A few links: GizmoWatch's 10 Interactive User Interfaces for the Future, CNN's Eatocracy, EVA 2010 and More!

Here's a quick link to a recent Gizmowatch post, Ten Interactive User Interfaces for the Future.  Bharat, the authro, reviews a variety of interfaces, input methods, and interaction techniques, such as Skinput, a water-based touch screen, a muscle-computer interface, air gestures, brain-computer systems, and even a mud-tub interface.


I was fortunate to see some of these interaction techniques and interfaces when I attended CHI 2010 this past April, and plan to share some of my photos and video clips from the conference on this blog soon.


Totally Unrelated


Online connection for foodies
Eatocracy is a new website within the CNN pages that provides news- and more- about all things related to food. The categories on the site include "main", "news", "bite", "sip", "make", "think", and "buzz".  The best part, in my opinion, is the heirloom recipe collection index, where people can upload and share family recipies and the stories behind them.

Here is the description of Eatocracy from the website:

Eatocracy  "is your online home for smart, passionate conversation and information about food news, politics, culture. We'll highlight regional and family recipes, dive into restaurants and food shopping, chat with celebrity and local chefs, and show you what's for dinner around the world tonight. Grab a place at the table and read with your mouth full."

Enjoy!

(The above is a repost from The World is My Interactive Interface)

Coming Soon

--More about 3D TV and Interactive TV

--Highlights from CHI 2010 (better late than never!)

--My experiments- SMARTTable, a game, interactive timeline prototype pictures...

--A post about Lieven van Velthoven's interesting Post-WIMP explorations - here are some links that he recently sent me:

• 3D birthday invitation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNOP5aIoS9o
• Virtual overgrowth in the real world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuJPoUpBIKU
• Make race tracks for virtual cars with any real stuff you can find: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1K3og8qLcA
• Smoke Pong: Pong, ONLY for smokers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwrsVo5p2_E
• Webcam Airmouse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57kTrKJHOjM 
• MusicalNodes: the visual music library: www.musicalnodes.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czQdhfA__UY (will be published at EVA2010)

As I took a peek at Lieven's video links, I noticed an interesting video mash-up Lieven created from the open-source code from the RadioHead's House of Cards music video and his One Million Particles app. I'll post them soon.

I'll try to get video, pictures, and commentary about EVA 2010.  EVA stands for Electronic Visualization and the Arts. "Electronic Information, the Visual Arts, and Beyond.

FYI

I'm in the process of sorting through and re-organizing my blogs, which have been around for over four years!  During this time, my blogs have attracted a growing number of readers. Because of this, I'd like to make things a bit user-centered.  So expect to see little changes here and there.  I promise I'll give my readers warnings in advance if I make any serious changes! 

If you are new to this blog, you should know that my blogs started out as on-line filing cabinets, open to the world.  Although there is a bit of overlap of material and some cross-posting between the blogs, they are arranged to serve as a paper-less way of keeping track of things that I've learned through my coursework, conference attendance, readings, and research. Since emerging technologies are high on my list of interests, I also use my blogs to share interesting things that cross my path.    

  

I changed the name of my World Is My Interface blog to The World Is My Interactive Interface.   "Off-the-desktop natural user interfaces, interaction, and user experience" are the main topics of the blog.  It sometimes includes information about ubiquitous computing and DOOH, otherwise known as Digital Out Of Home.

I plan to tinker with my TechPsych blog later on. It focuses on topics that are useful to psychologists, educators, special education teachers, speech and language therapists, health and wellness professionals, and parents.

Feel free to leave comments, as I welcome your input.

Video: DYI Acrylic Multi-touch FTIR Pad - Low-cost and Stylish (Anne Roudaut, Patrick Baudisch, Christian Holz, and Torsten Becker, Hasso Plattner Institute)

I came across the following video and link when I visited Jonathan Brill's Multi-touch Maven blog.  The multi-touch project was developed as part of the Patric Baudisch's Human Computer Interaction Research class at the Hasso Plattner Institute.



Detailed directions, along with pictures, can be found on the Designer Multi-touch Pad website. From there, you can download the OpenCV source code, which requires Microsoft's Visual Studio, from the project's website, along with a copy of the how-to video,  a nice shopping list, and references.


-Hasso Plattner Institut
This is what graduate students and post-docs play with!

RELATED
An easy way to build your own multi-touch surface
-Jonathan Brill

CCC/CRA Roadmapping for Interactive Technology: Series of 3 Game Changing Workshops

The following information is from the CCC/CRA Roadmapping for Interactive Technologies website, describing an upcoming series of three three-day workshops that I think have the potential for changing the way interactive technology is designed and implemented in the future:

"The modern computing experience is shaped by the ways in which people interact with their computers. Underlying that interaction are the technologies of input, sensing, interactive techniques and interactive architecture. This is a series of workshops that will create a research agenda for revolutionizing these foundational technologies."

Workshops

Interactive System Architecture - August 11-13, 2010 - Jackson, WY http://icie.cs.byu.edu/CCCWorkshops/InteractiveArchitecture.html

Dan Olsen - Brigham Young University  

The last few decades have produced many new interactive technologies and many interactive techniques. Few of them are making their way into actual use because they are so hard to integrate. This workshop will create an agenda for new architectures for building interactive systems that integrate basic interaction in powerful new ways and provide new opportunities and foundations on which to build usable systems.

Persuasive Experiences - September 23-25, 2010 - Burbank, CA   http://icie.cs.byu.edu/CCCWorkshops/Persuasive.html

Joe Marks - Disney Research

A culture is defined by its shared stories and the messages that people communicate with each other. Computing has created new ways for stories to be told in entertainment and education. This workshop will outline how we can bring digital storytelling from the realm of multimillion dollar productions down to the practical needs of everyday social, educational and political discourse.

