Friday, November 21. 2008Google Plans to Shut Down Lively 3D WorldGoogle announced that on December 31st they will shut down Lively, which was their 3D chat world, and somewhat of a potential competitor to Second Life. Room widgets embedded in other sites are then supposed to show an image but no more interaction, which would add Lively to the list of Google’s canceled products. Google’s post on this decision does not really give a detailed reasoning for this shut-down of a product which was just released this year, except that they’re saying “we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.” In particular, this leaves some questions unanswered as a company could theoretically embed ads in this 3D world app. Lively was a great-looking Google product. On the other hand from the beginning on it was riddled with regular program crashes for some users, though the situation improved over time. There were other oddities as well, like a flood of sex rooms almost kidnapping the Lively rooms directory, or custom images never quite fitting the object you’d put them on (and then being disabled altogether for a while). It was still a fun experience, with a fresh and intuitive interface that I found more beginner-friendly than Second Life. Building rooms was entertaining and casual, with features like integrating YouTube videos by pasting the video URL, leading to quickly shareable results. Now, Google say they’ve “always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives” but that they’ve also “always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.” Google apparently made up their mind that this bet will never pay off, even if the product was only given the chance to grow for 4 months; a short time to make a good judgment on potential future success. Others feel like Lively was an odd release for Google to begin with; Andy Baio in the forum comments, “I never understood this product. It never seemed to fit Google’s worldview, and even the standalone domain and branding were weird. I wonder what the story behind it was.” Google says current users of Lively are supposed to make “videos and screenshots” of their “hard work” to preserve some of it. They also mention that current members of the Lively team will move to other projects. In 2006, Niniane Wang, who headed the then-secret project at Google, quoted from an email a colleague sent to their team:
Already by now, a website by Lively users has sprung up protesting against the shutdown. On the homepage of Livelyzens.com, which is accompanied by a discussion group, the following is written:
Also, people are currently coming together in – where else – a Lively room set up for the purpose. Called “KEEP LIVELY ALIVE!”, this room plays the song “Staying Alive.” An image from South Park reads “Don’t Kill Kenny.” Thursday, November 20. 2008Stealth LPC-450M Little PCStealth.Com have announced a new small-form-factor PC intended for embedded, in-car or industrial applications. The Stealth LPC-450M Little PC is based on an Intel Core 2 Duo with, as standard, a shock-mounted 2.5-inch hard-drive and PSU capable of running on 10-16V DC power such as supplied from a car battery. SSD storage is an option, as is upgrading the standard DVD/CD-RW to a DVD burner. Despite measuring 5.7 x 9.9 x 1.65 inches, the LPC-450M still manages to offer LAN, two serial ports, three USB ports, FireWire, video and audio output and PS/2 mouse & keyboard ports. There are also start-up and shut-down delay timer options: start-up can be delayed by 5, 10, 20 or 40 seconds or 1, 2 or 4 minutes to give the power supply time to stabilize, while shutdown can be delayed by 3, 5 or 10 minutes. A fanless, lower-powered version of the PC is also available, the LPC-450FM. Windows XP and Vista are supported, as is Linux, and Stealth.Com will also produce custom OEM builds if you ask them nicely. Related Links:VIPRO VP7710 - Touchscreen panel PCVIA have announced the VIPRO VP7710, a fanless touchscreen panel PC intended for industrial and commercial applications but likely to prompt at least a little interest from domestic custom installers. Based on either a 1.6GHz VIA Eden or 1.0GHz C7 processor with up to 1GB of DDR2 RAM, the primary means of input is using the 10.4-inch water and dust resistant touch panel. Connectivity includes gigabit ethernet, optional WiFi, two USB 2.0 ports, three COM ports, PS/2 support, HD audio and VGA. VIA’s UniChrome Pro II 2D/3D graphics and MPEG-2/4 and WMV9 hardware accelerated decoding is also onboard, and the VIPRO can be wall, table or VESA mounted. Storage can be either IDE or SATA hard-drives, or Compact Flash based. The VIA VIPRO VP7710 is available now. Related Links:Wednesday, November 19. 2008Mindball GameIf you are in London this December 28th & 29th you can be amongst the first people in the UK to play Mindball at the Science Museum. Mindball is one of the first examples of entertainment using brainwaves to control the content, in this example a ball in a game. Competitors are hooked up to an EEG (Electroencephalogram) machine, which reads their brainwaves and transfers them to a physical movement of the ball. The more stressed you are, the easier it would be for your rival to push the ball to your side and ultimately over the line to score a goal. Related Links:
