We’ve added another tutorial to the GestureWorks site that covers how to build a multitouch Google Map application from start to finish. One of the more complex tutorials, it extends the Google Maps API, allowing the user to scale, rotate and “fly to” specific areas. The tutorial also describes how to use our 3-D tilt gestures take advantage of Google Maps’ 3-D features, and how to set map properties within the application.

We’ve built a few of these applications for clients, and look forward to seeing other variations on the Google Maps application as multitouch becomes more and more common. Next week our developer showcase launches. If you’ve built an app using GestureWorks and want it to be considered for the showcase, contact us.

I just posted a case study on the ExhibitFiles website. It examines the L.A. Zone multitouch table exhibit that we developed with California Science Center and details some of the design considerations we encountered in putting this multi-user exhibit together. You can read the complete case study here.

This custom exhibit was built using Adobe Flash with our Gestureworks multitouch framework and runs on our MT-50 multitouch table. There’s also more information about this exhibit on our portfolio page: “Visitors Explore Los Angeles in a Google Maps and Flickr Mashup.“

Update May 14, 2010: Adobe has recently corrected this problem and is now properly attributing our icons.

Last month, we blogged about the GestureWorks Open Source Gesture Library and released a series of illustrations showing all of our supported multitouch gestures. We released these illustrations using a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. We are happy to make these illustrations available to the community. We simply ask that when they are used, we are attributed.

Today, at the FITC 2010 conference in Amsterdam, several of our illustrations popped up, apparently unattributed, in a presentation by Adobe about multitouch. To be fair, we only saw the presentation online, so perhaps we were attributed “verbally” during the conference?

We are quite flattered that Adobe has adopted our multitouch gesture illustrations. Perhaps in a couple of years, as their support for gestures improves, they’ll be able to use the complete set .

While we were looking at the presentation online, another slide caught our interest.

Maybe this slide illustrates Adobe’s commitment to multitouch?

To see the entire Adobe presentation, visit the Flash blog. And don’t forget to check out our True Multitouch in Flash video to see how GestureWorks compares to Adobe’s built-in support for multitouch.

We just learned that the KQED Quest website won the Best Use of Web 2.0 / New Media Award at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival.  We worked closely with the KQED Quest team to develop this site, which makes extensive use of Google Maps and Flickr photos “mashed” into visually rich map applications.

You can visit the KQED Quest Website or learn more about the project on the Ideum portfolio site. Other finalists in the category were Expedition: Blue Planet, Save Our Seas, and Wild Earth.

The public alpha for RSS Mixer has now been up for a week. The site started out with around 18,000 feeds in the directory. These were added over the last year, since the launch of the initial prototype last summer. The count now stands at 24,000–a relatively large increase for our first week. This total number of feeds translates into nearly 3 million posts in the RSS Mixer directory.

A mention in Mashable! (RSS Mixer Makes Mashup Easier), along with a number of mentions in China (most notably Web Share 2.0) and a post in a Spanish language blog (Geeks Room) among others–helped add nearly 3,000 feeds in just 24 hours. Things have slowed down a bit since, but we are still serving up a lot of pages and supporting an ever-increasing number of widgets and feeds.

When the prototype site went live last year, we were swamped and the site was crushed by spikes in traffic. This time around the structure of the application and the database is much improved.  Not only can we handle the load, the time it takes to deliver pages is vastly improved. Take a look at the chart below from Google Crawl stats. This shows how Googlebot (which indexes pages) has spidered the RSS Mixer site over the last 90 days. You’ll notice as the Alpha site replaced the prototype there is a huge spike in activity, as new pages are added to Google. Check out the bottom graph and you’ll see the download time fall off the chart!

This drop-off shows the performance improvement in RSS Mixer. Of course, if we continue to add 6,000 feeds and approximately 750,000 post every week–we’ll have to revisit our site structure in the coming months.

A new and improved version of  KQED’s QUEST Website, which we helped to develop, is now live. QUEST is an ambitious project utilizing all of KQED’s platforms to not only broadcast science and nature programming, but to also build a community supporting further exploration in the area. Ideum worked with KQED to design a website promoting community participation via an interactive mashup-driven website.

The most recent version of QUEST includes a number of improvements intended to simplify the navigation of the site’s ever-expanding content. With nearly 100 television broadcasts and around 65 online radio broadcasts, the initial sort features (time based) became difficult to use. The radio/television tab can now be filtered by topic and type and the main map features the latest five items instead of search features.

You’ll also notice that blog posts are now displayed as items on the main site’s map – a feature we were able to implement using data from the geopress plugin for WordPress. This feature means that all of KQED’s great content can now be available within the Google Map Mashup. Since the purpose of KQED QUEST is to explore “the stories behind Bay Area science, nature and environmental issues,” this addition makes perfect sense. Take a look at the KQED site or check out  KQED Quest in our portfolio to learn more.

Last July, we posted a prototype Web application, RSS Mixer that allowed anonymous visitors to mix RSS (and Atom) feeds together. Back then the page got a lot of notice. There was a blog post from Mashable, one from CNET’s Webware, a brief article in Brazil’s largest newspaper, and literally hundreds of other links from all over the world. The prototype site continues to get traffic and it will surpass 5,000 user-generated mixes and added 10,000 feeds any day now.

Next month, we’ll be releasing a new version of RSS Mixer. The alpha version will still allow for anonymous mixing, but registered (free) users will be able save and edit their mixes. A new and vastly improved feed mixer will update RSS and Atom feeds quickly, pulling images and other rich media. A number of other improvements including enhanced language support, full search, tagging, feed statistics and ranking, and many others will all be part of the package. We will announce the release date in early February. Update: We will be releasing the new version of RSS Mixer this summer.

Today’s Albuquerque Journal has a story about Ideum in the business section. The article provides some background on our company and highlights our move from California. You can read the web version on the ABQJournal online, the article is entitled, A Warm Climate.

Last week I was in Tucson, Arizona as part of the Astronomy from the Ground Up initiative. This NSF-sponsored project involves the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Association of Science-Technology Centers, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. Ideum is working with all of the partners to help build an online community and create some online materials and experiences for informal educators. We spent part of the day Thursday trying out some outdoor astronomy activities at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

My time was somewhat limited, but I did get a chance to look around the museum and take some pictures. The place is certainly unique. It touts itself as a zoo, natural history museum and botanical garden, and it does do a pretty good job teaching visitors about the natural wonders of this part of the world. The museum is located on 98 acres in the hills just outside of Tucson.

The desert was in bloom when we were there or perhaps just past, but regardless the demonstration gardens were absolutely beautiful.

The museum was quite crowded the day we were there. An employee told me it was the end of the busy season. It was about 90° F the day we visited, so it is easy to see why attendance in the summer might be down. According to their FAQ the highest recorded temperature at the museum was 117° F.

The museum recommends about 2 to 3 hours to look around, unfortunately I was only able to spend about half that amount of time exploring. I walked through some of various demonstration gardens. In the mountain woodlands area, they have a mountain lion “exhibit.” While, I must admit I have mixed emotions when I see large animals in captivity, it was still quite fascinating to be able to see this amazing cat so close.

In the desert grasslands area I got to check out some Black-tailed Prairie Dogs, very cool.

The museum is full of suprises they have a mineral gallery, a collection of reptiles and invertebrates, an impressive hummingbird aviary, and much more. All in all it was a nice mix of live animals, beautiful demonstration gardens, and other types of exhibits. It was a great, brief introduction to the Sonoran Desert.