ICT MxR Lab's Response to Google's "April Fools Day" Gmail Motion, using OpenNI and FAAST

I recently purchased a Kinect and have been chomping at the bit to do something creative with it.  I have been  too busy with work to dive into a project. Fortunately,  great minds have been paving the way!


I was almost fooled by Google's April Fools prank, "Gmail Motion", a mythical application designed to allow Gmailers the opportunity to conduct email tasks through gestures alone. 


Robert Kosara, an assistant professor of computer science at UNC-Charlotte, and author of the EagerEyes visualization blog,  recently shared a link to a video of  a working prototype of the Gmail Motion concept.  The video features Evan Suma, a post-doc at USC who earned his Ph.D. at UNC-Charlotte.  



"This morning, Google introduced Gmail Motion, allowing users to control Gmail using gestures and body movement. However, for whatever reason, their application doesn't appear to work. So, we demonstrate our solution - the Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving (SLOOW) - and show how it can be used with a Microsoft Kinect sensor to control Gmail using the gestures described by Google. This project uses OpenNI coupled with FAAST and was made by Evan Suma and the folks at Mark Bolas' MxR Lab at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies."

Below is the video that almost had me fooled on April 1st  : )
>

RELATED
FAAST Video Gallery
Download FAAST from the USC ICT FAAST website.
University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (USC ICT) 

The FAAST website has loads of  additional "how-to" information. The list below is just a sample of what can be found on the site:

To use FAAST, you will need to download and install the following software:

1. OpenNI Unstable Build for Windows v1.0.0.25
2. PrimeSense NITE Unstable Build for Windows v1.3.0.18
   During NITE installation, enter the free license key from OpenNI: 0KOIk2JeIBYClPWVnMoRKn5cdY4=
3. Hardware drivers for your sensor (only one of the following)
   • Microsoft Kinect: SensorKinect Module – download Win32 installer from Bin folder
   • PrimeSensor: PrimeSensor Module – this does NOT work with the Kinect

FAAST should then run out-of-the-box; no additional installation or setup is necessary. If you encounter an error on startup, you may also need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package.

FAAST project members are Evan A. Suma, Belinda Lange, Skip Rizzo, David Krum, and Mark Bolas

INTERACTIVE TABLETOPS AND SURFACES 2011 CALL FOR PAPERS AND NOTES (6th Annual ACM ITS 2011 - Nov. 13-16)

Thanks to Johannes Schöning for sharing this information!

CALL FOR PAPERS AND NOTES

6th Annual ACM Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2011

ITS 2011

November 13-16, 2011

Portopia Hotel, Kobe, Japan

http://its2011.jp/

The Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2011 Conference (ITS) is a premiere venue for presenting research in the design and use of new and emerging tabletop and interactive surface technologies. As a new community, we embrace the growth of the discipline in a wide variety of areas, including innovations in ITS hardware, software, design, and projects expanding our understanding of design considerations of ITS technologies and of their applications.

Building on their success in previous years, ITS again features Papers and Notes presentations, as well as tutorials, posters, demonstrations tracks and a doctoral symposium. ITS 2011 will also include workshops.

ITS 2011 will bring together top researchers and practitioners who are interested in both the technical and human aspects of ITS technology. On behalf of the conference organizing committee, we invite you to begin planning your submissions and participation for this year's conference!

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: PAPERS AND NOTES

The use of interactive surfaces is an exciting and emerging research area. Display technologies, such as projectors, LCD and OLED flat panels, and even flexible display substrates, coupled with input sensors capable of enabling direct interaction, make it reasonable to envision a not-so-distant future in which many of the common surfaces in our environment will function as digital interactive displays. ITS brings together researchers and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds and interests, such as camera and projector based systems, new display technologies, multi-touch sensing, user interface technologies, augmented reality, computer vision, multimodal interaction, novel input and sensing technologies, computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), and information visualization.

The intimate size of this single-track symposium provides an ideal venue for leading researchers and practitioners to exchange research results and experiences. We encourage submissions on (but not limited to) the following topic areas as they relate to interactive tabletops and surfaces:

* Gesture-based interfaces

* Multi-modal interfaces

* Tangible interfaces

* Novel interaction techniques

* Data handling/exchange on large interactive surfaces

* Data presentation on large interactive surfaces

* Software engineering methods

* Computer supported collaborative work

* Middleware and network support

* Virtual reality and augmented reality

* Social protocols

* Information visualizations

* Hardware, including sensing and input technologies with novel capabilities

* Human-centered design & methodologies

* Applications

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE

Conference Co-Chairs

Jun Rekimoto, The University of Tokyo / SonyCSL, Japan

Hideki Koike, University of Electro-Communications, Japan

Kentaro Fukuchi, Meiji University, Japan

Program Co-Chairs

Yoshifumi Kitamura, Tohoku University, Japan

Daniel Wigdor, University of Toronto, Canada

SUBMISSIONS

Papers/Notes: We invite paper submissions of two kinds: Papers (10 pages) and Notes (4 pages). Papers must present original, highly innovative, prospective and forward-looking research, possibly in one or more of the themes given above. Notes must also report novel and complete research, but where the scope and scale of the contribution is more focused and succinct than papers. Submissions must be submitted as a single PDF file in the ACM format through the submission system. A template for submissions can be found on the ITS

website (http://its2011.jp/).

