Tim Stutts: ITP Project Blog

While presenting my midterm today, and discussing the difficulties of making the content uploader work for mobile phone, Shawn suggested a lo-fi solution of using an old school html image map or table, where a user could select regions of the map to specify picture placement. I built this mobile webpage prototype with a table with each cell notated according to the column and row. From this screen the user will eventually be able to title the image, write a comment, choose the location, and upload a camera phone picture onto a miniature screenshot of their map. The change will be reflected onto the server, so that after the uploading takes place, all users will be able to go to the more complex Processsing-based map on any desktop computer and view the image. This eliminates the need for a user to download a separate Mobile Processing of Flash Lite application onto their phone. View the prototype GUI on your cellphone:

LivelyHoodContentUploaderGUI

The website is in the early stages. Currently just a huge logo, couple sentences, and a link. Over the next few months this will be growing into living place for user-generated maps and related media, so keep checking back!
www.livelyhood.us

This is what I did for my Mobile Media Midterm.  The local Processing applet has the user click onto the screen where they will place a photo.  The applet then calls a PHP script, which moves the image onto a server, to be loaded into a web-based applet, which is visually identical to the one the local applet the machine of the user.  Right now it works fine, aside from the image coming out one solid color.  Here’s how:
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Press down the mouse, draw, release, and define the element!

- Each element takes on a custom color and thickness

- Trees appear bushy

- Cars and people move

http://itp.nyu.edu/~ts1200/NatureOfCode/Sketchytown9/ 

I’ve submitted the piece as an Installation Design under the Interactive Media Category for this year’s Adobe® Design Achievement Awards. Che-Wei has posted some pictures and also a functional download of the application for Mac OSX onto his blog:

http://cwwang.com/2007/10/28/grass/

More information on the contest can be found here:

http://adaaentry.com/

I thought I’d stop by to see if running Livelyhood on the One Laptop would be feasible. It seems like it would be a challenge using Sugar–a Fedora distribution of Linux that these computers ship with–since Java Processing doesn’t run in browser yet. Processing works fine both in the Firefox browser and as a development tool on other distributions of Linux that can be loaded onto the OLPC. Here I have loaded SimSuburbia in browser on an OLPC and it actually runs smoother than on a desktop PC, which is totally perplexing!:

More pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7461316@N08/sets/72157603968048162/

For those of you who have an OLPC or who are interested in them, check this out:

http://www.freeculturenyu.org/2008/02/15/olpc-jam-session/

NYU OLPC Jam Session
1pm-5pm, February 23rd 2008
721 Broadway @ Waverly
4th Floor - Room 442

What: It’s a Mobile Processing application–an add-on to LivelyHood–that allows the user to upload photos taken on their cellphone onto a web-based map they’ve created of their community.

Why: The photo layer injects a bit of reality into these otherwise hand-drawn maps, can serve as social commentary, and also aid site visitors in situating real world locations on user-generated maps.

How: After a user takes a photo on the phone, they will open the application, where upon they can view existing photos on their map or position new ones into place, using the arrow keys to guide an empty placement square to the appropriate location. Upon choosing the placement, the user is directed to their media folder, where they can choose a photo. They are then taken back to map view, where they can view their photo on the map with other photos, that have been placed their previously by the user. As a final step the user updates the public copy of their map, which is uploaded onto a server. A PHP script handles the user account info, meta data, actual image file, and its location coordinates, all passed from the mobile application to the server. Afterwards other users can log into the LivelyHood Web Network and view the new photos on the updated map.

“Constructionism involves two types of construction.  First it asserts that learning is an active process, in which people actively construct knowledge from their experiences in the world.  To this, constructionism adds the idea that people construct new knowledge with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing products that are personally meaningful.  They might be constructing sand castles, LEGO machines, or computer programs.  What’s important is that they are actively engaged in creating something that is meaningful to themselves or to others around them.”

- Mitchel Resnick from “Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds.”

The following are stills of an applet that allows a user to first draw an element, then determine it’s type. This kind of GUI is reverse from the traditional model, where a user would first determine type, choose it, and then place it ( i.e. Photoshop, SimCity ). In the example below, the user draws a shape and chooses a tree as element type. Consequently the shape is redrawn and takes on the green and jagged look of a tree. Also in the example is a feature where the applet determines the center of the shape by averaging all points in it, and then places it accordingly. Additionally there is maximum number of points allowed per sketch, and if a user exceeds this they are flashed a warning text.

For the Nature of Code midterm, I plan on advancing this example so that users can draw multiple sketches, determine the element type by clicking it, and finally saving their favorites into a template–white boxes–to be recalled for duplication. Time permitting I would like to have people move around on the map towards attractors like homes and stores. I also want to implement a smoke-like particle system for factories.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I love LA dearly…about 15% of it.  This is a map of where I go when I’m there and where I tend to avoid.  The data points on the map are not a result of formal research, but rather, my perceptions or different areas, and to a degree, even my preconceived notions of those areas I haven’t visited yet.  For a more resolute version of my map, click on the one below: