Wrangler Bluebell Jeans Interactive Ad on my TouchSmart PC -"How-to", plus a demo of ad on iPad

The content of this blog post was removed at the request of Wrangler.

Android Tablet Prototype Runs Flash (Video and quick links)

It is interesting to watch how this unfolds:

Part I

Part II


The above videos can be found on ZedoMAX's YouTube channel.
(Thanks to Justin Ireland for the link.)

RELATED
More videos about Adobe products and new forms of tablets can be found on TheFlashBlog. (Thanks to Christian Moore for the link.)

YouTube HTML 5 Video Player Info
Google Chrome 5 Beta: The Top Five Features 
Ian Paul, PC World Blog, 5/5/10
"HTML 5, the new programming standard for Web pages, may not be officially ready yet, but that hasn't stopped Google from implementing some of its new and exciting features. Google Chrome 5 beta introduces file drag-and-drop capabilities, Geolocation (such as Google's MyLocation feature), and offline application caching (Google Gears replacement ). The new version of Chrome beta also offers Web sockets, which make it easier and faster for Web-based applications to communicate with their host servers." -Ian Paul

WIRED's Gallery: Eight Tablets That Aren't Made by Apple; HP Slate video teaser)

The following thumbnails are from a recent article in WIRED:
Gallery: 8 Tablets That Aren't Made by Apple
Priya Ganapati, Wired, 4/16/2010



Web, Flash & Air on Slate Device from HP:



The HP Slate would be very useful in education, especially for students working in pairs or small groups during activities such as digital storytelling, "kid-reporting", and so forth!

Ideum's GestureWorks vs Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 1.0 comparison of multitouch and gesture support

Jim Spadaccini, of Ideum, shared information about his company's product, Gestureworks, highlighting how it provides better multi-touch and gesture support than Adobe AIR2 and Flash Player 10.1. Gestureworks supports multiple-point drag, rotate, and scale at the same time. In the video, the application is demonstrated on an HP Touchsmart 600 and a 3M multitouch screen.

Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1  vs Gestureworks 1.0: A direct comparison of multitouch and gesture support


"A direct comparison between the built-in support for multitouch found in Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta / Adobe AIR 2 and that of the Gestureworks multitouch framework for Flash. More about this comparison can be found on the Gestureworks website (http://www.gestureworks.com) and the Ideum website (http://www.ideum.com)  There is a blog post with more about this comparison and links to all of the example files at: www.ideum.com/2010/01/true-multitouch-wi th-adobe-flash/ "

True Multitouch with Adobe Flash - Jim Spadaccini


GestureWorks Supported Gestures

Example of Ideum's GestureWorks multi-touch, multi-user design for an exhibit a the Vancouver Aquarium:

Good News for Creative Techies: Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Adds Support for Multitouch!

I sort of knew something was going on at Adobe when I posted the following video clip on this blog a few months ago. Rumors can transform into realities, right?

If you want to cut to the chase, sign up NOW to be notified about the BETA release of Flash Professional CS5 BETA:  Adobe Labs:  Adobe Flash Professional CS5 BETA

Here are the new features as described from the CS5 BETA website:

•  Applications for iPhone — Publish ActionScript 3® projects in Adobe Flash Professional to run as applications for iPhone. Learn more.

• New text capabilities via the Text Layout Framework (TLF) — Get unprecedented text control and creativity with projects created in Flash. Advanced styling and layout, including right to left text, columns, and threaded text blocks, let you work with text in Flash like never before.

• XML based FLA files — Manage and modify project assets using source control systems and enable teams to easily collaborate on files.

• Code Snippets panel — Choose prebuilt code that can be injected into projects to increase interactivity and also reduce the ActionScript 3 learning curve.

• Flash Builder™ integration — Use Adobe Flash Builder software as your ActionScript editor within projects in Flash.

• Improved ActionScript editor — Improve productivity with custom class code hinting and completion.

This will give me a reason to brush up on ActionScript.    I'm a code-snippet queen, so I anticipate that I'll love the Code Snippets panel!



Adobe tries keeping Flash in Web vanguard
Stephen Shankland, CNET news 10/4/09


"Flash Player 10.1 also adds support for multitouch user interfaces, which are all the rage for good reason right now because they can enable an intuitive, direct interaction with computing equipment. There have been experiments with multitouch in Firefox, but it's a complicated issue in general since there's some contention about whether the operating system, a browser, or a browser plug-in is in charge of interpreting multitouch commands" 



 

More Multi-touch and Gesture-based Natural User Interfaces: Bamboo Wacom Tablet; Multi-touch PresTop Kiosk and Snowflake Suite software

Wacom Tablets Get Multi-Touch, Gestures
(Charlie Sorrel, Wired, 9/24/09)
"For the tech-curious, the new tablets have 512 pressure levels in the pen tip and the active area of the tablet is 5.8 x 3.6 inches, and all lose the in-pack mouse (for obvious reasons). The Touch and the Pen models are both $70, and the Pen & Touch is $100. Also, if you were thinking of buying Photoshop Elements 7 for the same price, get a tablet instead — Elements comes in the box."






