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ETech 2008 San Diego, CA Tim O’Reilly describes this as the premier conference he and his company puts on. His keynote was on the theme of the constructive value of hacking. With this premise a conference overview as given of the trends which could change society. This included global warming, mind hacking, open source of all types, social networks and new applications. This is certainly a major conference on the directions that technology is and could take which will impact the masses. Gesture Interfaces The title of the talk was Tap is the New Click and in it, Dan Saffer, provided a refreshing overview of the emergence of gesture interfaces. He stated we are in the midst of a interaction design revolution. But direct interaction has been around since before the pioneering work with the mouse at Xerox PARC. The success of the windowing form of direct interaction has eclipsed gesture interaction. Now it is coming back. The basis for the talk was to address the question of how is gesture interaction designed for? The key topics of the talk, and the forthcoming book forthcoming O’Reilly book, were: Interfaces – gesture The value of the talk, and assumed book, is that this was a broad view of the gesture interface. For example, a gesture interface is defined as:
The reasons that this type of interface would be used are: It provides for a more natural interaction Gesture interaction lies in two forms: Touch screen There are reasons to use and not use these interfaces: No for heavy input data The ability to make gesture interfaces work are the sensors. These include: Pressure These sensors are then used to detect the attributes of gestures such as: Presence Dan’s work on designing such interfaces has led him to a premise of design: The more complicated the gesture, the fewer people who will be able to perform it. Given the role of the hand his list of the “features” of fingers was interesting. Width: 16 – 20mm Finger oil The touch target characteristics play a role on the design of the interface and the user experience. Touch targets can be as small as 1cm Interface conventions are already being established for gestures and these include: Cursors In summary Dan stated that:
Useful information can be found at: http://www.designinggesturalinterfaces.com/ Ambient Devices David Rose spoke of his experience at designing Ambient Devices, the company he founded of the same name. Objects which meet the ambient category fall into 6 classes, which broadly align with individual need. To know Virtually all of his talk was on the Know need. His premise was a category of new Internet objects which meet these criteria: Never breaks The metaphor he used was a weather barometer and a clock. How can we achieve this same level of simplicity with Internet objects? Ambient objects should: Be peripheral A key criteria David focused on is Pre-Attentive Processing, which includes: Independent of the number of distractions Example of Pre-Attentive processes by individuals include detecting Orientation David finds pocket watches as an example of an object which takes advantage of attention. A number of designs were shown using this metaphor. But one of the problems is that individuals could not get around the notion that it is not a clock. One of the products based on the concept of Pre-Attentive processing is the Ambient Dashboard. This has swappable faces to allow the device to fit individual needs. Ambient is using a data casting system based on pager transmitters. Some market data was presented. It showed Ambient Devices were observed from 12 to 3 times a day. The value of Ambient devices is supported by new efforts in the area of energy conservation. The devices could be used to alert consumers when energy prices rise during times of high demand. Trails are underway. David provided fresh thinking on how computing and information can be made pervasive and useful. http://www.ambientdevices.com/ Open Source Hardware Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone described the embryonic emergence of the Open Source Hardware movement. To form the basis for Open Hardware it was explained in terms of 6 layers Dimensions for the enclosures and mechanical systems Described in 2D models with vector graphics such as DXF Schematics and Circuit Diagrams Symbolic diagrams with PDF, BMP, GIF and other formats Parts List May include VHDL/Verilog/RTL Software/API In practice not every level is open. The licensing models vary. This is still evolving with the following being used: Creative Commons Various business models are being practiced and include: Arduino – Assembled development boards It was claimed that there are more Daisy MP3 based players than Zune. Many open hardware examples were shown in the Show and Tell time. Community Electronics Peter Semmelhack, CEO, Bug Labs, laid out why Open Source hardware is difficult to accomplish and this parallels the earlier talk by Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone. Going from a product idea requires a schematic, BOM, Gerber – PCB format, and ID/CAD. An innovative product which broke down some of these barriers was the Lego Mindstorms. A key element is that a community was created of Mindstorm developers. Bug Labs has gone beyond Mindstorm and created the Bug Labs platform for hardware. It is described as:
There is also a BUG Web Services land. This is a BUG web server where information is present on the BUG and web service links. The BUG modules available today include: BUGlocate The BUG software is based on open source. The code to link modules is called BUG Module Interface (BMI), Further:
The web site warns that individual needs to be able to write in Java to do their own devices – or getting software from other BUG users is possible. Open Source Computer Vision Library Gary Bradski, Senior Scientist, Willow Garage, described the current state of OpenCV. Willow Garage is a spin out from Stanford University.
