|
|
|
|
|
2010
|
|
Technology Meets Music: Free Sonic Generator Concert with Resident Composer Michael Gordon on February 8
Sonic Generator is Georgia Tech’s chamber music ensemble-in-residence. But since it’s GT, it’s not just chamber music performed by classical musicians, though that’s certainly part of it. Sonic Generator “explores the ways in which technology can transform how we create, perform, and listen to music.” I’m intrigued. Want to check ‘em out for free? Head to the Rich Theatre on February 8 at 8:00 p.m. for a free Sonic Generator concert, featuring the music of resident composer Michael Gordon.
Atlanta on the Cheap - February 2, 2010
|
|
Attracting a More Diverse Group of Students
Blog by Barb Ericson, CSTA board member... In the fall of 2009 Georgia Tech started a high school weekend computing program... We selected 22 students from 16 schools out of 90 applicants.. . Some of the students are helping local FIRST LEGO League teams... We will be doing a more formal evaluation of the program. But, we are excited about the preliminary results. This program was funded by our National Science Foundation Broadening Participation in Computing grant. The cost of this program for fall 2009 was approximately $10,000 in payments to the high school students.
Computer Science Teachers Association Blog - January 28, 2010
|
|
How Do Scientists Think? Creative Processes in Conceptual Innovation
How do novel scientific concepts arise? Nancy Nersessian, PhD, seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question by studying the cognitive and cultural mechanisms that lead to innovation. Nersessian, a Regents Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Georgia Institute of Technology, will address the issue of “How do Scientists Think? Creative Processes in Conceptual Innovation” on Thursday, Jan. 28, at 7:30 p.m. in Jonsson Performance Hall at The University of Texas at Dallas.
University of Texas Dallas - January 28, 2010
|
|
This Day in Tech - Jan. 25, 1979: Robot Kills Human
1979: A 25-year-old Ford Motor assembly line worker is killed on the job in a Flint, Michigan, casting plant. It’s the first recorded human death by robot. Robert Williams’ death came on the 58th anniversary of the premiere of Karel Capek’s play about Rossum’s Universal Robots. . . .When it comes to robots, scientists don’t want to wake up one day and ask, “Oh my God, what happened?” as some did following the development of nuclear weapons, said Ronald Arkin, the director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He described Williams’ death as an “industrial accident,” one in which the lack of physical safeguards were at fault. The death was not caused by the robot’s will, he cautioned. “It was not an ethical lapse, unless you’re a Luddite against the Industrial Revolution,” Arkin said in a recent telephone interview.
Wired - January 25, 2010
|
|
The New Nerd Mafia
Georgia Tech's brainy geek squad brings cutting edge design to the masses... For some, Georgia Tech may conjure visions of the protractor and anime-loving set... At Tech, an array of nationally recognized smarty britches are wedding technology to design in radical new ways. "The computer people are nerds and the design people are nerds and we're just all a bunch of geeks making science," saids Tech instructor and fashion designer Clint Zeagler. (Also featured in the article on page 34 - Georgia Tech's Ian Bogost, Ellen Dunham Jones, Thad Starner and David Van Arsdale.)
The Atlantan - January/February 2010
|
|
Year of the Woman
Blog by Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech) Today I listened to NPR On Point on the ride home. The topic was "A big year for Hollywood women?", with film critics Manohla Dargis and Nicole LaPorte discussing (and deflating) recent buzz about the "Year of the Woman" in movies. If you listen to the show online, you'll be struck by how much the conversation about women in film mirrors that of common conversation about women in games: women not getting the same treatment as filmmakers as men; industry assuming that movies are mostly for guys; the expectation that women filmmakers make "chick flicks" like romantic comedies; that women's roles in films are generally the same as ever; and on and on.
Gamasutra - January 20, 2010
|
|
Ten Most Anticipated Games of 2010
It’s roughly that time again, to hesitantly cast a squinting eye to the shining future and stab randomly at what might by chance be worth looking forward to. My selection of the most anticipated games last year ended up being less than dead-on; half of them were average-at-best or outright soggy disappointments, and a handful of them have still yet to materialise. A Slow Year (Atari 2600, PC, Mac) – due 2010 . . And speaking of the impossible marriage of poetry and gaming; how about some interactive haikus? I’m not sure you could conceivably get any more obscure than creating zen-inspired interactive Japanese poems on a console over three-decades old, but since it comes from designer, critic, intellectual, and all-round gaming guru Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech) it automatically goes into my interested basket.
Voxy Blog - January 12, 2010
|
|
Independent Games Festival Announces 2010 Finalists
On Monday, the Independent Games Festival (for which both Chris and I are judges) announced the finalists for this year’s competition. Over three hundred entries were submitted this year. Judges whittled down the competitors to five competitors in each of six categories, including best audio, design, visual art and technical excellence. The big category is the Seumas McNally Grand Prize — which nets gamemakers $20,000 in cash. This year’s nominees for the top award are Joe Danger, Monaco, Rocketbirds: Revolution!, Trauma and Super Meat Boy. Take special note of the Nuovo Award, where off-the-wall, experimental art games are celebrated. Among this year’s excellent and completely out there Nuovo nominees are Daniel Benmergui’s Today I Die, A Slow Year by Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech), Tuning from Cactus, Closure and Justin Smith’s nutty Enviro-Bear 2000.
Wired - January 5, 2010
|
|
The Future of Brain-Controlled Devices
In the shimmering fantasy realm of the hit movie "Avatar," a paraplegic Marine leaves his wheelchair behind and finds his feet in a new virtual world thanks to "the link," a sophisticated chamber that connects his brain to a surrogate alien, via computer. This type of interface is a classic tool in gee-whiz science fiction. But the hard science behind it is even more wow-inducing. Researchers are already using brain-computer interfaces to aid the disabled, treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and provide therapy for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Work is under way on devices that may eventually let you communicate with friends telepathically, give you superhuman hearing and vision or even let you download data directly into your brain, a la "The Matrix." Researchers are practically giddy over the prospects. "We don't know what the limits are yet," says Melody Moore Jackson, director of Georgia Tech BrainLab... Jackson, of Georgia Tech, agrees: "Nothing is out of the realm of possibility."
CNN - January 4, 2010
|
2009
|
|
Augmented Reality: Nearly But Not Quite
"If we crowdsource all the geotagged images from Flickr, then you can generate the model that you need," says Blair MacIntyre. "You could use correspondences between these pictures so that they can figure out where the cameras were for each image. That gives the system the information it needs to do the visual tracking."
Researchers have already crowdsourced images to create 3D versions of cities including Rome and Dubrovnik. With companies such as Google already generating entire street-level photomontages of cities, the dataset necessary to make this happen is growing daily.
While technologists grapple with these problems, there must also be advances made in display technology. Holding a phone up to the world is one thing, but it limits the user's experience to “pulling” information on request at ad hoc points throughout the day, MacIntyre explains. For a fully-immersive experience in which information is constantly pushed to the user without their thinking about it, a head-up display will be necessary, and these are already appearing. Researchers at the University of Washington, for example, are working on bionic contact lenses that can virtually “float” an 8x8 grid of pixels in front of the human eye.
In order for AR to be really useful, researchers must chisel away at the technical problems facing it on both the software and the hardware fronts. As companies and their customers begin recognizing the concept's inherent value, they will adopt rudimentary AR techniques, paving the way for more sophisticated solutions as they emerge over the next few years. It will be an exciting spectacle.
Orange Business Services - December 2009
|
|
Robots to Shape Wars of the Future
Robots may one day be more effective than human soldiers on the battlefield and they may have a sense of ethics — even a sense of guilt, says a robotics expert who has done a study with the support of the Army's research office. Ethical robots that can use lethal force on the battlefield would adhere to international law and rules of engagement, Ronald C. Arkin told Army Times on Dec. 15. Arkin describes how this could work in his 2009 book "Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots." He is with the Mobile Robot Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
USA Today - December 28, 2009
|
|
A Robot Named Shimon Wants To Jam With Y
What was billed as the first intercontinental musical interaction between humans and robots took place the weekend of Dec. 17. It involved humans in Japan using an application called ZoozBeat on their iPhones and a robot named Shimon in Atlanta. According to its makers, unlike other robots that can play music, Shimon is perceptual. The robot can listen to what is played, analyze it and then improvise. And it has been taught to improvise like some jazz masters. Gil Weinberg of Georgia Tech's music technology program recently spoke to NPR's Robert Siegel from Japan, where he witnessed the historic interaction. Weinberg says the result is music meant to inspire people — not an effort to turn our music-making over to robots. "The whole idea is to use computer algorithms to create music in ways that humans will never create," Weinberg says. "Our motto is, 'Listen like a human, but improvise like a machine.' " Hear the segment at the following link:
NPR - December 22, 2009
|
|
iPhone + Robot Marimba Player = Instant Band
Gil Weinberg, director of music technology at Georgia Tech, is developing Shimon as a socially dynamic band mate. He says the robot "listens like a human and improvises like a machine" thanks to complex algorithms that allow it to perceive and improvise a groove. Weinberg is also behind ZOOZBeat, an app that turns your iPhone into an instrument and sequencer, letting you remix and loop your own music by shaking, tilting, and otherwise getting down with it. Beats come bundled with the app, but you can also download packs with vocals, hooks, and instruments.
CNet - December 22, 2009
|
|
Gaming Courses Popular in Georgia Colleges
The wood planks on the floor of a Georgia Tech research room appear normal. The pieces form a square, about 5 feet long on each side. A green screen lies on the floor in the middle. Put on a pair of computerized goggles and that green floor becomes a “pit” that drops about three stories. Walk around the edge of the pit using the planks as your guide, provided you can keep a fear of heights in check. Grab a remote, push a few buttons and try to drop a virtual ball onto targets below. The exercise is part of an experiment to measure a person’s mental state as they are immersed in “augmented reality” which blends the actual physical world with a virtual one created by computer programs. This activity, designed by Georgia Tech students and professors, is just one example of how the state’s public and private colleges are building on students’ interest in gaming and the fast-growing fields of video game design and development. Students are learning skills to create games that make users laugh, scream and think...Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost teaches students and is co-founder of Persuasive Games, which focuses on social and political issues such as airport security, flu epidemics and tort reform. Students, he said, are looking for ways to match games with their life passions. One student is trying to meld religious activity with games, he said. “Games are like folk music of the 1960s,” Bogost said. “They grew up with it. They identify with it. And it isn’t something really co-opted by institutions of power.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution - December 20, 2009
|
|
ARhrrrr: SCAD Brings Augmented Reality to Asia Game Show
SCAD will show for the first time in Asia a much-anticipated Augmented Reality (AR) game, "ARhrrrr," created through a collaboration between SCAD and the Georgia Institute of Technology's Augmented Environments Lab. The shooter game combines aspects of the physical world with computer-generated "augmented reality" to provide a truly interactive gaming experience, leveraging advanced graphics processing and a camera.
Dexigner.com - December 20, 2009
|
|
SantaVision AR app is now available on the iTunes App store!
The SantaVision social toy for the iPhone 3Gs is available available in the iTunes App Store now. The application was developed by Blair MacIntyre, Maribeth Gandy and Kim Spreen under Aura Interactive, a company that MacIntyre and Gandy started in 2009.
|
|
Nerdiness Turns Women Off to Computer Science
Movies are full of scenarios in which one of the cool kids helps the class nerd win the girl of his dreams, usually by convincing him to change his style. Now a new study makes a similar recommendation to college computer-science programs: Tidy up that nerdy, masculine image if you want more females in the classroom... Cheryan's findings suggest that a slight adjustment of the decor in computer-science offices, classrooms and workspaces could increase female interest in the field. Georgia Institute of Technology professor Mark Guzdial agrees with Cheryan's findings, but stresses that computer-science stereotypes can be overcome easily."We are finding that the stereotypes are prevalent, but not entrenched as you might think," Guzdial told Discovery News. "In general, there is very little computer science in middle and high schools today. We find that a little bit of real information and experience can influence those stereotypes dramatically." In leading Georgia Tech's "Georgia Computes!" initiative, Guzdial works to broaden the state's K-12 participation in computer science programs. He suspects that actual labs and classrooms don't factor into people's perceptions nearly as much as media portrayals do.
