Vision-Based Hand-Gesture Applications: Video from Communications of the ACM

The latest edition of Communications of the ACM, via "snail mail", was the inspiration for this post:

Vision-Based Hand-Gesture Applications
Juan Pablo Wachs, Mathias Kolsch, Helman Stern and Yael Edan

"Body posture and finger pointing are a natural modality for human-machine interaction, but first the system must know what it's seeing."


More to come!

Interactive Timeline "Wordle" for WikiLeaks: Explore the Cable Street Database, an Example of Interactive Journalism

What can a cloud of words tell us about foreign policy?:
"An interactive analysis of all the 250,000 documents in the so-called Cable Street database" -Aftenposten

http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/cablegate/?lang=en

RELATED

Behind the scenes of Aftenposten's Wikileaks visualization

Tracy Boyer, Innovative Interactivity (II), 2/23/11

Eirick Wallem Fossan: Multimedia journalist and Flash developer for Aftenposten.

Comment:  I usually don't blog about political topics, but I felt that this interactive visualization was an effective method of helping the public understand the information/data shared through the Wikileaks process.  

My last post focused on the large multi-touch wall installed at a new library at North Carolina State University.  The library was designed for collaborative activities.  An interactive "Wordle" displayed on a multi-touch wall for students to explore with peers would probably be worth using!    

Public libraries, outfitted with collaborative displays, would also be great places for the people to explore all sorts of visualized data.  

How Social Can News Get? SoCon11 Presentation by Lee Rainie, Pew Internet Project

If you'd like to learn more about social media,  take a look at the following presentation from the recent SoCon11 conference, "How social can news get?", by Lee Rainie,  Director of the Pew Internet Project:


"Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet Project, discusses the Project’s latest findings at the SoCon11 conference. He goes through trends in social media use in the last five years of the Project’s data. He explores how the turn to pervasive, participatory, personal, and portable news changes the way news consumers and producers behave and think about the role of news in their lives." - Pew Internet and American Life Project


Quite a few topics were covered at the conference, which can be found on the SoCon11 Agenda site.

2011 2.5.11 - kennesaw -- social news
View more presentations from Lee Rainie.

RELATED

SoCon11 Attendees
SoCon11 Speakers

Urban Ministries of Duram's online serious game, SPENT: Can you make it through the month on $1,000.00? (via Tracy Boyer)

SPENT is an online serious game that is a result of a collaboration between the ad agency McKinney and Urban Ministries of Durham, N.C.    The game was launched this month to help increase community awareness about the needs of people who have been negatively impacted by the on-going economic crisis - people who have lost jobs, the under-employed, and the homeless.   


The factoids provided in the game are based on data (see link below).  One goal for presenting this information is to help players sift through the myths they might be carrying around in their heads about poverty and the realties that many people face every day.   


The game offers players the opportunity to take on different roles, make tough decisions, and see the results of these decisions. 


The game is a call to action.




RELATED
McKinney launches Spent, an interactive game about poverty
Tracy Boyer, Innovative Interactivity, 2/21/11
Play SPENT
Sources for the data/information provided in SPENT (pdf)
Urban Ministries of Durham
McKinney
WhiteNoise | Lab (Sound Design for SPENT)
Emphathize Walt Barron, 5 Words (McKinney Blog)  2/8/11

Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction - Video of MacWorld presentation by authors of upcoming book.

I'll admit it. I've been a SciFi fan and Trekkie since childhood. 


When I discovered that Nathan Shedroff and Cris Noessel were writing Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction, I just had to take a break from writing reports to share the news.  


The video below is from the author's MacWorld presentation that covers some of the content of the book's first chapter:

Below is information about the book, from the publisher's website:

Make It So:  Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction 

"Interaction and interface designers can learn practical lessons from the interfaces in Science Fiction films and television. Though lacking rigorous engagement with users, production designers are nonetheless allowed to develop influential "blue-sky" examples that are inspiring, humorous, prophetic, useful, and can be incorporated into "real" work to make online, mobile, and ubiquitous interfaces more interesting and more successful. This book will share lessons and examples culled from imaginative interfaces free from traditional constraints. In addition, the authors will outline their process of investigation and describe a toolkit for others to make similar explorations into other domains." 

A book in progress by Nathan Shedroff & Chris Noessel. Publisher: Rosenfeld Media. Anticipated publication date: 2012

Nathan Shedroff is the chair of the new MBA in Design Strategy program at California College of the Arts.  Chris Noessel is an interaction design director at Cooper.


via Putting People First 

Transit: Digital Video Dance Storytelling on Large Displays at the LAX Airport, by Scott Snibbe and Francesca Penzani

Scott Sona Snibbe, an interactive artist, created a large-scale video installation on twenty-nine connected HD displays that curved around at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the LAX airport in 2010.   The video tells a story of groups of people traveling through an airport who eventually begin dancing in interesting ways.  

Francesca Penzani was the choreographer for this project. Noah Cunningham was responsible for the cinematography, editing, and post-production.




RELATED
SNIBBE INTERACTIVE
The Snibbe Interactive website has lots of great photos and videos of the company's work.

Thanks to Daniel Chen for sharing this video!