All accepted submissions will be presented at ITS 2011 and appear in the ITS digital proceedings and be archived in the ACM digital library.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper/Note Submissions: June 30, 2011

Paper/Note Author Notifications: September 2, 2011

Paper/Note Camera-Ready Deadline: October 21, 2011

The calls for the posters, demos, tutorials, workshops and the doctoral symposium will be published soon, please check our website for further information.

RELATED

ITS 2010 Proceedings

ITS 2010 Awards

Best Paper:	Proxemic Interaction: Designing for a Proximity and Orientation-Aware Environment by Till Ballendat, Nicolai Marquardt, Saul Greenberg
Best Note:	MudPad: Tactile Feedback and Haptic Texture Overlay for Touch Surfaces by  Yvonne Jansen, Thorsten Karrer, Jan Borchers
Best Poster:	A Multi-Touch Alignment Guide for Interactive Displays by Mathias Frisch, Ricardo Langner, Sebastian Kleinau, Raimund Dachselt
Best Demo:	MudPad - A Tactile Memory Game by Yvonne Jansen, Thorsten Karrer, Jan Borchers

Best Paper:	Proxemic Interaction: Designing for a Proximity and Orientation-Aware Environment by Till Ballendat, Nicolai Marquardt, Saul Greenberg
Best Note:	MudPad: Tactile Feedback and Haptic Texture Overlay for Touch Surfaces by Yvonne Jansen, Thorsten Karrer, Jan Borchers
Best Poster:	A Multi-Touch Alignment Guide for Interactive Displays by Mathias Frisch, Ricardo Langner, Sebastian Kleinau, Raimund Dachselt
Best Demo:	MudPad - A Tactile Memory Game by Yvonne Jansen, Thorsten Karrer, Jan Borchers

Who's Who

ITS 2010Conference General Chairs 

Johannes Schöning, DFKI GmbH
Antonio Krüger, DFKI GmbH 

ITS 2010 Organization Committee

Daniel Wigdor, one of the ITS 2011Program Co-chairs, co-authored the following book with Dennis Wixon. The book has not yet been released.
 
Brave NUI World: Designing User Interfaces for Touch and Gesture

Note: This post includes links, please let me know of anything I should correct.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Touch the Web 2011 2nd International Workshop on Web-Enabled Objects

CALL FOR PAPERS: Touch the Web 2011

2nd International Workshop on Web-Enabled Objects

The workshop will be held on June 20-24, 2011 in Paphos, Cyprus, in conjunction with the:

International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE)(Information about this CFP was taken from the workshop's website: http://www.pros.upv.es/touchtheweb/ )

The vision of the Internet of Things builds upon the use of embedded systems to control devices, tools and appliances. With the addition of novel communications capabilities and identification means such as RFID, systems can now gather information from other sensors, devices and computers on the network, or enable user-oriented customization and operations through short-range communication. When the information gathered by different sensors is shared by means of open Web standards, new services can be defined on top of physical elements. In addition, the new generation of mobile phones enables a true mobile Internet experience. These phones are today’s ubiquitous information access tool, and the physical token of our "Digital Me“. These meshes of things and “Digital Me” will become the basis upon which future smart living, working and production places will be created, delivering services directly where they are needed.

The fundamental questions in this workshop are:

How do we apply the lessons learned in Web Engineering to the Internet of Things?

What kind of Web-based interaction patterns for embedded devices (streaming, eventing, etc.) can we identify?

Applications, deployments, prototypes and evaluations of Web of things systems.

Human-things interaction models and paradigms (mobile interfaces, etc.)

User-oriented, context-aware discovery and dynamic search for the real world.

Compositions of Things and Meshes of Things.

What kind of interfaces, business models and scenarios these smart things will create, address and modify?

How can the services in the surroundings be composed and orchestrated?

The research areas involved are many, including Web Engineering, Ubiquitous Computing, Product Engineering, Distributed Systems, Human Computer Interaction, Economics, Artificial Intelligence, and many more. We look forward in this workshop to bring together different areas of expertise to help us shape a vision of creating living and working surrounded by meshes of web-enabled things.

Workshop format

Expected number of participants is no more than 20, for a full-day workshop. A tentative program (to be adjusted following the number of participants) is organized as follows:

A short (15 min) opening session by the workshop organizers

Two full paper presentation sessions (each session with 3 papers, 20 min presentation each)

Lunch break

One short paper presentation session (up to 6 papers, 5 min presentation each)

Discussion session. A specific agenda to discuss and provide feedback upon will be proposed and the organizers will moderate the discussion.

The last session will be devoted to consolidate and present the results of the discussions. The workshop organizers will write a workshop summary and publish it as part of the workshop proceedings.

