Bill Gerba blogs about DOOH, which stands for "Digital-Out-of-Home", focusing on displays and kiosks in public spaces that offer dynamic and/or interactive content, usually for the purpose of advertising and marketing. If this is an area that interests you, take a look at Bill Gerba's most recent post, "Does TV Content Work on DOOH? Maybe, Maybe Not" - WireSpring: Digital Signage Insider (9/24/10)
Gerba refers to a "Marketing Funnel" graphic to illustrate some of his points. Six of the seven concepts represented in the graphic, shared below, might be useful to think about for people working in the field of public displays for purposes other than advertising or marketing:
Most of us have noticed that there are many more large-screen displays around. Some displays intrusively attempt to grab your attention through loud and garish informercial-like content. Some are designed to be interactive and pleasant, but go un-noticed by passers-by at all!
I love the concept of interactive, networked public displays! The PD-NET project has a fairly new website and a Facebook page. If this interests you, take the time to learn about the PD-NET project, a collaborative effort between researchers from several different universities in Europe. I'd like to see this take hold in the US.
To create enabling technologies for large-scale pervasive display networks through the design, development, and evaluation of a robust, scalable, distributed and open platform for interconnecting displays and their sensors.
To establish Europe as the international centre for work on pervasive display networks.
To address key scientific challenges that may inhibit the widespread adoption of pervasive display network technology: Tensions between privacy and personalization, situated displays, business and legislative requirements, User Interaction.
Here is a list of participating universities and researchers, taken from the PD-NET website:
J. Müller, F. Alt, D. Michelis, and A. Schmidt, "Requirements and Design Space for Interactive Public Displays," in Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia (Multimedia 2010), to appear, 2010.
COMMENT
If you are familiar with this blog, you know that I am passionate about interactive displays, especially in public spaces. I've devoted numerous posts to this topic on this blog, and also on The World Is My Interactive Interface, a blog I started a few years ago when I was working on projects for large interactive displays.
I am interested in how interactive displays, of any size, can be accessible and universally designed, especially those that can inter-operate with mobile devices, including devices that support communication for people with special needs.
I discovered Unity 3D a few years ago and was impressed by the company's great game development products. I especially liked the company's Unity Web Player- it makes web-based 3D interaction come to life.I shared my impressions of the company on a post, Chill in an on-line 3-d tropical paradise from Unity 3D. At the time, Unity 3D was a very new company.
A lot has changed since then!
I learned today that "the companies are announcing that EA has signed a multi-year enterprise deal with Unity: EA will be using Unity’s platform across multiple franchises, and all of EA’s developers will have access to the “entire range of Unity products from web and mobile to consoles and beyond”. The timing is also good: Unity is launching its 3.0 upgrade next week." -Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch
What I like about Unity 3D is that it was created to support cross-platform development.
Immersive Tech (imTech) is a "non-profit think tank created to promote the development and adoption of immersive technology for the benefit for advancing fields in public interest, such as education, health, arts and entertainment."
Immersive Tech hosts an annual summit. On October 21st, 2010, the summit will be held at the Los Angeles Center Studios:
"The summit organizes a community that bring together technologists, visionaries, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and industry leaders in various fields of immersive technology.This year's summit will feature groundbreaking speakers, a 360° fulldome installation (think planetarium style), exhibitors demonstrating cool new technology, and with your support, this simulation system!"
Here is the list of speakers and their bios, from the website:
John Smart, Acceleration Studies Foundation John Smart is a developmental systems theorist who studies accelerating change, computational autonomy, and the singularity. He is President of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, a nonprofit community for research, education, consulting, and selected advocacy of communities and technologies of accelerating change. He co-produces the annual Accelerating Change Conference, an annual meeting of 350 change-leaders and students at Stanford University, and edits ASF's free newsletter, Accelerating Times, read by future-oriented thinkers around the world. He is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists, the FBI Futures Working Group, and the editorial advisory board of Technological Forecasting and Social Change.
