Jeff Winkworth’s IMM Blog

Tuesday’s Multimedia Pioneering class found Wayne MacPhail, a social media consultant, arrive to discuss Social Media and the DIY community. My first impression was “cool laptop case.” I didn’t get a full glimpse of it, so I’m not sure if there was bumper stickers, or just one image, but it looked neat. I also immediately noticed how this was an actual “presentation” and not just someone talking about their profession.

The first thing he did was define “web 2.0″ for he class as nothing more than a marketing term. Its about time an “industry insider” actually admitted this point. I’ve heard countless “professionals” toss this term around and lost of people I know who are less-computer savvy think of it as a new technology. Wayne defined web 2.0 as follows:

• encourage community & collabaration
• shared content creation
• focus on a single task
• clean, clear interface,
• supports tagging / bookmarking
• moves data and apps from desktop to web

The last point is one I found interesting; for years people were using desktop applications, and around 2002-2004 there began a shift to move desktop apps to web interfaces (currently I am writing this blog post in google docs, and once all my thoughts are organized I will paste the contents into wordpress). In the last year or so however there have been numerous attempts to bring web-based applications back to the desktop. In particular, Wayne seems very hyped about Adobe AIR, a technology that I like, but at the same time have noticed one or two pitfalls with (the lack of threading support that a language such as c++ or Java can utilize proved to be a major problem for my client project last semester). When I asked him his thoughts on this trend, he stated that “different tools can get used for different reasons” and that both technologies can co-exist. While I agree with this sentiment (I am currently not using my personal computer, hence the use of google docs and not Microsoft Word), I find this contradictory with Dan the Man’s “Mutlimedia Pioneering is more than just taking something that already exists and modifying it” stance.

Wayne then gave us a quick rundown of web 2.0 technologies such as tagging (he cited an example of how social norms dictate how things are labeled: Photos from the New Orleans Hurricane are easier to find when tagged as “Katrina”), del.icio.us, rss, and “embed code” (which allow less-savvy computer users easily update their websites with muliimedia. He also broke down some “social rules”:

you dont use a social network, you become a part of it

If you are a company trying to “cash in” on a social network, you will fail if you are not actually a part of the community and instead just try to force your product down people’s throats.

contribution is participation

This goes back to the first point; If you don’t contribute to the community, then you really aren’t a part of the community, regardless of you membership.

social media encourages engagement & evangelism

Wayne cited an example of a group of sheep eating grass; if one farmer is a douchebag then he can let his sheep destroy the entire field, whereas if everyone does their part for the “common good” then the community lives on.

social media:

• is local first
• is viral
• is granular
• is a conversation, not a broadcast
• is mobile
• wants to be free

He also discussed many 2.0 technologies. One that Wayne was very passionate about and kept returning to was Twitter, and kept telling us how wonderful and fascinating the twitter experience is for anyone not involved (for those not aware, the idea is that anyone can know what you are thinking at any time). Well, a quick search through Wayne’s archives found some gems from before and after he spoke to us. I would never want to get involved with something that ARCHIVES your thoughts for all to see. I also would think there would be a problem of professionalism when you rant and rave about this that and the other thing on a public forum. Additionally, didn’t we have a speaker last week in Andrew’s Project Management class who spent a good deal of time slamming the maturity level of most Twitter users?

Finaly, Wayne briefly touched upon some of the following technologies:

• iPhone SDK
• Flash on iPhone
• Android
• Sprout – WYSIWYG editor for flash
• ning, toolkit for “creating facebook”
• jaiku – “social life feed”
• Mogulus – a real time web based tv studio for creating live web tv shows.

He also touched upon the current Facebook Beacon controversy, something I have been following since about December. Its good to see that someone other than myself is concerned about Facebook’s pitfalls.

Wayne was a very engaging speaker, but I felt he left me very confused in the end. Wayne does not appear to even have his own website, and instead jumps on every social media bandwagon out there (a quick google only came up with his name attached to social media sites). While his argument is that in this day and age community is everything, personally and professionally I do not seen any forseeable future where an IT professional would not have a web site, if not even to just store links to all of his social media communities. We also mentioned “not becoming a slut to social media” which, to me, he very clearly is.

Additionally, I am curious when and if there will ever be any form of “social network convergence” where you can keep everything together in one place; right now I find alot of these social media places redundant, and full of redundant information. I assumed the world wide web and in particular “web 2.0″ was supposed to be about ease of use. Right now everyone puts all their photos on flickr, bookmarks on del.ico.us, video on youtube, and status on twitter, and then puts all that information AGAIN on their facebook or myspace anyways.

