Here at Ideum labs, we’ve been hard at work developing a new Linux driver for our MT Series multitouch tables and displays.
Beginning in March, Linux users and developers will be able to take full advantage of the gesture-driven, social features of MT55 Pro table, MT55 Platform table, and the new MT65 Presenter wall display with native multitouch and GestureWorks support for applications deployed in Ubuntu.
Running multitouch applications on our devices will be plug and play. Touch data from our driver will be exposed to both the TUIO protocol and by Linux’s native multitouch protocol. In the future, we plan to expand support to include the Linux X11 API’s, bringing full compatibility to both the Qt and GTK+ (Gimp toolkit) frameworks.
There is good news for Linux ActionScript developers as well. GestureWorks 3 authoring environment is compatible with several IDE’s in Linux, including Flash Builder 4. 5, FDT, and OSFlash.
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Ideum is fortunate to work with a network of some of the best multitouch designers and developers in the world. This holiday season, we are particularly thankful for our Developer Partners.
We’d love to program every computer-based exhibit that comes our way, but we don’t always have the capacity. In those situations, our partners are an integral component to the success of the MT55 multitouch table, and the satisfaction of our clients.
If you are searching for a firm to design and develop your next multi-touch application or interactive exhibit, we highly recommend contacting one of our partners. To view a list of our partners, and recent installations please visit our Partner Page.
Interested in becoming a partner? The Ideum Developer Partner Program allows you to offer your clients the best multitouch tables available with exclusive hardware discounts, free software, marketing opportunities and other benefits. If you would like to apply, please contact us.
Next Tuesday we will be release a new version of GestureWorks, our multitouch framework for ActionScript. GestureWorks 3 is an entirely new build, we started over and rebuilt it from scratch.
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.
Tomorrow, I’m participating in a session entitled, Open Source for Museums: The Experiment Continues at the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual conference. This is a follow up to a session to one I was involved in two years ago. I’m representing the Open Exhibits software initiative. Here’s the description for the session:
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.
We’ve just completed our first release of the Android version of the NASA Space Weather Media Viewer. Like the version we developed last fall for the Apple iPhone & iPod, the Space Weather Viewer for Android features near-real-time imagery from a wide variety of NASA missions, as well as video interviews with prominent scientists.
The new Android version will be available in the Google Android Market Place and on the Amazon App Store later this month.
If you’d like to get a sneak peak of this new NASA app, you can download the alpha version right here: NASASpaceViewer.apk (4.6 mb) Update: May 31: It’s now live in the Google Market Place: NASA Space Weather Viewer
The NASA Space Weather Viewer is now available in the Google Android Market. You can download it here.
It requires Android 2.2 or greater and Adobe AIR 2.6. We’ve run it with Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” and it runs great.
The app is optimized for phones or tablets and we’ve tested it on the following devices: HTC EVO, Motorola Xoom, Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy Tablet, and the Samsung Galaxy Epic. Please let us know what you think. We will be making the source code for this Android app later this summer.
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.
As we announced yesterday, we recently partnered with Touch Revolution to create a series of GestureWorks applications for their hardware demos. We’ve been lucky enough the past few weeks to get to play around with the new 21.5″ TRū Touch monitors, which Touch Revolution will be debuting at CES. The TRū Touch monitors are full HD (1920 x 1080), bezel-less, and, like these concept screens, you can tilt them to horizontal angles to make tasks like typing and drawing easier.
We’ve been testing our apps for CES on the TRū Touch, including an amazing gigapixel image viewer that allows you to zoom in close enough to see rock climbers on El Capitan in Yosemite and a 3D object viewer, but so far the hands-down favorite has been Astrotouch, our multitouch version of Asteroids.
The game has a series of old school-style arcade controls at the bottom, and we’ve been nothing but impressed with the screen’s responsiveness and accuracy. Some of the other hardware we had in-house had trouble with ghost points on the controls, but the TRū Touch screen handled it flawlessly every time.
Check out the video above for a sneak peek at the new Touch Revolution hardware, and be sure to visit us at CES. We’ll be at the Touch Revolution Booth, #21755, South Hall Lower Level with a full set of great multitouch applications on display and free gesture illustration posters to give away.
This week we put together a quick test using QR Codes to extend a multitouch exhibit that we developed last year. QR Codes are an easy way to incorporate a mobile exhibit component that allows visitors to view and share more information about exhibit objects or media items. Any user with a smartphone can use a barcode scanning app to scan a QR code, which can then navigate to websites, source materials, teacher guides, commenting; basically, the possibilities are endless. Users can also choose to share the link with friends via social networking sites or email.
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.
We’ve been mighty busy around here with the Open Exhibits initial software release and site relaunch just around the corner (coming November 15), but we have found time for other important and related work.
We’ve just posted a call for participation in our third annual Computer-Based Exhibits in Museum Survey on the Open Exhibits Website. We’ve managed to have over 250 respondents to the last two surveys, representing hundreds of museums all over the world. You can see the previous survey results on the Open Exhibits website. We plan to release the survey results in early December. Those who complete the survey will be able to see the results first.
Also, earlier in the week, we released an alpha build of Open API, a program that allows developers to create a public API of a collection or any other MySQL database. This is not to be confused with the larger release of Open Exhibits core in November, which is a multitouch-enabled Flash and Flex-based software (Open API is built using Ruby), but we do plan on releasing other types of software modules that can help museums develop computer-based exhibits. At the moment, only a handful of museums have open APIs for their collections.
You can read the full post on Open API on the Open Exhibits blog.
We’re hiring! Ideally we’re looking for someone with Flash/Flex experience who’s knowledgable and curious about art, science and history. Some graphic design or media production chops don’t hurt either, and non-profit or museum experience would be an added bonus. Still, we’re flexible and mainly looking for a good developer that works well in a team environment and doesn’t mind a fast-paced and rapidly changing workflow. Position includes benefits and the occasional awesome snack.
Here at Ideum labs, we’ve been hard at work developing a new Linux driver for our MT Series multitouch tables and displays.
Tomorrow, I’m participating in a session entitled, 