Dr. Joanne Kuchera-Morin,UCSB Allosphere Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is a composer, Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Music, and a researcher in multi-modal media systems, content and facilities design. She created, built, and designed the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology and has been the Center’s Director since its inception in 1986. Her years of experience in digital media research led to the creation of a multi-million dollar sponsored research program for the University of California, the Digital Media Innovation Program. In 2000 she began the creation, design, and development of a Digital Media Center within the California Nanosystems Institute. The culmination of her design is the Allosphere Research Laboratory, a three-story metal sphere inside an echo-free cube, designed for immersive, interactive scientific and artistic investigation of multi-dimensional data sets. She serves as Director of the Allosphere Research Facility.
Dr. Albert "Skip" Rizzo, USC Institute for Creative Technologies Albert "Skip" Rizzo's work in Virtual Reality has created technologies being used to treat combat-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, help clinicians practice skills for challenging clinical interviews and diagnostic assessments, address the use of VR applications to test and train attention memory visuospatial abilities, and executive function, and has created VR Game systems to address physical rehabilitation post stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury and for those aging with a disability.
Chris Noessel, Cooper His prior experience has seen him developing interactive kiosks and spaces for museums, helping to visualize the future of counter-terrorism, building prototypes of coming technologies for Microsoft, and designing telehealth devices to accommodate the crazy facts of modern health and healthcare. His spidey sense goes off about random topics, and this has led him to speak at conferences about a wide range of things including interactive narrative, ethnographic user research, interaction design, sex-related interactive technologies, free-range learning, and, most recently, the relationship between science fiction and interface design with co-author Nathan Shedroff.
Greg Hyver, BCINet Mr. Hyver has 30 years of high-technology experience working in Silicon Valley firms. He spent ten years working within the Aerospace and Defense industry at Lockheed Missiles and Space, serving as a software and hardware engineer for “Star Wars” defense projects. In the late 80’s, Mr. Hyver joined Market Intelligence Research Company as Senior Market Researcher and, in 1994, joined Xilinx as Product / Test Engineering Manager in the ASIC division. In 2005, he joined NeuroSky as VP of Marketing and became VP of Business Development at BCInet in 2009, two companies in the Brain-Computer Interface industry.
Mark Goulthorpe, dECOi Architects / MIT Mark Goulthorpe was educated in England and the USA, and apprenticed professionally for 4 years with Richard Meier in New York and Paris. In 1991 he established the dECOi atelier to undertake a series of architectural competitions, largely theoretically biased. These resulted in numerous accolades around the world, which quickly established a reputation for thoughtful and elegant design work suggestive of new possibilities for architecture and architectural praxis. The Hyposurface was designed principally by Mark Goulthorpe and the dECOi office with a large multi-disciplinary team of architects, engineers, mathematicians and computer programmers, among others. The piece is a facetted metallic surface that has potential to deform physically in response to electronic stimuli from the environment (movement, sound, light,etc). Driven by a bed of 896 pneumatic pistons, the dynamic 'terrains' are generated as real-time calculations.
Dr. Sheryl Flynn, Blue Marble Rehabilitation, Inc Dr. Sheryl Flynn is the founder and CEO of Blue Marble Game Co, a serious games company that focuses design and development of video games to enhance rehabilitation for people with disabilities worldwide. The heart of which is centered on a passion for using technology to revolutionize health care delivery and outcomes. Recently, her company received funding from the Department of Defense to develop a video game for troops with mild traumatic brain injury who wish to return to work. Sheryl has also begun the development of the Games4Rehab.com social network that aims to bring together individuals with disabilities, clinicians, researchers and game industry professionals to push the games for rehabilitation agenda forward quickly. In addition to her entrepreneurial pursuits, Dr. Flynn also consults with the University of Southern California, Institute for Creative Technologies and Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy on the NIDRR funded OPTT-RERC grant to develop a suite of games that clinicians can use in rehabilitation settings.
