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March 14, 2006
DIY Media: the consumer is the producer
Christian Crumlish (extractable, blogger) - "the power of many" - x-pollen.com. Refusal to be just a passive recepient of mass media. Impulse & technology to make your own message out of what's being sent to you. many-to-many network, instead of broadcast (one-to-many). Everyone, potentially, has an equal voice. People want to be involved in the creation of things.
Phil Torrone (Make magazine) - rhumba (using bluetooth) "robots" with downloadable software. Make book (Matty Sallin - wake n' bacon).
Natalie Zee (crafts) - Sell crafts on etsy.com.
pinkofperfection.com - the martha stewart of the online crafts
Diana Ing (project runway) - vacuum dress (on ID magazine) - inflatable dress. She's created scarfs (mathematical fibonacci equation). Make fair coming up.
Limor Fried (Eyebeam) - R&D fellowship. case study of making an open source kit (using creative commons). People bought the kit, built it themselves, and contributed back. Circuit bending (audio musicians) - they are experimenting but don't really know what they're doing with the electronics. This is a TB303 synth clone. When its circuit bent, you get different kinds of sounds. Modifications are a step before contribution. People answering quesions on the forum. Why contribute to a project? -> the user actually wants to help make it more and a better product. Like open source software. Open up the API to people. Give them all the information.
Cameron Shaw (AOL/Time-Warner) - AOL synonymous to "walled garden". Are opening up the AIM api (there is an sdk available), and they are opening up the aim network. People will be able to create their own file-sharing, social networks. Mapquest API is opening up as well! Building a page-publisher - open architecture with creating your own profile, where you can plug in modules/feeds into a personalized environment. Through the API they want to provide access to their information - movies, sopranos, etc... (all the time-warner info). How much should be given away, and how much should still be kept? what about copyright? big issues still to be solved. (I am alpha - website to receive all this information for developers) developer.aim.com
zengestrum.com
hobbyprincess.com
People pay for things that they like, even though it is Open Source. Since its hardware, its harder. Makes more sense to make hardware open source business, rather than software open sourse.
Hardware - there are no copyright laws. You can take gadgets apart.
ispot - online video mixing website community - for collaborative storytelling.
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2006
What people are really doing on the web
Joel Greenberg (GSD&M) -
Holland Hoffma Brown (Harris Interactive) -
Michele Madansky (yahoo) - user behavior
Max Kalehoff (Nielsen BuzzMetrics) - blogpulse.com - a community service that they give.
Eric von Hippel (MIT) - democratizing innovation
One out of 3 say they use online news. Can't live without it. But can't really trust it.
TV is most trustworthy, then newspaper, and then the internet (by a poll from Harris Interactive).
Yahoo - market research group - computers/mobile phones/game consoles/mp3 player stats between countries. Yahoo Go! - taking yahoo content out on the cell phones. Yahoo Music! - for 5$ a month you can get a million songs online which you can stream. Yahoo answers - social search - you get other people to respond to your question.
Nelsen BuzzMetrics - user & social recommendation (word of mouth) - most people believe that this is the best way a recommendation system works. Consumers trust fellow buyers before they trust marketers. CGM (consumer generated media) - moving us to a culture of information seekers/givers.
Big theme: creating media service that fits into your environment - see this with blogs, rss, personalized media, Tive - control of what you get. We want to be able to control the media that we consume.
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)
Designing for communities without advertising
user driven design community that allows users to vote and submit. (skinnycorp)
threadless (t-shirt design site) - presented by users, they vote & create it.
15 Megs of Fame - uses smae model where users submit the content and everyone rates it. Different prizes. This project evolved the most from the original idea. Wanted at first to go to a site, listen to a song, and read it. Evolved into what it is. Having the community participate in what should be heard is important.
extra tasty - submission of drink recipes. Mybar - enter booz you have in the house, and it tells you which drinks you can make. Now you can use extra-tasty with your cellphone (access to your recipe book, etc...).
Another site - Yay hooray.
Ad-free sites. They've achieved so much without using advertising.
important to make people proud of the content that they produce and place online. They're getting 150 submissions a day. They go through all the submissions and approve them. But they never cut anything out. No problems with community management.
Still needs to be "worth" winning. They give monetary prizes in order to give people the motivation.
ideals:
- Community replaces advertisement.
- logistics of community centered business.
- traditional business concerns.
They want to keep their project special. It is special because it is within the community. If they sell to Target, there will be nothing special about them. They give stickers with the orders -> letting the community grow by itself. They are going to send free t-shirts to the largest participants in their community.
another community idea: iparklikeanidiot.com - people buy a sticker to put on their bumper. And send in photos.
The community watches over itself, for copyright infringements, etc. The guys in charge of the website usually hear about this last.
