Over on Open Exhibits, we’ve just released a new template called the Magnifier Viewer. The template has an integrated multitouch-enabled magnifier object that can be used with a variety of media items such as images and Google Maps. We’ve been looking to integrate this magnifier into Open Exhibits and make it available to the community ever since we developed it for the California Mapping exhibit with Oakland Museum last year.

The Magnifier Viewer has different styled magnifiers (round or square, brass or silver, handles or no handles) that can be changed via XML settings. This flexible template can be used to create a variety of custom exhibits. Just add media and customize the XML and you’re ready to go.

This template and a dozen other software modules are available free on the Open Exhibits site. Museums, students, universities, and non-profits can get the Open Exhibits Core SDK for free too. Comercial users will need the GestureWorks framework to use the free modules. Open Exhibits and GestureWorks require Adobe Flash or Flex.

We’ll be showing how to use this template and other software modules at an Open Exhibits bootcamp workshop next week at Museums and the Web conference in Philadelphia.

With the sun currently approaching solar maximum, the most active period in the solar cycle, solar flares have become more common and powerful. This has led to some concerns about damage to satellites and electric power grids and it has also helped generate amazing and beautiful auroras.

The increased interest in “space weather” has also spiked interest in our free Space Weather Viewer iPhone app, which we developed for NASA back in November. We’ve had 107,528 downloads in the Apple App Store this month. The downloads peaked at 9,035 on March 13th although we have had more than 4,000 downloads each day this month.

Outreach efforts by our partners at Goddard Space Flight Center and the Sun-Earth Day 2011 events have also likely helped push the numbers upward.  You can download the Space Weather Viewer iPhone app in iTunes store. If you’re a developer you can download the source code for the app at Github, there’s more about this release in previous blog post, Source Released for the NASA Space Weather iPhone App.

The Android version of this app will be available next month.

This video demonstrates the results of a recent collaboration between SENSUS and our own Open Exhibits software initiative.  The concept is simple: make networking and sharing transparent across multitouch devices and operating systems. The demo video shows an Android Tablet (Samsung Galaxy), a Multitouch Table (our own, new MT55), a Windows 7 multitouch kiosk, and an iPod–all sharing media items (images, video, and a Google Map) effortlessly.  This easy sharing is made possible with Konnectus software which is a new cloud-computing platform developed by SENSUS.

The  Konnectus software and the Open Exhibits modules will be available later this summer. And, Yes! These “network friendly” software modules will also work with our GestureWorks multitouch framework.

Here’s a bit more about Konnectus and our partners at SENSUS…

KonnectUs is a new cloud-computing software platform by SENSUS designed to make sophisticated networking functions easy and intuitive for users across a range of devices including multitouch tables, desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones. KonnectUs “Natural Networking Technology (NNT)” empowers users to connect seamlessly across all major platforms – from Windows to Android to iOS. The new software aims to deliver a desktop user experience for key cloud-based services such as file sharing, social networking and location-relevant distribution of content. Additionally, KonnectUs APIs allow developers the opportunity to leverage the power of SENSUS networking technology through integration into third party applications.

You can read the full-press release on the SENSUS Website.

For the latest installment see: Building a High-Resolution Multitouch Wall (Part 4).

We’ve made a great deal of progress since our last blog post on the multitouch wall project (see: Building a Multitouch Wall (Part 2)). The big news is that we’ve completed an illumination test and the image looks really great! The exhibit is using dVision 35 WQXGA XB LED projectors by Digital Projection. These awesome, short throw projectors have a resolution of 2560 x 1600. The combined resolution of the round 7-foot, multitouch wall will be better than HD at 2560 x 2560.

To mount these two projectors, we designed custom, adjustable projector mounts out of aluminum. These mounts –along with the cameras and first-surface mirrors– connect to the aluminum rigging we designed (mentioned in the last installment). All of these pieces need to fit and work within a tight 3 foot space!

In the last blog post, I mentioned that we are using 10mm haptic tempered glass fronting a piece of acrylic with projection material that will go directly behind it. The acrylic is from Draper it is 1/4″ Cine 13 Optical Coating it has a dark grey tint. Locating 84″ of projection material that was seamless, was one of the challenges we faced in developing this exhibit.

For our illumination test we displayed an early version of the software. The exhibit will allow visitors to “touch” plankton and learn more about them. As I mentioned in a previous post, this exhibit is going to be installed in a major North American aquarium. (We have received permission from them to share the development process as long as we don’t divulge their name.)

Finally, we have designed and fabricated all of the laser mounts for the outside wall. The image above shows a close-up. There are 8 laser mounts with a total of 16 lasers creating two interlaced grids. The lasers are 5mW, similar in power to a laser pointer.  These lasers will be used to track visitors fingers and hands as they interact with the wall (it is a method called Laser Light Plane (LLP).  This application of LLP is completely safe; along with the low power, these laser will not come in contact with visitor’s eyes. A metal flange will completely cover the laser mounts.

In our next installment we will show you how we are blending the two high-resolution images together. To see the previous steps in the process check out: Building a High-Resolution Multitouch Wall Part 1 & Part 2.

Fast Company’s Design Blog posted an interesting infographic yesterday on the Next 25 Years in Emerging Tech. I’ve been a fan of well-constructed infographics and folks in the studio have been passing around some really interesting infographics from Good.is lately. This particular graphic was constructed by Michell Zappa and maps a number of emerging technologies.

The technologies that we were most interested in have to do with Natural User Interfaces. Under the heading NUI, the infographic lists: multitouch, gesture recognition, augmented reality, speech recognition, haptics, telepresence, and machine vision.

The contents for the graphic were researched from “hundreds of articles, magazines, and books” and the site lists a number of sources. The graphic is available as high-resolution PNG and as PDF and it released with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.