I am very close to finish another project in Fraunhofer FIT: IdeaPitch on the Microsoft Surface. This concept is very simple, you are able to “store” ideas in a repository, created using PHP and MySQL, and later on manipulate it on Microsoft Surface, along with the rest of the contributors. Other clients, iPhone and Air, were developed and are able to connect to the repository and register the ideas there. They are acting like individual clients, the iPhone can’t be used comfortable by more than one person. Not to mention that this is kind of personal device by its nature. The Surface […]
Category: Media Informatics
63 posts
In order to understand the need of changing the screen orientation on a Microsoft Surface, you might want to think aboutthe situation in which you have casual visitors, who sit in pairs working on one Surface, you might considering rotating the window such that the ’Down’ of the application would be the nearest edge to them.
For sure at some point in your Microsoft Surface application you'll need to do programatically some screenshots. This article explains how to do it in two simple steps.
No method is perfect – GPS needs clear sky, aGPS improves this but still needs some satellites to be seen, GSM works like a charm if you have lots of antennas but falls dramatically if you’re in a remote place and WiFi positioning is good in cities, but absolutely lacks in remote zones. Only the composition of all can cover all the situations encountered in a normal life – crowded city when going to work and big, empty spaces when going to mountains to relax.
GPS is the oldest one from the frameworks available to the large audience. It isn't the first positioning system, but it is the one with the most success and longevity. It started as a military project in 1957. Because of the cold war, once the Russians sent to space the first man-made satellite, a team of scientists started monitoring its radio transmissions. The crucial discovery was that, because of the Doppler Effect, the signal transmitted frequency increases as the satellite approached, and lowers as it continued moved away from them.
Scrum is one of Agile processes that use incremental framework for developing complex software and managing new products so it is considered more like a framework in which you can employ various processes.
The software as industry relies more on reusability and on site modifications. If a programmer finds a piece of code, of course respecting the intellectual property, can easily adapt it to his project. This approach is called adaptive, because these methods focus on adapting quickly to changing realities – no customer knows from the start exactly what he needs from the start.
This methodology and set of principles has the root in the Toyota company. After the Second World War, the Japan and its companies were almost ruined both physical and financial. To recover the economy, they had to rethink all the processes of production in order to maximize their efficiency.
Agile methods are a family of development processes, not a single approach to software development. It represents the ways of creating software in a lighter, faster, more people-centric way. The base of this is the Agile Manifesto, widely regarded as the canonical definition of agile development and accompanying agile principles.
The roots of agile programming as we know it can be traced back to 2001. At Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, a group of seventeen people met have fun, but also to find common ground on a issue that was too much discussed but no result can be achieved.They were adepts of Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming and other agile techniques, joined together by the need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes.
After starting the task, I started to be very curios about the technology that drives this device.I started looking over the internet and I found this picture. Very interesting, isn’t it? Basically contains a normal computer, linked to a projector and few infrared cameras. 1) Screen, the visual part of the device – Contains a special diffuser which turns the Surface’s acrylic tabletop into a big horizontal “multitouch” screen, capable of acquiring and processing multiple inputs from multiple users in the same time. The Surface is far more advanced than simple multitouch devices, being capable to be aware of […]
Latest additions :sounds in our application, allowing user to get auditive feedback, background and confirmation for hit sounds for improving the User Experience, creating an immersive experience who tries to transpose the user into the real wood atmosphere, self generating levels, allowing users to improve themselves beyond our ideas about their possibilities: the user gets 60 seconds levels in which he has to hit more and more animals as he becomes better in targeting ( and in ball retrieval :-) ), changed the aspect ratio of the game from 4:3 to 16:9 to bette use the whiteboard's surface