My thoughts:
one could think that they are abusing the community with threadless.com, since they're getting these design submissions for free from people, and then using them to sell to others (although the one person who's design is more popular does get a monatery prize). Not sure if they pay every single person who's design is printed. But what's important for people is that they get to show their stuff, especially within the community that is formed. When their stuff is seen and printed, they do get a monetary prize. It is important to let people participate in voicing their opinion, saying what they think.
hireme@skinnycorp.com - they are hiring in New York
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)
Craig Newman (craigslist) panel
wisdom of crowds works.
Tivo save democracy? If everyone started skipping political commercials that defeats their purpose and they'd have to go somewhere else. Polititians will have to say more, and act more in order to get to the people. Bombardment of political ads vs. having more of a dialogue.
OneVoice - talk to people in Israel and Palestine - everyone wants the same thing. Media is not presenting news this way, and there are extremists on both sides.
look at this link.
also this.
Craigslist is showing some amount of news articles. But as a citizen, there is a need to get the real news, better information and more trustworthy sources. Better investigative journalism (newspapers firing these people since they don't bring in money immediately).
Craig works with Jeff Jarvis on a collaborative filtering feature - trying to figure out what the most trustworthy articles are.
Also works with Dan Gilmore, who is experimenting with citizen journalism. (also look up Jay Rozin). He is putting together a think tank currently to figure out what's going on. Its hard to figure that out nowadays.
ohmynews (korea) brings this sort of news to Korea.
Most exciting is the center for public integrity (journalism group) - they document enormous amounts of behaviour and publish a book. But they are talking about publishing a blog - so more immediate response. Putting a database that would allow us to see who's paying which politician. Exciting opportunities for citizen journalism.
What is there to do - people post stories themselves. Electronic media makes production cheaper (than paper). With flexible displays / low-power lasers (on your retina). Investigative journalism is a big deal. Need more investigative journalism. Now we have to go to blogs to find out what our government is doing.
Newspapers should be community service. Phil Meyer "the internet could never compete with newspapers because they are global, and newspapers are local" -> not true at all. Many local news websites.
"think globaly act localy" - craig's motto
craig: they haven't seen much cultural differentiation between languages. But no translation between languages yet. People everywhere have the same value for needs. Only differentiation - in LA. People want media/TV jobs. And in New York real estate is a big deal blood sport. Jim Buckmaster is in charge of the expansion of craigslist (CEO).
Citizen investigative journalism is not supported by the same dedication that professional investigative journalists are. How do we know that citizen investigative journalism is truthful. Need to do factchecking. Spectrum of publishing and fact-checking changing with new media. In citizen media - publish first & hope people will back check you. This is starting to happen.
fact checking sites: factcheck.org ,
"everybody tells jokes, but we still have some professional comic acts" -> big spectrum, so we'll be seeing a hybrid of the current model. You do need professionalism, especially in news. Their work can be amplified using the community.
Nice that craigslist is still just a bulletin board. Easy to use, very simple. People run the site, not the owners. Used it during Katrina to offer people jobs and places to live. Craig says that the smart thing they do, is get out of the way - to let people do what they want to do.
possibilities in the future - using google maps in the future. They are going to start charging for posting real-estate ads (in order to stop spam).
One of the only sites for helping katrina victims. Carnegie mellon U project to scrape the posts and analyze this.
The importance of craigslist is in the community that is formed. People truly appreciate this.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (do similar stuff to craigslist)
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
Darknets
The concept Darknets comes from a book by JD Lasica - sharing media between people. For collaboration, activistis in China, communication, us troops in Iraq, asserting digital rights, creative freedom,
freenet, groove networks, grouper, outhink's, youtube, ourmedia,
Entertainment companies aren't taking advantage of this new culture that's forming online.
Marc Ishikawa (bate.esb) - anti piracy & surveillance. Internet piracy today - around 5 million per day. TV content is the fastest growing. Ipod content (podtropolis). They can identify the first person to put something up on the internet. You can be caught. Act like a policeman on an open network. Darknets allows small groups of people to share and trade files.
Ian Clarke (Freenet founder) - allows people to communicate and share information freely on the internet. Focuses on China / Saudi Arabia, with sensored internet access. Freenet prevents other people from knowing what you're publishing and what you're consuming. People don't know what you're doing, but they do know that you're part of the network. 10 people who form private P2P networks (invitation only) -> but this is very limited use of freenet. They want anyone to be able to share information with anyone else, but only through using people they know. Need to create a scalable Darknet. The small world property (6 degrees of separation) -> they found a way to exploit these properties, where everyone is part of the network, but their computers are talking only to only people that they know.