Official Wacom Video

"Bamboo Touch is new type of computer input device by Wacom that lets you navigate and perform commands like zoom, scroll, rotate and more with a series of simple finger taps and hand gestures. Bamboo Touch brings Multi-Touch capability to your Mac or PC"

Video from a Wacom user:

A nice alternative to a mouse.  I'm going to get one for my laptop!


Multi-touch Kiosks!
Press release:  Dutch touchscreen supplier PresTop partners with Natural User Interface (NUITEQ)
 



RELATED

I couldn't find any video clips of PresTop's multi-touch interaction. From what I can tell, PresTop multi-touch screens will be using SnowFlake Suite from Natural User Interface Technogies AB.

How-to:SnowFlake Suite Flash multi-touch Interactable component (NUIversity)

Without a single line of code, you can do quite a bit with Snowflake Suite

"This video covers how to make a rotatable and scalable image. The beauty about this is, that we have developed a Flash mouse input simulator, so that there is no need for multi-touch hardware in order to develop your applications. Simply simulate multiple mouse inputs for multi-touch.This project is still in alpha phase and a download will become available with the next release of Snowflake Suite 1.7 for the NextWindow platform and camera based multi-touch solutions."


Below is a video of single-touch interaction for PresTop, from Omnivision:


PresTop  PresTop offers interactive hardware and software solutions that can be used indoors as well as in outdoor environments.

The Opposite of Interactive Media: The Pretty Loaded Archive of Preloaders (Are we really movin' up to HTML 5?)

According to a recent article by Garrick Schmitt, preloaders might become history in the very near future. Schmitt discusses HTML 5 and related topics, and included a link to the Pretty Loaded website, an archive of interesting web-site preloaders from our recent past - 2002 to 2009, to be exact. You can download a screensaver for PC or Mac from the site.

For more information, read Schmitt's article, and take also a look at the related links I've posted below.

Things are changing.

Are You Ready for a Flash-Free Future: How HTML 5 and Open Video will Deliver a Faster, Plug-in Free Internet
Garrick Schmitt, Ad Age, 8/12/09

RELATED AND SOMEWHAT RELATED

HTML5 Canvas Experiment

HTML 5 Doctor

Mozilla's Canvas Tutorial
"canvas is a new HTML element which can be used to draw graphics using scripting (usually JavaScript). It can for instance be used to draw graphs, make photo compositions or do simple (and not so simple) animations. The image on the right shows some examples of implementations which we will see later in this tutorial..."

O3D Demos (Google Code Site)

Open Video Project

Open Video Player Initiative

Advancing Open Video

Need for Multi-touch, Multi-user Interactive Multimedia Applications, and the Miracle Question

Last week I received a few comments on my post, "Multi-touch and Flash: Links to Resources; Revisiting Jeff Han's Presentation". I started to respond to a thoughtful comment by Spencer, of TeacherLED, and I wanted to share it as a post:

Spencer is a teacher and instructional technology consultant who develops web-based interactive applications for use on interactive whiteboards (IWB's). He's interested in multi-touch applications for education and has some good insights into what HCI researchers call the "problem space".

Here are Spencer's comments:

..."I agree that Flash could have a very important role to play here. I chose Flash as my development tool because it allows quick development of ideas and then easy distribution of the product. The importance of this is that it allows people who have a profession other than software developer to create software with the insight of their main role. In my case, as a teacher, I can identify things I wish I had and then make them. Often I find that other teachers had the same wish and they then appreciate the product."

"The unfortunate thing with multi-touch is that it is far from the technology most of us outside the industry/research areas have to work with. An app created in Flash for single touch follows the mouse and pointer method so it can be developed easily. When done it can be easily tested on a standard IWB for the feel (which is often surprisingly different on the IWB compared to using a mouse)."

"The Flash developer community has a very experimental and creative characteristic and I’m sure would be a great driving force for multi-touch but first there needs to come a reason for more people to have some sort of multi-touch display for general use, beyond facilitating experiments. When the various operating systems support it and have the apps to make having a supporting display viable then the experimentation and ideas will really flow."

"In addition, the display makers need to recognize the benefits of Flash and ensure they address them. At the moment it seems to be too often an afterthought if considered at all. SDKs and APIs make no reference to Flash or they remain indefinitely in beta for older versions of Flash only."

"It is a pity that all of this will take time. The more time that passes the more single touch IWBs are bought and installed which will delay the uptake of the eventual multi-touch ones. Meanwhile children continue to have to keep reminding themselves that they can only touch the board in one place when it is clear that every bit of their brain is telling them to interact with the board in a much more natural multi-touch way."

