Visual Culture

What is Visual Culture? It is a fairly new discipline of study that supports the point of view that understanding our world goes beyond words and text.

I'll be posting a bit on this topic, since I'm interested in figuring out how the concept of visual culture fits into my own theories about multimedia literacy and technology.

As I dig deeper into this field of study, I hope to gather and share what I find. One of my tasks will be to find a "short list" of visual culture scholars and see if there are is any cross-pollination between this group and people in the field of information/data visualization.

In searching for definitions of Visual Culture, I came across this description from the Visual Culture website from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What is Visual Culture?

"(It) is concerned with everything we see, have seen, or may visualize-paintings, sculptures, movies, television, photographs, furniture, utensils, gardens, dance, buildings, artifacts, landscape, toys, advertising, jewelry, apparel, light, graphs, maps, websites, dreams-in short, all aspects of culture that communicate through visual means...."

Visuality and Textuality

"Visual Culture Studies presents a challenge to the textual model of the world that dominates so much thinking about culture. While analyzing cultural experiences, artistic practices, and even social interactions and history itself as so many texts to be read is an undeniably powerful approach, this textual bias ignores a vast realm of perception, experience and meaning in reducing culture to "reading." Visual Cultural Studies counters this bias by emphasizing the importance of the visual-even in textual objects, as when scholars consider the impact of design on the meaning of literature. In countering this earlier thinking, Visual Culture Studies does not set aside textuality, but draws it into dialogue with visuality, performativity, aurality, tactility, and so on. At the same time, Visual Culture scholars are beginning to question the broader dominance of visuality itself (what some have termed "ocularcentrism") and to look for ways to consider vision in the broadest cultural context without introducing new hierarchies of social practice."

What is Visual Culture? (University of Aberdeen)

"Visual culture has emerged as a constellation of various interests and numerous critical intersections in the visual and performing arts here at the University of Aberdeen. Because of its dynamic nature it constitutes less of discipline than a platform for exploring theoretical and creative collaborations between Film, Art History, Modern Thought, Museum Studies, Visual Anthropology, Scientific Imaging practices, new media, and computer engineering. The taught M.Litt reflects the diverse interests of faculty and students participating in visual studies. The M.Litt in Visual Culture is divided into two tracks: one designed to engage with critical thinking (the history of art and film criticism, theories of the visual, philosophies of perception and new media); and the other concentrating on creativity and media production (the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Raul Ruiz advises on avant-garde filmmaking, and courses are taught in film production)."

RELATED
(This list is not inclusive and will be updated.)

Visual Culture Website (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Visual Culture Website (University of Aberdeen)

Georgtown University's Visual Culture Page (Martin Irvine)
Warning- it is ALL TEXT!

Aesthetics and Visual Culture (Bruce B. Janz, Director, Center for Humanities and Digital Research, University of Central Florida)
This site has an extensive number of links that cross numerous disciplines, last updated in 2006.

Journal of Visual Culture

Visual Culture at Middlesex University People Page

Visual Culture Blog (Oberholtzer-Creative)

The Visual Culture Awards - Info about awarded individuals

Infosthetics

Capella Web Capella Garcia Arquitectura- see picture below:




Via Visual Culture:

Pathway to a Sustainable Environment
"Heaven by Capella Garcia Arquitectura is an ephemeral space whose purpose is to show off the virtues of a constructional system using a plastic material, developed by the Resyrok Company, at the latest Casa Decor Fair in Barcelona, Spain, whose theme was “Pathway to a sustainable environment"

I came across the following video, created by Eirik Solheim, on the Visual Culture blog:

2008 in 40 Seconds

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Link to Resource Update: Adolesecent Literacy, Digital Storytelling, and More

I posted updated resources and links on the TechPsych blog. Take a look!

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.

Capzles: On-line beta interactive multimedia timeline.

"Capture your memories. Tell your stories. Travel through time"




(The above screen is interactive. You can slide the photos back and forth, and select one to see the the content on the screen.)

Capzles is an interactive multimedia story timeline that I found when looking for timelines about the financial crisis. Meltdown 101 was created by TruthDig, a member of the Capzles community. Capzles can contain audio, video, blog post, photos, and other forms of content. More information can be found on the Capzles website.