Heather Champ (community manager in Flickr) - 80% of the photographs are public. Its many communities. There is a darknet of small clusters of people who share photos between themselves. People don't always understand what sharing is. Copyright has fuzzy boundaries.
Cory Bernards (MPA) - Represent the major motion picture studios. Big change in exploring ways for delivering content. More ways for people to view movies. Industry loses 5.4 billion dollars per year over piracy. Looking for technology that will find people who swap files illegaly. Some people don't even know that they're breaking the law in P2P networks. They try to work with people and tell them what's right or wrong.
Dave Toole (R&Media.org) - hybrid peer network (invitation only network). Recognize intelectual property, but also participate in the media. Needs to be more easily available but in a way that satisfies the industry. Towerpod - personal media (launched this week)
paying multiple times for content that you've already paid for is a rip-off for the consumer. Why pay again for content that you missed on TV (paid for already).
jd@well.com
DRM - has widespread negative reputation. We could be loosing the rihgt to use our computers as our tools. Sony's implementation of DRM (look into this stupid move).
Digital Convergence Initiative - Texas
Austin Ballet Theatre party tomorro night
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2006
Serious Games for Learning
newmedian - (bower - CEO) - video game environment where children learn math/science.
(Brazell - great speaker)
5th world -
presented in 1995: Teraflop super computer (xbox-360) ->raw computing power can be used for multiple applications. Now costs 300$, by 2011 will be 1$.
4th generation computing - ubiquitous computing - P2P - Berkeley's Golem Dust (smaller than a coin). Application - tooth implanted instead of wisdom tooth to control amount of saliva (Israel) - H2M relations (human2machine relations).
Cooper's Law - the capability of wireless communications has doubled every year ever since Marconi's radio invention.
5th world : convergence of information & science. OLED displays - nanoscience product. Building stuff out of bits, neurons, atoms and genes. Biotronics (state university of new york) - roborat. NanoBionics - bioelectonics - interface neurons with implanted chips. How does Science & Technology affect education?
/transdisciplinarity
science and technology convergence: Biosim 1.0 - children playing a "serious game" that offers transdisciplinary learning.
- games for learning
- method of building games for learning
ipod - produce your own content
Self organized innovation networks - take technologies from one domain and move to another
examples:
VSTEP - videogame in Rotterdam to monitor public
USC ISI - tactical Language Training
food-force.com - game made by the united nations
glucoboy - game for health. Video game that runs on blood, for diabetes. Characters are powered according to sugar levels.
Serious Games - games for learning, for social change, for health...
Erwin Kaplan (US Army) - distributed learning interactive media.
Looking to accomodate the current technologies with the army communications. Combat simulations are very expensive.
"youth are leading the transition to a fully wired and mobile nation"
Bower - www.whyville.net - sending healthy eating messages to kids through his website. Website aimed at ages 8-15. At whyville you can learn about healthy eating at the whyeat section. Online characters change according to the eating habits. Kids writing their own newspaper. They have their own senate. Dominated by females. Girls prefer more communicdation & interaction game.
Advertising on the internet -> can't just put a square advertisement. Difference between internet and TV is that it's interactive. Need different methods for advertisements. Toyota uses whyville for product placement as a way to research internet advertisement. Kids design their own cars.
engagement - depends on there being challenge and education. Engagement is necessary to reach the kids.
Mike Whalen (ignite learning) - middle school education. Creating a whole immersive environment for the students.
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 06:02 PM | Comments (0)
Developing for mobile web
godomobile (san francisco company) -
Cameron Mall (interface design) -
Dave Shea (bright creative) - CSS specialized -
Understanding demography - In New Zealand people use SMS-es a lot because it costs a lot to make calls. Its important to understand how things work in each country. Need to focus on audience (like television / car industry).
Thin Client - connect to the internet when you need, and close when done.
Thick Client - app that are integrated into the OS system
Smart Client -
shozu.com
mobilicio.us
wapedia.com (wikipedia)
dodgeball
technology moving to svgt
SVGT is not yet an established technology for mobile phone platform, but does see a lot of promise in the near future.
What is Mobile SVG?
This is the official W3C overview of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. SVG 1.1, SVG 1.0 and SVG Mobile Profiles are Web standards (W3C Recommendations). Work continues on SVG 1.2 and future profiles for Mobile and Printing.
In a relaxed way, Mobile SVG describes images in XML as shapes with attributes like colors, sizes, etc. In compare with other vector graphics formats, the advantages are that Mobile SVG is XML based, open and designed for wireless transmission and display. When a bitmap format, like JPEG or PNG, is perfect for photography or icons, Mobile SVG is more suitable for dynamic and interactive graphics.