Posted by Christian Babski
in Science & technology
at
14:25
Defined tags for this entry: design (interactions), games, monitoring, research, science & technology
Search by voice and locationLast night I installed the new "Google Mobile App" on my iPhone to try out the new Voice Search. I was anxious to try it out after first seeing the demo in Google's announcement video, because this seems like one of those defining moments in technology advancement: combining the ease of voice queries with Google searching with results shown quickly on your phone is just amazing. And, it's location aware as well, which has all kinds of implications for the GeoWeb. Just imagine if you could do searching with the iPhone Google Earth application? Watch the Google announcement VIDEO to see what I mean. Google's experiments with 800-GOOG-411 seem to have really paid off with good voice recognition. I had very good success rate with its accuracy - although it still messes up occasionally. What I was really interested in was the possibilities with mapping. You can say "Map <place>" to get an instant map of a place. For example: "Map of London" I hope they voice search enable the iPhone Google Earth application. That would be really cool. And, directions in Google Maps on the iPhone would be really handy. It's such a pain having to type addresses for directions or search for places when in a car - you either have to stop, or get someone else to do it for you. But, with voice search it could be so much easier. Now, imagine adding voice search to the Google Earth on your laptop/desktop... ----- Related Links:Tuesday, November 18. 2008Media augmented architectural surfaces - HFT StuttgartThe ‘Medien und Raum’ Studio is a master course subject taught by Dr. Haeusler at the HfT Stuttgart – Hochschule für Technik. The Studio is part of a new research focus at the university on media architecture and interactive architecture. ‘Medien und Raum’ focused on the architectural integration of state of the art media technology. The two projects presented ‘Concrete LED Façade’ by Angela Renz and Dominik Kommerell and ‘Lochblech LED Façade’ by Ute Schweinle, Melek Güler and Andrea Fackler are prototypes resulting from this studio. Both projects were conducted as scientific research projects where conditions and materials were tested and documented and the prototypes are a result of the research. Can a deactivated media façade transform back to an architectural surface or to ask the question the other way around can an architectural surface temporarily become a media façade? Both presented projects offer a possible answer to the question – the architectural surface is, when activated, a media façade that can display media content without having a persistent urge for new media contents. This urge is the result of media technology that exists as an added element onto architectural surfaces that when deactivating the technology unmasks the assembling of parts. Through an amalgam of architectural surface and technology one can create a media augmented element that is able to transform either to a space-defining element or a message-delivering vehicle. Links: Medienraum, Mevaco GmbH, Hochschule für Technik - Stuttgart ----- Related Links:Personal comment: Le résultat visuel n'est évidemment pas encore très intéressant... et l'on devine la masse de câbles cachés derrière le bloc de béton. Cela me rappelle un autre projet d'écran en béton... Il s'agissait en réalité "simplement" d'un béton rempli de fibres optiques, mais le résultat était surprenant. Si non, bien entendu, cela rappelle aussi les bétons semi transparents (cf. liens ci-dessus) Genetic GeographyGenomic analysis reveals Europeans' places of origin. - An international group of scientists has shown that genetic analysis can pinpoint Europeans' geographic origins within a few hundred kilometers. The scientists mathematically mapped the differences between people's genomes onto a two-dimensional grid, and the result looked much like a map of Europe. John Novembre, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who participated in the study, says that the findings could have research implications. Scientists can study a disease by looking for genetic variations shared by people who suffer from it. But test subjects from different countries may have unrelated genetic variations that yield false positives. The same technique that produced the genetic map could filter out such regional differences, making it easier to home in on variations of interest. Blood will out: A mathematical operation maps (right) the most significant differences between the genomes of 1,387 Europeans onto a single axis (PC1). Performed again, the operation maps the most significant differences that the first iteration missed (PC2). The result--a 2-D map of genetic variation--looks remarkably like a map of Europe (left). ----- Via MIT Technology Review (magazine = password protected), with a comment and picture on Flickr. Related Links:Monday, November 17. 2008Expanding the Mobile WebAn announcement by Adobe and ARM will let phones see more of the Web.