Ultra-large-scale Interaction - October 25-27, 2010 - Chicago, IL http://icie.cs.byu.edu/CCCWorkshops/Ultra-large-scale.html

Mark Ackerman - University of Michigan

A byproduct of the Internet's success is that large numbers of people can interact with each other and with large stores of loosely interconnected data. This workshop will create an agenda for interactions that involve thousands of participants.

NOTE:  Organizers for the Interactive System Architecture Workshop include Dan Olsen, from Brigham Young University, Andy Wilson, from Microsoft Research, and Celine Latulipe, from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.  (Dr. Latulipe was my HCI professor.)  Joe Marks is a VP at Disney Research.  The organizers for the Ultra-large Scale Interaction Workshop include Mark Ackerman and Mark Newman, from the University of Michigan, Keith Edwards, from Georgia Tech, and Scott Klemmer, from Stanford.


I'd really like to attend all three workshops.  I will try to learn all I can about these workshops and share what I find during periodic blog posts over the next several months.


RELATED
Links on the CCC/CRA Website
Welcome
Approach/Participation
Workshop Attendence Information

Events

Interactive System Architecture Workshop

Aug 11-13, 2010
Submit: June 14

Persuasive Experiences Workshop

Sept 23-25, 2010
Submit: July 1

Ultra-large-scale Interaction Workshop

Oct 25-27, 2010
Submit: July 19

Links  NSF   CRA / CCC  ACM / SIGCHI

CCC Liason: Elizabeth Mynatt - Georgia Tech

The Slide in the Subway, The Rocket Elevator, and the Skateboard- Propelled Shopping Cart Videos - Volkswagen's Fast Lane: True Use Experience (just in case you missed it all)

Via Pixelsumo -Just in case you missed this:


Here's a few others you'll enjoy.  The true meaning of user experience, out and about!

The Elevator


The Shopping Cart- I love the ending with the guy skateboard-propelling his shopping cart out to the parking lot!

SIGGRAPH and INTEL's Visual Adrenaline: Look what I found in my email today about 3D lighting, UV's, and dynamic volumetric cloud rendering for games!

I thought I'd share a few links sent to me via Intel's Software Dispatch for Visual Adrenaline about the upcoming ACM SIGGRAPH 2010 conference. The links are to well-written "how-to" articles in pdf format.

"To keep your adrenaline pumping while waiting for SIGGRAPH to start, here's a few juicy bits of inspiration:

		"Simulating Real-world Film Lighting Techniques in 3D. Light, shadows, and rendering play together to create realism in your 3D models. Learn to bring these art techniques into your 3D scenes to create compelling cinematic views."
		"Creating UVs for Characters in Autodesk Maya*. Regardless of whether you're using a model in a real-time environment or as part of a rendered sequence, here are some tips and tricks to making UV mapping work efficiently."
		"Dynamic Volumetric Cloud Rendering for Games on Multi-Core Platforms. Learn how the LuckyCloud demo implemented a solution for real-time dynamic simulation and illumination of clouds that didn't impact performance during game play."

By the way, the conference will be held from July 25-29 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Graphene: Flexible touch screen, made from a sheet of carbon the thickness of one atom!

Catching up on reading the MIT Technology Review, I came across an article written by Nidhi Subbaraman about the use of graphene to make flexible displays:

Flexible Touch Screen Made with Printed Graphene:  Sheets of atom-thick carbon could make displays that are super-fast

The most recent version of graphene was created by researchers in Korea at the Sungkyunkwan University, in collaboration with Samsung.  According to the article, graphene was discovered over thirty years ago, but only recently have researchers been able to produce it in large mono-layers. This flexibility looks like it will have possibilities for future display applications, as noted in the video clip below the photos.

Photo Credit: Byung Hee Hong, SKKU.

Photo Credit: Impact Lab
"Future Applications of Graphene"


RELATED
Roll-to-roll production of 30-inch graphene films for transparent electrodes
Nature Nanotechnology 6/20/2010
Sukang Bae, Hyeongkeun Kim, Youngbin Lee, Xiangfan Xu, Jae-Sung Park, Yi Zheng, Jayakumar Balakrishnan, Tian Lei, Hye Ri Kim, Young Il Song, Young-Jin Kim, Kwang S. Kim, Barbaros Özyilmaz, Jong-Hyun Ahn, Byung Hee Hong & Sumio Iijima
ABSTRACT:
"The outstanding electrical¹, mechanical^2, 3 and chemical^4, 5 properties of graphene make it attractive for applications in flexible electronics^6, 7, 8. However, efforts to make transparent conducting films from graphene have been hampered by the lack of efficient methods for the synthesis, transfer and doping of graphene at the scale and quality required for applications. Here, we report the roll-to-roll production and wet-chemical doping of predominantly monolayer 30-inch graphene films grown by chemical vapour deposition onto flexible copper substrates. The films have sheet resistances as low as ~125 Ω □⁻¹ with 97.4% optical transmittance, and exhibit the half-integer quantum Hall effect, indicating their high quality. We further use layer-by-layer stacking to fabricate a doped four-layer film and measure its sheet resistance at values as low as ~30 Ω □⁻¹ at ~90% transparency, which is superior to commercial transparent electrodes such as indium tin oxides. Graphene electrodes were incorporated into a fully functional touch-screen panel device capable of withstanding high strain."


Korean Researchers Open Door to Bendable Electronics
(Includes information from an interview with Hong Byung-hee, a chemistry professor at Sungkyunkwan University)
Graphene OLED Thin Film Displays


Nanogenerators:  Fully Rollable Transparent Nanogenerators Based on Graphene Electrodes Advanced Materials, Vol.22, No. 19 5/18/2010