"A wireless square with sensors and a simple web app to set rules, Twine tells you what your things are doing by email, text or Twitter." I want one!
This project was developed by David Carr and John Kestener, the designer-engineers behind Supermechanical. They are passionate about creating connectable objects.They honed their skills in the interdisciplinary MIT Media Lab.
More information about Twine can be found on the KICKSTARTER website. Here is a bite of info from the site for the tech-curious:
"Twine is a wireless module tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. The module has WiFi, on-board temperature and vibration sensors, and an expansion connector for other sensors. Power is supplied by the on-board mini USB or two AAA batteries (and Twine will email you when you need to change the batteries)." "The Spool web app makes it simple to set up and monitor your Twines from a browser anywhere. You set rules to trigger messages — no programming needed. The rules are put together with a palette of available conditions and actions, and read like English: WHEN moisture sensor gets wet THEN tweet "The basement is flooding!" We'll get you started with a bunch of rule sets, and you can share rules you create with other Twine owners." "Because the hardware and software are made for each other, setup is easy. There's nothing to install — just point Twine to your WiFi network. Sensors are immediately recognized by the web app when you plug them in, and it reflects what the sensors see in real time, which makes understanding and testing your rules easy."
One of my favorite blogs is FlowingData, Nathan Yau's labor of love for the past several years. Nathan is a UCLA PhD candidate in statistics with a focus in data visualization. He shares interesting tidbits of information on his blog, including those that relate to his main interests, social data visualization, self-surveillance, and data for non-professionals. He supports accessible and useful data visualization.
Below is information about the video posted on Vimeo: "Google Street View stop motion animation short made as a personal project by director Tom Jenkins.
Story: A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View. All screen imagery was animated - there are no screen replacements.
One of the blogs I enjoy following is Innovative Interactivity (II). Here is the description from the "About" section of the blog:
"Innovative interactivity serves as an open forum for multimedia producers, interactive web developers, and new media professionals. Content focuses on the dynamics and theory of how people receive and react to different forms of information on the web, both through visual, multimedia storytelling and interactive information design."
"The goal is that this blog will provide an outlet for those in the online realm, whether you are interested in learning about multimedia storytelling, interactive web development, programming languages, software tools, data visualization, or all of the above. Hopefully you will be inspired from what you read here to surpass your current standards in order to develop highly effective multimedia interactives for the digital community."
Tracy Boyer Clark is the founder & managing editor of Innovative Interactivity. She is finishing up her MBA/MSIS dual master's degree at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Here is the press release: Next Generation of Microsoft Surface Available for Pre-Order in 23 Countries "Software developers interested in creating solutions for the Samsung SUR40 can get started immediately by visiting the Surface Developer Center. The site provides free and easy access to the Surface 2.0 software developer kit, featuring the Input Simulator, which enables developers to write Surface applications on any Windows 7 machine, as well as other helpful developer-related resources. There are already hundreds of highly skilled Surface software development partners that can be found at http://www.surface.com."
(I've listed Microsoft Surface partners at the end of this post and plan to share more about the latest applications for surface computing in the near future.)
The following product information was taken from the Samsung website:
40" Surface Experience "Samsung SUR40 is the new generation of Microsoft® Surface® experience featuring PixelSense™ technology, which gives LCD panels the power to see without the use of cameras. Building from the innovation of the first version of Microsoft® Surface® and Samsung’s leading display technology, it is now possible for people to share, collaborate and explore together using a large, thin display that recognizes fingers, hands and other objects placed on the screen."
PixelSense™ "PixelSense™ allows an LCD display to recognize fingers, hands, and objects placed on the screen, including more than 50 simultaneous touch points. With PixelSense™, pixels in the display see what’s touching the screen and that information is immediately processed and interpreted."
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Viewing Angle: (H/V) 178 / 178° (CR ≥ 10) CPU: Athlon X2 Dual-Core 245e (2.9GHz) Operating System: Windows 7 Professional x64
Product Dimensions (With Stand): 1,095 x 728 x 707.4 mm Product Dimensions (Without Stand): 1,095 x 102.5 x 707.4 mm Shipment Dimensions: 1,214 x 299 x 832 mm
