Wayne Macphail

In our Multimedia Pioneering class, we invited Wayne MacPhail. He has been a print and online content producer for over 20 years. He has been a magazine editor and photographer, a newspaper feature writer and editor and, in 1991, founded and directed Southam Inc.'s InfoLab, a groundbreaking research and development studio for what was then Canada's largest newspaper chain. Our teacher Dan used to work for him.

During the presentation, he shared his experience in the past and he also talked about the future. Here, I am quoting his word: "We drive into the future using only our rear view, so the best way to predict the future is to invent it." Our teacher Dan is a inventor, maybe it's because he got the influence form him, maybe I should become a inventor too.

Nowadays, computer power double every 24 months, form 1980 to 2008, we have four million times more memory, it's a remarkable growth.

Wayne made some comparisons, digital vs film photography, desktop vs press publishing, Leds vs lights. Not long ago, Leds is slow power, low quality control and expensive. Now it become more reliable and soon become the trends. He thinks that the next innovation is the batteries.


When we are looking into the future, you are wrong and right. For example, Charles Babbage build an Analytical Engine in 1837. His idea is brilliant, but also wrong.

Three years ago, there is a movie "Minority Report", it's muti-touch computer makes lots of people lose their jaw, people are saying:"it's so amazing, how can it happen?" and "Holly crap, it's so cool." Now it's no big deal, GestureTek, Microsoft Surface, they all have multi-touch now. Even cell phone has multi-touch too--iPhone. We may expect the everything will be touch based in the next four to five years.

He also think the future is the wireless. We got to extends the idea in the whole different way.Winner are the people who innovates, it's our challenge.

3D without glasses

Have you ever watched 3D movie in theaters with glasses? Would it be great to be able to watch it at your home without glasses? The answer is YES, you can. And do you know that you can also watch it from your iPhone? Is it cool? In today's multimedia pioneering class, guest speaker James Hurley from SpatialView showed us their amazing 3D technology to make your dreams come true.

There are few products that James showed us in our class. Wazabee 3Dee is a 19 inch 3D LCD display, it plays some of the popular games on the market, such as "World of Warcraft" and "Call of Duty" in 3D.

Wazabee 3DeeFlctor is a 13.3 inch removable screen attachment for laptop. It has been named in top 10 hottest products of 2009 by the New York Post.

As for mobile, the company provides 3DeeShell, it is a protector case with lenses specific for iPhone which enables watching clips and playing games in 3D in the palm of your hand without the need for special glasses or an external display. In the class, James showed the 3D movie trailer of "Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)" using his iPhone, it looks real and I really like it.


How did they do it? James told us that they are using the technology called "autostereoscopy". pretty long word! Currently most common solutions are using lenticular lenses or parallax barrier. Basically each eye sees the screen at a slightly different angle, the barrier allows only specific image to be seen at specific angles.

Now comes the most important question as a flash developer, how do we create content? James explained that they provide plug-ins for tools such as Adobe Flash, Adobe After effect, 3DMax and Maya. In flash, we just go through standard flow to create content, at the end, we just need to set few variables, in the pop up windows, choose "require for 3D". You can download the 30 days trail from their site for free.

About the price, the LCD monitor is about $1000, the screen attachment is about $200 to $300, and the iphone shell is about$40 to $50 which is not so expensive to get. and it will be out spring this year. You should definitely get one. I might get the screen attachment for my laptop to play 3D game. And I high recommend Sheridan get the 3D monitor for each one of us in the IMM program.

To get more information about their 3D products, you can watch the interview with the CEO from geekbrief.tv in MacWorld 2009.

Actually, James is from the we developer background, he is currently on the 3D mobile development, he's quite enjoying it, shall we join their teem too? It sounds a really promising market to me.

From the research I have done, there are a great number of movies, advertisement and sports event being shot in 3D now. I believe that in the near future, the 3D movies which now only played in theaters will be transferred to DVD, so I can view them at home, yeah!

Links:

Spatial View company site
3D movie
3D game
3D term in wikipedia
New York time Article
Interview in MacWorld 2009

GestureTek visit

Last Friday, our class of sheridan IMM program had a great visit to GestureTek in Toronto. The president Vincent John Vincent show us around the amazing gesture control systems in which you can do interactivity using hand, body movement instead of mouse, keyboard, joystick or touch pad.

