GestureWorks 3 is completely rebuilt and we greatly improved the way the software analyzes gesture interaction.  With GestureWorks 3, “objects” behave more like objects do in real world and the software can determine no only user touch points, but also their orientation.  To demonstrate this new feature we developed a built-in gesture visualizer.  Here’s a video of the gesture visualizer.

There’s lots more in GestureWorks 3, you can learn more on the GestureWorks website or check out the Press Release on PR Newswire.

GestureWorks developers will have access to the most advanced multitouch authoring environment yet developed. It includes a comprehensive Gesture Visualizer, a built-in multitouch simulator, and it introduces the world’s first markup language for multitouch; Gesture ML with definitions for scores of gestures.  ActionScript developers in Flash, Flash Builder, Flash Develop, and FDT can creating powerful gesture-driven apps that can be published as SWF files, exe, or AIR apps.

In a year where there has been seemingly no positive news about Adobe Flash, we think GestureWorks is great news for Flash developers. We believe that ActionScript and Flash are important and powerful tools for application development. While HTML5 has a great deal of promise, and it will likely be increasingly important in the future; it lacks the power and flexibility that ActionScript and Flash currently provide. We need to make applications now and we’re not alone.

GestureWorks 3 was major effort here at Ideum and it represents almost a year of development. GestureWorks is primarily self-funded, however, the project did receive some important help and we are very thankful to have received $100,000 from the Venture Acceleration Fund (VAF) launched by Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The software and the new website will be unveiled next Tuesday, November 29th. We’re excited, we hope you are too.

]]> http://www.ideum.com/blog/2011/11/gestureworks-3-release-next-week-good-news-for-flash-developers/feed/ 0 http://www.ideum.com/blog/2011/10/open-exhibits-year-two/ http://www.ideum.com/blog/2011/10/open-exhibits-year-two/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:20:09 +0000 Jim Spadaccini http://www.ideum.com/?p=5693 Our Open Exhibits multitouch software initiative has just completed its first year. Last year, we received funding from the National Science Foundation and we launched our full community site last November. We’ve learned a lot in year one and we are gearing up for an exciting second year.

If you haven’t been following developments on the Open Exhibits site, here’s an update:

The Heist project was announced today. Heist is an experimental project that uses Open Exhibits and GestureWorks software and is powered by Sensus server technology to enable effortless networking. It allows museum visitors to “steal” digital objects; easily placing them on their smart phones or tablets.

The system uses a captive WiFi portal to push an HTML5 app to visitors so there is no need to download an iOS or Android app. The visitor just connects to WiFi and opens their browser. We are planning a testbed with ten museums this winter.  Learn more and check out a video of Heist.

Open Exhibits is on the road in October and November. There are presentations and workshops planned on both coasts and in Europe. We’ll be at Association of Science- Technology Center’s (ASTC) annual conference in Baltimore, the British Museum in London, and at The Tech Museum in San Jose. We will have one of our MT55 Platform Multitouch Tables at the British Museum if you want to check it out.

Work has begun on a new version of our most downloaded software module, the multitouch-enabled Collection Viewer. We’ve posted preliminary designs and have explained the new features that will become available in the new version.

Open Exhibits surpassed 10,000 software downloads last month and our community now has over 1,700 members. If you haven’t already done so, please join us. We are looking forward to an eventful second year.

Just last week week in Tech Crunch (Video: Kinect-Controlled Gigapixel Image Exploration) we saw an installation at the University of Lincoln in the UK in which visitors interact with gigapixel photographs.  The installation was developed by Sam Cox who used our Open Exhibits TUIO Kinect and Gigapixel Viewer module. He added the ability for visitors to “step switch” between gigapixel scenes. He also added ambient sound and the ability to print zoomed in scenes. Check out the video below.
You can learn more about this installation on the Gigalinc website.

Yesterday we came across an interesting three-screen kiosk installation developed by the Spinifex Group for the Sydney Theatre Company. They used GestureWorks and FDT to develop an Adobe AIR desktop application which allows visitors to learn how the Sydney Theatre Company is reducing their carbon footprint. You can learn more about this installation and see a video of it in action on Karkaris.com.

We’re moving! Six years (in New Mexico) and two studio spaces later, Ideum is on the move again. This time we are moving into a brand new building (still in Corrales) where will consolidate all of the things we do. We will have more space for our Web and custom exhibit development teams. We will also have expanded space for hardware and software prototyping; a lab! We’ll also have a new space for multitouch table assembly, testing, and shipping.

The new building also means more space for our GestureWorks team. Expect a few big announcements concerning the GestureWorks framework later this fall. Here are some of pictures of the space. There are more on our Flickr pages.

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.

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.

You can learn more about the table on our MT55 Pro product page.