Discovery - December 18, 2009
|
|
Proponent for Playtime
It’s recess at Bethune Elementary School. The first-graders file past a big storage locker filled with blue blocks cut in a variety of sizes and shapes. Once given a piece, they repair to the play area. Then all joy breaks loose... Imagination Playground in a Box, designed by New York architecture firm Rockwell Group, was developed with this in mind. Bethune’s principal, RoseMary Hamer, can attest that it works. “I’ve been quite amazed,” she says. “Their imaginations have expanded, they’re sharing. I see a lot of discussion. I’ve also seen quieter children open up and be more expressive.” Gentry thinks there should be — and could be — more. And she’s decided to stir the pot. Working with Georgia Tech professor Claudia Rebola Winegarden, she is planning “Playable 2010,” an international design competition to encourage creative thinking about play spaces and equipment.
Atlanta Journal Constitution - December 18, 2009
|
|
Paralyzed Man 'Turns Thoughts Into Sounds'
An experimental system is letting a paralyzed man turn his thoughts into the beginnings of real-time speech, according to researchers. Erik Ramsey, 26, from Georgia, in the U.S., suffered a stroke after a car accident at the age of 16, leaving him with Locked-in Syndrome. Ramsey is completely paralyzed and currently able to communicate only by blinking his eyes. But researchers at Boston University have implanted an electrode into his brain that lets him convert his thoughts into vowel sounds produced by a voice synthesizer, according to a paper published December 9 in the online journal PLoS ONE. The technology is an example of a "Brain Computer Interface" (BCI) -- systems that let people use their thoughts to communicate with computers... Melody Moore Jackson researches BCIs at Georgia Institute of Technology. In 1998, she was part of the team that was the first to implant recording electrodes in humans. In those cases, locked-in patients had an electrode implanted in the part of the brain responsible for physical movement. The patients would then imagine moving part of their body in order to move a cursor on a computer screen. But Moore Jackson says the new research represents a major step forward with the technology. "It's a pretty significant achievement to be able to achieve speech recognition from brain signals, especially from the Neurotrophic electrode, which is attached to a fairly limited number of neurons," Moore Jackson told CNN.
CNN - December 16, 2009
|
|
The Rise of Machine-Written Journalism
...For sure, technology has increased efficiency in newsrooms. Google long ago became the de facto desktop for journalists. Lightweight recording equipment, cameras and desktop editing tools have cascaded through newsrooms, too. All of this is good, and there’s more to come. In the US, research into so-called computational journalism is enjoying something of a renaissance. Using technology to augment newsgathering isn’t a new idea. And there’s plenty to be enthusiastic about, including software to assist with data visualisation and pattern recognition. As Irfan Essa, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology notes, software has augmented brainpower in countless other verticals, including the legal profession and pharmaceuticals. He reasons that there’s “no reason it can't work in journalism, too.”
Wired.UK - December 16, 2009
|
|
Augmented Reality Virtual Pet on the iPhone
The guys from Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Lab (GVU Center) are working on an awesome augmented reality application for the iPhone. Augmented Reality (AR) is basically a technology that deals with the combination of the real-world and computer-generated data, in real time, and can be interactive. In this AR Virtual Pet application for the iPhone, first a marker is placed on a surface, and then the iPhone’s camera is focused on the marker. Through the iPhone’s screen you then will see a 3D virtual pet pop up from the marker, as if the pet was on the surface where the maker was placed.
