mentegrafica | infovis solutions

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December 17, 2007

Earthmine, a brand new approach to use geocoded meta data

If this year Google Maps Street View and Microsoft PhotoSynth have been some of the interesting stuff in the world of online maps, from 2008 it will time to re-think the way well use online maps and meta-data on them.

Im talking of Earthmine, a new US company that is offering a new approach in terms of interacting with a meta-tagged real world.

In order to better explain what Im talking about, maybe its better to give a look to the following video:

As you can see in some videos, Earthmine seems to cover some issues emerged also on workshops at last infovis summit in Zurich.

Some aspects of the soluton let users easy interact with 3d panoramas and objects (like taking pictures, adding geocoded meta-data and measuring buildinds ) and offer some improvements to the traditional paradigma of navigating on online maps, towards a more 3d games approach.

This solution (that has one his strongest point in the data collection process ) is also made possibile also thanks to the efforts provided by the smart guys behind PaperVision3d and to the evolution of the Adobe Flash platform.

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An Interview with...Xiang Cao

After introducing the amazing project by the University of Toronto about the hand-held projection of multi-user information spaces, we are really glad to share some opinions with Xiang Cao, one of the researcher behind the project.

So dont waste your time and start reading what he told us

1 - Where the proect come from ? What have been your inspirations ?

This is a university research project. It is also part of my PhD thesis in progress, which investigate multiple aspects of handheld projector interaction. There have beena few previous research works on handheld projectors, which you can find in the references section of my paper.

2 - How long it takes to reach the prototype phase from the begingin of the project ?

We started the research on handheld projectors in 2005. Again, the video is only a part of the overall research project, which covers design, evaluation, theories and social impacts of handheld projector usage for both single and multiple users.

3 - How do u think hand-help project could help and integrate with tangible user interfaces ?

We currently have not explored Tangible UI in this setting. However, the ability to project interface/information on whatever physical environment/object could help creating tangible UI using ordinary objects.

4 - Did u need to write a propetary operating system ? Which are the technologies behind your projects ?

Our research focuses on the interaction rather the technology. Were using a computer-vision-based motion tracking system to provide position & orientation of the projector, and process the projected image accordingly to create the experience. It is a prototype to demonstrate the interactions rather than a fully-functional product. More details is in this paper:
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~caox/uist2006_handheldprojector.pdf

5 - Now, it seems to me that the hand-held projector is quite "big and not so user friendly. How do you think the hand-held device could be improved ? Did u also tested or thought about the usage of an head-held projection device ?

The projector we use to prototype is released by Mitsubishi in 2005. Several companies are developing laser projectors of much smaller sizes (e.g. Microvision, Symbol), which are likely to be in market soon. These would enable actually integrating the projector into current cell phones or PDAs.

6 - How do u interact with the net ? I mean...how people could share an information space, even they are not in the same physical space ?

Good question. Supposedly all information displayed by the projector can be pulled from the web. To support a more "literal sharing of information spaces remotely, we could imagine mapping a wall in one place to a wall in another place. This is something we plan to explore in the future.

7 - I just got the online available paper, but if we would like to know more...where we can have a look ?
My papers are probably the best resources of the research:
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~caox/uist2006_handheldprojector.pdf
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~caox/uist2007_multiprojectors.pdf

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December 14, 2007

Hand-held Information Spaces

Almost 2 years ago, at the TED 2005 Conference we discovered the amzing work by Jeff Hann that was about multi-user interfaces.

Here we also spoke about physical computing, wearable information spaces, mobile infovis and tangible user interfaces.

All these innovation have in common that are related in the way people use and interact with information in several contexts.

Today is time to appreciate the marevellous job done at the University of Toronto: the hand-held multiuser projected Information Space.

The video is amazing and there is no need to use words to understand the powerfull of this solution and the innovative approach of mobile information visualization.

We must congratulate with the team who developed such solution for the impact it could offer to Interaction and Infovis Designer.

I was thinking to improve the hand-held device in order to use an HEAD-HELD device as a projection device, in order to let users use their hands and approach to a more natural intraction.

There is also the paper available online.

Well see in next days what is going on

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December 13, 2007

Many Eyes - A more social approach

First of all,
I have to apologize with all of you because I was not able to write so often during the last days.

There is a reason for that and you will know soon

Anyway...As you know, Im a great fan of Many Eyes, the amazing tool created by the IBM visual Communication Lab.

After almost one year from the official launch, yesterday Many Eyes started to offer a Key features: let the visualizations be embeddable into blogs and other web pages.

This is a great feature that, as an user, I was missing so much (as discussed in New York with Fernanda and Martin.).

For this reason, from now, the blog will have a full dedicated category "Many Eyes Visualizations, aiming to collect visualizations (about several topics) in order to let users better understand and criticize the data they got from other media.

As a first start, I would like to add my first embedded visualization about the Research and Development situation here in Italy:

Have fun !

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Posted by InfoVis at 2:59 PM | Comments (0)