Flash

GestureWorks and GestureKey Featured in TechCrunch

Last week, the popular tech blog, TechCrunch posted an article on GestureWorks including a review of the new GestureWorks Core and GestureKey multitouch utility app for Windows 8. Ideum has been developing the GestureWorks multitouch framework since 2009.

The author, Alex Williams met us the Blur conference and shot some video of GestureWorks in action as well. You can read the full article on the TechCrunch website: Ideum’s GestureWorks Platform Will Let Developers Create Complex Gestures For Ultrabooks Apps. 

GestureWorks and Open Exhibits – New Releases

Three and a half years ago we first launched GestureWorks, a fledgling multitouch framework for ActionScript. Tomorrow, GestureWorks 3.5 will be released with a series of new features including 75 built-in user interface elements and software modules. These customizable elements and modules are written in the Creative Mark-up Language (CML). We developed CML as a standard for defining object creation, management and interaction. 

GestureWorks 3.5 is fully compatible with the  Windows 8 operating system, which will be released next week. GestureWorks 3.5  built applications work with Windows 7, Windows 8 or devices that support TUIO touch events. GestureWorks built applications have been developed for touch-tables, wall, kiosks, desktop computers, tables, mobile phones, and even embedded devices. We include a lifetime license of GestureWorks with our multitouch tables and our Presenter Touch Wall. 

In addition, tomorrow (October 18)  is a big day for our Open Exhibits educational software and community site initiative. The Open Exhibits software framework will be updated to version 2.5. A new Open Exhibits player will be released, making it easier for non-programmers to develop interactive multitouch and multiuser exhibits. Open Exhibits also has software to assist with the development of Arduino and motion-recognition exhibits.  Open Exhibits is free to museums, nonprofits, and educational organizations. 

In addition, there will be more changes to the Open Exhibits community Website. We are redesigning the front page and we’ve expanded our Getting Started guides and tutorials. Other recent changes include, expanding our Papers section and a new 3-part blog post on creating motion recognition exhibits with Microsoft Kinect. 

Welcome to Ideum Labs

If you’ve read Ideum Blog and you’ve been keeping up with GestureWorks and Open Exhibits, you know that we’re fast moving and productive group. The unfortunate thing about being this productive is that we often don’t get the chance to share all the cool ideas, experiments, and discoveries we’ve made along the way.

Enter Ideum Labs, our new Tumblr blog. Labs was conceived as a high output, low production value home for Ideum and GestureWorks Staff to share raw ideas, UX experiments, project snippets, random acts of science, and interesting HCI + multitouch news.

What have we shared thus far? How about wood-paneled multitouch tables, unpainted touch walls, multitouch solitaire (a la Windows XP), Windows 8 beta, and multitouch Van Gogh.

Learn more about Ideum Labs at Multitouch-Labs.tumblr.com, or read all the Labs posts on the Ideum facebook page.

GestureWorks and Touch Revolution at CES 2012

GestureWorks built software will be showcased in the Touch Revolution booth at CES 2012 in Las Vegas in January. GestureWorks is our own commercial multitouch authoring framework. If you’re at CES stop by the booth and check out our software and Touch Revolution’s multitouch displays.The Touch Revolution booth will be located at South 1 -20248. Last year, we showed off our multitouch Asteroids game (see below). This year we will have a new demo to show.

You can purchase GestureWorks bundled with the Touch Revolution 21.5″ TRū™ Touch Monitor in the TouchRev store.

GestureWorks 3 Release Next Week: Good News for Flash Developers

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.

Open Exhibits, Year Two

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.

New Video for the MT55 Pro Multitouch Table

We’ve recently updated our video for the MT55 Pro multitouch table. There is new footage showing table custom colors: red and opal green. We also added some footage showing Tune Grid our multitouch music sequencer application built with Gestureworks.

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

Tune Grid Multitouch Audio Sequencer – Now Playing

Tune Grid is a 16-step multitouch audio sequencer built with GestureWorks. It allows multiple users to create harmonic rhythms, or play sequences of notes using multitouch input. We originally conceived of the idea with our friends at the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum, after seeing Andre Michelle’s ToneMatrix web application.

Tune Grid now comes standard on every Ideum multitouch table. It’s a fun multi-user sound application that does a great job showing off the integrated Bose audio system found in the MT55 Pro. Below is a video showing Tune Grid in action on the MT55 Pro multitouch table. We’d love to hear your feedback.

NASA Space Weather Viewer in the Google Android Market

The NASA Space Weather Viewer is now available in the Google Android Market. You can download it here. Becoming a Google Developer and posting the app to the market was very simple process.

Back in November, I shared some of the difficulties we encountered developing and publishing the iOS version of the application. (By the way, I still believe, long term Apple will have difficulties with their model, but certainly Android and the iPad alternatives have stumbled quite a bit with the Honeycomb release.) Still, in the end the iOS version has been very successful (see: Over 100K Downloads for NASA Space Weather iPhone App in March).

Below is a video we made showing the NASA Space Weather Viewer running on Samsung Galaxy tablet and Android phone. The video is also embedded in app listing the Android Market.  A simple, but smart feature for previewing apps in the market.

We will let you know how the Space Weather app does in the Android Market and if we see anything like the success we’ve had in the iTunes Store.

Try the NASA Space Weather Android App

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.

If you’re looking for more information about the Apple iOS version and source code, see our last blog post on that version, “Over 100K Downloads for NASA Space Weather iPhone App in March.”