Related:

Telling stories in bite-size Capzles
(1/20/08, Erica Ogg, CNET)

"Capzles takes the idea of telling a story with a photo album or a vacation video and puts it all into one multimedia package....The start-up calls its product "social storytelling." Of course, this means the stories you make with its Web-based authoring tool are eminently shareable with anyone and everyone...Using a patent-pending Flash-based technology, photos, video clips, and audio files are uploaded to Capzles in a linear, chronological strip. Each image or file can be scrolled through horizontally and selected. Each can have a caption, links, and a blog."

Bloom - Play Music with Colors: Seth Sandler's relaxing little on-line application!

Bloom: Play music with colors (link to application)

For more information about Seth Sandler's work, visit his AudioTouch website.

Here are a few pictures of his applications:








Seth integrates music into his multi-touch applications, as he has a background in both music and art. He is a member of the NUI-Group.

Links to videos of natural user interfaces - multi-touch & gesture

Here are links to two recent posts about multi-touch and gesture interaction on the Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blog:

Jonathan Brill's Point& Do: "Your Guide to Natural User Interfaces"

More from Lm3labs: Ubiq'window & Reactor.cmc's touch screen shoppiong catalog, AUDI's touch-less interactive showroom screen, and the DNP Museum Lab

Dan Saffer's Book: Designing Gestural Interfaces; Gregory Siegal's LifeMap Photo App

Dan Saffer's new book, Designing Gestural Interfaces, is out!




Dan Saffer's company, Kicker Studio, specializes in touch screens and gestural interfaces. Chan Wook sent me a link to Dan's recent blog post, Concept: Desktop Touchscreen System. The post includes a variety of illustrations of various touch-screen interactions and features, including a "haptics keyboard when you need it". (Thanks, Chan Wook!)

If you are interested in multi-touch and gesture interfaces and interaction, join the Multi-touch Book Club at Jonathan Brill's site, Point & Do, for more information. The discussion will center around Dan Saffer's new book.

Dan Saffer is the author of Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, one of my favorite books in the field of interaction:

Chan Wook also recommended a look at Gregory Siegal's LifeMap concept:


According to Siegal's website, "The LifeMap is a touch -screen digital photo storing and organization product. After tagging photos with people, places, and keywords, the LifeMap organizes the images in a way that users can document their lives over time..."My inspiration for the LifeMap came from noticing the lack of intimacy in the interaction with most everyday products. Family photographs are very important and currently the process of storing and organizing them is tedious and boring. I wanted to create a product for families that would promote a meaningful interaction and attach more intimacy to digital family photos."

(Gregory Siegal is working on a BFA in Industrial Design from Carnegie Mellon, with an expected graduation in May of 2009.)

Quick Post: Video clip of RENCI's exhibit at SC'08. Includes a view of a multi-touch table.

This is a videoclip of RENCI's exhibit at SC'08 (Supercomputing 08, Austin, TX). Quite a nice set-up!



-RENCI Vis Group Multi-touch Blog

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

Streaming Museum in Cyberspace and Public Space on 7 Continents

For more information, see my recent post on the Technology Supported Human-World Interaction blog.

Demo of Duke University's multi-touch wall at RENCI, running the Cobalt Metaverse Browser

The video below shows the "pre-alpha" version of the Cobalt Metaverse Browser:



"This video shows the Cobalt metaverse browser being tested on a 13-foot by 5-foot multi-touch visualization wall equipped with six high-definition projectors located at the Renaissance Computing Institute engagement center at Duke University. The input drivers are being developed by Dr. Xunlei Wu so that users can directly manipulate high-resolution data using both hands and multiple fingers for a more natural and intuitive data exploration experience. In the video, Dr. Wu is using both gesture and touch to navigate through, and rearrange content between, two Cobalt virtual worlds."

Related:
The Open Cobalt Project (on ning)
Cobalt Website & link to download to the latest pre-alpha build
Cobalt Community,
Cobalt Google Group
EduSim (A 3D multi-user virtual world platform and authoring toolkit for K-12 interactive whiteboards. The latest version is powered by Cobalt)

Cobalt can import objects from the Google 3D warehouse as well as Google Sketch-up:
Video Tutorial: Using Google 3D Warehouse to build Cobalt & Edusim Virtual Worlds

People:
Julian Lombardi, Duke University
Xunlei Wu, Senior Visualization Researcher, RENCI, Duke University
Rich White, EduSim; Greenbush Education Service Center, Girard, KS

Kids using Cobalt-based EduSim on desktop computers, via Rich White:

Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines: All Windows programs should be touchable!

