi-media content. In just one year, a multitude of websites have been transformed from static to interactive.
Although the initial objective for some of these websites was to optimize the interface and navigation for people accessing websites via touch-screen cell phones, some are ideal for use on touch-enabled slates, the iPad, and even larger touch screen displays and surfaces.
Convergence seems to be the buzz word of the day. Interactive TV. Game sets with Internet access. Movies on your cell phone. Touch screen Coke machines displaying movie trailers. What's happening now, and what is next?
I welcome input from my readers in the form of links to websites, university labs with grad students and professors who are obsessed with emerging interactive technologies, proof-of-concept video clips, video clips of related technologies that are new-to-market, etc.
FYI: I'm also in the middle of writing a series of posts about 3D television technologies for the Innovative Interactivity blog, and welcome input from my readers about this topic.
According to a recent article from the Microsoft News Center, "statistics from high schools and universities suggest that percentage won’t change any time soon. Only 17 percent of Advanced Placement (AP) computer science test-takers in 2008 were women, even though women represented more than half of all AP test-takers. At the college level, fewer than one in five computer and information science degrees were awarded to women."
Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition is a way to encourage female students that they can use technology to help make the world a better place, and that computer science is a field that provides an outlet for creativity a innovation.
One of the teams that participated in the Imagine Cup Competition was "Team Blob". The young women in this team attend South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Their work can be seen in the video presentation of Team Blob's Multi-touch Designer, which allows teachers to create multi-touch presentations for their students. The application was written in C# using Windows Presentation Foundation.
The team developed a interactive timeline to highlight history's famous women in math and science, and demonstrated it on a 40-inch multi-touch table to girls who visited their university campus. The time-line can be seen in the video clip at about 3:34.
"Team Blob members, from left, Lori Rebenitsch, Robyn Krage and Jaelle Scheuerman demo their application that aims to bring emerging multitouch technology into K-12 classrooms. The all-woman team is from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology."
Dr. Juan Pablo Hourcade heads a team of researchers at the University of Iowa who are creating multi-touch applications and other technologies to support communication, collaboration, creativity, and self-expression for young people with Autism Spectrum Disorders. The picture below is a screen shot of the team's web page that includes a few videos of the team's important work: (Videos can be found on the Technologies for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders webpage.)
Info from the Strukt website: "The first game Strukt produced is called “Solar Land”. The visitors can place solar panels on a map of Upper Austria, guessing where they would be most efficient according to the altitude of the sun in the area. After all items are placed, the participants can start a simulation of the insolation over the duration of an entire year. The game shows how much energy is produced during that period of time, and the top simulations are listed in a high-score. The results encourage people to discuss their decisions and to play the game once more, using the knowledge they gained to reach a better score."
Strukt studio is located in Vienna, Austria, and is a design agency that specializes in interactive media for events and exhibitions. Strukt has an innovative portfolio of interesting work.
Ideum is a company that has been around since 1999. It focuses on the design and creation of "computer-based exhibits, multitouch installations, rich Internet applications, and social networking sites for museum and Web visitors." Gestureworks is the software developed by Ideum, which is an authoring solution for Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex.
Below is some information, including a video clip, of one of Ideum's most recent installations a multiuser, multitouch table at the California Science Center.
Here is an excerpt from Jim Spadaccini's post: "This multiuser, multitouch table exhibit in the L.A. Zone allows visitors to explore a satellite image and map of the LA Basin and view overlays in thematic areas that explore fire, air, water, and earth. In addition, points of interest are placed on the map in the form of images and videos. All of the content and navigational controls are available in English and Spanish. The exhibit software runs on a custom-built 50" multitouch table that supports 60+ simultaneous points of input."
The Ideum team has spent a great deal of attention to the way groups of museum visitors interact with their multitouch applications. In the past, they've noticed that on a 50" surface, visitors would experience interaction conflicts. In the present application, more than one visitor can manipulate the content without changing the interaction of others. Spadaccini points out that multi-user control of touch screen exhibits is new, so interface design concepts developed for single-user interaction are no longer useful. Social interactions around a multiuser display are now something to consider.
