Video modeling software for visual learners and those who have autism spectrum disorders

Activity Trainer, video modeling software from Accelerated Educational Software, supports the following activities:

• Academic
• Communication
• Daily Living
• Non-Verbal Imitation
• Recreation
• Social
• Vocational

A free 30-day trial of the software can be downloaded from the Accelerations Educational Software website.

On the Accelerations Educational Software website, you can find other products, such as Storymovies, which is the product of a collaboration between Carol Gray (social stories), Mark Shelley, and the Special Minds Foundation.

"The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics": Link

I could remain an undeclared graduate student for life!

Last semester, I took a course in information visualization and visual communication. What next?!

Cultural Analytics.

I just heard of this area of study today. Here is a link to an article, written by Kevin D. Franklin and Karen Rodriguez, in HPCwire:

The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics


"some see the reciprocal and perhaps limitless possibilities of emergent technologies and humanities scholarship -- how digital technology cuts across disciplines, creates new ways of looking at artifacts, as well as producing new forms itself."

This speaks to my multidisciplinary soul.


-photo via HPCwire

Mozilla's Concept Series: A call for collaborative participation. Demos look like they would work well on a touch screen...

Mozilla labs has a call for participation in the development of nextgen web interaction design. "Be bold. Be radical. The crazier, the better. Let’s explore the future together."
-Mozilla Labs

The following videos give a good overview of the innovations initially created for this new endeavor:

Aurora, created by Adaptive Path, is an adaptive browser interaction concept, incorporating radial and wheel menus, data visualization objects, a 3D navigation system, and more.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.



Bookmarking and History Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.



Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.



Excerpt about this collaborative project, from the Mozilla Labs website:

"Today we’re calling on industry, higher education and people from around the world to get involved and share their ideas and expertise as we collectively explore and design future directions for the Web.

You don’t have to be a software engineer to get involved, and you don’t have to program. Everyone is welcome to participate. We’re particularly interested in engaging with designers who have not typically been involved with open source projects. And we’re biasing towards broad participation, not finished implementations.

We’re hoping to lower the barrier to participation by providing a forum for surfacing, sharing, and collaborating on new ideas and concepts. Our goal is to bring even more people to the table and provoke thought, facilitate discussion, and inspire future design directions for Firefox, the Mozilla project, and the Web as a whole."

-via Putting People First

This will be an interesting trend to follow. I'd like to work on web navigation systems optimized for multi-touch and large screen displays. Is it now possible?

iPhone: Multitouch control of a laptop screen!

The Media Computing Group at RWTH-AACHEN University has developed an application to allow users to control a laptop via a multi-touch iPhone. Although the demo shows how to rotate and resize images, the "multiple views" section is interesting. Like an Etch-a-Sketch, you shake the iPhone to reset the images.

I've been toying with ideas about ways to create user-friendly interactions between screens of all sizes. This approach intrigues me.



You can find more information about the iPhone and Cocoa on the Multi-touch Framework website. The contact for this project is Stefan Hafeneger, a student assistant

Catchyoo's Interactive Touch-screen on the Panasonic Road Show

Lm3Labs/Catchyoo's application was featured on a giant Panasonic interactive touch-screen display. The ripple effect looked intriguing:


Cathyoo on Panasonic's national roadshow from Nicolas Loeillot on Vimeo.

Lm3Labs focuses on interactive applications that harness the power of computer vision. Although much of what I've seen has been retail and market-related, they are also involved with innovative interactive museum displays:
Lm3Labs: Interactive Museum Solutions featuring ubiq'window and Catchyoo

Wouldn't this sort of interactivity be fun in our schools? How about at the public library? It is a leap or two ahead of the interactive whiteboards.

Microsoft's Multi-Touch Sphere "Photo Globe"

I just had to post about this, even though this news has been rapidly circulating around the blogSPHERE.

The sphere could support an interactive travel planning/travel memory application.

Imagine if you were on a cruise ship, and uploaded your photos to the globe, and voila, they'd show up on the sphere in your mother's living room! Geo-tagged, cross-referenced, synched with your 2.0 apps, and linked to your vacation video-clips you previously uploaded to YouTube.