Vincent is also the co-founder of the company. He is a really smart guy who pioneered the idea that video camera with perfect interface computer interaction twenty year's ago, now GestureTek is the world's leader in computer vision technology. Their system can work with any devices: pc, public displays, kiosk, even mobile phones. And it works with any surface: panels, floors, tables, screen, even bar and counter space. Their interactive solutions for controlling computers, interacting with multimedia displays and playing games in a 3D virtual world have won international awards.

During the visit, Vincent showed us some of their systems: Illuminate, GestPoint(holoFrame, holoPoint, AirPoint), GestureXtreme, GestureFX, ScreenXtreme. Illuminate brought "Minority Report Style" interactivity to the real life. And their newest portable air point system makes the setup really easy, it can handle any lighting condition, control any display size from any distance. All you have to do is placing your finger above the control unit and the system will track your finger position.

What I like most is the ScreenXtreme, it creates the 3d virtual world by transporting your real time image to digital display, sign or advertisement, you can see yourself in screen interacting dynamically with on screen characters, your body motion control the program. It's really a powerful entertainment tool.


By the way, the system also works with mobile phone, their patented, award-winning EyeMobile Engine® is the world’s first motion-controlled user interface for mobile gaming and applications. I think it will be the future mobile device user interface.

Overall, I enjoyed the visit a lot, it really is a memorable experience. Those cutting edge innovations are unforgettable. I believe in the near future, you will see more and more of those systems on malls, hotels, hospitals, everywhere.

Tilt Emulator

Do you want to know what Flash can do for the apple iphone?
check out this link to see this really cool tilt simulator by crazy inventor Dan Zen.

QR code and mobile technology

In today's multimedia pioneering class, we had a guest speaker James Eberhardt . James is the partner of company named echomobile. There are lots of the things he is doing right now, IVR, SMS and iphone development. And he also teaches digital media in a college(sorry I did not get the name of it). James has done lots of the flash project, he is also regular speaker of flashinTo, the Toronto's largest flash user group.


Today's main topic is the two dimensional bar code, shot code, datamatrix and QR code. And QR code is the most popular one, it contains information in both vertical and horizontal directions, so it can contain much more information like address and URL than the traditional bar code. What is real cool is that there is a website which you can generate your own bar code. The picture above is what I generated for my blog. As you can see, QR code has a outline box which is the security area. And the three little squares on the corner are the registration areas which allows you to scan it on different angles and orientations.Is that convenience!

How does QR code relate to mobile/cell phone technology? While using a camera phone equipped with the reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone's browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. in Canada, QR code does not spread wide usage, only Nokia phone is pre-installed with QR code reader software. But in Japan, QR code is very popular, they are everywhere, QR code reader software is pre-installed on every phone. Our speaker thinks that it's because that Japan heads the way of the mobile technology and they also have the great amount of the cellphone usage. I would like to see one day in Canada, I can see QR code everywhere. I love to go shopping, when I see something I like, sometimes I will buy it, then after I found out it's not good enough, so I have to return it. Sometimes I will come back after I have done the research at home. It would be great if I can do some research right away so I can make the right decision.

For those without Nokia phone, currently there are three QR code readers on the market, keywa, shotcode and semacode readers. Jame also talked about a compromised way for those without the reader program, they can take the photo of the code, sent it as mms to the server, the sever decode it, then sent it back as a sms message.

James gave us an example of QR code usage. An Australia wine company put the bar code on every bottle of the wine. So they can collect their customer's physical location according to the QR code other than the IP address.

James also mentioned the most popular phone on the market now, iphone, the new generation of the smart phone. We can develop applications for iphone according to the gps location, access hardware(picture) or physical movement. To do that, you must be an apple licensed developer, and you can only sell your application on iTunes store. Other than iphone, James recommend another great developer phone, Nokia N95 which has GPS too. And it also support flash lite 3, which is a good news for flash developers. I just hope one day Apple will work with Adobe. He also talked a little bit about Blackberry. He think that blackberry won't be out because of the iphone because it is for business use only, not for fun.

Speaking of Flash lite, He said that he spend some time on it, but he can't sell it in Canada, then he moved away. Unfortunately, iphone doesn't support flash, as his personal point of view, the only future of Flash is flash running on iphone. I definitely hope to see that day coming soon.

Links:
QR Code
Definition from Wikipedia
wirelessnorth
Blog covering the Canadian mobile industry.
Kaywa
QR code Generator and Reader
flashinTo
The Toronto's largest flash user group.
cellphone news and forums
iPhone