Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work - New York Times
Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work - New York Times
Epiphany has little to do with either creativity or innovation. Instead, innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time.
“The most useful way to think of epiphany is as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems,” explains Scott Berkun in his 2007 book, “The Myths of Innovation.” “Most innovations come without epiphanies, and when powerful moments do happen, little knowledge is granted for how to find the next one. To focus on the magic moments is to miss the point. The goal isn’t the magic moment: it’s the end result of a useful innovation.”
What's wrong with a Wii Media Lab? (Ethan Kennerly)
What's wrong with a Wii Media Lab? (Ethan Kennerly)
and so an idea began for a...
Wii Media Lab
Use infrared camera and infrared LED to intuitively control the cursor of a variety of applications while being free from the keyboard and mouse. These are input device systems for the Zemeckis Media Lab.
HarambeeNet: About
HarambeeNet: About: "Duke GUESS
GUESS is an exploratory data analysis and visualization tool developed by Eytan Adar that is particularly well-suited for our work on networks. We have adapted our own version, Duke GUESS, for use in our courses. For example, In the Steven Johnson's popular book, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, he argues that current television shows have far more complex plots involving more complex social networks than stories in the past. The adjoining figure shows the Duke GUESS tool visualizing the social network around the show 24's main character Jack Bauer. Students can use GUESS to interactively and programmatically ask questions about networks."
GUESS is an exploratory data analysis and visualization tool developed by Eytan Adar that is particularly well-suited for our work on networks. We have adapted our own version, Duke GUESS, for use in our courses. For example, In the Steven Johnson's popular book, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, he argues that current television shows have far more complex plots involving more complex social networks than stories in the past. The adjoining figure shows the Duke GUESS tool visualizing the social network around the show 24's main character Jack Bauer. Students can use GUESS to interactively and programmatically ask questions about networks."
profmason.com » Building stand alone executables for Vpython
profmason.com » Building stand alone executables for Vpython:
Vpython is a set of extensions to the python programming language designed to allow easy visualization and computational modeling for an introductory physics or engineering course. Since the goal is to have students develop their own models and simulations the IDLE environment is ideal. However, creating a stand alone executable would allow vpython based simulations to be deployed for students to use outside the programming environment."
Vpython is a set of extensions to the python programming language designed to allow easy visualization and computational modeling for an introductory physics or engineering course. Since the goal is to have students develop their own models and simulations the IDLE environment is ideal. However, creating a stand alone executable would allow vpython based simulations to be deployed for students to use outside the programming environment."
Friday, February 01, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Tales of a Code Monkey: A preview of gtk-vnc v0.3.3
Tales of a Code Monkey: A preview of gtk-vnc v0.3.3:
"At first, a VNC web-browser plugin may sound like a silly idea. Of course, both RealVNC and TightVNC ship a Java applet VNC client. Clearly, there is demand for embedding a VNC session within a web browser. Besides the obvious concerns about performance, Java applets are severely limited in what they can do. You cannot grab the mouse and you cannot grab arbitrary key events. You really can't build a first class VNC client as a Java applet.
With a gtk-vnc based plugin, you can have a first class VNC client in your web browser."
"At first, a VNC web-browser plugin may sound like a silly idea. Of course, both RealVNC and TightVNC ship a Java applet VNC client. Clearly, there is demand for embedding a VNC session within a web browser. Besides the obvious concerns about performance, Java applets are severely limited in what they can do. You cannot grab the mouse and you cannot grab arbitrary key events. You really can't build a first class VNC client as a Java applet.
With a gtk-vnc based plugin, you can have a first class VNC client in your web browser."
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Sun - Immersion Special Interest Group
Sun - Immersion Special Interest Group:
Project Wonderland
MPK20: Sun's Virtual Workplace
MPK20 is the first example of a virtual 3D environment created in Wonderland. Designed for Sun's distributed workforce, employees can accomplish their real work, share documents, and meet with colleagues using natural voice communication.
More »
More »
Project Wonderland
Project Wonderland is a 3-D scene manager for creating collaborative virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio and can share live applications such as web browsers, OpenOffice documents, and games.