By Kate Greene
Specifically, the companies say that Adobe's Flash Player 10 and AIR (a platform for building complex Web applications) will be compatible and optimized for the ARM chips available in 2009. While ARM is used in a huge number of mobile phones, the announcement has broader implications: the chips are also used in set-top boxes, mobile Internet devices, personal media players, and automotive platforms. The experience of publishing and viewing content on a PC is "near frictionless," says Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing of mobile devices at Adobe. "But when we get into devices like set-top boxes and phones, you run into a lot of roadblocks." While Murarka doesn't think all of the roadblocks will vanish immediately, he believes that the Adobe and ARM collaboration can help make it easier for people to post videos from their PCs or mobiles and access them anywhere. To be sure, the agreement won't improve the Web on all devices. One big exception is Apple's iPhone. Steve Jobs has historically eschewed Adobe's Flash for the iPhone because the existing mobile version of Adobe's player, called Flash Lite, runs too slowly on the gadget. But for a vast majority of phones, the collaboration could make a difference to users. Murarka explains that the two companies worked together to optimize the software and hardware in three different ways. First, the compiler used in Flash Player 10, which converts program code into microchip instructions, has been written to work smoothly with the ARMv6 and ARMv7 chip. This means that the software understands how these chips transport data and can tap into the right part of the chips at the right time, speeding up applications. A second improvement, says Murarka, is that some ARM chips have been built with graphics subprocessors--pieces of silicon that are specifically designed to handle the heavy lifting of graphics rendering. Desktop versions of Flash, he says, don't use graphics processors, but the new version of Flash will take advantage of the graphics subprocessor, making graphics rendering more efficient on mobile devices and also saving battery power. Third, the software that Adobe uses to compress and decompress videos will be optimized to run on ARM's chips. Today, content providers have to make sure that Flash videos are encoded in a specific way, in order to run on some mobile devices. This is how YouTube videos can play on the iPhone. "Flash now delivers over 80 percent of Web video," Murarka says. "By working with ARM, we can optimize that so that content that exists in video or audio form will be compatible with more devices." A broader implication of this initiative is that both the hardware and software companies are providing the tools that programmers need to build content that works across devices, says Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy at Jupitermedia, a research firm based in Connecticut. "The problem is [that] developers face a fragmented [mobile] landscape," he says. "And Adobe, by trying to get this content architecture on multiple handsets, is trying to make it easier for developers." Earlier this year, Adobe announced the Open Screen Project, a collaboration with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Qualcomm, and others aimed at standardizing Flash on mobile devices. The project led to Adobe removing licensing fees, which lets developers integrate Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR into any device or application without paying a fee. Many industry watchers saw the move as a reaction to Microsoft's release of Silverlight, a Flash competitor. The announced Adobe and ARM partnership is "about the ability to get Open Screen Project onto handsets," says Gartenberg. "You've got the ARM folks supporting the technology, which is the critical first step." Copyright Technology Review 2008. ----- Minority Report becomes reality
Oblong Industries is the company behind the prototype. They believe that their interfaces ‘brings the first major step in computer interface since 1984.’ Oblong states that ‘g-speak will fundamentally change the way people use machines at work, in the living room, in conference rooms, in vehicles.’ But although it looks really interesting, it also seems to require a very active attitude of the user. Large arm (beyond hand) gestures are needed and very ‘enthusiastic’ interactions with a large environment. I wonder if this is what people like in everyday life… Isn’t subtlety a better direction? Small subtle gestures, needing a small environment. See the VIDEO DEMO of the working interface on Video. ---- Personal comment: Cela ressemble a du gros "finger, hand & gesture" tracking. Ceci dit, cette référence constante faite à Minority Report par beaucoup d'ingénieurs (et de designers d'interaction) commence à devenir fatigante. Comme si il s'agissait là d'un objectif à atteindre ou d'une "milestone" culturelle... ExitReality - Le vieux "rêve" du web en 3dUne autre version /produit du web en 3d, ici avec construction automatique de mondes/chambres à partir de pages web (le fonctionnement est assez similaire à Knowscape (! même très!): une page dédiée d'où on load les pages). Les liens fonctionnent et le système additionne en plus tout le reste de l'attirail des mondes en 3d (chambres, avatars, îles désertes, import d'objets, etc...), les design étant assez horrible et prévisible. ExitReality: http://www.exitreality.com - Ex. sur le site de fabric | ch.
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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