Sep 18

VIDEO: The Reactable. Swell, futuristic synthesizer: “

The Reactable.

(Via Signal vs. Noise.)

Sep 18

File Magazine: “

FILE Magazine is a new bi-annual publication edited by Fabio Sebastianelli and Thorbjørn Ankerstjerne and featuring a broad selection of visual communication in the fields of graphic design, art, photography, fashion and moving image. Beautifully presented in a 30×39 cm hard cover with a full colour 52 gsm newsprint stitched inside.

This first issue comes with a DVD containing over 2 hours of short films, music videos and interviews, as well as a limited print by Geoff McFetridge.

(Via Computerlove | Connecting Creative Talents.)

Sep 13

Zoom! Squidy Brings Together Natural Interaction, Puts Standard TUIO on MS Surface: “

Ready to evolve past the mouse and keyboard? Squidy helps bind together all the possible ‘natural’ user interfaces by putting touch, ink, speech, and vision and tracking together in a powerful set of libraries. In other words, if you’ve got a novel interface, Squidy will help you not only make sense of it, but use standard protocols to route expressive data from the input to other good stuff. With the power of TUIO, the set of conventions built atop OpenSoundControl, that means your weird input device can get routed to your Processing visuals or robotic bass guitar player or Kool-Aid-squirting fountain.

As the creators explain it:

Squidy is an interaction library which eases the design of natural user interfaces (also known as ‘post-WIMP interfaces’) by unifying various device drivers, frameworks and tracking toolkits in a common library and providing a central and easy-to-use visual design environment. Squidy offers diverse input modalities such as multi-touch input, pen interaction, speech recognition, laser pointer-, eye- and gesture-tracking. The visual user interface hides the complexity of the technical implementation from the user by providing a simple visual language based on high-level visual data flow programming combined with zoomable user interface concepts.

The visual interfaces is fascinating; it brings all these complexity into a single, patchable, graphical interface (pictured at bottom).

And now it means even Microsoft’s Surface is getting a healthy dose of standards, bringing TUIO to Microsoft’s futuristic table. reacTable / reacTIVision developer and TUIO creator Martin Kaltenbrunner writes CDM:

Researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany created a Surface-To-TUIO bridge for the MS Surface. This means that all TUIO enabled open source applications can now be run on the MS Surface without modification!

squidypatch

Here are some more fascinating interface design videos from the folks at Squidy, showing off their natural, zoomable interfaces.

The development environment itself looks fantastic. Check out the iPhone control and how zoomable interfaces lend themselves to development.

These projects in turn are developing some terrific ideas for zooming around information.

For more:
Squidy Interaction Library

(Via Create Digital Motion.)

Sep 06

webtrendmap.com: “

webtrendmap.com

Oliver Reichenstein and his team of iA and Craig Mod webtrendmap.com site.

(Via swissmiss.)

Sep 06

Design Folios with Google Maps: “

Micrtoyp.org

Using an application, like CASA’s Image Cutter or the Automatic Tile Cutter, you can create your own map tiles for Google Maps. This means that you can replace image map tiles with any image tiles you like including other maps, or more importantly for designers and artist, replace them with portfolio images! How incredibly cool!

Click here for 5 examples of design portfolios using Google Maps. The above example is: Microtyp.org

(thank you Rhett)

(Via swissmiss.)

Aug 12

It’s Red Bull Soapbox Racer Time!: “

 

Ever fancied taking part in a soapbox derby but been just a little bit too scared to do it? Then Less Rain has created the perfect site for you…the Red Bull Soapbox Racer.

 

 

Just as in the real life Red Bull Soapbox Race events, which happen all over the world, Less Rain’s site allows users to create their own uniquely designed vehicles online in a 3D garage, and then paint and decorate them with go-faster stripes and bumper stickers. Along with looking good, the design and construction of the machines will also effect how they handle on the race track.

 

 

Players can then pick which course they’d like to race (panoramic views of the Alps, the Bosphorus, the Wild West and the icy climbs of Canada are all available) and then set off. New courses can also be designed, with the steepness modified and obstacles added. As in the real Red Bull Soapbox event, only one car is allowed on the track at a time, but the website does allow players to challenge their friends, with your opponent’s car appearing as a semi-transparent ghost on the track while you race. Virtual prizes are then rewarded to the winners.

 

 

The Red Box Soapbox Racer follows Less Rain’s equally charming Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab site, which allows users to design and fly their own planes. As on that site, the vehicles designed on the Soapbox Racer can all be saved on the site to be viewed by others and returned to for later races. Let’s go racing!

(Via CR Blog.)

Aug 12

Tori’s Eye: “

toriseyequodiscom

Submitted by Ricardo Mestre, @ricardom. Designer.

Tori’s Eye is a Twitter visualization tool, inspired by papercraft and origami. It’s a visual and technical experiment implemented using only standard XHTML/CSS and Javascript.

This is a fun little distraction. I’m loving the style of illustration/textures here and can’t wait to see if they expand the application to be even more distracting but eye candy at the same time. It’s like a twitter aquarium :) .

(Via Unmatched Style.)

Aug 04

Playful Learning Experiences: “

Playful learning Experiences

Urbanpreschool Playful Learning. It’s filled with educational activites for parents and their children. What a resource. Hat tip to Mariah Bruehl, the force behind Playful Learning.

(Via swissmiss.)

Aug 04

Interactive table, tangible objects & paper to search fonts: “

Fontplore is an interactive application designed for searching and exploring font databases on an interactive table, using tangible objects to navigate. Fontplore combine both web and print based research using a pyramid, a round shape, your fingers and paper.

More info at Fontplore.org

(Via Computerlove | Connecting Creative Talents.)

Aug 04

Multitouch Barcelona Interview: “

Multitouch Barcelona is at the moment one of the most interesting artistic collective. It was founded by four young designers, based in Barcelona, who work across interaction and New Media, and develop platforms linked to entertainment, play and experiment, by constantly exploring the communication between people and technology.

Contrary to many different projects made in this last period in this field, MultiTouch was able to show, in his artistic projects, the human aspects, and opened up another interesting option in the education and entertainment fields.

Here is an interview of Xavier Vilar de Paz, one of the four collective founders that will tell us in a better way how MultiTouch was born and how their artistic projects are developed, by going through a selection of his more representative interactive installation analysed by the eyes of the author to achieve and locate the concept of art and design in this right historical moment.

Source: Fabrik

(Via Computerlove | Connecting Creative Talents.)