"Wake Up Your Feelings" ad campaign for the HP TouchSmart PC: Harnessing interactive digital story-telling.

I am not sure if this is an ad campaign for the HP TouchSmart PC, or just a pitch that was entered into the New York Festivals competition. It won a Silver and a Bronze.

This is the scoop from XM Asia Pacific (RGM Connect) about the campaign:

"Our clients came to us for a campaign to launch the HP TouchSmart Desktop PC, the first-ever touch-screen computer for the home that is sleek and stylish as it is powerful. Targeting style-conscious young aults who are fully immersed in the digital lifestyle, we created an emotional pull that focused on the product’s core USP (i.e. the touch-screen) by spinning the big idea/line/message “Wake Up Your Feelings” into a fun and interactive story in which our feelings (in the form of cute personalisable characters) had fallen into slumber as a result of neglect due to our busy lifestyles – and only through the power of touch could we wake them up again to get our feelings back. The result was a wonderful world of whimsical animation that was magical to behold and brought the campaign messaging to life."

Since I'm a school psychologist in my "day" job, I appreciate interactive applications that help people understand and communicate feelings. It would be nice if this concept could be transformed for use in school counseling and social skills/coping skills intervention groups!

You can access the video from the Motion Graphics website, or click on the picture below to link to the video and additional information. The concept is great, and the video is worth watching.

Mun Hoe Tung was responsible for the animation and art direction of the campaign.

Screenshots:



Just think of how fun it would be to manipulate the items on the screen!

Ben 10 Alien Force Game Creator from Cartoon Network: Social Game Creation Online for Kids!

I meant to post something about Cartoon Networks on-line Ben 10 Alien Force Game Creator. For many children, it is the middle of summer, and on rainy days, wouldn't it be fun to create a game? To create a game, a sign-up is required, but the application is free.

Here is a screenshot of the on-line Game Creator tutorial:


There is an easy-to-understand "help" section that accompanies Game Creator.

RELATED

Cartoon Network Asia, HP Team for Toon Creator Awards
“HP’s collaboration with Cartoon Network on the Toon Creator Awards is a joint effort to leverage each other’s strengths—HP’s leadership in personal computing and Cartoon Network’s expertise with kids’ entertainment,” commented Ajay Mohan, the VP of marketing for the Personal Systems Group at Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific. “We aim to enhance the experience for young kids and their families by inspiring creativity, promoting self-expression and evoking imagination through technology in a fun and exciting way.” (WorldScreen.com, 7/2/09, Kristin Brzoznoski)

Link:
Cartoon Network - Measure your animation skills against other animators


I played some of the on-line games on the Cartoon Network website, and the first thing I thought was that the games should be optimized for touch-screen interaction. If Hewlett-Packard has partnered with the Cartoon Network, perhaps they might facilitate this process sometime in the future.

NUI-Group Members: What are they doing now?

Multitouch Media Application Pro v3.0 from Falcon4ever on Vimeo.

MMA Pro is a multitouch photo and video organizer build in Adobe AIR (Flex3) and has new features such as Google Maps, support for uploading pictures on the fly using blue-tooth. For more information, visit Laurence Muller's website, Multigesture.Net. There you can download the application. Make sure you read the install instructions that are included in the readme.text, and also make sure that you have the latest Adobe AIR 1.5.x. Laurence also recommends installing BlueSoleil to handing the pairing of devices and file transfers. (If you've never programmed for Bluetooth, take his advice!)

Laurence Muller (M.Sc.) is a Scientific Programmer at the University of Amsterdam who develops scientific software for multi-touch devices. He is a member of the NUI-Group.

The following video highlights some of the applications from the University of Amsterdam from about a year ago:

Multitouch Applications from Falcon4ever on Vimeo.

Feel free to leave a comment and a link or two if you are a NUI-Group member and like to share your recent projects!

Where are they now? Revisiting Interactive User Interface Projects

I've been blogging about interactive multimedia and interesting human-computer interfaces/ interaction for a while. I thought I'd revisit some of the projects and prototypes that interested me and find out what happened to all of those visionary graduate students after they earned their degrees. (Feel free to leave a comment and a link if you have any information to update about yourself or someone you know.)

This will be a topic I'll touch on from time-to-time, and since I've covered so many projects, it might take quite a while!

