TABLETOP2007 - The 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems (October 10-12, 2007 Newport, RI USA)

TABLETOP2007 - The 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems (October 10-12, 2007 Newport, RI USA)

I thnk we are looking to put somthing in for this. sonuds cool.

sheep

Software engineering - whats on my ipod?

I was checking out this website Geoff Mullery is giving a talk in May. Scans very intreasting I normally have problems with software Engineering - it generally isn't and is normally the cover for anti-engineering ( ie either craft or excessive formalisium ). I wonder how many people I have insulted in that line. For example if you ask an Engineer how long it will take to cut through this hill then generally you can get a reasonable result. This dispite the fact that strange stuff might lurk in the hill you want to cut trough. Ask a programmer and your getting guesses and ambitions, craft not engineering. Anyway rant against software engineering over.

This Mullery guy looks to have had some wonderful failures under his belt. I'm definitly putting this on my Ipod to listen to.

product reherals.

I was reding this page on project perfect. The bit that got me was.

'In most cases, clients are unable to specify exactly what they want in the beginning until they see the product. It is also often difficult for business users to visualize how the new system will be until they see it.'

This for me is a reminder that we need to specify with user interfaces. That is the use(s) should see what they want. Another quote was qute intreasting.

'When the users do see the new system for the first time, changes may be needed because any new applications will be initially unfamiliar to users.'

I've seen/heard of this a number of times in a number of diffrent contexts. One example was a company making very large digital displays they thought could be on the outside of the building and allow central office to send new messages digitally ( sale on all electrical items 50%). When they came to test the system they discovered the probelms - it was hard to get an electical supply all the way up where the sign was and more importantly most shops didn't have a digital link to the central office.

What makes many new products work is not how it was intented to be used but how people appropritate the technology. People oftern use technology in away not envisaged by the original programmers. Hotmail was desinged as remote mail for executives to discuss making new products out side the company, it ended up being used by the digitally disposeesed ( originally backpackers in cybercafes).

Typcially products are designed, made, tested, installed, followed by training.

Perhaps we need to think about product reherals - pretending the product exists and then seeing how we might use it or intergrate it into the context. This would give the users time to get used to what is coming and allow them to adapt things to use the system. It would also allow the developers and managers a chance to see future delivery problems and alter the design appropriately. What counts are rehersal depends upon the product - if we have a user interface tool like interface builder then it might be getting the users to reherse using the sytem. The key element is getting everyone thinking about the product before it is dumped on the desk.

perhaps this is what is happening with agile programming.

Ambient compiler

There was some thought about how to improve the teaching of programming at the OU. I had an odd thought.

Why not have a 'compiler' on line? that is your code is stored on the server and then you access the code from a text box on a web form. One of the form buttons is 'compile' which does some ajaxy magic which then sends the text back to the server where the text is compiled. The error messages are then stuffed back into the html code. When the user clicks 'run' the code is executed on the server and the result is piped back to the output a new window on the client.

Ok why do this? The problem is how to automatically evaluate the work of students. I suspect most people think about how to take the 'product' ( final source code) and mark it ( together with supporting info). This requires trying to understand the process from the source (alone). That process is one which requires someone experianced not only in the lanaguage but java and process I belive that would be impossible to automate. The degree of success of this depends on how much you belive in automatic teaching.

Well if you have the code on the server then you get a stream on log files that indicate who the code evolved. the problem is to find out if the code genuinly the result of the pupil or the result of some creative 'cutting and pasteing'. As such providing the code matches the desired output then if the production process appears normal then the pedigogical results must be achived.
http://try.flex.org/ example of one line compiler of a flex language.
http://nirvana.informatik.uni-halle.de/~thuering/php/latex-online/latex.php Online LaTex compiler.
Online java upload based compiler

i like the idea of a website where the documentation and compiler text box are surrounded by other useful links ( chat room?). not perfet for hard core coders but good as a beginner space.

Pad++ and the zooming user interface with adaptive rendering!

I've just got the adaptive code working for the amazon interface. I was looking around and low and behold the other people who have done time centric rendinerging where the people doing the original zooming interface ( Ben Bederson, Jon Meyer ) .

