Monday, May 25, 2009

Kweekies - mobile augmented reality game



Cool idea for an augmented reality game. The game is an overlay on the video stream from the built-in camera, and it could be implemented in an iPhone today, given that there are official APIs to the camera video stream.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Tilt Techniques - Investigating the dexterity of wrist based input



I love it when someone does your homework for you. If you want to use an accellerometer or gyro to do interaction, this video covers the basics of human wrist motion as well as how to quantize or discretize your raw tilt data into useful blocks or ranges.

Bezel Swipe



This is too wierd and inelegant. But it does have the advantage of being compact.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

DynaSpot, Speed-Dependent Area Cursor



The faster the cursor moves, the bigger the cursor area is.

With an ordinary mouse pointer in Microsoft Windows, the pointer area is always just one pixel.

This technique should allow faster clicking, as well as cursors that are easier to follow when they move quickly.

This video also has some nice examples of the classic bubble cursor.

VPlay from Microsoft Research



There is an aspect of this software that I've totally fallen in love with. In a graph view, move two items together, and they will automagically connect. It's so playful and elegeant and wonderful.

Friday, May 22, 2009

SiteLens: Situated Visualisation Techniques for Urban Site Visits



Technology in phones are leaping towards making these kinds of visualizations possible.

The Google G1 phone has GPS and compass. If you assume that the phone is located about 1.5 meters above ground level, this could be prototyped on that phone. Augmented reality is just around the corner.

The design and Evaluation of Multi-Finger Mouse Emulation Techniques



This looks kind of interesting for large screens. Use your index finger for pointing, your thumb for left clicking, and any other finger for right clicking. What could be more intuitive?

MicroRolls: Expanding Touch-Screen Input Vocabulary by Distinguishing Rolls vs. Slides of the Thumb



Here's a new gesture for you: Microroll.

It's when you move a finger a small distance on the screen without sliding it. Screens of today can't discriminate between these gestures, but it certainly feels different to your finger. I've tried doing these gestures one-handed on diffent parts of the screen and it gets incredibly awkward on some places. Try it.

These guys say you can distinguish between slide and roll by doing analysis. But in my opinion that will intruduce unacceptable lag for direct manipulation. Maybe it could work on an offscreen keyboard. But for what?

Thursday, May 21, 2009

What’s Next? Emergent Storytelling from Video Collections



This is the first time I've seen facial recognition and emotion recognition in video.

This video editing software can suggest the next clip based on who's in the frame, and what mood they are in.

Looks like you can film all day, and then have the computer automatically segment and categorize all your video for you. What an amazing future we all have ahead of us.

Samsung Alias 2 Review



I haven't gotten a chance to feel how this feels yet. But I think the buttons with E-ink display looks very promising. It certainly looks like they have all the benefits of standard hard buttons, while retaining much of the benefits of using a display to dynamically change the content of the buttons.

I wonder how long we'll have to wait before we get full size e-ink keyboards for our laptops and PC's. Caps Lock and Num Lock would be so much more elegant if the characters could change.

PenLight: Combining a Mobile Projector and a Digital Pen for




Soon, projectors will be so small that you can put them in anything. The question becomes, what kinds of interaction will they enable.

At 2:20 - Take a look at the menu that varies its level of detail as you move the pen closer or further away from the projected surface. Novel.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Cyclopath: Editing Streets and Trails and How They Connect



I don't know about you guys, but I've never edited roads before, so it's nice to see just any solution. Cyclopath is a wiki, so anyone can edit.

Check out the use of bubble targets at 3:20

Thursday, May 14, 2009

PTZ Control with Head Tracking for Video Chat



In a video chat, you usually can only send video in low resolution, because of limited bandwidth. On the other hand, your camera may well be able to record video in high resolution. So, should you scale the image down, or should you send part of the image. And what part?

I really like this idea to use headtracking for zooming and panning. This way, you can send only the zoomed and panned part of the video, which makes the best use of your available bandwidth.

TapTap and MagStick



This looks kind of cool and unintuitive on the same time.

Occlusion-Aware Menu Design for Digital Tabletops



Nice to be able to use the information from the hand. Now, you can finally rest your hand on the surface.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Sky Map - Astronomy App for Android



Amazing. The first fully working augmented reality application! The G1 phone has GPS, accellerometer and a compass, which makes it possible for the device to know exactly where you point it on the sky. You can see the stars and planets.

Now, someone only needs to hack it and add trajectories for google earth sattelites. That way you can know when it is safe to pee on your neighbours lawn.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

StarGazer experimental typing system



This is basically a dwell-based system, that zooms while you dwell, to make selection more accurate.

More at Gazegroup.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Eyetwig



This looks rather nice. With this technology, you could get rid of a rather large portion of the trackpad on your laptop. Just keep the buttons for left, middle and right click.

OR, you could use it for something silly, like testing glasses.



Download and try at www.eyetwig.com

Monday, May 4, 2009

miniMusic Pianofly



I love the scrollable piano keyboard. The thing with how you play the piano is that you often play keys that are close to each other. Nice.