Project Wonderland
MPK20: Sun's Virtual Workplace
MPK20 is the first example of a virtual 3D environment created in Wonderland. Designed for Sun's distributed workforce, employees can accomplish their real work, share documents, and meet with colleagues using natural voice communication.
| |
MPK20: Sun's Virtual Workplace
MPK20 is the first example of a virtual 3D environment created in Wonderland. Designed for Sun's distributed workforce, employees can accomplish their real work, share documents, and meet with colleagues using natural voice communication.More »
Project Wonderland
Project Wonderland is a 3-D scene manager for creating collaborative virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio and can share live applications such as web browsers, OpenOffice documents, and games.More »
Project Wonderland
Project Wonderland is a 3-D scene manager for creating collaborative virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio and can share live applications such as web browsers, OpenOffice documents, and games.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Turbulence, cont. on Vimeo
Turbulence, cont. on Vimeo
Whoa! This guy is on to something (and on something).
Turbulence, cont. from flight404 on Vimeo.
Whoa! This guy is on to something (and on something).
Turbulence, cont. from flight404 on Vimeo.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
The Consequences of Firefox 2.0 Features and Default Tabs Settings
The Consequences of Firefox 2.0 Features and Default Tabs Settings:
... in previous builds of Firefox, you had the following choices for opening links: In Firefox 2, this all-encompassing list of five different choices has been squeezed down to just two: The problem here is that the type of user who will change these settings [Preferences/Tabs] (power users), let alone those who actually know they exist, will want the larger list of choices from the previous versions of Firefox. Firefox 2 simply doesn't accommodate these power users - ironically, the people giving Firefox the most support.
To add to the confusion for power users, there's another setting for "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately." Leaving this unchecked, as it is by default, means that when a user intentionally opens a link in another tab, the current Web page will not be affected in any way and will still be in the forefront. But when the other setting for "New pages should be opened in a new tab" is selected, the opposite happens. With this configuration, links intentionally opened in a "new tab" are still done so in the background. Click on a "new window" link, however, and the new tab is opened in the foreground!
If you're a Website designer and want to prevent this from happening to your "new window" links, you'll have to replace your code with javascript links that pass the window features parameter to the window.open method:
... in previous builds of Firefox, you had the following choices for opening links:
- Open links from other applications in a new window
- Open links from other applications in a new tab in the most recent window
- Open links from other applications in the most recent tab/window
- Force links that open new windows to open in the same tab/window as the link
- Force links that open new windows to open in a new tab
- New pages should be opened in a new window
- New pages should be opened in a new tab
To add to the confusion for power users, there's another setting for "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately." Leaving this unchecked, as it is by default, means that when a user intentionally opens a link in another tab, the current Web page will not be affected in any way and will still be in the forefront. But when the other setting for "New pages should be opened in a new tab" is selected, the opposite happens. With this configuration, links intentionally opened in a "new tab" are still done so in the background. Click on a "new window" link, however, and the new tab is opened in the foreground!
If you're a Website designer and want to prevent this from happening to your "new window" links, you'll have to replace your code with javascript links that pass the window features parameter to the window.open method:
Friday, January 18, 2008
x10 light switch controllers
Figure 1: Wireless X10 devices require a wireless transceiver.
The video shows me tackling two very common problems in my 1950’s era home. First, in my bedroom (Figure 2), I use two lamps to light the room. It’s annoying to have to walk across the room in the dark to turn them on, and then to reach across the bed to turn them off at night. I fixed this in about ten minutes with about $100 in X10 hardware. Now, I can turn both lights on and off from a wall switch, or control them from my bedside table. As an added bonus, I can now dim the lights.
Figure 2: In the first project, I add remote switches to control two bedside lamps.