That’s one of the reasons I have never got much into the whole “social community” trend. I post on applicable message boards, I have a facebook account, and I rate films on IMDB. That’s about it. Perhaps its because I have always had a programming background; if I ever required somewhere to store my photos, I could just write a photo album script and place it on my server and tweak it to my own needs. If i needed a blog, I could install wordpress on to my own server, and not have to worry about Facebook or myspace slowing down to a crawl during peak hours.

Finally, here is a video of Wayne’s more or less talking about the same sorts of things to another group of people I am sure he talked about on Twitter afterwards.

I was browsing the web today and found this (older) clip from TED 2006 where Sir Ken Robinson discussing the lack of creativity in schools. I agree with a lot mentioned, and felt this relates well to IMM, and in particular Multimedia Pioneering and our ongoing speaker/field trip series. I’m sure some people have seen this before, but its an engaging discussion on our current education system.

Our story begins on a Friday morning (October 12th, for those keeping score) at 10am. After feeling ill for the past week, Our hero (myself) makes his way to Sheridan College to meet Heather in the parking lot in an attempt to save the environment one day at a time (read: carpooling to downtown T.O.). After a few minutes of “Parking Lot Hide and seek” we eventually meet up and are on are way!

Once we make our way to Adelaide Street (for 10:45, the tour starts at 11), we quickly realize that this is going to require some work to pull off. We circle downtown Toronto for about 10 minutes searching for #317 before deciding to park in a lot and continue our Journey on foot. We find a spot and high five each other in celebration, only to discover that Kilian & her merry band of travelers have decided to pounce on that spot before we can. At least we’re not alone any more.

While finding a spot elsewhere in the lot, “Team (an)Drew” says Hello as they appear, and instantly disappear. We pay the happy man in the booth (I assume he’s happy because he’s making a living charging people $3 per half-hour for parking) and the five of us (Heather, Brook, Karen, Kilian & myself) begin our eastbound trek to GestureTek.

After 5-10 minutes of hiking, we realize that due to the building numbers becoming further and further from 317 we are most likely heading the wrong way. We encounter an unknown passerby who as we pass him says “You appear to be lost!” Not only is he willing to help us out, but he knows exactly where GestureTek is. Indeed, we were traveling in the wrong direction.

It turns out that GestureTek’s offices were literally on the west side of the parking lot. Our bad. As we enter the building (which appears to be under renovation; similar to the hotel in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York) I expected to be hit by swinging paint cans or trip over strategically placed micro machines. My worries were soon gone once the elevator opened and we journeyed to the ninth floor.

We arrive and are quickly ushered into the back room of the GestureTek offices. It appears that we have arrived late, as Vincent John Vincent (President/Founder) is busy showing off his company’s neat toys.

We start with a videogame, which utilizes green screen technology. As we arrived late, I did not manage to catch all the details, but the camera seems to recognize your image from the green screen and put you right into the game. As you move around (either walking, or by using gestures such as waving your arms) the camera picks up your movements and changes the output of the game. Interestingly, this is similar to technology used by Weather Services International, or more specifically, TV Weather Men/Women.

Vincent also cited some examples of television shows using primitive versions of this technology: One game show for Nickelodeon involved players running through a virtual obstacle course which was nothing more than a 30′x30′ wall, with some platforms, staircases, and ladders (all covered in green), and the difficulties would appear on screen. While he could not remember the name, some quick searching revealed it was Nick Arcade, a 1992 videogame-themed children’s game show. What is interesting about this is that while the technology has been around for that long (and obviously longer in the case of TV weather persons), it is still not readily available to the public, nor has anyone found a popular “personal use” application for this stuff yet.

We got a chance to play with their GestureFX technology, which are different renditions of the same hardware: GroundFX, TableFX & WallFX all work similarly, it just depends on where the cameras are positioned (on the ceiling looking down, on a projector looking at a wall, etc) and what the output device is (a screen facing up, a projected image, etc). The Interactive floor uses IR, and is designed to ignore the projected image and only pick up the differences (such as hand movement, or foot movement). What’s neat is that most of the applications written were used in Flash (see video).

I find it interesting that the main example used for the interactive table is Pong. It appears that civilization peaked in 1972.

GestureTek’s Newest venture is GestureTek Mobile, which incorporates movement detection into cellphone cameras. It allows the movement of the phone to be used similarly to a wii controller. I think this has some great potential for innovation in cell phone applications & games. You could use the phone as a controller instead of a straightforward input device.

We then ended our journey with a trip back to Oakville, where a lunch at Kelseys (where a hero did not have to wait an hour for his food for the first time ever) and Flash ActionScript review and learning was in abundance.

Finally, here are a few more links associated with Gesture Technology:

• Handy future for gesture sensor
• Gesture Glove Not Science Fiction