Location-based and field services are well-suited to Mobile SVG because of the ability to zoom in on images without loss of quality. SVG maps with animated objects and hyperlinks provide views of different areas of maps or topographical layers. Field services also benefit from Mobile SVG by using technical drawings that can be viewed in full or in detail. The last example but not the least is entertainment applications. Games, cartoon animations can be developed using Mobile SVG.
MVNO - personalized mobile phones - not all want browsers or full internet. Need specific services for certain groups (e.g. kids mainly need sms)
MTV
ESPN mobile
Virgin - first in Europe. Took airtime off vodafone -> knew their users, and customised/personalized the service, becoming the third largest.
Disney
7-11 mobile
amp'd mobile -
WiMAX is an acronym that stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, a certification mark for products that pass conformity and interoperability tests for the IEEE 802.16 standards. WiMAX is a standards-based wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances. WiMAX can be used for a number of applications, including "last mile" broadband connections, hotspots and cellular backhaul, and high-speed enterprise connectivity for business.
Products that pass the conformity tests for WiMAX are capable of forming wireless connections between them to permit the carrying of internet packet data. It is similar to WiFi in concept, but has certain improvements that are aimed at improving performance and should permit usage over much greater distances. A WIMAX wireless internet map of coverage is being publicly developed now.
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)
Convergence of Online Education
"Brainertainment" - Betsy Spears
- Palumbo
UT telecampus - Michael Anderson - online courses at the university.
"Entertech" - Andrea Andulum -
Jessica Shadoian -
Brainertainment - lots of education products and lots of entertainment products, but the two don't meet. Difficult to bring all the variables together. They create products in the fields of music and art. They create audio, video and interactive (games). Distribution path to reach children while they're playing. Customization, self-direction and the ability to customize the learning experience. Customization is the most important thing that we can do with digital/online education.
In a classroom setting we need to teach either the lowest common denominator or the middle ground. Using technology, we can build adaptable learning programs. Can use digital content to allow for self direction / self-pacing. When kids have the choice of where to go next, they learn best (teacher doesn't need to keep telling the kid what to do next). Multi-modality is pertinent. School systems capitalize on audio (lecture based). But doen't have to be the case. Can be audio, can be visual, or physical (joystick etc...). How can we engage all of the user's senses in their learning experience.
The "social contract is changing" - instead of most people have the right to learn-> we get ALL people having the right to learn, with the convergence of online education.
"social networks" - driving learning through networking. The network itself holds the power to solve educational problems.
Major changes out there -> (1) doing is more important than knowing ("millenials"- new name for youth). (2) staying connected at all times.
We are at the tipping point (intersection)- new generation of learners who expect to learn in a different way.
Look at EnterTech courses offered in Austin.
The problem: E-learning = Boring
Something's missing. Missing the mark on something. Focus on content delivery is old school. Computers can give the user the opportunity to creatively construct. But then we don't really know how to asses this new type of model. Need to create new tools.
Making incredible courses that can compete with grand theft auto (causes attention deficit). Game developers help create these online education programs -> they know what the kids want. How to create new virtual worlds.
Is instructor-led education truly gone?
International Children's Digital Library (university of Maryland) - having the children active in the design process.
Everyone has cable TV at home. Some don't have running water, but they still do have cable TV.
What they'd see for the coming years:
Virtual world that is readily accessible that you can enter on one side, and leave when you're ready to go on with your life. Hard for many people to get the opportunity.
E-learning is the same as when TV first started (Radio, with an image). TV figured out what they did best, and changed. E-learning has to figure out what works out best. It is probably the networking / social aspects that are the strongest. Learners need to be able to interact between themselves using a network of learners who help each other.
the concept of being connected at all times directly affects the way of learning. Opportunity to learn about different perspectives.
Digital Divide is widening and not shrinking -
connections project (Rice)
Open courseware (MIT)
Look into this international education project
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2006
Online/Offline spaces
Molly Steenson (architecture) - space affect our social interaction. Plug-in city. Realities unlimited (berlin) - facades that interact with people around them. This started with Blinkenlights, which allowed users to play pong on a building using their mobile phones.
mapamundi- 15th century maps of the mapmaker's world (Jerusalem the center of the map, and everything else around them). Was a way to see cultural perspective. We can create our personal maps now (Michael Sharon, Socialite) - everything we do happens somewhere, and now we can easily display and show that.
propertyshark - put in your building address and gives you information from accessible public records about your building.
Scott Heiferman (meetup.com) - organizing events. people put their ratings and thoughts about the venues that they use. When others go to the site to try to find a venue for an event, they can get more specific information according to their needs ("is this specific restaurant good for hosting a group of 5 people in the afternoon?")
murmur - location based stories
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)
Digitizing Books
Panelists:
Danielle Tiedt (microsoft)
Bob Stein (institute for the future of the book)
Dan Clancy (google book search)
Implications of book digitalization on libraries/users.