If you are a designer/developer who would like to develop applications that can support touch interaction, it will save you some time to study the Windows Vista User Experience "Touch" guidelines. You'll find information about the eight flick events, (gestures that correspond to keyboard shortcuts for navigation and editing), the 40 or so gestures recognized by Vista, tips for creating controls, GetMessageExtraInfo function, and more.


"As touch spreads from Tablet PCs to other types of computers, software program developers and designers will find it increasingly important to support touch as well. All Windows programs should have a great touch experience. Users should be able to perform your program's most important tasks efficiently using a finger."

BMW and Surface Computing: Video of Tabletop Interaction

This is a promotional video from BMW, showing how potential buyers can interact with a tabletop computing system to preview various ways they can customize the car. The system in the video is Microsoft's Surface:



Via Gizmodo Australia

(I wonder if Microsoft is working on a few educational games for the surface....)

Tech-Savvy Teachers at Classroom 2.0; Google Sketch-up for math, and other creative ideas...including multi-touch

Classroom 2.0

"Guzman", a member of Classroom 2.0, is a math teacher in Florence, Italy who teaches math to middle school students. In addition to math, he has an IT background. He used Google Sketchup to introduce and work with solids. He thinks that Sketchup would be a good tool to use to teach volumes, sections, and more.

Guzman's student's worked on this project one hour a week for five weeks, and created all of the models using Sketchup. The animation was created with Sketchup by Guzman.



You can find the models Guzman's students made at Google 3D Warehouse

Tom Barret, at Classroom 2.0 has started a Multi-Touch Interactive Desk Development group. Tom is involved in the SynergyNet: Multi-touch in Education research, which is part of Durham (UK) University's Technology-Enhanced Learning Research Group.

You can find related pictures on Flickr: Multi-Touch Interaction: Applications and Gesture Ideas

For the Tech Curious: Multi-Gesture Net: A Multi-touch and Multi-gesture Research Blog

Laurence Muller, M.Sc. is a scientific programmer at the Universiteit van Amsterdam who develops scientific software for multi-touch devices. His blog, Multigesture.Net, provides good information regarding multi-touch and gesture interaction hardware and software applications.


Laurence links to the DYI tabletop computing bootcamp that was held at
IEEE Tabletops and Interactive Surfaces 2008. From there, you can find a linked list of the organizers of the events, and additional information.

Picture below is from MTC Multi-touch Console:


Here is a link to the group's libavg wiki that includes open-source code and "how-to" instructions.

If you are interested in multi-touch and multi-gesture computing from an academic point of view, Florian Echtler, of the Technische Universitat Munchen has a series of publications listed on his website. Here is the abstract of one of his papers. He is on the right track. I especially like the fact that he's thought about widget layers. (I have, too, but they are only sketches in my idea book.)

TICH: Tangible Interactive Surfaces for Collaboration between Humans (Sourceforge website, with links to libtisch.

F. Echtler, G. Klinker
A Multitouch Software Architecture
NordiCHI 2008: Using Bridges, 18-22 October, Lund, Sweden. (bib)

"In recent years, a large amount of software for multitouch interfaces with various degrees of similarity has been written. In order to improve interoperability, we aim to identify the common traits of these systems and present a layered software architecture which abstracts these similarities by defining common interfaces between successive layers. This provides developers with a unified view of the various types of multitouch hardware. Moreover, the layered architecture allows easy integration of existing software, as several alternative implementations for each layer can co-exist. Finally, we present our implementation of this architecture, consisting of hardware abstraction, calibration, event interpretation and widget layers."

Teliris InterAct TouchTable and TouchWall: Immersive Collaboration & Telepresence; DVE's Holographic Tele-Immersion Room

A few years ago I took a class about virtual reality and how it can be used in education and training. One of the topics we covered was telepresence. One of the companies I looked at was Teliris.

According to a whitepaper on the Teliris website, "Business Value of Telepresence", by S. Ann Earon, "Telepresence is what videoconferencing was meant to be: reliable, highly interactive, easy to operate, resulting in a natural meeting with transparent technology and an emphasis on human factors."