The second problem is in my office. I have a light switch, but the light it controls is too dim. So, when I go into my office, I flip the light switch on, and then walk across my office to turn on a floor lamp. With another $100 investment in X10 hardware and about 30 minutes time, I replaced my wall switch with an X10 switch capable of controlling both the built-in light and my floor lamp, as shown in Figure 3. Now, with a single flick, I can control all the lights in my office.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Convert a Web Page into an iPhone Data Bookmarklet
Convert a Web Page into an iPhone Data Bookmarklet:
"Enter a URL you would like to turn into an iPhone data bookmarklet.
"Enter a URL you would like to turn into an iPhone data bookmarklet.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
SourceForge.net: EditArea
SourceForge.net: EditArea: "
Here is EditArea, a free javascript editor for source code. It allow to write well formated source code with line numerotation, tab support, search & replace (with regexp) and live syntax highlighting (customizable).
Friday, January 11, 2008
Video Trace
This would be great for the Virtual Children's Zone project.
(Thanks Adam)
VideoTrace: Rapid interactive scene modelling from video.
VideoTrace is a system for interactively generating realistic 3D models of objects from video—models that might be inserted into a video game, a simulation environment, or another video sequence. The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object to be modelled over one or more frames of the video. By interpreting the sketch drawn by the user in light of 3D information obtained from computer vision techniques, a small number of simple 2D interactions can be used to generate a realistic 3D model.
http://www.acvt.com.au/research/videotrace/
See also... http://www.realviz.com/3d_model_software.htm
This is just very cool too...
(Thanks Adam)
VideoTrace: Rapid interactive scene modelling from video.
VideoTrace is a system for interactively generating realistic 3D models of objects from video—models that might be inserted into a video game, a simulation environment, or another video sequence. The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object to be modelled over one or more frames of the video. By interpreting the sketch drawn by the user in light of 3D information obtained from computer vision techniques, a small number of simple 2D interactions can be used to generate a realistic 3D model.
http://www.acvt.com.au/research/videotrace/
See also... http://www.realviz.com/3d_model_software.htm
This is just very cool too...
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Moderation Strategies | Main / HomePage
PM Wiki: Moderation Strategies | Main
This is a space for studying strategies of moderation in groups that conduct some or all of their communications online. The principal content of this wiki is a proposed 'pattern language' -- a description of the common patterns of these moderation systems -- for developers to consider when deploying or altering social software.
More in the About page.
Contributing to this wiki
In order to avoid spam on this wiki, editing now requires a password. If you'd like to participate or edit content, please send an email to clay(at)shirky(.)com OR mouna(at)nyu(.)edu. Thanks."
This is a space for studying strategies of moderation in groups that conduct some or all of their communications online. The principal content of this wiki is a proposed 'pattern language' -- a description of the common patterns of these moderation systems -- for developers to consider when deploying or altering social software.
More in the About page.
Contributing to this wiki
In order to avoid spam on this wiki, editing now requires a password. If you'd like to participate or edit content, please send an email to clay(at)shirky(.)com OR mouna(at)nyu(.)edu. Thanks."
Social Design Patterns at Like It Matters
Social Design Patterns at Like It Matters:
06Nov07
Josh puts a gloss on some social design principles some peeps at the Google put out in conjunction with last week’s hooha. Check em out.
I’d also point you to Christian’s evolving social media design patterns.
& to Alex’s roundup of social trends in enterprise tools. (RWW is really upping their game. Alex is one of my favorite reads these days, and Marshall seems to let it all hang out in his RWW posts. Useful.)
I generally look to Thomas, Josh, Rashmi, Stowe, Tom, Tara, Chris & Leisa for social design best practices. Tell me what I’m missing out on, pretty please.