In the meantime, I've posted a video of the TANGerINE Inspirational Cube, a mixed reality interactive multimedia project between the University of Florence, University of Bologna, along with the contributions of other researchers. The video was produced in 2007, I think.


Here is a 2008 picture of some of the people who continued to work with the TANGerINE project at CHI 2008:

Here is the video of "TANGerINE Cities: Collaborative Tangible Sonorization" from Nicola Torpei's Vimeo page:

TANGerINE cities - collaborative tangible sonorization from Nicola Torpei on Vimeo.

And here is a link to a Flickr slideshow from TANGerINE Cities at the Frontiers of Interaction 09 conference, held recently in Rome, Italy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolatorpei/sets/72157619553939994/show/ Below is a video of the conference highlights, set to spaghetti western music:


Somewhat Related:
Note: Stephano Baraldi, one of Nicola Torpei's colleagues who worked on the TANGerINE project, worked for a while at a company called Natural Interaction, now part of iO. To read more about iO, take a look at Alessandro Valli's whitepaper, "Natural Interaction, iO"(pdf). Stephano Baraldi's prototype of the Sensitive Table is mentioned in this paper.

iO's Interactive Climbing Wall


(If you just happen to be interested in spaghetti western music, you can listen to it at Last FM: http://www.last.fm/tag/spaghetti+western Ennio Morricone is one of the top artists of this genre.)

Update on Interactive Mobile Phones: Sony Ericsson's Android Rachael; HTC Hero

Both Sony Ericsson and HTC have built upon Google's Android build to create new "user experiences" for mobile phones.



Sony Ericsson Rachael UI Video:


Related:
"Sony Ericsson "Rachael" Android XPERIA handset unveiled?"
(Paul Miller, engadget, 7/4/09)
Sony Ericsson's Android Rachael UI Makes Me Want to Ditch My iPhone
(Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo, 7/8/09)


"Make it Mine, Stay Close, Discover the Unexpected!" Personalization with HTC Hero Touch-enabled Smart Phone"



HTC recently launched the HTC Hero. I haven't had a chance to touch one, but it looks interesting enough to make a trip to my local mobile phone service provider and see how it works.

"HTC Hero launch event video featuring HTC Sense™ - an intuitive, seamless experience built upon three fundamental principles - make it mine, stay close, and discover the unexpected." -HTC

The two video clips below explain the rationale behind the HTC Hero and why the company thinks it is an important innovation:

PART I



PART II


A few quotes from the video:

"It begins with listening and observing people as they use their phone..."

"...there has been a fundamental shift in people's phone expectations..."

"People want to stay close with the important people in their lives, and have online information...Voice is key, but no longer enough...The SmartPhone is the New Phone, people no longer expect their Internet to be at their desks anymore. They expect it everywhere they are. The Internet is becoming the fundamental of the mobile phone. Access to web browsing, streaming media, and connected applications has taken off, and this is where Smartphone really excels. People really appreciate the experience..."

HTC Hero UI Video


Related:
HTC Debuts Hero, With Fresh Face for Android
(John Herman, Gizmodo, 6/24/09)
Google Android Info
"Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. The Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications that run on Android-powered devices."

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

Haptics and Interactive Simulations

Following a link from Jonathan P San Diego, of London, I learned about Haptist, a user community for haptics researchers. The first thing I came across was "Simodont".

What is Simodont?

"Simodont is a high quality, high fidelity simulator allowing future dentists to be train in operative dental procedures in a realistic dedicated virtual environment while receiving haptic, visual, and audio sensory information".



"The haptics is based on the patented Moog admittance control paradigm. The use of a force sensor in the drill hand piece allows realistic rendering of drill and contact forces."

pdf brochure Simodont

pdf info about admittance control and impedance control

Food for thought:
Jonathan posted this quote of Marvin Minsky on his website:

"It often does more harm than good to force definitions on things we don't understand. Besides, only in logic and mathematics do definitions ever capture concepts perfectly. The things we deal with in practical life are usually too complicated to be represented by neat, compact expressions. Especially when it comes to understanding minds, we still know so little that we can't be sure our ideas about psychology are even aimed in the right directions. In any case, one must not mistake defining things for knowing what they are."

-- Marvin Minsky --
from The Society of Mind, 1985