Design You Trust - December 14, 2009
Pixelelement.com - December 14, 2009
|
|
Learning to Love to Hate Robots
ROBOTIC helpers are not yet in every home. But in recent years robots have steadily marched into the real world to perform tasks such as cleaning floors, delivering drugs or simply entertaining... A six-month study of how Roomba affected households, conducted by Ja-Young Sung at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, backs up that finding. "Some people saw it as a lifetime partner - they had a real emotional attachment to it." Even those who returned to their previous cleaning routine didn't blame the robot, instead saying it was their routine that was at fault.
New Scientist - December 9, 2009
|
|
Life, Passage of Time Key Elements in
Like a vortex, “crea,” a new chamber work, swirled around the interior of the High Museum of Art’s Robinson Atrium on Thursday evening, blending live music and dance. The collaboration between choreographer Lauri Stallings’ performance group gloATL and Georgia Tech’s contemporary music ensemble Sonic Generator, led by Thomas Sherwood, stirred up energies from the atrium’s nooks and crannies as Stallings and Sherwood interpreted the soaring interior space in playful dialog between classical and contemporary music and dance.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution - December 11, 2009
|
|
Designing What Goes Around
On December 2nd, 2009 I released an experimental anti-war video game called What Goes Around (download link) that features a procedural rhetoric. The game is for PC, lasting a few minutes and the download is about 7+MB. I encourage you to give it a try because in the rest of this article I will explain what inspired me to make it and why I made the design decisions I did... The term, "procedural rhetoric" comes from an article by Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech). In my experience, most games that attempt to have a procedural rhetoric tend to be void of context, such as The Marriage. Bare abstract mechanics are difficult for many players to interpret. It's important for me to explore how to combine both contextual visual and aural elements with gameplay mechanics to say something specific and have it be easily understood.
Gamasutra - December 13, 2009
|
|
Philip K. Dick’s Defense of Video Games
Philip K. Dick’s fiction is a defense of the validity of video games because despite the fact that they are not real, his stories argue that there is still something valid in the artificial. One of the major tenets of believing that a video game is capable of communicating a message comes from a concept that Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech) calls “simulation fever”. When a person plays a video game, they are engaging with a designer’s perspective of reality (or fantasy) through the finite nature of the simulation. Hitting someone in the back of the head in Halo 3 will win a stealth kill, but the same blow to the face is not lethal. That might strike someone as stupid or illogical.
Pop Matters - December 7, 2009
|
|
Scientists, Lawyers Mull Effects of Home Robots
...We're still far from the sci-fi dream of having robots whirring about and catering to our every need. But little by little, we'll be sharing more of our space with robots in the next decade, as prices drop and new technology creates specialized machines that clean up spilled milk or even provide comfort for an elderly parent. . . Ronald Arkin teaches a course on robots and society at Georgia Tech and directs the school's Mobile Robot Laboratory. His most recent book is titled "Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots." "There needs to be ethics embedded in the systems," he said. "It's not just making a system that assists someone. It's making a system that interacts with someone in a way that respects their dignity."
AP - December 5, 2009
Washington Post - December 6, 2009
|
|
This Just In: The Boob-Tube, Not YouTube, Is Transforming the World
Consumers and businesses, voters and politicians, and readers and writers today are caught up in the social media wave. There is no escaping the magnetic pull the Web, and sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have over our everyday existence ... While TV can be constructive in low income societies, it should not be viewed as a panacea, says Georgia Tech Professor and Internet global development guru Michael Best. He takes issue with some of Kenny's generalizations and interpretation: "To refer to Baywatch as 'an everyday tale of lifesaving folk' is really too much; one need not employ a feminist perspective to still understand the departure from the 'everyday' evinced in Baywatch."
Fast Company - December 1, 2009
|
|
Sonic Generator Among Atlanta's Best - Contemporary Classical Music
Sonic Generator is Georgia Tech's superlative new music ensemble, with concerts that are both intellectually rigorous and hip with high-end music and computer-imagery fashions.
