Connecting the iPhone to the multitouch table. You can see photos and learn more about the event at British Museum on the Open Exhibits blog.

On November 15th, we’ll be at The Tech Museum in San Jose participating in the Interfaces for the New Decade – Conference and Gallery Opening. You can get tickets for the day long event or you can come by the free evening reception. We will be demoing the Heist software project,which allows visitors to “steal” digital objects from a multitouch table using their mobile devices. We will also have a demo of our Open Exhibits Gigapixel Viewer controlled by a Microsoft Kinect.  If you’re in the Bay Area and want to check out our MT55 Platform multitouch table we will have one at the Tech.

A ceramic head from Guatemala, traced to the Postclassic Mayan times (AD 100-1697)

On December 2nd, we’ll be at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology on the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque.   We will be running Heist software on the Maxwell’s MT55 Pro multitouch table. The touch table will show digital objects from the “Look Close See Far: A Cultural Portrait of the Maya” exhibit which features objects the Maxwell’s Mayan collection. The event runs from 4 to 6:30 PM. You can learn more on the Maxwell site, look under Events. The Maxwell Museum is one of our museum partners for the Open Exhibits project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Join the project leads of Pachyderm, Omeka, CollectionSpace and Open Exhibits for an introduction to open source and a frank discussion of the promises and potential pitfalls of open source software in the museum world. Learn about the origin and forms of the open source software movement and about the history of its application in the museums.

Hope to see some of you tomorrow! Bright and early, it is a 9AM session.

Open Exhibits has just passed 4,000 software downloads! If you’re not a programmer, or you haven’t downloaded the code, yet – we thought we’d give you an idea of what you may be missing.

This video demonstrates several of the free multitouch software modules already posted on the Open Exhibits site. These modules are designed to simplify Flash and ActionScript exhibit development, and many are compatible with the Microsoft Kinect (using MT-Kinect). The source code for every module shown in the video can be downloaded today on the Open Exhibits Software page.

We demonstrated the software on the TRu Touch 21.5″ multitouch monitor from Touch Revolution and 3M M2256PW 22″ display.

Open Exhibits modules require Open Exhibits Core SDK (free for museums, non-profits, and educational use). The software modules can be used commercially with GestureWorks SDK.

We’ll continue to post videos as we release new software. If you have any comments or feedback, we’d love to hear from you.

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.

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.

Our free Kinect module works with Community Core Vision (CCV) software, an open source software package for computer vision. We’ve used this software in the past with various multitouch tables and other installations. Our Kinect module is a “directshow” source filter, a virtualized webcam device that reads data from the drivers released by OpenKinect.

Here’s a video showing the Kinect module working with other Open Exhibits software.

The Kinect module and the others are all free and open on the Open Exhibits website. The Open Exhibits core software is free for students, educators, nonprofits, and museums. (Commercial users can download a free GestureWorks trial.)  Add a $150 Kinect 3D Motion Controller to our software and you have a very cheap and flexible authoring solution.

There are photographs of the Kinect and Open Exhibits modules on the OE Flickr site.

This article is cross-posted on the Open Exhibits Website.In the video, the gigapixel image of El Capitán that appeared in the example was provided by xRez Studio. The cubic VR image of Chichen Itza was taken by Ideum back in 2005 and is part of the Traditions of the Sun project.

We built the tables and worked with Vancouver Aquarium back in the summer of 2009 to create the software. The report looks at the “general experience of the digital tables”, including the form factor, and then it takes a closer look at the applications.

The study shows, as Jeff points out in his post, that “not everything was a success with the tables, but they are, overall, successful.”  Considering the emergent nature of these types of exhibits, we were pleased to see that the study was generally very positive.

Still, some things didn’t work as well we would have liked. There were significant usability issues with the early version of the Collection Viewer.  I’m happy to report that many of the issues cited in the report have been fixed in the newer version of the Collection Viewer that is available on the Open Exhibits site.  We built in the ability to easily change some of the design parameters via XML. For example, button size and spacing can be modified by changing the XML. In addition, we remapped many of the gestures, so that the Collection Viewer objects respond better to visitor interaction. Still, some issues remain and we’ll be taking a closer look at this report and making additional changes.

Studies like this are incredibly valuable (and far too rare in the field).  As designers and developers, we can only learn so much through testing and observation in the studio.  The museum (or aquarium) setting and the sheer number and range of different visitors provides us with a new picture of the exhibit.  You can download and read the full report on the Open Exhibits website, Interactive Tables at the Vancouver Aquarium.

In addition to the new software release, we’ve also redesigned the GestureWorks website. The front page is now multitouch-enabled.  The support system and documentation areas of the website have been completely revamped, with an expanded FAQ, a new issue tracking system, and a comprehensive GestureWorks manual. We’ve also added Google Checkout to the options for payment in the store.

In addition, we’ve updated our popular gesture poster to reflect the gesture support in the new release. The poster and the gesture artwork are released under a Creative Commons Attribution – ShareAlike license.

You can download the Open Source Gesture Library poster and illustrations on the GestureWorks site.

We are, by just about any measure, off to a very fast start.  While Open Exhibits is a three-year exhibit software initiative, we know how hard it is to develop a community of practice and we understand that it takes time. Quickly releasing software and developing a site that allows our community to take root is the first step.

On the Open Exhibis site, you’ll find Open Exhibits Core software, which includes support for multitouch gestures within Adobe Flash and Flex. Along with the core, the first open source templates and modules are also available. These templates and modules will allow developers to easily create interactive exhibits. All of this software is free for museums, nonprofits, universities, students, and other educational organizations. (Commercial users of GestureWorks can also use the templates and modules and are encouraged to contribute.)

We reworked the EM Spectrum multitouch, multiuser exhibit that we developed with Adventure Science Center last year to include QR codes with links to Wikipedia entries for each area of the spectrum. Check out the video below to see the updated EM spectrum exhibit.

This experiment has proved useful enough that we’ve decided to add a QR Code generator to our Open Exhibits software modules. You’ll be able try these for yourself when the redesigned Open Exhibits site launches and the software is released on November 15th!  Open Exhibits core multitouch and multiuser software is free for educational use. All Open Exhibits modules are free for any user and they also work with the commercially available GestureWorks software framework.