In my opinion, what the Ideum team learns through their design process can be quite useful to those of us planning to develop multiuser educational applications for interactive surfaces and displays. What I liked about this exhibit is that it has a monitor that mirrors the display, so people can view the interaction from afar. This feature would be useful in classroom settings that have an interactive table and an interactive whiteboard. The interactive whiteboard as the secondary display so the teacher and other students could see what the group at the table was exploring.
Multitouch Google Maps and Flickr Mashup Built with Flash
Update: A video showing how Ideum's multi-touch table can withstand all sorts of heavy-duty treatment:
Note:I have been pretty busy over the past couple of months- I have much that I haven't yet blogged about. More to come!
Chris Yanc, of Cyan Design, has been creating multi-touch applications for a while. His work, "Multi-touch Experiments" was included in the Collider Exhibition Series in Akron, Ohio. Below is a video of his experiments, a video of a demo app for an interactive touch conference map, info about his work with the 36 Views of a Bridge project, and links to his tutorials and code.
About the Collider Exhibition Series (info taken from the website): "The Collider Exhibition Series examines the impact, implications and inspi- ration of the phenomenon generally categorized under the umbrella term New Media within the design practice and fine arts.Collider: Interactivity and New Media is an initial exploration into this realm. The exhibition seeks to provoke an awareness of the pervasive nature of New Media as it is applied in every function of our society and immerges as a forum for the highest expressions of our contemporary culture. It explores the results of collisions between humans and machines, biology and com- putations, art and technology, thought and process. What is New Media? And what are the implications to artists and designers when worlds, cul- tures and even identities collapse, build and collide."
Chris Yanc's Multi-Touch Demo App: Tokyo Game Show 09 Conference Map
Chris was involved with the 36 Views of a Bridge at the Bridge Project in Cleveland, Ohio. His post, 36 Views of a Bridge, explains in detail how his work was created, and also observations of groups of people interacting with the multi-touch table that was part of this project.
The sliding list widget demonstrated in the above video was created using Flash and can be downloaded from Chris's website: Sliding Lists ~ TUIO Flas App Widget. The link will take you to "how-to" information, a code example, and also to a link to download the widget.
Chris was kind enough to share his repository of tutorials and code: http://www.cyancdesign.com/tutorials/ His tutorial page has lots of good links!
I'll be highlighting more work by innovative individuals, groups, and companies from time-to-time in future posts.
I've been meaning to visit a few of North Carolina's RENCI visualization centers, but I just haven't had a moment to squeeze the field trip in my schedule. Tracy Boyer, who authors the Innovative Interactivity blog, had a chance to visit the center in Chapel Hill
For those of you who can't visit a RENCI center, visit Tracy's blog and read about her first-hand experience as a visitor: RENCI pioneering the visualization industry with innovative interfaces I found a link to the following project, "The Docuverse", deep within one of the RENCI websites:
The Docuverse: 1.5 million documents on the screen at once.
"The Docuverse is a method of displaying an entire digital library on a screen at once. The Docuverse takes a digital library of HTML documents and a set of queries and creates a “universe” around these queries. Each “galaxy” corresponds to a library query. Each “star” corresponds to a document. The most relevant documents found through a query are the stars located close to the center of a galaxy. Documents perceived by a search engine as less relevant are out among the arms of the galaxies. The visualization is interactive, allowing the user to zoom in and out of galaxies, change queries, and overlay different kinds of data mining results onto the visualization to show how documents with certain characteristics are distributed throughout the collection."
-RENCI
Below are a couple of videos from RENCI's YouTube channel:
Unity 3D Game Engine running on a multi-projector dome system using JavaScript:
From the DISPLAX press kit materials: "DISPLAX™ Multitouch Technology turns any non-conductive material into an interactive multi-touch surface. Based on projected capacitive technology, DISPLAX™ Multitouch Technology has been developed using a transparent thinner-than-paper polymer film which can be applied to a variety of flat and curved surfaces including glass, plastic and wood."
"DISPLAX™ Multitouch Technology was primarily developed to enable touch screen integration for LCD and projection displays. Application of the technology ranges from converting entire store windows into a touch surface, creating information screens, or developing innovative user interfaces. Potential customers are found in retail and diverse industries such as telecoms, museums, property, broadcast, pharma or finance. The technology will also be available for LCD manufacturers, audiovisual integrators or gaming platforms."