Tino Schaedler, NAU Tino Schaedler is an established art director, production designer and trained architect. He is something of a chimera, moving seamlessly across disciplines, always working at the leading edge of change. Be it production design for feature film and commercials, event design or architecture: His work is about spaces that tell and frame stories. Tino is a regular guest speaker at universities and conferences worldwide, whilst also regularly contributing on film design to ‘Mark’ and ‘Build’ Magazine. His designs have won various awards and have been widely featured in internationally renowned publications.
Aaron E. Walsh, MediaGrid Walsh is Director of the Grid Institute, an international best-selling author, and a Boston College faculty member. In 2006 Walsh received the Teaching with New Media award for his work on Immersive Education. He received this prestigious national award for his pioneering work on immersive education, which was recognized as “…innovative, promising technology which holds the potential to significantly affect society in the near future.” In 2007 Computerworld named him one of the forty most innovative people in the information technology industry. After more than a decade of research and development in the field, Walsh began using his prototype technologies to teach Boston College courses from a distance. At that time he coined the term “Immersive Education” to describe learning platforms that combine interactive 3D graphics, commercial game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice chat, Web cameras, and rich digital media with collaborative online course environments and classrooms.
Howard S. Lichtman, Human Productivity Lab Howard S. Lichtman is a productivity-focused technology technologist, author, publisher and consultant with specialties in telepresence and visual collaboration to improve organizational and personal productivity. He is the founder and president of the Human Productivity Lab, an independent consultancy and research firm that helps organizations design telepresence strategies and deploy telepresence solutions. He is the publisher of Telepresence Options, the #1 website on the Internet covering the telepresence revolution and editor of the Telepresence Options Telegraph, the world’s most widely read publication covering telepresence technologies.
Bruno Uzzan, CEO & Co-Founder Total Immersion Bruno Uzzan has been driving the growth of Total Immersion since 1999 – from start-up to the company’s current position of global category leader. As a pioneer and AR visionary, he has led Total Immersion’s global expansion and built the company’s client roster with blue chip accounts that include Disney, McDonald’s, Mattel, Twentieth Century Fox and Nissan Motors. He also is responsible for developing strategic alliances, bringing his vision for the potential of next gen AR to these relationships. Before establishing Total Immersion, Uzzan served as a consultant for Pierre Henri Scacchi and Associates (Price Waterhouse Group). He holds a masters degree in management from the University of Paris Dauphine.
Immersive Technology Summit Agenda (From the Immersive Technology website)
Time Event/Topic Speaker
8:00am Registration & Morning Refreshments
9:00am Welcome Ken Rutkowski & Harold Tan
9:10am Collaboration Successes Jody Turner
9:25am Collaboration Challenges John Canning
9:40am I-Cocoon Tino Schaedler
9:55am Q&A Panel
10:10am Virtual Choir Eric Whitacre
10:15am Panel Discussion TBA
10:30am Refreshment Break & Networking
11:15am Video
11:20am Telepresence Howard S. Lichtman
11:35am Immersive tech in physical therapy Dr. Sheryl Flynn
11:50am Immersive education Aaron Walsh
12:05pm Q&A Panel
12:15pm Imagined Communities Bonnie Bucker
12:30pm Lunch & Dome presentations
2:00pm Video
2:05pm Institute of Creative Technologies Dr Belinda Lange (USC)
2:20pm Augmented Reality Bruno Uzzan (Total Immersion)
2:35pm The Allosphere Dr JoAnn Kuchera-Morin (UCSB)
3:05pm Brain-Computer Interfaces Greg Hyver (BCINet)
2:50pm Q&A Panel
3:05pm Immersive Tech Awards Arts / Health / Education / Communication / Startup
3:30pm Refreshment Break & Networking
4:20pm World Builder Bruce Branit
4:25pm Future Visualizations of Spatial Relations Tali Krakowsky, Ed Lantz, Greg Downing, Bruce Branit
4:40pm Science Fiction & Immersive Tech Chris Noessel
4:55pm Immersive Tech Ubiquitousness Benjamin Bratton (UCSD)
5:10pm 10 Years and Beyond John Smart
5:25pm Closing Remarks
"Open Exhibits is a National Science Foundation-funded initiative to develop a library of free and open multitouch-enabled software modules for exhibit development. Build using the popular Adobe Flash and Flex authoring tools, museum professionals will be able to create innovative floor and web-based exhibits easily and inexpensively" -- Open Exhibits
VIDEO: Introducing Open Exhibits: Open Source Exhibit Software
Open Exhibits Core is based on the commercialGestureWorkssoftware package.
Here is artist Steven Lopez, sharing his NextWindow experience:
Here is a video from NextWindow's "Digital Art Day"- watch how four artists use various tools, including brushes, to interact with a NextWindow screen:
“A common method for creating digital art has incorporated pen-based tablet devices, connected to a PC. This approach required artists to look down at the tablet while they drew and look up at the image that was developing on the larger screen. Although artist’s adapted to this tech-heavy approach, it did not come close to the sensory experience of sketching on paper with pencil or using acrylics and watercolors to create a vast array of effects on canvas. Now, there are sophisticated touch screen PCs and applications that are helping artists bridge the "digital divide" between traditional art-making and computer-based art. A group of visual artists visited the NextWindow offices in 2010 for the opportunity to play with a touch PC and see how it affected the creative process.” -NextWindow/Polly Traylor
I think that Galaxy Tab would be great in educational and healthcare settings!
Do More on the Go with the GALAXY Tab™
According to the Samsung website, the 7-inch Galaxy tablet will be available through AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon. It has a a front facing camera and a rear facing camera, which can be edited within the system. It supports Adobe Flash Player 10.1, a variety of HD video content formats, and apps from the Android Market. It accepts a variety of input interactions, including SWYPE.
Here is some information from the website:
"With 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth® 3.0, the Samsung GALAXY Tab takes mobile communication to a whole new level. By combining Samsung innovation with the Android OS 2.2, the Tab is truly an always on communication and entertainment tool. Its large battery (4,000 mAh) provides more than 7 hours of movie viewing time and because it’s powered by a Cortex A8 1.0GHz application processor, it’s designed to deliver high performance."
ClassDroid is an application designed for Android-based smartphones. It lets you take a picture of the student's work, or of the student, or anything else, and instantly upload it to the student's on-line portfolio.
ClassDroid is available for free from the Android Market. According to Johnny McClear, the app "supports images being stored on the wordpress site which can be accessed through a web browser on any web-enabled device. Parents and pupils can then view their work and grades online."
UPDATE ClassDroid might be a great app for the new Android-based Galaxy Tablet:
PrimaryPad is a clone of EtherPad, a web-based collaborative word processor application that is now part of Google. It is similar to PiratePad, which is powered by EtherPad. The EtherPad code is open source and can be found at http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/ Additional information can be found at http://etherpad.org/
Here are a few topics and links of interest: THE FUTURE OF SCREENS, CIRCA 2014
If you haven't seen this short video clip, take a look. It was created by TAT MobileUI, and includes examples of how screen interaction can take place across a variety of surfaces and settings.
"This is the result of TAT's Open Innovation experiment. It is an experience video showing the future of screen technology with stretchable screens, transparent screens and e-ink displays, to name a few." TAT MobileUI. TAT stands for The Astonishing Tribe. According to information from the TAT website, "TAT is a Swedish software technology and design company offering products and services that differentiate and enhance the user experience of portable devices. TAT is headquartered in Malmö, Sweden, and has local offices in Korea and USA."
Ola Larsén, the Vice President of Marketing at TAT, recently spoke at the ARM Multimedia conference in Taiwan, focusing on UX trends and tablets: "Enabling a cross device connected user experience". To dig deeper, see the original post in Gizmodo and take a look at the comments: The Future of Screens Circa 2014 (Kyle VanHemert, Gizmodo, 9/1/2010)
INTERACTIVE VIDEO RESOURCES/EXAMPLES I have a need to create "touchable" interactive video, and I plan to share what crosses my path on this blog from time to time. Over the past several months, there has been some growth in the world of interactive video. The information below is just a beginning:
Interactive Video Research Thanks to a link from Johannes Schöning, I learned about the Dragon project, headed by Dr. Jan Borchers of the Computer Science Department at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. I haven't yet explored the research or used the application, which can be downloaded from the Dragon project website.
