June 30th, 2011 by Jim Spadaccini
We’ve just released the source code for the NASA Space Weather Viewer app that we developed for the Android platform. The app allows you to see today’s images of the sun along with videos and other materials from a variety of NASA science missions. The application was created in Adobe Flex and it requires Adobe AIR. You can get the source code on github (see Gestureworks/NASA Space Weather Media Viewer).
The app works on a variety of Android phones and tablets. We’ve tested the application using Android 2.2 all the way up to 3.0 (Honeycomb). The amazing NASA solar images really look great on larger tablets like the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy.
If you want to try the free app for Android it is available in Google Android Market and in the Amazon App store. There is also an iOS native version of the Space Weather Media Viewer available on iTunes. The source code for the iOS version is also available on github (see Ideum/NASA Space Weather Media Viewer).
Finally, if you want to learn more about both of these mobile apps, we have a description and a video in our portfolio site.
June 28th, 2011 by Jim Spadaccini
Our commercial multitouch SDK, GestureWorks has support for over 200 gestures. To help our users better understand what’s available in the GestureWorks software package, last year we made a poster showing most of the gestures included. The PDF poster and all of the illustrations are freely available through a Creative Commons attribution license. Now, we’ve taken a step further and have put together a font family called Gesture.
This family of typefaces includes three variations of the stroke alphabet and one font of the multitouch icons or “dingbats.” The font is free (again through a Creative Commons attribution license). You can find the Gesture font, poster and all of the illustrations on the GestureWorks Open Source Gesture Library page.
June 24th, 2011 by Jim Spadaccini
This is the fifth blog post about our multitouch wall installation. To see the previous ones see: Building a High-Resolution Multitouch Wall Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3 & Part 4.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, while we received permission to share the development process we’ve been unable to say just which “major North American aquarium” we have been working with. Now we can share the name and we are proud to say it is the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The 7- foot, round multitouch wall that we’ve been developing will be part of the Open Sea exhibition which is fully open to public on July 2nd. You can learn more about the Open Sea exhibition in Monterey Bay Aquarium Pressroom.
The previous blog posts detail the methods, materials, hardware, software, and other aspects of the development process. So I won’t go to far in depth here, but I wanted to mention a few more details about the visitor experience and the software.
The large size and round form-factor of the multitouch wall should make for an engaging visitor experience. The wall is big enough to accommodate multiple visitors simultaneously. It also support hundreds of simultaneous touch points.
As I mentioned earlier the exhibit will allow aquarium visitors to “touch” phytoplankton and learn more about them.The fact that microscopic plankton are the base of the marine food web and they produce most of the oxygen present in the Earth’s atmosphere makes the exhibit all the more significant. We hope this installation will provide a compelling way for visitors learn about these important tiny organisms.
The exhibit software was created in Unity 3D and the programming and design was done by Lindsay Digital (they also took the photographs that appear below). This is one of the first projects where we concentrated just on hardware.
Here are a few photographs of the installation at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We will share photos and video of the exhibit in full operation after the opening on July 2nd!
Ideum’s Paul Lacey and Chris Steinmetz work on calibrating the multitouch wall. The number “2560″ which appears on the screen is the resolution of the round multitouch wall. It is 2560 x 2560 pixel which is better than HD resolution.
Paul and Chris are silhouetted in front of the massive multitouch wall.
June 14th, 2011 by Andrew Berry
We’ve recently updated our video for the MT55 Pro multitouch table. There is new footage showing table custom colors: red and opal green. We also added some footage showing Tune Grid our multitouch music sequencer application built with Gestureworks.
You can learn more about the table on our MT55 Pro product page.
June 2nd, 2011 by Chad Person
Tune Grid is a 16-step multitouch audio sequencer built with GestureWorks. It allows multiple users to create harmonic rhythms, or play sequences of notes using multitouch input. We originally conceived of the idea with our friends at the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum, after seeing Andre Michelle’s ToneMatrix web application.
Tune Grid now comes standard on every Ideum multitouch table. It’s a fun multi-user sound application that does a great job showing off the integrated Bose audio system found in the MT55 Pro. Below is a video showing Tune Grid in action on the MT55 Pro multitouch table. We’d love to hear your feedback.