For google booksearch, you need to log in with your username. In library context, you shouldn't have to present who you are in order to look for something. Google gives you a "find this book in a library" option, as well as "buy this book online". There is also ranking available.
Limit search to only things that are available in the public domain.
Google Booksearch: people are saying that the information in the internet is enough (students not going to libraries anymore) -> this is the motivation for google booksearch. A longterm commitment - publisher program (log in, you get something customized to you, and they make sure you don't steal the content), the library program - many books in the world are not published anymore : digitizing libraries and create a search using them, giving the user only snippets from the text (so as not to abuse publisher rights). Google are working on opening this service up, and help people add value to the initial service that google is giving.
Microsoft Booksearch: answering questions better is their motivation. Today they can only answer 50% of the questions. Only 5% of the world's information is online today. They want to get more authoritative data into their database. Newspapers, magazines, bus schedules -> all sorts of published information that's not digitized. Need to know what the questions that people are asking. Its also about pointing people to where they can get the information that they want. Problem- book digitization is very expensive right now (10 cents per page). Need a lot of people working together to make it happen. Open Content alliance - microsoft joined recently. Microsoft want to be the "best" place to view the content, as well as having the content. Their service will be launching very soon.
Brewster Kale - started the internet archive. He wanted to digitize everything. Made the OCA, and brought in microsoft and yahoo, against google. There is a problem with corporations controlling our information. Google has proven in China that they will sell out their corporation for profit. The role of the librarian is something that we are easily giving up. This is a drastic error. Librarians have a joy for "searching". They DO want to create complex searches. Libraries create a sense of community. Coffee shops are proof that people still do want community (surf the web while they're with people). Libraries are trying to build spaces now that are based on building interaction and community among people.
The role of digitizing our culture should not be from the corporations. In Europe, the governments are taking an active role in digitizing for the people. Its a weird place in time when there's not enough money for people/countries to be doing the digitization themselves. Hence the companies are going in and doing that work now. Microsoft would like to be able to only give the user a good serach experience.
But why does it all have to be centralized. Wikipedia is a great example of a decentralized option. Every person can scan some books-> Bottom up develpment in resources.
Government funding doesn't necessarily mean government control of the information. Some examples out there. Worry about intelectual decay with linking to parts of books. What about the original publications?
look at ibiblio - public library and digital archive.
Books are more trustworthy for people when they're doing online search queries. People want the right authoritative information when they're querying. There is a real need for this, not to download "moby dick" and read on my ipod... Finding relevance is the big part of the work that microsoft and google are doing. Need human intervension in order to do this in mass scale.
Difficulty of digitization of books -> there isn't the copyright problems there are with other media (aka .mp3).
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
Lectures - 3.11.06 - tagging for grandma - taxonomy
Tags are much more used in rich media - since you can't just sift through it. People who do put up the video make sure they add as many tags as possible. You get better information when a person tags. Automated tagging will bring less quality information.
Automatic tagging - doing the same thing over and over again.
Implicit tagging - making use of the work that's already being done. Each of us, when we go through information, are doing "work". We should make use of that.
What will it take for people to personally feel that they're getting something useful from tagging? -> we build technology and then find a use for them. Best way is to think of problems people have, and how we can fix that (flickr, del.icio.us). Need to start by asking ourselves how we can solve an existing problem. The pain is there. We all have problems with tagging as is. Flickr clusters -> offers you different uses for one tag.
Who's doing tagging the right way?
iTags - distributed tagging richer than technorati.
itags.net -> (look it up)
Interface is important (glow of the text captivated people), flickr - you put a tag and it shows up, del.icio.us - inline editing
But still not right for someone who's not web-oriented. Test with people who never heard of flickr.
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2006
shadowBox - 3.9.06 update
We finally got full control of servo motors, using the patterns that Min made and lasercut at the NYU ITS lab we got some cool 3d effects, especially using the fabrics on top of the box.
I rewired the arduino board and placed it on a regular breadboard. Finally workable and easily managed:
From here, our next big challenge is to fully control the lights, either using shift registers or transistor arrays, or whichever other way we find.
Here's the current arduino code to control 6 different servo motors using 6 potentiometers:
more inspiring shadow-play photos from Myanmar:
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 09:49 PM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2006
Ubi.ach - updated flowchart
We are getting a mini-itx board, that will do the following actions, in order:
1. activate a popper perl script every minute to check the email account (ubiach@gmail.com). This perl script will send the email to a php file located on the mini-itx.