Teleris now offers something they call Immersive Collaboration, which involves the use of surface computing that supports document and multimedia content sharing across locations, as if all of the group members are in the same room


Watch the demonstration of the Teliris Collaboration Touch Table in a telepresence meeting. In the video clip below, the narrator shares content from a local Teliris Collaboration Touch Table to a remote meeting participant who is at another table.

"Touch to Telepresence"

Business Holograms!
DVE (Digital Video Enterprises) developed a Tele-Immersion room that uses Cristie Digital Systems Mirage HD 3D projectors to create holographic images of remotely located meeting participants:

DVE Telepresence: An Introduction (A plug from DVE, but informative.)

DVE Portable Virtual Presentation -A Volumetric 3D image from a projector hidden from the audience's view:

This system can display 3D images on the stage, and supports 2-way interactive HD feeds.

The above examples demonstrate how newer technologies, including table-top surfaces, can be used for collaborative business meetings. I can envision this technology used for medical education, medical consultations, and collaboration between artists and musicians.

When the price comes down, perhaps we will have these systems in our family rooms!

Touch TV Networks Demo using Windows 7 a NextWindow display

Here is a short video demonstration of a Touch TV Networks demo on a display using a NextWindow touch screen. It looks like it was built using Windows 7. I understand that it was created by people with former Microsoft connections.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=74b3a821-3e82-4b50-bc64-04ae4b75bdaf" target="_new" title="Touch TV Networks Demo at Microsoft REC">Video: Touch TV Networks Demo at Microsoft REC</a>

For more information, take a look at the Touch TV Networks website.

For the Tech Curious: "Get in Touch with Touchless": Multi-touch with just a webcam and the free demo application!

Via the Seattle Tech Report's Microsoft Blog:



You can find the demo code on the Codeplex website. Here is a quote:

"The Touchless SDK enables developers to create multi-touch based applications using a webcam for input. Touch without touching."

"Touchless started as Mike Wasserman’s college project at Columbia University. The main idea: to offer users a new and cheap way of experiencing multi-touch capabilities, without the need of expensive hardware or software. All the user needs is a camera, which will track colored markers defined by the user."

(I posted about the Touchless SDK previously, but I didn't have the video.)

Need for Multi-touch, Multi-user Interactive Multimedia Applications, and the Miracle Question

Last week I received a few comments on my post, "Multi-touch and Flash: Links to Resources; Revisiting Jeff Han's Presentation". I started to respond to a thoughtful comment by Spencer, of TeacherLED, and I wanted to share it as a post:

Spencer is a teacher and instructional technology consultant who develops web-based interactive applications for use on interactive whiteboards (IWB's). He's interested in multi-touch applications for education and has some good insights into what HCI researchers call the "problem space".

Here are Spencer's comments:

..."I agree that Flash could have a very important role to play here. I chose Flash as my development tool because it allows quick development of ideas and then easy distribution of the product. The importance of this is that it allows people who have a profession other than software developer to create software with the insight of their main role. In my case, as a teacher, I can identify things I wish I had and then make them. Often I find that other teachers had the same wish and they then appreciate the product."

"The unfortunate thing with multi-touch is that it is far from the technology most of us outside the industry/research areas have to work with. An app created in Flash for single touch follows the mouse and pointer method so it can be developed easily. When done it can be easily tested on a standard IWB for the feel (which is often surprisingly different on the IWB compared to using a mouse)."

"The Flash developer community has a very experimental and creative characteristic and I’m sure would be a great driving force for multi-touch but first there needs to come a reason for more people to have some sort of multi-touch display for general use, beyond facilitating experiments. When the various operating systems support it and have the apps to make having a supporting display viable then the experimentation and ideas will really flow."

"In addition, the display makers need to recognize the benefits of Flash and ensure they address them. At the moment it seems to be too often an afterthought if considered at all. SDKs and APIs make no reference to Flash or they remain indefinitely in beta for older versions of Flash only."

"It is a pity that all of this will take time. The more time that passes the more single touch IWBs are bought and installed which will delay the uptake of the eventual multi-touch ones. Meanwhile children continue to have to keep reminding themselves that they can only touch the board in one place when it is clear that every bit of their brain is telling them to interact with the board in a much more natural multi-touch way."

My response to Spencer's comment:

Spencer,

You make good points regarding the barriers to getting the multi-touch approach adopted by the "mainstream". You're right about what the commercial display makers need to do. If they want to market displays that will have more appeal, they must think about the different sorts of applications and programming environments that the displays should support.