Pad Papers

I think what I have produced is novel enough that I can do a paper about it - this in in Java there stuff was C plus plus /C/TCL. I wonder what happend to the Pad plus pluse interface. zooming user interface appears to be such a natural thing.

Software Development Kit for Nokia RFID application developers now available

Nokia - Software Development Kit for Nokia RFID application developers now available - Press Releases - Press - About Nokia

Perhaps I am just playing catch up but it looks like you could wave your phone near an RFID tag and have it 'read' the tag and so do something with it.

cool.

Pictures from the amazon table

this is a picture of the amazon table -on of the multi touch table projects I am working on. By putting you fingers on the table and pullling them appart it zooms in to the Amazon landscape. By pulling your fingers together you zoom out. IF you keep zooming in you eventually get to see thebooks. This appears to be quite natural.





this shows the books section - on the web version clicking on the books goes to Amazon.

perhipheral vision.

I have been wondering if it was possible to use a seperate perhipheral vesion system as a way of creating a deeper sense of immersion in a system.I mean in a desk top or or laptop.

Use for spatial audio idear

I was talking to Paul about the ipod shuffle and he mentioned that he thought that it was hard to have a screen less interface. I quite agree with him and said I wondered why. I have always been intreasted in try to produce an audio interface but would like to get beyond the phone interface of ‘press one for action a press 2 for action b. wait for a long slow list to get to the option you want’. With icons, location and text you can be reminded and skip to the option you want pretty quickly. The subject moved on to Simon’s excellent audio interfance and we came up with the idea of multiple speakers all talking at once.

Imagine you have a pair of head phones, you have a key pad with say five buttons and the machine wants you make a choice from. The idear is that all five voices sit speaking out aloud. Each voice gets its own speech position in space and you use your listening in party auditory system to identify the one you want. So imagine one voice repeating ‘option one to revise your document. option one to revise your document.’
Another voice repeating
‘Option two to create a new document. Option two to create a new document….’
And so on for all five voices.

The spatial audio (position in stereo field) would help which of the appropriate buttons to click/press. The distance to speaker plus variation in speakers (male, female, old, young, accents) would act both as further ways to separate out the voices (perhaps).
Clearly there must be some natural limit to the number of voices you can differentiate but perhaps 4 five would be useful. Worth testing out.

Multiple mice part 2

http://icculus.org/manymouse/

The other thing I have always wanted to build was a 3d editor with multiple mice. So to make a cube you pulled the mice appart each mouse would be the approrparate corner. This would require scroll wheel mice to be the part.

Actions like cutting would become very simple - you click on the think you want to cut and use the other mouse to do the cutting. You could also use one mouse to move the viewpoint while useing the first mouse to hold/move the item in question.

Multiple mice (part1)

I have been checking out.

http://icculus.org/manymouse/

or

http://jusb.sourceforge.net/?selected=about if you have a Linux box. This allows multiple keybords to.

I always liked the notion of the open meeting tool - a way where groups could have conversations but not have to take turns to speak. There would be a large screen on the wall and the chairman would ask for opinions like should we do this or do that. People could speak but others could annotate with their typed opinions - these could be ether named or anonymous. Could be done if you could collect the input from many keyboards.

I've sat in meetings where something has come up and some senior person says 'that reminds me of the the time...' (ok case of pot calling the kettle black here but bear with me). This tends to move the conversation along making it impossible for people to go back and readdress the question.
Meanwhile some underling has important information 'I know this is possible this has been done already by our competitors' or has some alternative suggestion but is too nice but to speak up.

more random thoughts next week.

sheep

fun with GML Diamond touch driver for the mac.

On Friday I ended up spending most of the day working with the GML mac driver.
http://iihm.imag.fr/projects/gml/
The driver let me write a mac version of the PC merl program ( kind of a Diamond Touch debugger). Looking at the output we began to wonder if it was possible to pick up 2 or 3 individual fingers. With this you could draw a line between two fingers or use it to roate a knob or shape.

Anneli was determined to figure it out and kept me thinking about it while I should have gone off and got some admin work done.

I will test the Mac Merl program for a bit and possibly release it ( I need to contact the GML people to see if I can relase their library with it).