Atlanta Magazine - December 2009 (Subscription only*)
|
|
A Report on the Discovery and Innovation in Health IT Workshop
The CCC co-sponsored and co-organized the Discovery and Innovation in Health IT Workshop in San Francisco on October 29 and 30, 2009. The event was an attempt to make further inroads on productive collaboration between healthcare and computing, exploring and defining fundamental computing research challenges and opportunities in healthcare IT in both the near- and long-term and identifying a range of “model” proof-of-concept, integrative systems that might serve as motivating and unifying forces to drive fundamental research in healthcare IT... Beth’s take-away was somewhat different. She says: I also attended the Discovery and Innovation in Health IT Workshop. With so many obvious shortcomings in the current healthcare system, it is tempting to focus on near-term challenges. In fact the discussions in the press and on Capitol Hill orient to current inefficiencies in the healthcare system as well as the poor health outcomes that stem from misaligned incentives... Contributed by Beth Mynatt, CCC Member and Director, GVU Center at Georgia Tech.
Computing Community Consortium -December 2, 2009
|
|
Agassiz Really a True, Lego-loving Town
This past Saturday Agassiz Library held its Awards Day for the week long 3rd Annual Lego Buildup. 30 youngsters brought in treasured pieces they have worked on at home to display for the community at the library...As for the brightly coloured bricks, they are a favourite of local kids and little do they know that they are engaging in something that promotes their learning skills. In studies on procedural literacy, Ian Bogost, Assistant Professor of Literature Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology states, “Language is an example of a system where meaning is constructed by assembling constituent parts together – you put together letters that form words, which form sentences that convey meaning. The bricks work in the same way as sentence formation; you put together pieces that form parts, which make up a model that also conveys meaning. The model can be taken apart and put together in many different ways, much like language and mathematic equations. It often takes a few different configurations to get it “right” so willingness to persevere is crucial to learning.”
Agassiz-Harrison Observer - December 2, 2009
|
|
Survey: Majority of Adults Would Prefer Robotic Home Help to Care Facility
A recent survey by researchers at Georgia Tech found that older adults are more amenable than younger ones -- 77 percent to 67 percent -- to having a robot "perform critical monitoring tasks that would require little interaction between the robot and the human." . . .The researchers, Drs. Neta Ezer, Arthur D. Fisk and Wendy A. Rogers, sent a questionnaire to 2,500 Atlanta-area adults ages 18-86 and received 177 responses. . . .The poll respondents preferred robots that could perform chores and could fetch and carry, and didn’t much care if the robot wasn’t designed for chat. Robots that could issue alerts to the owner or to his or her doctor in an emergency found particular favor with the older group of respondents.
Ergo Web.com - November 30, 2009
|
|
UC Irvine Offering Four Year Video Games Program
Well-known for its excellent courses in engineering, business, and medicine, UC Irvine is now pushing into a new area of expertise; video games. The university announced that it had established its Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds earlier this year by joining forces with the Institute for Software Research and the Game Culture and Technology Laboratory. . . . Currently on the schedule are noted independent game developer and professor of literature, communication, and culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology Ian Bogost
The Standard - November 20, 2009
|
|
Serious Games Aim at Raising the Big Issues
Diane Gromala runs the Transforming Pain project at SFU’s school of interactive arts and technology. It’s still unknown whether games about things like homelessness can change attitudes, but creators believe that fun leads to knowledge... Developed by Persuasive Games for the U.K. Clinical Virology Network, Killer Flu was designed to depict the way that seasonal and pandemic flus mutate and spread. Ian Bogost, a founding parter of Persuasive, is also an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology . In a phone interview with the Straight, he said the objective was, in part, “to inject a greater amount of accuracy into the depiction of the spread of a mutated virus”.
