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posted by Editor
on Saturday March 29, @09:31PM
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posted by Editor
on Friday March 14, @12:21AM
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This New York Times article explores the possibility that users are ready to embrace interfaces that let them directly control objects in a 3D space on their screen, blending 3D representations of content with physics software to produce visually stimulating experiences. A number of consumer offerings are now appearing that are designed to exploit immersive 3D environments to make viewing large numbers of web pages, videos, and pictures more efficient. The article features PicLens, a FireFox plugin that transforms the browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing images on the web. With PicLens, arrays of photos are brought to life via a cinematic presentation that extends beyond the confines of the traditional browser window, using an interactive "3D Wall" allowing users to drag, click, and zoom their way around a wall of pictures (see screenshot).
A company not mentioned in the article is SpaceTime, which has just officially launched its SpaceTime 1.0 3D web browser. SpaceTime turns internet searches, YouTube videos, eBay listings and other web content into 3D elements that move around the screen (see YouTube demo). Another company called 3B offers a browser that allows users to take any collection of web sites or photos, and place them into a personalized 3D space called a 3B room (see screenshots). The question remains whether these tools truly make browsing more efficient, or are just eye-candy that will produce only a short-lived fit of interest before users return to their more familiar 2D point-and-click habits.
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| IBM's 3D Data Center Lets Users Remotely Manage Real Systems In Virtual World |
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posted by Editor
on Wednesday February 27, @01:12AM
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IBM announced technology that recreates 3D representations of IT data centers in a secure virtual world. The experience is designed to help administrators better monitor and manage the entire IT platform by allowing them to navigate an immersive 3D environment containing familiar structures such as servers, power equipment, and displays. The 3D data center collects real-time data from different facilities in the real world, and uses physical metaphors to visualize hot spots, data flow, and server utilization (so an overloaded server appears to be spitting flames etc). Since the 3D datacenter is truly a multi-user virtual world, administrators can collaborate on solving problems through a shared experience. The environment can also be used as a modeling and simulation tool. The system was implemented using OpenSIM, an open source Virtual Worlds Server that can be used to create a Second Life-like environment running in a standalone mode, or connected to other OpenSim instances through built-in grid technology. This YouTube video shows a demo of the 3D Data Center in action, and this brochure (PDF) explains the concepts behind its design.
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| Zoom Quilt 3D Zooming Interface Updated |
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| Recent Developments in Visualization, Virtual Worlds, and Interfaces |
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posted by Editor
on Thursday January 31, @12:20AM
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Here are a few articles discussing recent developments with next-generation user experiences:
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Interview with UI expert Ben Shneiderman about the growing impact of data visualization on the web. Mentions Smart Money's MarketMap stock market visualizer and IBM's ManyEyes, which allows users to upload their own data for advanced visualization.
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Metaplace allows virtual worlds to be inserted directly into standard web sites using a scripting language called MetaScript, which is based on Lua
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Article in MIT Technology Review entitled "The fleecing of the Avatars" talks about some major incidences of financial fraud that have recently occurred in virtual worlds, which is causing users to set up quasi-regulatory structures.
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This blog posting by visualization expert Edward Tufte has a video that reviews how successfully Apple's iPhone exploits its limited screen real estate
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Cynergy Systems has developed a Minority Report-like interface called Project Maestro using Microsoft's Silverlight rich web application toolkit (see video demo)
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| Roundup of Advanced Interface Systems |
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posted by Editor
on Monday December 03, @10:46PM
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This article in Smashing Magazine highlights a few advanced interface systems that have shown up in the last year. The Cheoptics360 from Vizoo is an impressive 3D holographic display (see this YouTube video of a demo system at the Copenhagen airport turning the heads of passing travellers). Reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop multi-touch interface, on which several performers play at the same time by moving and rotating physical objects on a luminous round table surface (see picture). Microsoft's Photosynth project takes a large collection of photos of one place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing how each image relates to the next. The interface is based on the Seadragon technology that Microsoft acquired last year, which provides a very high-performance zooming interface over image data of any resolution (see video of TED demo). The article also mentions the BumpTop 3D desktop and Jeff Han's Multi-Touch Interaction Research.
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| Whirlpool Integrating Smart Devices Into Refrigerator |
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posted by Editor
on Tuesday November 13, @12:45AM
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The home appliance manufacturer Whirlpool has built a digital interface into its GD5VVAXT refrigerator called centralpark Connection. The interface currently supports the Ceiva Digital Photo Frame, replacing the traditional system of fastening photos and children's artwork on the refrigerator door using magnets (which no longer work on the stainless steel surfaces of new refrigerator models). In the future, the interface will also allow consumers to charge and play a variety of devices, including electronic calendars, MP3/DVD/CD players, satellite radios, and cell phones. Is the refrigerator also a natural place to mount hardware for running Windows Home Server?
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| Vendors Gather To Discuss Standards For Virtual World Interoperability |
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posted by Editor
on Monday October 29, @11:34PM
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At the recent Virtual Worlds conference, a group of 20 vendors met to discuss steps for creating 3D Internet standards that would allow avatars and other forms of virtual content to move between the environments of different service providers. As reported by MIT Technology Review, the vendors included IBM, Linden Labs, Multiverse, and Forterra Systems. Some technologies available from these vendors that could be shared include the paged terrain format from Forterra, and Multiverse's code for porting avatars across worlds. However, virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier is skeptical that developers will be able to agree on formal, HTML-like standard. Rather, he believes that a breakthrough commercial platform, similar to Adobe Flash, will become a de-facto standard for the 3D web.
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posted by Editor
on Monday October 29, @10:31PM
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This article in MIT Technology Review describes Twine, a new web service being launched by startup Radar Networks that registers W3C-compliant metadata for user data such as e-mail, web searches, calendar entries, notes, spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. In addition to relying on manual tagging by users to identify information, Twine applies natural-language processing and learning algorithms to extract key concepts from text so that submitted data can be tagged automatically. This may help to overcome some of the metadata credibility challenges that critics of the semantic web have raised. Twine also uses social graph analysis to assist users in searching for information based on the connections between people and their information. In this scheme, the system establishes the statistical relevance of one user (or node) to another -- the "farther away" a node is, the less relevant it is to a particular user's search.
Twine is currently accepting registrations for beta testers, and plans to open fully to the public in 2008.
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| Dual Wii Controllers Navigate 3D "Majority Desk" |
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posted by Editor
on Tuesday October 09, @09:39PM
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Majority Desk is a 3D desktop interface in which all user interaction is controlled by two Nintendo Wii Remote controllers (the name is derived from the visionary gesture interface shown in the film "The Minority Report"). Majority Desk supports interaction with Flash movies running on floating, spinning tiles (see picture). The interface is powered by the Adobe AIR platform and takes advantage of several open source projects, including the Open Dynamics Engine for simulating physical behavior; the Papervision3D rendering engine for Flash; the WiiFlash toolkit for controlling Flash games and applications with the Wiimote, and the Tweener class for visual transitions. There are more pictures and demo videos in this blog entry from one of the project's developers.
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Is the end near for the file/folder metaphor?
The superficial "look-and-feel" of an interface is distinct from the more fundamental issue of how it represents data to the user. In this regard, potentially dramatic improvements are possible.
Read More
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