My response to Spencer's comment:

Spencer,

You make good points regarding the barriers to getting the multi-touch approach adopted by the "mainstream". You're right about what the commercial display makers need to do. If they want to market displays that will have more appeal, they must think about the different sorts of applications and programming environments that the displays should support.

Display makers also need to think more about the bigger picture - in what sort of environments will the displays be located? Indoors? Outdoors? Near bright sunlight? What about people with disabilities, children, or the elderly?

I can see that in the future, multi-touch displays and other devices would operate within an embedded systems environment and support mobile computing activities as well. There are existing examples of this concept, of course, but there is much room for creative improvement. An embedded systems approach is complex, and would need to handle input from sensors, support multi-modal signal process, and also provide users with a range of connectivity modes, including RFID. (Data management and storage needs would have to be addressed, along with privacy and security concerns.)

Most importantly, in my opinion, these systems would need to have the flexibility required to support human activities and interactions that have not yet emerged! Certainly this will need to take a multidisciplinary approach.

There are many unanswered questions....How does this fit in with mobile computing and "cloud" computing? What sort of middleware needs to be developed?

Even if we don't have solutions to the bigger problems, there are many smaller problems that I think could be somewhat easily solved.

As you mentioned, many applications that are designed for single-touch screens don't fully support the way people identify, select, and move items around the screen. Although educators access websites every day for use on interactive whiteboards, they are hungry for more. There are not enough websites that are optimized for single-touch interaction, or touch-screen interaction in 3-D "space".

Teachers who are successful users of interactive whiteboards know exactly what we are talking about. They spend quite a bit of time searching for new on-line resources they can use with their students. They know how much the students want to interact with the screen at the same time and would be so excited to have capability at their fingertips!

Optimizing websites for touch-screen applications is possible, but this idea hasn't occurred to web developers. Their jobs don't require it, so there is no incentive. Google is developing FlareBrowser, that can support multi-touch interactions, but according to information on the website, it runs on Mac Leopard 1.5, and nothing else. The present version is bare-bones. I haven't yet tested the FlareBrowser.

I think that another barrier to getting multi-touch off the ground is that the people who might have the knack for multi-touch application development simply don't know it! We've mentioned that Flash developers have the potential to create good multi-touch applications. I also think that game developers and designers could make good contributions to the multi-touch movement. Just think about what thought goes into programming interactions and event handling for 3-D web-based multi-player games!

Yet another barrier is that people who work in lower-tech fields could benefit from collaborative multi-touch applications, but they don't know it, either. The research I've reviewed tells me that multi-touch applications can support a wide range of human endeavors- work, creativity, data analysis, education, collaboration, planning, and so forth.

What is missing is the input of potential end users from a variety of fields. No specific discipline "owns" multi-touch, so it is hard to figure out how we can make this happen.

Could we set up multi-touch technology playgrounds at professional and trade conferences? What about airports and hospital lobbies? Libraries and museums? Shopping centers? Sports events and rock concerts?

This leads me to my next idea, which is jumping ahead a bit:

One of the barriers to the development of multi-touch applications is that it is not easy to gather user requirements when the users are not familiar with the technology.
That is when my "Miracle Question" technique comes into play. I learned this technique when I studied brief solution-focused counseling and found that if modified, can be useful when figuring out user requirements. (The process still needs some fleshing out.)
Why the Miracle Question?
The questions that a developer uses to guide the client during the initial planning stages are very important. Keep in mind that people want to use technology because it meets a need and also solves a problem, which is the similar to the reason a person might seek counseling.
The Miracle Question technique (actually, a series of questions) might help to tease things out. The goal of this type of questioning is to help the client use their own creativity, resources, and problem-solving skills so they can become effective partners throughout the development cycle.
(People with human-computer interaction training might have an easier time understanding how this technique might be modified and applied to different fields.)

FYI
A good example the Miracle Question process, as used in therapy and counseling, can be found on the Network of Social Construction Therapies website in an article written by the late Steve de Shazer:

http://brianmft.talkspot.com/aspx/templates/topmenuclassical.aspx/msgid/366482

There aren't many resources about the use of the Miracle Question in IT or business. Here are a couple:

Solution Focused Management of Unplanned IT Outages (Read pages 132 and the references.)http://conferences.vu.edu.au/web2006/images/CDProceedings06.pdf
Proceedings of 7th International We-B (Working for E-Business) Conference, 2006Katherine O'CallaghanSugumar Mariappandar, Ph.D.School of Business and InformaticsAustralian Catholic University

Miracle Question in Executive Coaching
http://www.1to1coachingschool.com/Coaching_Miracle_Question.htm

Multi-touch and Flash: Links to resources, revisiting Jeff Han's TED 2006 presentation

Despite the increase in interest in systems that support multi-touch, multi-user multimedia interaction, there is a need for creative, tech-savvy types to develop innovative applications. Why? This technology has the potential to make a powerful impact on how people learn, communicate, solve "big picture" problems, and do their various jobs.