Links - Web of Things: Touch the Web 2011; Web Patterns and the EPC Cloud, Windows 8 Rumors, Human Centered Service Design

WEB OF THINGS
Touch the Web 2011
Dominique Guinard|Web of Things|3/21/11


EPC Cloud: Reducing Software Complexity Thanks to Web Patterns
Dominique Guinard|Web of Things|3/8/11

View more presentations from Dominique Guinard.


WINDOWS 8 RUMORS

Windows 8 Beta Collectors Waiting with Bated Breath for a Leak

Mary Jo Foley |All About Microsoft|ZDNET|3/30/11

HUMAN CENTERED SERVICE DESIGN

Service Design Toolkit: A toolkit for the design of public service 

Service Design Toolkit Downloadables

(Via Putting People First)

FYI:  My dog woke me up very early this morning - so I decided to post a few interesting links. I'll share more in-depth posts in the future when I have a bit more time : )

Virtual History of Rome for the iPad, Created with Unity

RELATED
Unity iOS Publishing
Unity Game Development Website

Virtual Rome Featured by Steve Jobs

Program- CHI 2011 Child Computer Interaction: 2nd Workshop on UI Technologies and Educational Pedagogy

CHILD COMPUTER INTERACTION: 2ND WORKSHOP ON UI TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR IMPACT ON EDUCATIONAL PEDAGOGY

May 7, 2011

In conjunction with CHI 2011, Vancouver, Canada

PROGRAM (Draft)

9:00am – 09:05am       Introduction


9:05am - 10:05am        Paper Session I (8min presentation, 4min Discussion)


Evaluating Pervasive Classrooms


• Son Do-Lenh et al.:   Classroom-experience evaluation: An ecological approach to evaluating pervasive technologies in classroom
• Kathryn Rounding et al.:   Evaluating Interfaces with Children
• Dan Morris et al.:   Using Machine Learning to Scaffold Artistic Creativity in Education
• Tamara Polajnar et al.:   Enabling Picture-based Querying and Learning with the JuSe Interface
• Hamed Alavi et al.:   Lantern 2.0: A Pervasive Scripting Tool


10:05am - 11:00am  Coffee Break and Preparation time for short talks


11:00am - 12:10pmPaper Session II (8min presentation, 4min Discussion)


Collaboration in Math: Fears, Myths, and Insights


• Nicola Yull et al.: Pass the iPad: Comparing collaboration on paper and screen
• Veronika Irvine et al.: Math Education: A Creative Approach


• Group talk: Math and Embodied Agents
a.  Kristina Richter et al.: Bridging Diagnosis and Learning for Mathematics Education in Classroom Setting
b.  Lisa Anthony et al.: Handwriting Interaction for Math Tutors: Lessons for HCI in Education
c.  Andrew Jensen et al.: Using Embodied Pedagogical Agents and Direct Instruction to Augment Learning for Young Children with Special Needs


• Group talk: Dispelling Myths About the Next Generation Classroom
a.   Alex Thayer et al.: The Myth of the Paperless School: Replacing Printed Texts with E-readers
b.  Sharon Oviatt: Designing Digital Tools for Thinking, Adaptive Learning and Cognitive Evolution
c.  Alexandra Dunn et al.: Designing Classroom Technology to Meet the Needs of All


• Group talk: Games, Wearables and Fun Learning.
a.  Christiane Moser et al.:    Child-Centered Game Development
b.  Lizbeth Escobedo et al.:  Blue’s Clues: An Augmented Reality Positioning System
c.  Si Jung Kim et al.:   Wearable Story: A Story Telling Jacket for Young Children to Improve Their Independent Physical and Learning Activities


12:10pm - 1:30pm Lunch


1:30pm - 2:30pm Paper Session (10 min presentation, 5min Discussion)


Tangibles and Tabletops
•   Izdihar Jamil et al.: Communication Patterns in Collaborative Peer Learning around Interactive Table
•   Aura Pon et al.: Graspable Music and Vuzik: Music Learning and Creativity using an Interactive Surface
•   Ahmed Kharrufa et al.: Learning at interactive surfaces and designing for reflection
•   Cristina Sylla et al.: TOK – a Tangible Interface for Storytelling


• Group talk: Tables and Tangibles
• a.Robert Sheehan: Constructionism, Programming and Touch Interfaces
• b.  Orit Shaer et al.: Making the Invisible Tangible: Learning Biological Engineering in Kindergarten
• c.  Sebastien Kubicki: Evaluation of an interactive table with tangible objects: Application with children in a classroom
• d.  Cristina Emilia Costa et al.: I-Theatre: developing narratives skills in kindergarten children
• e.  Wooi Boon Goh et al.: Potential Challenges in Collaborative Game Design for Inclusive Settings


2:30pm - 3:00pm  Coffee Break


3:00pm - 4:00pm  Breakout Discussion (What are future challenges? Next years workshop?)


4:00pm - 4:45pm  Closing Keynote  TBA


4:45pm - 5:00pm  Closing Remarks


7:00pm   Optional Workshop Dinner


RELATED
Workshop Website
ACM-CHI 2011 Conference Website