Welie.com - Patterns in Interaction Design
Welie.com - Patterns in Interaction Design
by Jenifer Tidwell
Yahoo Design Pattern Library
by Yahoo
Interaction Design patterns for games
by Eelke Folmer
Mobile User Interface Design Patterns
by Little Springs Design
Web Patterns
by UC Berkeley
Pattern library
All patterns are listed here. It's quite a bunch of them, but I have tried to group them meaningfully.Other patterns libraries
Designing Interfacesby Jenifer Tidwell
Yahoo Design Pattern Library
by Yahoo
Interaction Design patterns for games
by Eelke Folmer
Mobile User Interface Design Patterns
by Little Springs Design
Web Patterns
by UC Berkeley
Contents | Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity | Committee on Information Technology and Creativity | Computer Sci
Contents | Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity
| SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS | 1 | |||
| CREATIVE PRACTICES | 30 | |||
THE INFLUENCE OF ART AND DESIGN ON COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT | 96 | ||||||||
| VENUES FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND CREATIVE PRACTICES | 118 | |||
| SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES | 151 | |||
| INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES AND PUBLIC POLICY | 176 | |||
| SUPPORTING WORK IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND CREATIVE PRACTICES | 197 | |||
Monday, January 07, 2008
Learning more about Sketchup
from http://learningmoreaboutsketchup.blogspot.com/2006/05/starting-points-for-learning-more.html
SketchUcation
University of Liverpool, School of Architecture SketchUp Tutorials
The SketchUp 5 Book
3D Construction Modeling
Designing With SketchUp Infowiki (Fred Bartels - RCDS)
SketchUp Pro Donated to Every Middle School Student in Maine
SketchUcation
University of Liverpool, School of Architecture SketchUp Tutorials
The SketchUp 5 Book
3D Construction Modeling
Designing With SketchUp Infowiki (Fred Bartels - RCDS)
SketchUp Pro Donated to Every Middle School Student in Maine
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike - New York Times
Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike - New York Times:
"Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on the curse of knowledge while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs from which to choose. Their task was to rap their knuckles on a tabletop to the rhythm of the chosen tune as they thought about it in their heads. A second set of people, called “listeners,” were asked to name the songs.
Before the experiment began, the tappers were asked how often they believed that the listeners would name the songs correctly. On average, tappers expected listeners to get it right about half the time. In the end, however, listeners guessed only 3 of 120 songs tapped out, or 2.5 percent.
The tappers were astounded. The song was so clear in their minds; how could the listeners not “hear” it in their taps?
That’s a common reaction when experts set out to share their ideas in the business world, too, says Chip Heath, who with his brother, Dan, was a co-author of the 2007 book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.” It’s why engineers design products ultimately useful only to other engineers. It’s why managers have trouble convincing the rank and file to adopt new processes. And it’s why the advertising world struggles to convey commercial messages to consumers.
"Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on the curse of knowledge while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs from which to choose. Their task was to rap their knuckles on a tabletop to the rhythm of the chosen tune as they thought about it in their heads. A second set of people, called “listeners,” were asked to name the songs.
Before the experiment began, the tappers were asked how often they believed that the listeners would name the songs correctly. On average, tappers expected listeners to get it right about half the time. In the end, however, listeners guessed only 3 of 120 songs tapped out, or 2.5 percent.
The tappers were astounded. The song was so clear in their minds; how could the listeners not “hear” it in their taps?
That’s a common reaction when experts set out to share their ideas in the business world, too, says Chip Heath, who with his brother, Dan, was a co-author of the 2007 book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.” It’s why engineers design products ultimately useful only to other engineers. It’s why managers have trouble convincing the rank and file to adopt new processes. And it’s why the advertising world struggles to convey commercial messages to consumers.
“I HAVE a DVD remote control with 52 buttons on it, and every one of them is there because some engineer along the line knew how to use that button and believed I would want to use it, too,” Mr. Heath says. “People who design products are experts cursed by their knowledge, and they can’t imagine what it’s like to be as ignorant as the rest of us.”
But there are proven ways to exorcise the curse.