CNN's Magic Wall was one of the first applications to gain the attention of the masses, as it was used as an interactive map during the US presidential election process. Touch-screen interaction gained even more notice after the recent SNL parody by Fred Amisen.

If you think about it, the multi-touch applications you see on the news aren't much different than what you'd get from a "single-touch" program.

Fancy, yes. Truly innovative, no.

Just imagine a 3D multi-touch, multi-user, multimedia version of Google Search. I did. I put my sketches in my idea book and hurt my brain thinking about how it could be coded.

Jeff Han, the man behind Perceptive Pixel and CNN's magic wall, had much more up his sleeve when he demonstrated his work at TED 2006. Even if you've previously seen this video, it is worth looking at again. (I've provided a link to the transcript below.)



Transcript of Jeff Han's TED 2006 Presentation

This video presentation had a transformational effect on me as I watched for the first time. Jeff Han brought to life ideas that were similar to my own as a beginning computer student thinking about collaborative educational games and multimedia applications that could be played on interactive whiteboards.

Here are some selected quotes from the video:

"I really really think this is gonna change- really change the way we interact with the machines from this point on."

"Again, the interface just disappears here. There's no manual. This is exactly what you kind of expect, especially if you haven't interacted with a computer before."

"Now, when you have initiatives like the hundred dollar laptop, I kind of cringe at the idea that we're gonna introduce a whole new generation of people to computing with kind of this standard mouse-and-windows pointer interface. This is something that I think is really the way we should be interacting with the machines from this point on. (applause)"

"Now this is going to be really important as we start getting to things like data visualization. For instance, I think we all really enjoyed Hans Rosling's talk, and he really emphasized the fact that I've been thinking about for a long time too, we have all this great data, but for some reason, it's just sitting there. We're not really accessing it. And one of the reasons why I think that is, is because of things like graphics- will be helped by things like graphics and visualization and inference tools. But I also think a big part of it is gonna be- starting to be able to have better interfaces, to be able to drill down into this kind of data, while still thinking about the big picture here."

So now what?

A recent post by "Alex", on the AFlex World blog discusses a few solutions. Alex had a chance to meet with Harry van der Veen and Pradeep George from the NUI Group, and Georg Kaindl, a multi-touch interaction designer from the Technical University of Vienna. The focus of the discussion was to come up with ideas to encourage Adobe/Flash designers and developers to learn more about multi-touch technology and interaction, and take steps to create innovative applications.

I especially like the following quote from the post:

"...A quick quote from our conversations: “When our children will walk up to a display, they will touch it and expect to do something.”

As a techie and a school psychologist, I see an immediate need for innovative applications. I know that there is a built-in market in the schools, at least for low-cost applications. Despite economic constraints, many school districts continue to invest in interactive whiteboards (IWB's). They are cropping up in preschool and K-12 settings, and teachers are searching for more than what's currently available.

Interactive, collaborative applications are needed in fields such as health care, patient education, finance & economics, urban planning, civil engineering, travel & tourism, museums & exhibitions, special events, entertainment, and more.

Smart Technologies, the company behind SmartBoards, has a new interactive multi-touch, multi-user table designed for K-6 education, the Smart Table. Hewlett Packard has several versions of the TouchSmart PC, which can support at least duo-touch, if not multi-touch, multi-user applications. There are numerous all-in-one large screen displays on the market that support multi-touch and multi-user interaction.

Quotes from Harry van der Veen, of Multitouch NL:

"In 10 years from now when a child walks up to a screen he expects it to be a multi-touch screen with which he can interact with by using gestures."

"...multi-touch screens will be as common as for children is the internet nowadays, as common as mobile phones are for us."


Here is a quote from a conversation I had with Spencer, who blogs at TeacherLED.

"It was interesting this week as I was in a classroom with a teacher who I've not worked with before... he had 2 students using the whiteboard who kept touching it together by mistake. The teacher, exasperated, said to himself, "Why can't they make these things to accept 2 touches without going crazy!"

Proof of the demand! I think you are right when teachers spot the limitations and then see the technology on visits to museums, that might stimulate demand."

Spencer creates cool interactive mini-applications, mostly for math, using Flash, that teachers (and students) love to use on interactive whiteboards. (He's interested in multi-touch, too.)


So what are we waiting for?!

Related:
Natural User Interface Europe AB meets Adobe
Georg's Touche Framework
NUI Group
TeacherLED
Interactive Touch-Screen Technology, Participatory Design, and "Getting It".
Hans Rosling's 2007 TED talk