"DISPLAX works with partners and directly with customers to deliver multi-touch rich-media
applications, enabling people to take full advantage of the latest developments. DISPLAX
Multitouch Technology will be available in the market with several embedded business
applications at no extra cost, designed especially for the kind of installations that interactive
technology companies work on. This Apps Pack will allow customers to display photo and
video streams, provide users access to Google Maps and social networks, integrate news
streams via RSS and play multitouch games. More applications will be available later in 2010
If you want to know more about the inner workings of DYI multi-touch, you'll be interested in the video below.
Aaron Bitler and Brady Simpson learned how to build a multi-touch table through their participation in the NUI Group, and recently formed a company, 3M8 to distribute multi-touch solutions. The 1/2 hour video provides an in-depth tour of multi-touch technology, in an an on-line broadcast on the HAK.5 website.
"Brady Simpson explains the different multi-touch methods. Aaron Bitler gives us a tour of the x19 multitouch tables construction. Brady explains the software used to power the x19 lcdmultitouch table, including the nuigroup CCV application. Aaron wraps up by explaining to us how he got involved in multitouch. He shares with us some sites where others can get started in their own homebrew projects, as well as his own multitouch company 3M8s at LCDMultiTouch.com."
If you are a talented interactive web designer/developer, game designer/developer, traditional programmer with a creative bent, or someone who who is thinking about working with technology in the future as a programmer or designer, I urge you to consider thinking about designing/developing multi-touch applications in the near future.
In my opinion, there will be a need for multi-touch web applications as well as for multi-touch education and collaboration applications for the SMART Table, Microsoft's Surface, multi-touch tablets like the rumored iTablet from Apple, and the multi-touch laptops and all-in-ones (Dell, HP, etc.).
Below are direct links to some of my blog posts related to multi-touch applications and screens. If you are fairly new to multi-touch, I'm sure that looking through some of my blog posts will be helpful. All of the posts have links to resources, and most have photos and video clips of multi-touch in action.
If you are new to this blog, I have a great deal of information, links, photos, and video clips of various multi-touch screens and applications. The best way to find the stuff is to enter in a keyword in the search box for this blog: multitouch, touch screen, gesture, multi-touch, etc. on this blog.
Here are some links: Do you have an HP TouchSmart, Dell Studio One or NextWindow touch-screen? NUITech's Snowflake Suite upgrade provides a multi-touch plug-in http://bit.ly/5tdlhc
The following blog post has a video clip that shows someone from Adobe painting with a multi-touch application in development: More Multi-Touch!: Rumor of the mobile apple iTablet; AdobeXD & Multitouch; 10-finger Mobile Multitouch: http://bit.ly/4S9Upm
Jim Spadaccini, of Ideum, shared information about his company's product, Gestureworks, highlighting how it provides better multi-touch and gesture support than Adobe AIR2 and Flash Player 10.1.Gestureworks supports multiple-point drag, rotate, and scale at the same time. In the video, the application is demonstrated on an HP Touchsmart 600 and a 3M multitouch screen.
Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 vs Gestureworks 1.0: A direct comparison of multitouch and gesture support
"A direct comparison between the built-in support for multitouch found in Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta / Adobe AIR 2 and that of the Gestureworks multitouch framework for Flash. More about this comparison can be found on the Gestureworks website (http://www.gestureworks.com) and the Ideum website (http://www.ideum.com) There is a blog post with more about this comparison and links to all of the example files at: www.ideum.com/2010/01/true-multitouch-wi th-adobe-flash/ "
-Stephane Chatty, Benjamin Tissoires; Video by G. Tabart
Information from the YouTube video: "This video, shot by ENAC's Interactive Computing Laboratory, demonstrates how one can use out-of-the-box Linux applications with multitouch displays, using the lab's kernel drivers and modified X.org evdev driver. See http://lii-enac.fr/en/projects/shareit/xorg.html for technical details. This work was done during project ShareIT, carried out with Thales Avionics, IntuiLab and Stantum, and sponsored by Aerospace Valley. The ShareIT project explores the use of multitouch interaction for future commercial aircraft cockpits."