SPLITCAM video clone split cam capture driver software
SPLITCAM video clone split cam capture driver software
Under development
Under development
 Sound splitting. Support for more video codec’s. Adding Text or Picture as second layer over the main video stream. |
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
Bug Labs: Products
Bug Labs: Products
Products
 | BUG is a collection of easy-to-use, open source hardware modules, each capable of producing one or more Web services. These modules snap together physically and the services connect together logically to enable users to easily build, program and share innovative devices and applications. With BUG, we don't define the final products - you do. The PlatformBUG helps you explore the realm of personalized devices and applications, and find ways to solve many of the problems current gadgets can't. For example, with BUG, you can easily assemble and program a GPS + digital camera device that automatically publishes geo-tagged photos as a web service. Integrating with an online photo-sharing service like Flickr is only a few more lines of code away, and now you have your own real-time, connected traffic-enabled mobile Webcam! The platform is designed to enable a collaborative development environment. BUGnet (launching soon), our online community, is tied in directly to the BUG SDK, which allows developers to connect with others, share information, and jointly build products or services. |
Available Q4, 2007 |
SitePlayer-telnet-Home
SitePlayer-telnet-Home
| SitePlayer Telnet is an Ethernet to RS232 adapter. It allows you to connect to RS232 devices using TCP/IP. Once connected you can send and receive data to SitePlayer's serial port at various baud rates. SitePlayer Telnet can be configured using a standard web browser. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Compact size
New Lab Develops Computer Games for Social Change - Chronicle.com
New Lab Develops Computer Games for Social Change - Chronicle.com
December 12, 2007
New Lab Develops Computer Games for Social Change
Computer games can make the world a better place, and Parsons The New School for Design and the MacArthur Foundation are betting $450,000 on that proposition. The institution, with the non-profit organization Games for Change, just got a grant in that amount from the philanthropy to start a public-interest game design and research laboratory for interactive media.
The facility, to be called PETlab, will work with Microsoft’s Xbox development platform and Think.MTV.com—the youth-oriented network’s online activist community—to develop learning tools and digital games that explore social issues.
Gaming as an education tool is attracting attention from a number of higher education institutions, including Boston College, Columbia University, and Amherst College, which are supporting an online educational game environment called Immersive Education, The Chronicle reported earlier this week.
PETLab will focus on new games and simulations to encourage learning and investigation into social and global issues, as well as educational assessment, according to Colleen Macklin, Parsons chair of communication design and technology and director of the lab.
Among the projects: Xbox on Campus, which uses the Microsoft game platform to develop games relating to social issues. It will be made available as open source material for other universities to adopt and expand.—Josh Fischman
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card
Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card
What's the Deal: I've been told technology makes life easier. But ...my life hasn't become easier; it's just become overwhelmingly involved.
Then I stumbled upon the Eye-Fi card. Here's a device everyone uses, an SD card, that actually takes work out of my day. Rather than providing me a "more efficient method" (as so many products and services pitch) of transferring photos from a digital 
I plug the Eye-Fi dongle into my PC (or Mac) and configure a few settings: Where I want my photos saved, the website I want them uploaded to, etc. I then put the Eye-Fi card into my camera and take photos as I always do. It functions as a normal SD card with no problems and no fine print. As soon as the camera gets within range of a Wi-Fi network, it automatically begins transferring the photos on the card to my computer and my Flickr account. It easily handles full-resolution, huge JPEG files and automatically resizes them, if required, by sites such as Facebook.
I don't even have to be on my home network because it sends the photos to my personal Web-based Eye-Fi account and then pings them over to my computer. If I turn off my camera before all the photos are transferred or my computer isn't on, the photos are queued in my Eye-Fi account and sent when everything is golden. They are then deleted from my Eye-Fi account once successfully transferred, so there are no worries about my pictures being anywhere they shouldn't be. The only time I need the dongle is when I want to change the card's settings.
I now have one less thing on my daily to-do list and I didn't replace it with a "more efficient" task. It's just gone-crossed out. How many times has a friend said they'll put a photo of you online so you can have a copy, and somehow it never happens? They either forget or it sits on their camera for three months until they get around to transferring it. By then they've forgotten to send you a copy. With Eye-Fi your Edward Fortyhands photo is online the minute they get home-literally.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Slideshow: Transparent Desktop Opens Doors
Slideshow: Transparent Desktop Opens Doors
A computer can be controlled with finger gestures using Factop. Pointing and flicking fingers opens and closes windows, selects text or double-clicks icons.
A computer can be controlled with finger gestures using Factop. Pointing and flicking fingers opens and closes windows, selects text or double-clicks icons.
David Stotts and Jason Smith
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