2. The php file will:
a. parse the new email messages and place them in a database (SQL).
b. place the subject of the message on the clipboard
can use the - GtkEditable::copy_clipboard command:
void copy_clipboard(void);
copy_clipboard() copies the current selection to the clipboard.
It also causes the "copy-clipboard" signal to be emitted.
c. The TTS application will run automatically (from the startup), and take as argument anything that's on the clipboard. Then needs to erase the clipboard.
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2006
SPEAKER - Scott Draves
Speaker: Scott "Spot" Draves
Title: Dreams in High Fidelity
URL: http://hifidreams.com
Graphic: http://hifidreams.com/thistle.jpg
Fractals / graphics
The electric sheep - graphic display between thousands of people (like seti at home)
Apothesis - multi user graphics display
Dreams of High Fidelity - open source network + refined version (to bring in the money)
1992 - Iterated Function System - Hutchinson (81), Barnsley (88) - Michael Barnsley ("fractals everywhere" - book) - linear functions / B&W
Non-linear function parameters -> more interesting
1999 - Distributed screen saver - created by everyone in the network. Everyone sees the same on the screen.
2003 - generic algorithm - people vote (using up and down buttons) when the screensaver is running -> then the "good" ones stay longer.
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2006
Controling a Servo Motor
Been a long long day, but hey, this thing finally works. managed to get a potentiometer to control a servo motor using the arduino board. Found out that the language still doesn't implement floats(too bad), but is fairly simple and easy to use (although I was pretty much cursing along the way!).
IMPORTANT THINGS I FORGOT ALONG THE WAY:
- motors need separate power supplies (can't use USB power!).
- don't program the chip while still running the serial!
First code I used: - (mainly Tom Igoe's)
/* Gilad Lotan (modification of Tom Igoe's code)
Control a Servo motor
*/
int servoPin = 2; // Control pin for servo motor
int minPulse = 500; // Minimum servo position
int maxPulse = 2500; // Maximum servo position
int pulse = 0; // Amount to pulse the servo
int analogValue = 0;
int analogPin = 3;
int myVar = 0;
// functions
void newline(void);
void setup() {
pinMode(servoPin, OUTPUT); // Set servo pin as an output pin
pulse = minPulse; // Set the motor position value to the minimum
beginSerial(9600);
}
void loop() {
analogValue = analogRead(analogPin); // read the analog input
myVar = minPulse + (analogValue * 2);
// when arduino gets floats, we can use the following command to get the precise value
//myVar = (analogValue/1023)*(maxPulse - minPulse) + minPulse; // convert the analog value
printInteger(myVar); // print it out for reference
newline();
digitalWrite(servoPin, HIGH); // Turn the motor on
delayMicroseconds(myVar); // Length of the pulse sets the motor position
digitalWrite(servoPin, LOW); // Turn the motor off
delay(20); // 20 millisecond delay is needed between pulses
// to keep the servo in sync
}
void newline() {
printNewline();
printByte(13);
}
Adapted code: (to deal with specifying turning angles)
/* Gilad Lotan (modification of Tom Igoe's code)
Servo motor control (with angles)
---------------------------------
This code enables a servo motor to turn to a specific wanted angle (using servo
motors that have a maximum turn angle of 180 degrees).
*/
/************************************************************************************
variables
*************************************************************************************/
int servoPin = 2; // Control pin for servo motor
int minPulse = 500; // Minimum servo position
int maxPulse = 2500; // Maximum servo position
int pulse = 0; // Amount to pulse the servo
int analogValue = 0;
int analogPin = 3;
int myVar = 0;
/************************************************************************************
function declarations
*************************************************************************************/
void newline(void);
void pulsout( int servoPin, int pulse);
void turnServo(int angle);
/************************************************************************************
setup
*************************************************************************************/
void setup() {
pinMode(servoPin, OUTPUT); // Set servo pin as an output pin
pulse = minPulse; // Set the motor position value to the minimum
beginSerial(9600);
}
/************************************************************************************
main loop
*************************************************************************************/
void loop() {
/*
// read analog input from 'analogPin'
analogValue = analogRead(analogPin);
// calculate the input relative to the input range and angle range
myVar = (analogValue * 180)/1023;
// change the analog reading to the wanted range (between 500 to 2500)
//myVar = minPulse + (analogValue * 2);
turnServo( myVar );
// turn servo to the 50 degrees mark
*/
turnServo(50);
delay(500);
turnServo(5);
delay(500);
turnServo(150);
delay(500);
turnServo(5);
delay(500);
turnServo(20);
delay(500);
turnServo(90);
delay(500);
}
// brings servo motor to the wanted angle (between 0 to 180 degrees)
void turnServo(int angle) {
int i;
// this loop is done in order to turn the servo motor to the wanted angle
for( i=1;i
// calculates the amount to pulse to the servo (this servo can turn maximum 180 degrees)
pulse = (i*2500)/180;
// add the minimum amount for the pulse, and the relative position of the given angle
// compared to the maximum angle
pulse += 500+((2000/180)*i);
// pulse the servo motor
pulsout( servoPin, pulse);
}
}
// makes the servo motor, placed in 'servoPin' pulse for 'pulse' length in microseconds
void pulsout( int servoPin, int pulse) {
digitalWrite(servoPin, HIGH); // Turn the motor on
delayMicroseconds(pulse); // Length of the pulse sets the motor position
digitalWrite(servoPin, LOW); // Turn the motor off
delay(20); // 20 millisecond delay is needed between pulses
}
// newline function -> prints out new line (\n) as well as a carriage return (\c);
void newline() {
printNewline();
printByte(13);
}
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 01:33 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2006
Ubicomp midterm
Here's what I managed to do for my midterm. It works well for t-mobile. Not sure about other phones yet. And there's still a problem with foreign alphabet...