The multi-touch software shown in the video was created by IntuiLab. The Slate PC multi-touch hardware was built by Stantum. Later in the video, the software is shown running on a MERL DiamondTouch
Globacore Globacore used four 72" Blue Ocean Low Gain Screens 16:9 to create their twenty-foot multi-touch wall, which I think was also used for the "holographic" screen in the first video. The tracker and base flash API from the NUI-group were used in this system. I wasn't sure if I'd heard about Blue Ocean screens. Much to my surprise, the company behind Blue Ocean is Nippura, located in Japan. Nippura has another office in Charlotte, N.C. For years, Nippura's core business has been focused on creating "the world's largest acrylic panels, tunnels, cylinders and spheres for the professional aquarium industry", but is also focused on screen systems as well.
US Nippura/Blue Ocean Projection Screens Blue Ocean screens were use in the second videos of this post. Below is some information the screens from the company's website: "Blue Ocean® Projection Screens are the first ever to cast the screen into a hi-tolerance viewing plane centered between two ultra-clear panels of cell-cast acrylic, the same type of material used in hi-optic fighter jet canopies and the world’s largest aquariums. Blue Ocean® Projection Screens also offer something never before found in screens: self-rigidity. The thickness of each screen can be fabricated so that it maintains its form without external frames or tension systems. Frameless high definition projected images without borders amplify the infinite depth viewing experience. Because of its durability, outdoor applications of entertainment around the garden and pool are also possible. Normal wear and tear scratching has no long-term effect on the screens’ performance, and a ten year old screen, simply re-polished, will literally look and perform exactly as it did the day it left the factory." Super High Definition Stereo Image using 4K Projection Systems (pdf) Tetsuro Ogi, Hiroaki Daigo, So Sato, Yoshisuke Tateyama, Yasuaki Nishida, International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence 2008
NUITEQ NUITEQ offers single and duo-touch plugins for Snowflake Suite that enables the software to run on NEXIO and NextWindow screens, including NextWindow's screens that are integrated in the HP TouchSmart and Dell Inspiron all-in-one PC's and others. SnowFlake Suite is also compatable with 3M Touch Systems, N-Trig, and Lumino. You can view the SnowFlake Suite application in action on NUITEQ's YouTube channel. "NUITEQ's software product Snowflake Suite, which received a Stevie Awards finalist recognition for Best New Product or Service of the Year 2009 - Media & Entertainment, is available to end clients, software developers, system integrators, VAR's and OEM's. Snowflake operates on a wide variety of hardware technology platforms including rear camera based solutions, IR overlay systems, bending wave, surface acoustic wave (SAW), projected and surface capacitive, resistive and other touch technologies for small hand held mobile devices and larger scale interactive displays." Recent news: NUITEQ Assists LTU Skelleftea at SACO event with new educational multi-touch desk
NextWindow and All-In-One PC's: NextWindow, the company that made the large single-touch display I used for a couple of class projects nearly three years ago, has really grown over the past few years. NextWindow provides optical touch screens for the HP TouchSmart PC, and also for the Dell Inspiron Studio One All-In-One PC, and the Dell Sx2210T desktop monitor. The next Dell with a NextWindow touch screen will be the Inspirion One 19, an all-in-one PC. You can find NextWindow touch screens in the Medion X9613, the NEC ValueStar W, and the Sony L Series. (NextWindow has Windows 7 certification for touch screens)
STANTUM and GUNZE USA Stantum has partnered with Gunze USA, a manufacturer of resistive touch-panels, to co-design and deliver multi-touch products. "Gunze USA will provide these custom multi-touch modules to the North American market for use in industrial, automotive, defense, aerospace, medical, kiosk/point-of-sales, and other professional applications. Unlike capacitive multi-touch, Stantum’s technology is particularly well suited to these professional markets, thanks to its:
immunity to EMI issues, via easy coexistence with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth antennas around the screen;
stylus input and high precision, enabling handwriting recognition; and
ability to work flawlessly with gloves."
