Darkstar, I Never Got To Know Ye: Oracle squashed Sun's open-source application server for 3D multi-player online games!

 I never had a chance to explore Darkstar, and I'm sad to share the news that Oracle squashed it before I had a chance to explore it.  The Darkstar project was on my long list of "future" topics for this blog.  

What is Project Darkstar?

"Project Darkstar is a software platform that simplifies the development of horizontally scalable servers for online games, virtual worlds, and social networking applications. Its revolutionary design will eliminate serious problems like zone overloading, data corruption, and inefficient server utilization, while enabling new dimensions of play such as evolvable virtual worlds and very large scale battlefields."

Why am I disappointed?
Darkstar interested me because it could be a good tool for creating collaborative multi-player educational games that students could play at school and at home.  It was up my alley, given my background as a school psychologist and fairly recent coursework (VR for education & training, online learning & communication tools, game design/development, AI for games, information visualization/communication, HCI, etc.).  It was designed to help people like me "avoid the complexities of multi-threaded and distributed systems programming".


Information from the Project Darkstar website:
2/2/10:
Today is a difficult day for all of us associated with Project Darkstar. Regretfully, we must inform our community members that Sun Labs engineering effort is no longer being applied to Darkstar development. You will hear from the individual engineers about what this means for them, but the organized lab project will not be moving forward...
 (More on the Darkstar Community Forums) Jim Waldo 




Here are links to examples how Darkstar has been used to develop 3D multi-user applications, from the Darkstar application list page:

• 1 MilMo
• 2 Leelh
• 3 Sorpresas Mágicas

"Sorpresas Mágicas is an online educational video game developed by Proyecto Metáforas at the Universidad de Chile. Sorpresas Mágicas is a turn based game, each team (composed by 12 players) have to make a bet tryiing to guess what is inside a box.What is inside a box depends on the the properties of the box (color, width, height and length). So the users have to use statistics to discover the surprise inside the box.

Twice in a year we are running in Chile a national tournament, the last was on October 23, with more than 5000 childrens playing this game. You could get more information about our game onSorpresas Mágicas, if you want a credential to access the game feel free to ask one to the email at the bottom.

Visit us at Proyecto Metaforas.For more information, please contact (Lead Programmer) at manuel [at] metaforas cl"

• 4 TRZZ Online
• 5 Spirits of Gaia
• 6 Aktalita
• 7 X-Shift Online
• 8 Modern Society: Online
• 9 Dark Frontiers
• 10 Project Wonderland - Toolkit for Building Virtual 3D Worlds
• 11 6thSpace
• 12 Call of the Kings - The Mirror Black
• 13 The Aceituna Project (Game Name suggestions accepted)
• 14 CampFU
• 
  'The Monkey Wrench platform delivers unprecedented levels of real-time interactivity for casual gamers as well as persistent in-game and in-world avatars, badges and achievements, and a robust virtual goods management system.'
  
  
  RELATED
  Oracle: destroyer of virtual worlds
  Austin Modin, The Register, 2/4/10
  
  
  
  Oracle kills Project Darkstar; adios to virtual worlds
  Dean Takahashi, Venture Beat, 2/4/10
  Scalable Data Storage in Project Darkstar
  Tim Blackman, Jim Waldo Oracle News, 10/8/09
  Sun's Project Darkstar aims for gaming services
  Stephen Shankland, CNET News, 3/27/06
  
  
  Darkstar's sister, Project Wonderland, will also be unsupported by Oracle:
  
  Good News and Bad News
  Project Wonderland Virtual World Toolkit Blog, 2/30/2010
  
  
  Oracle cuts off Project Wonderland
  Maria Korolov

More Multi-Touch: DISPLAX on thin polymer film fits all sorts of surfaces, can interact by blowing on it, too!

The photos below are from a recent article on the Physorg.com website about DISPLAX Systems multi-touch polymer film, Multi-touch "Skin" Transforms Surfaces Into Interactive Screens:




DISPLAX™ Optimus Concept Store - Casa da Música (Porto - Portugal) from Displax on Vimeo.

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 

directly from DISPLAX and other developers."

DISPLAX SHOWREEL

DISPLAX™ Interactive Projects Showreel from Displax on Vimeo.

DISPLAX is a company of the EDIGMA GROUP.

Touchco, Ken Perlin & Ilya Rosenburg's Multitouch Company, Bought By Amazon

Here is the scoop:
Amazon buys touchscreen startup Touchco, merging with Kindle division
Ross Miller, Engadget, 2/3/2010

Amazon Said to Buy Touch Start-Up
Nick Bilton and Brad Stone, New York Times, 2/3/2010


Is Amazon Building a SuperKindle?
Nick Bilton, NYT, 2/3/2010
"Unlike traditional capacitive sensors, our patent-pending system can detect any object — not just a finger — and can determine how much pressure is being applied to every point on a sensor simultaneously. IFSR sensors are natively multitouch, use less power than capacitive sensors, and are much less expensive to produce, making them a highly disruptive technology with widespread market applications."

RELATED
Here is my Aug. 29 post:
Natural User Interface Surfaces:  TouchCo - IFSR Technology company, founded by NYU Media Research Lab's Ken Perlin and Ilya Rosenburg


TOUCHCO GUI:

Touchco GUI example from Nick Bilton on Vimeo.

A Touch of Ingenuity:  Inexpensive pressure-sensitive pad could make surfaces smarter
Kate Green, MIT Technology Review, Sept-Oct


Multitouch Screens Could Enliven New Devices
Nick Bilton, NYT, 12/20/09


TouchCo was an outgrowth of the UnMousePad research at NYU.


Photo from the UnMousePad website:



Photo from NYT:

Photo from NYT:

Photo from NYT:



Ken Perlin

Bluebell Jeans' Interactive Website: Toss the guy around your screen, zip his jacket up and down, and download the vid, pics, and music.

I came across the Bluebell Jeans' interactive website today after following a link for something else...

On the website, you can manipulate the model with your mouse (or finger on a touch-screen). You can go straight to the website and get started by unzipping the guy's jacket and spinning him about, or take a look at the video below. Better yet, do both!



You can download the video, pictures, and music from the Wrangler Blue Bell website!

The link to the Bluebell Jeans interactive website was found on Richard Leggett's On New Media blog post.  The post has a few great links and is worth reading: The World is Moving to HTML 5 and Other Flights of Fancy

Apps with Geographic Data Can Make You Healthy: Bill Davenhall's TED Talk

Bill Davenhall is the health and human services marketing head at ESRI, a geographic information systems (GIS) software development company. In this recent TED Talk, he shows how geographic applications and mobile devices can help provide patients and doctors with useful information for health care planning and informed decision-making by harnessing the power of existing data maps.

The presentation includes a variety of interesting map, representing a "place history", something that is central to the field of geographic medicine. The video is about 9 minutes long, but worth viewing, especially if you care about your health!



Thanks to RealVision for the link.

For more information about this topic, see the International Journal of Health Geographics website.

Interactive website links: Featuring Moodstream, Getty Images' site is great for whiteboards or touch-screen PC

I'm always on the look-out for high-quality interactive content on the web.  I can share this with the teachers I work with at one of my schools. This particular school now has an interactive whiteboard in every classroom, as a number of SMARTBoards, were recently installed.  Good interactive websites that are are great for interactive whiteboards are also great for use on touch-screen PCs and displays.

The interactive website I'm featuring today is called MoodStream.  I came across it a while ago, and thought it would provide creative way to provide a stressed-out student a productive way to "chill". Moodstream was created by the Barbarian Group for Getty Images in 2008.

Moving the sliders will change the music and pictures to match your choices.  As you listen to music, you'll see videos and picture montages from Getty Images. As you view the images, you can select your favorites, and they are ported into a "Moodboard", shown below, along with the corresponding music.  To save your creation, you have to register for the free service.  You can play back your board and create additional boards.

What I like about Moodstream is that it gives students the opportunity to identify their feelings, choose different feeling experiences, and create something related to their experiences.  They can later share their creations with others if they wish.   I think that this activity might work well with pairs or small groups of students as well.


Below are screenshots of Moodstream. The first shot is of the screen with the controls hidden from view. The second shot shows the slider control to the left, and the Moodboard chart where the selections are stored. The selections can also be viewed in a text format.

"Moodstream is a powerful brainstorming tool designed to help take you in inspiring, unexpected directions. Whether you want images, footage, or audio, or just need a stream of fresh ideas, tweak the Moodstream sliders to bring a whole new creative palette straight to you."

-Getty Images

OTHER INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD RESOURCES


Here are a few:

How to Download and Insert a You Tube Video Into SMART Notebook

Interactive Whiteboard Games by PBS Kids

SMARTBoard Goodies Blog, by Mrs. Coggin (A wealth of great activities.)


Teachers Love SMARTBoards

Scholastic's Interactive Whiteboard Resources and Activities (Lots of information for integrating interactive whiteboard activities into lesson plans.)

SMART Board Bubble Wrap (You can save this to your computer and pop the bubble wrap without being connected to the web.)