An amazing 2D physics game

Visit Kloonigames web site and enjoy a very simple but effective 2D physics game. It's perfect for children (and those not so child...)

See a fantastic video of it with a tablet pc (although a tablet is not required to play with it):

Another nice look to the future - UMPC

Uhmm... again, a refreshing new look to what Ultra Mobile technology will be able to offer us in a near future ...

Microsoft Surface - selling old things as new ones

Microsoft is now presenting Microsoft Surface. The web site is really beautiful, the videos fantastic, the marketing impressive... as usual. However, the product they show is not new. In previous posts you can see similar products.

But it is always interesting to see how Microsoft is able to get previous ideas, remake them, and sell them in a way they can reach everyone. It's Microsoft, and one of the advantages is that thanks to them the ones like me, who love these new interaction devices, are going to have more chances to purchase these products.

Explore the Microsoft Surface website, it's very interesting.

Here, some videos of this 'new' product. Thanks again to Jordi Camarasa for this information.


Microsoft Surface Computing - The Possibilities



Details Of MS Surface

Open - A wonderful word ...

I really enjoy the adjective open. When applied to computer science topics is something that only offers advantages.

I'm not going to describe here the good things we have in open source solutions, and how incredible to visit sourceforge is in order to get almost everything you need but with an open license and with source code.

Recently, I'm enjoying with another application of the world open to lecturing. A fantastic example is the MIT. They have opened almost all the material they use in their courses, and believe me, they are worthwhile (go here). They have incredible lectures notes and even videos. I personally love the videos you can follow in subjects like Introduction to Algorithms. They are very useful and interesting.

Visit and enjoy the MIT OpenCourseWare and take the most of it !

A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces

Although it is something not new, I show you a video of a morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces presented by Volker Blanz and Thomas Vetter. You can see more information of their work at here and here.

Pay attention to the last part of the video, when this technique is applied to real images, being able to reconstruct the head and finally being able to modify the original image. The results are much better that the classical 2D image warping techniques.

Another video about multi-touch screens

I have found another excellent video on multi-touch screens (thanks to Jordi Camarasa), where Jeff Han and Phil Davidson (see their website) demonstrate this technology is really very useful.

Enjoy it.

Tangible user interfaces and music

The Music Technology Group (Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona) specializes in audio processing technologies and their music and multimedia applications.

Among several research projects, I have found a very interesting one: reactable (see http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/)

reactable, as you can see in the following videos, is characterized by the use of a Tangible User Interface in the production of sounds and music.







Don't lose the opportunity to test this software. It's open source. You can get it here.

At reactable website, there's also a fantastic collection of similar projects, all with videos ready to be enjoyed. See them here.

Intelligent interfaces in CAD

Have you ever worked with a 3D CAD system ? It is really time consuming... In order to get some results, you need a lot of time.

New AI techniques can provide very interesting results to this problem. A solution can be the use of handwork or sketches as input in those systems. The problem is however, how can these sketches be transformed into technical and accurate geometry.

GIDeS++ is a good example. From the authors we can read the following:

With the advent of new interaction techniques and supporting hardware we should look beyond traditional WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers) interfaces. Mouse and keyboard are by far the most widespread input devices and have been around for a good many years. However, before these, designers have been using pen and paper for an even longer period. GIDeS++ is a tool that adopts the paper-and-pencil metaphor to bridge the gap between designers’ and modellers’ innate ability at freehand drawing and the more elaborate and structured methods required by traditional CAD systems. GIDeS++ offers handwriting recognition for both gestures and measures, combined speech recognition as an alternative to floating toolbars and a set of innovative, simple and efficient tools that allow for quick prototyping and modification of three-dimensional shapes.

In the following video, a bit long but very interesting, you can see the product in action:



You can get more information of this system here. In this website, you can enjoy with more videos and even to download the product itself. Inevo is the company behind.

Motion capture as a 3D modeling tool

Recently, via Gizmodo (thanks to Ignacio Bellver for the link), we were able to see an amazing work from a sweedish group called FRONT.

The idea is quite simple and not new, but perfectly undertaken. Using 3D motion capture, it is possible to design 'in situ' a collection of new furnitures. After this process, real size models are generated (using stereolithography).

More information can be found at Dexigner web site here.

Finally the link to this impressive demonstration of the process:

Virtualizing my 'chaotic' physical desk

How is your physical desk ? I mean your everyday work table... In my case, oops. A really messy one.

So, now, imagine your computer desktop with an almost identical interface of the one you use in the 'real' world.

See what I'm talking about in the following video:



You can see more information of this new interface in its original website here. (Thanks to David Siñuela for this link).

Do you see what I mean ? I'm not quite sure this is going to help my chaotic way to organize my life :) But, seriously, it's a fantastic example of what we will have as our new desktop.