According to the press release, Stantum's multi-touch technologies provide advantages such as handling 10 or more touches at a time, finger and stylus input, finger-pressure consumption, and native Windows 7 support, with no need for a driver. Developers can order the "beta" version of the Slate PC, based on the Dell Inspiron Mini netbook platform, from the Stantum website.
GESTURETEK The video below is of an interactive 3D application created for the Gondwana Das Praehistorium in Schiffweler, Germany, and provides an simulation of what it might be like to be a flying ancient pterosaur of giant dragonfly. Two gamers can play at the same time. If you want to fly, you flap your arms, and navigate by leaning. You crouch to dive, and increase your speed by flapping your arms even faster: GestureTek's 3D Interactive Flying and Virtual Game Experience for Gonwana Museum
This company always has something going on that looks fun and interactive. To get an idea this company's interactive work, take a look at the information on the GestureTek website links below. GestureTek has a variety product videos on the website.
SNIBBE INTERACTIVE Snibbe Interactive was founded by Scott Snibbe to develop social immersive media as a communication medium that incorporates the language of cinema and engages participation and interaction with others (and technology) through unencumbered body movements.
Scott Snibbe's Social Immersive Media presentation at Stanford's Seminar on People, Computers and Design, 5/2009
'Scott Snibbe of Sona Research discusses a distinct form of augmented reality focused on social interaction: social immersive media. He discusses design principles and interaction techniques to create strong emotional responses and social engagement through visceral interaction. He also describes approaches to clearly communicate cultural and scientific ideas through the medium, and how to promote specific distinct social behavior in uses." -YouTube description
RELATED Globacore "Globacore was founded by Ben Unsworth and Jeff Williams out of a passion for technology, art, and business. Globacore began as a web hosting and development company supporting the the technical needs of sports apparel startup VC Ultimate and it's associated companies."
"Globacore Inc. was officially incorporated in April 2003. In 2007 Ben and Jeff were joined by programmer Kyle Davis and graphic designer (and trail biker) Matt Venhuizen. In 2008, the Flexmaster Lukasz Ruminski joined us and continues to be a huge member of our team.Update: We'd like to welcome our newest team member: Developer Dave Rapin!"
Globacore Interactive Technologies 67 Mowat Ave. Suite 431 Toronto, ON M6K 3E3 Phone: + 1 (416) 925-2082 Tollfree: + 1 (888) 309-7658 Fax: + 1 (647) 477-3270 General Email:info@globacore.com
Natural User Interface Asia Pte Ltd(Asia office)
12 Little Road
#06-01 Lian Cheong Industrial Building
Singapore 536986
Phone: +65 6748 5245
Fax: +65 6748 7961
FINGERTAPPS Contact: James Bell-Booth
james[at]fingertapps.com
+64 21 226 6399 www.fingertapps.com/
GUNZE USA Product Overview Contact:Gunze Electronics USA 2113 Wells Branch Parkway, #5400 Austin, Texas 78728 Tel: 512-990-3400 Fax: 512-252-1181
LM3LABS Website: http://lm3labs.com/ENG/index_eng.html info@lm3labs.com Europe: Antipolis Innovation Campus 300, route des Cretes 06560 Sophia-Antipolis France Hong Kong, China +852-8198.8406 Australia +61(02)8011.3342 USA: +1(646)461.6146 TGarden Square 409 3-5-26 Funabori Edogawa-ku 134-0091 Tokyo, Japan +81(0)3.3877.0779
Outdoor Media Company (China) Products Contact: Kuo Lin (?) 42x46 Multi-touch LCD Display
HIWAD TOUCH - Beijing Yhjn Science and Technology Co. LTD
Interactive Sandbox "An interactive sand box or sand table for use in tactical training includes an automated control system and image generator so that infinitely variable visual images may be projected onto the contoured surface of the sand for training and preparation for action in the military field and disaster control, industrial planning, environmental protection, and similar situation."
Interactive Holographic Touch Screen
Beijing Yihejianing Science and Technology Co., Ltd
Address: Room 621, Jinyuan Modern shopping Mall, NO.1 Yuanda Road, Haidian District, Beijing, China
TE:8610-88892897，88892895
FAX:8610-88892867-801
Email: hxrong2001@hotmail.com http://www.cnhci.cn