Display makers also need to think more about the bigger picture - in what sort of environments will the displays be located? Indoors? Outdoors? Near bright sunlight? What about people with disabilities, children, or the elderly?

I can see that in the future, multi-touch displays and other devices would operate within an embedded systems environment and support mobile computing activities as well. There are existing examples of this concept, of course, but there is much room for creative improvement. An embedded systems approach is complex, and would need to handle input from sensors, support multi-modal signal process, and also provide users with a range of connectivity modes, including RFID. (Data management and storage needs would have to be addressed, along with privacy and security concerns.)

Most importantly, in my opinion, these systems would need to have the flexibility required to support human activities and interactions that have not yet emerged! Certainly this will need to take a multidisciplinary approach.

There are many unanswered questions....How does this fit in with mobile computing and "cloud" computing? What sort of middleware needs to be developed?

Even if we don't have solutions to the bigger problems, there are many smaller problems that I think could be somewhat easily solved.

As you mentioned, many applications that are designed for single-touch screens don't fully support the way people identify, select, and move items around the screen. Although educators access websites every day for use on interactive whiteboards, they are hungry for more. There are not enough websites that are optimized for single-touch interaction, or touch-screen interaction in 3-D "space".

Teachers who are successful users of interactive whiteboards know exactly what we are talking about. They spend quite a bit of time searching for new on-line resources they can use with their students. They know how much the students want to interact with the screen at the same time and would be so excited to have capability at their fingertips!

Optimizing websites for touch-screen applications is possible, but this idea hasn't occurred to web developers. Their jobs don't require it, so there is no incentive. Google is developing FlareBrowser, that can support multi-touch interactions, but according to information on the website, it runs on Mac Leopard 1.5, and nothing else. The present version is bare-bones. I haven't yet tested the FlareBrowser.

I think that another barrier to getting multi-touch off the ground is that the people who might have the knack for multi-touch application development simply don't know it! We've mentioned that Flash developers have the potential to create good multi-touch applications. I also think that game developers and designers could make good contributions to the multi-touch movement. Just think about what thought goes into programming interactions and event handling for 3-D web-based multi-player games!

Yet another barrier is that people who work in lower-tech fields could benefit from collaborative multi-touch applications, but they don't know it, either. The research I've reviewed tells me that multi-touch applications can support a wide range of human endeavors- work, creativity, data analysis, education, collaboration, planning, and so forth.

What is missing is the input of potential end users from a variety of fields. No specific discipline "owns" multi-touch, so it is hard to figure out how we can make this happen.

Could we set up multi-touch technology playgrounds at professional and trade conferences? What about airports and hospital lobbies? Libraries and museums? Shopping centers? Sports events and rock concerts?

This leads me to my next idea, which is jumping ahead a bit:

One of the barriers to the development of multi-touch applications is that it is not easy to gather user requirements when the users are not familiar with the technology.
That is when my "Miracle Question" technique comes into play. I learned this technique when I studied brief solution-focused counseling and found that if modified, can be useful when figuring out user requirements. (The process still needs some fleshing out.)
Why the Miracle Question?
The questions that a developer uses to guide the client during the initial planning stages are very important. Keep in mind that people want to use technology because it meets a need and also solves a problem, which is the similar to the reason a person might seek counseling.
The Miracle Question technique (actually, a series of questions) might help to tease things out. The goal of this type of questioning is to help the client use their own creativity, resources, and problem-solving skills so they can become effective partners throughout the development cycle.
(People with human-computer interaction training might have an easier time understanding how this technique might be modified and applied to different fields.)

FYI
A good example the Miracle Question process, as used in therapy and counseling, can be found on the Network of Social Construction Therapies website in an article written by the late Steve de Shazer:

http://brianmft.talkspot.com/aspx/templates/topmenuclassical.aspx/msgid/366482

There aren't many resources about the use of the Miracle Question in IT or business. Here are a couple:

Solution Focused Management of Unplanned IT Outages (Read pages 132 and the references.)http://conferences.vu.edu.au/web2006/images/CDProceedings06.pdf
Proceedings of 7th International We-B (Working for E-Business) Conference, 2006Katherine O'CallaghanSugumar Mariappandar, Ph.D.School of Business and InformaticsAustralian Catholic University

Miracle Question in Executive Coaching
http://www.1to1coachingschool.com/Coaching_Miracle_Question.htm

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