Straight.com - November 25, 2009
|
|
Concert Review: Sonic Generator's
To better stay a perceived erosion of French cultural significance and language, the government of France is energetic in supporting their artists abroad. To insure performances of French contemporary music in the U.S., it means giving grants to organizations that will devote shows to French music and influences. A few years ago, there was a major “Sounds French” festival at New York’s Lincoln Center. Bent Frequency, an Atlanta group that celebrates the avant-garde and is linked with Georgia State University, gave its own sponsored Francophile concert a couple of seasons back. On Nov. 16, Sonic Generator offered “The French-American Connection” in Georgia Tech’s Alumni House ballroom. Right up front, SG executive director Jason Freeman thanked its partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. The trouble with any thematic program is that you listen hard for trends and aesthetic alliances, even if the sample size isn’t large enough to be representative. Here just two active Frenchmen were included. The first was François Sarhan, born in 1972. His “Pirouette, cacahouète,” from 2001, is a novelty piece with a piercing heart. The composer loved hearing his three-year-old niece sing the nursery rhyme in the bathtub. One truism (which the French themselves talk about) is that they love their own language; their mother tongue is its own music (and thus any piece of composed music played by instruments falls somewhere lower on the hierarchy).
artscriticATL.com - November 22, 2009
|
|
Augmented Reality On Your Phone
At its core, augmented reality is all about changing our view of the world by merging our environmental surroundings with digital data and media. But for this technology to evolve, there must be rules regarding what can truly be defined as augmenting reality, and what can’t. “The key is that the virtual content be registered (or aligned) with the right parts of the physical world,” explained Blair MacIntyre, PhD, associate professor at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing and director of the school’s Augmented Environments Lab. “Also, the application must be interactive
Laptop Mag.com - November 19, 2009
|
|
What's Next? Future Media Started the Conversation
Georgia has the potential to become a global pioneer and leader in the future of media. To do so, it will require focus, determination and collaboration among universities, corporations, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and government to make it happen.
That was a principal conclusion of the recent day-long FutureMedia conference here, which focused on opportunities and challenges in the already burgeoning fields of digital, social, and multi media. Held in midtown Atlanta on Oct. 15, the gathering brought together some 260 people from as far off as Canada, Ireland, Scotland, South Korea and Singapore.
...Elizabeth Mynatt, director of the GVU Center at Georgia Tech, seconded open innovation as a model for future media growth. But she stressed the unpredictability of how people use technology in the real world, and the need for academia to study those trends. “People do assemble technologies in crazy ways,” she said. “They will take platforms designed for one thing – like first-person-shooter gaming — and make cool movies and have fun parties and actually create documentaries. They repurpose media in novel and exciting ways.”
Future Media - November 9, 2009
|
|
Edwards, Grinter Named ACM Distinguished Scientists
Keith Edwards and Beki Grinter, both associate professors in the School of Interactive Computing, have been named Distinguished Scientists by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
The honor of Distinguished Member goes to ACM members with “at least 15 years of professional experience and 5 years of continuous professional membership who have achieved significant accomplishments or have made a significant impact on the computing field,” according to the association’s website. In awarding the honor, ACM further designates recipients as Distinguished Engineers, Distinguished Educators or Distinguished Scientists. Both Edwards and Grinter received the latter designation. In 2009, 84 ACM members were so honored, with 58 being named Distinguished Scientists, 17 named Distinguished Engineers and nine named Distinguished Educators.
Edwards is associate director of GVU Center and director of the Platforms and Infrastructures for Experimental Interactions (PIXI) lab. His research interests include ubiquitous computing, technologies to enable rich user experiences, evolvable and adaptable systems, multimodal interfaces, and human-centered approaches to networking. Edwards says he “is a technologist at heart, but enjoys working with designers, as well as ethnographers and other social scientists.”
Grinter is director of the Work2Play lab. Her research focuses on the relationship between human action and interaction and technologies. She uses empirical methods, primarily qualitative, to explore how to support people interactions with systems and each other through systems. Her research lies at the intersection of several different research communities including computer-supported cooperative work, human-computer interaction, sociology, software engineering and ubiquitous computing.
|
|