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2006
Notes from today's meeting with Clay
list of main ideas from our presentation:
- weblogs have done this for text. Video is different.
- social filtering tools.
- display material on a timeline (ability to go back)
- translation & alternate views
- bridging push&pull (RSS feeds & social filtering-> gives a more complex way to receive data)
- scaling between freinds -> haveing a mix of friends (personal) data with traditional news
- economic models
He said that these topics were the main things he picked up from our presentation, and that we definitely have to narrow it down. I think it is obvious which 2 we all like. Probably not going to be difficult to choose.
SOCIAL FILTERING:
filtering of the data that reaches you, through your peer network (1st neighborhood - most affect,2nd - less... etc). By the 6th neighborhood of peers, we should be basically reaching the whole WWW. "The Daily Me" - this model of social filtering exists nowadays, but too self-centered -> doesn't take into account outside news, this way the user can miss out on important events. Also, this model allows for little serendipity (which we all love), as well as it being hard to know what will be interesting for me (how do i know, when I don't know what's out there?!)
Clay said that we should basically take social filtering for granted - we should think that in a couple of years the technology is there, and that we can apply it to our application.
PROBLEMS WITH VIDEO:
ALTERNATE POINTS OF VIEWS / GLOBAL INTERESTS:
translation & thresholds. Networking local sites. Clay talked about how there is a loss of control -> beforehand, there used to be only 3 news networks, which everyone looked at to see the news. That was the absolute truth. Nowadays, there are so many sources, each one telling the story a bit differently. "Fake neutrality is gone!". How can we trust the news? There is a movement from authority to proxy-> peer review is a better model (wikipedia vs. Britanica).
- But how can we bridge these cultural gaps and get people to know things that they don't know?
- how do we say to someone "you should see this, for different values of 'should' ??"
his suggestions:
- translate 3 weblog posts for the ITP community / pick a few topics to translate for the ITP list -> find something thats not translated regularly and that people would be interested in reading
- write to the ITP list and ask who wants to subscribe
- need to find sources of video (maybe from ITP students)
- who are the users? Interview them about their interests from foreign countries. What would they like to see? Have no more than 10 questions.
- something good & linguistically remote -> is always a problem to find and bring to people! will be a challenge.
- he suggested that we "take advantage of the potential for the international social capital" that exists through the internet, and that is still fairly untouched.
WE NEED TO SEND CLAY A PARAGRAPH - "we are working on x" - explaining which part we're going to concentrate on in the next couple of weeks.
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
Ubi.ach - resources research
So we need a mini-itx board, (memory & RAM)
as well as Text-to-speech software... here's what we got from the loving ITP community.
MINI-ITX:
--------
http://www.mini-itx.com/
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/articles/AT3695724814.html
added-on features:
TTS software:
------------
Mike Olson (used to work for Dragon):
- Microsoft Speech SDK
- Nuance - too expensive for poor students like us
Dimitri Darras (ddarras@yahoo.com):
- Mbrola
- Cepstral (has a fee)
Christian Croft:
- Download FreeTTS 1.2.1
his installation notes:
FreeTTS Setup Tutorial Limits to Free TTS "FreeTTS provides some level support for the Java Speech API v1.0 (JSAPI). In particular, since FreeTTS is a speech synthesis system, none of the JSAPI 1.0 Recognition interfaces are supported. In addition, FreeTTS supports only a subset of the JSAPI 1.0 javax.speech.synthesis specification. The FreeTTS support for JSAPI 1.0 has the following restrictions: JSML Speech Markup is ignored. FreeTTS will process JSML, but currently does not apply the markup to the generated speech. FreeTTS does not currently generate the WORD_STARTED or the MARKER_REACHED events. Vocabulary management is not supported. The Synthesizer.phoneme() method is not implemented. PropertyVeto exceptions are not always properly thrown when property change requests are rejected or constrained." Download FreeTTS 1.2.1 at http://freetts.sourceforge.net/docs/index.php#download_and_install >>> Just get the bin package unless you want to modify the source files, then you want the source as well This is a third party package, so you have to go through a process of agreeing to an installer agreement. Put the freetts folder that you downloaded into (I put the whole thing, if you're an expert and know exactly which files you need ) System/Library/Java/Extensions Good setup instructions for Java Speech API 1.0 here (apparently there's a 2.0, but I haven't found it...) In the terminal, change directory to the lib directory of the freetts folder, and execute the following commands: Type chmod +x jsapi.sh Type sh jsapi.sh The BCL (Binary Code Liscense appears for you to "read it.") appears on the screen If the BCL is acceptable, accept it by typing "y". The jsapi.jar file will be unpacked and deposited into the lib directory. Then be sure to put the speech.properties file in your users/home directory In the freetts folder that you downloaded, open FreeTTSHelloWorld.java (find it in freetts/demo/freetts/HelloWorld/FreeTTSHelloWorld.java ) in Eclipse. Under Build Path, add all the .jar files from freetts/lib and you should be able to run it as a Java Application and hear kevin16 say "Thank you for giving me a voice. I'm so glad to say hello to this world."
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2006
Design Expo - first big presentation
Comments from critics:
- better to make it platform independent
- look at dabble.com
- regular people can't take the spot of journalists (they misunderstood us)
- lower transaction cost -> TV price is a big deal here, not lowest common denominator
- look at the participatory culture project
USER TESTING - try to build something small and test it out. Document with video, etc...
Clay's notes:
- 2 minutes in, the audience needs to know what the application is
- if it is platform based, first need to show an example of an application
- assumptions should be made CLEAR! -> TV will not disappear. Media from this century hasn't disappeared. lean forward media & lean back media -> this is how we're bridging the gap.
... try to take only MAX 4 problems to solve...
- Backwards - people we can talk to who can give us user testing (video cam - question them & get reactions)
- Under - research similar projects that exist.
- Forward - what can we model or build -> specificity
(go from width to depth now -> lower down, spread, choose, specify)
Social Filtering: aggregate & filter news and posts by using your social network as a filter. A critical mass of users with overlapping interests is needed for social filtering to be effective.
- David Weinberger
- "Collaborative filtering"
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)
Ubi.ach - First meeting with Patrick
Patrick clearly said we could go either way:
1) according to our initial diagram
. Only problem we haven't solved yet is the flash card and hacking into an .mp3 reader / player.
2) using a mini-ITX (EPIA-800 - look at the EPIA-800 model) - its basically a more "software" approach, but on the other hand would save us the hassle of haveing so many different parts to worry about. Here, this board can literally do everything - we just need to install an operating system, and then it could process, save and run the .wav file)
resources that we looked at:
- http://www.voice-assistant.com/- http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html
- http://www.nextuptech.com/
still need to find a good & reliable one.
We can use the same perl and php scripts from my UbiComp project
meeting tomorrow to decide which direction to take on this bi-ach!
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2006
GLArt #7- March 1st
Three matrixes that we use in GL:
PROJECTION - controls the 3d space/perspective or lack of perspective
MODELVIEW - controls the model/scene/placement of objects
VIEWPORT - where on the screen is the scene appearing/ "window"
(the process of using these matrixes is called PROJECTING)
PROJECTING - takes this scene that we created, and helps navigate in a scene (Z axis from 0 to 1) -> glu.gluproject() returns a result of the transformed point in space (from 1,0,0 to the actual openGL coordinates for instance: 500,20,83).
array picking method -> complex way to find the coordinates for mouse in the 3d space
getzdepthatorigin() - projects 0,0,0 (the origin) and gets back the projecting value of z (this is after the modeling,projection & viewport). We need to find the value of Z if we're gonna navigate according to the mouse position, so we get the projecting value (0-1) and can use that-> and if we want to keep our z constant, we can just keep that value.
ray-picking -> can calculate exact pixel which a light ray would hit a certain spot on the model. Find out more information about this - maybe some code which already dealt with this! Can make a model and use some organic/physical particle interaction (using IR?!)
Marshall Mcluhan book - "understanding media" (must read)
Vermeer - lighting in paintings
Charles Burchfield - watercolor, minimal natural lighting (look at the met)
video (talk to Chris K):
look at fractals (mandelbrot, julia)
gltextsubimage2d() - generates textures on the fly
gldrawpixels(), glreadpixels() - not h/w optimized, so better not used.
Posted by Gilad Lotan at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)