Description (from the Dragon website): " DRAGON is a direct-manipulation interaction technique for frame-accurate navigation in video scenes. This technique benefits tasks such as professional and amateur video editing, review of sports footage, and forensic analysis of video scenes." "By directly dragging objects in the scene along their movement trajectory, DRAGON enables users to quickly and precisely navigate to a specific point in the video timeline where an object of interest is in a desired location. Examples include the specific frame where a sprinter crosses the finish line, or where a car passes a traffic light." "DRAGON is a research project by Thorsten Karrer, Malte Weiss, Moritz Wittenhagen, Jan Borchers and others at the Media Computing Group. It is funded in part through the German B-IT Foundation and the UMIC DFG Excellence Initiative." Related Publication (more can be found on the Dragon website) Christian Brockly. Evaluation of direct manipulation techniques for in-scene video navigation. Master's thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, February 2009.
The following companies are involved in some form of interactive video work, mostly focused on marketing and advertising: INNOVID in-video innovation: "Existing Video ads can be intrusive and out of context. At Innovid, we believe that online video should be as interactive as the Internet is today, with many interchangeable elements that give the viewer dynamic content rather than a static succession of frames. We`re bringing this vision to life by innovating the way viewers interact with and engage with online video ads . iRoll®, our interactive pre-roll ad product, has powered the most interactive pre-roll campaigns with well-known brands and agencies." Innovid Platform iRoll® - Interactive Pre-roll Innovid Studio Innovid is hiring!
Article: Interactive video: A powerful beast (David Rossiter, iMedia Connection) QUICK.TV Quick.tvis a company co-founded by Nick Bell and Tod Yeadon. The information about the company was in the process of being updated when I visited the website.
I knew if I went to the iTVT website, I'd find more information about Quick.TV and interactive video, thanks to iTVT co-founder Tracy Swedlow: QuickTV in Interactive Video Partnership with Ooyala (Tracy Swedlow, iTVT, 7/11/10) "According to Quick.tv, Ooyala customers will see a "seamless integration" of Quick.tv overlays into the Ooyala video player. The company says that a library of off-the-shelf widgets can be used to deploy interactive features quickly, while an advanced editor allows users to create their own custom widgets. "The widget approach is efficient and flexible," Bell continued. "It offers a wide range of monetization, engagement and editorial overlays for immediate use, whilst offering an editing facility with limitless creative potential for those who want to deliver a more specific user experience. The analytics generated by viewer interactions take video accountability and market intelligence to a new level."
OVERLAY.TV
Overlay.TV: "Helping online retailers create, manage, and deliver interactive video experiences to drive traffic, increase conversion, and engage shoppers". While browsing through the Overlay.TV website, I came across a series of posts worth reading:
"Six Interactive Video Ideas to Get You Started"
Related article: Ottowa company makes clickable fashionable (CBC News, 9/8/10)
Comment: I wish the emphasis was on touch, NOT click!
Demonstration of Drag Video Function (Bluebell Inventions)
I'm continuing my search for examples of the use of interactive video in education- particularly video produced for larger touch-screen displays or IWBs.
DAVID POGUE'S RECENT POST & COMMENTS FROM HIS READERS RELEASED TOO SOON(David Pogue, NYT, 9/16/2010) Since most of my readers are interested in emerging technologies, I thought I'd share a link to one of David Pogue's recent posts. David Pogue knows what he's talking about. He's a guy who keeps up with new technologies better than most. In the article, Pogue discusses his review of a new product, Vulkano, which was designed to record TV shows and also provide a means to watch shows via the internet. Although his post focuses on the problems that can ensue when a product is marched to market before it is ready, the best part is the conversation generated by his post about this problem. Pogue's comments struck a chord among people across a range of industries.
The comments should be must-reads for university students preparing for careers in the world of business and technology!