Computer Vision is about turning sensor readings into perception. Given that Gary and many others at Stanford were on the DARPA Grand Challenge, where they won the 2005 race, there was much in the presentation related to the use of computer vision on the Grand Challenge automobile Stanley. The vision problem was characterized as hard due to the following factors: Depth discontinuity Intel began OpenCV as one means to drive the need for more MIPS. But computer vision is a hard problem and it is computer intelligence. The OpenCV library consists of the following: General Image Processing Functions This began in 1999 and there are now over 500 functions. It is implemented in C and C++ and it has a full Python interface. The license is BSD and free for any use. OpenCV is currently being used in: Google Maps, Google Street view, Google Earth There have been over 1.5m downloads and it is currently running at >25,000/month. One application is also being used for is gesture recognition. One of the most difficult projects OpenCV was used on, was as Stanley’s Brain for the DARPA Grand Challenge. This was described and related to the performance of the system to speed. For example, Stanley “thinks” at 10 times per second.
Automated N-Camera Calibration OpenCV is a major work which is already serving as a foundation for many applications. It is also a tool which is continually evolving. Asian Media Market Dynamics Mike Walsh will be publishing a book, futuretainment, Phaidon Press, 2008. His talk and the presentation was a overview of the materials in the book. http://www.thetomorrowcompany.com/ His talk consistent of the following sections as the means to describe media market dynamics is Asia: Fun Many of the countries of Asia were discussed and some of the statistics are provided. China Network applications Online music – 86% 94.2% of Chinese users were positive about entertainment on the Internet 72m blogs Japan ½ of the top selling works of fiction in the first ½ of 2007 were composed on mobile phones. Korea Korea takes for granted online access. For example the most popular WINC sites in 2007 include: Bus Schedules Mike Walsh described fast moving media and online markets in Asia which are country specific, large and very dynamic. Openmoko It is easy to dismiss the concept of a Taiwanese company, in this case FIC, embracing open source to enable other companies to collect market share. But the approach taken by Openmoko is refreshing. Michael Shiloh provided a detailed view of what the company is doing to create an open mobile platform which goes well beyond the cellular network. What is significant is that the open model could well provide the foundation for ubiquitous computing.
Openmoko is: The company behind the Openmoko Linux distribution
The components which Openmoko use include: Linux There is NO: NDA required Openmoko is based on: 400MHz ARM CPU The design and implementation of Openmoko and the Neo handsets enable the following: Reprogrammed including – Boot loader, kernel and file system The following is open source Block diagrams Expected to also be made open is the board layout The flexibility of Openmoko makes it possible to: Run Android apps on Openmoko
Products which have been implemented using Openmoko include: Dash http://www.openmoko.com/ Supply Chain Disruption Liam Casey, CEO, PCH International described his firm and how it enables total product and supply chain management. Everything the company does is in China or Asia. The strength of the US industrial base for small electronics based products is: product concept and marketing. Virtually all the other functions, including design, can be outsourced. His firm, PCH International is able to handle all the functions from getting a product to market and even its support. This is includes: Physical flow of goods Manufacturing services Complete transparency in the supply and support chain Financial flow of goods The web presence of goods for sale
PCH does the following, based on need of the client: Design One point made was that warehousing in the US or Europe was frequently more expensive than air shipment of individual units to buyers. It was stressed that PCH likes to work with VC based startups. These companies have the discipline forced by the VC and PCH is frequently evaluated in the investment decision. PCH is taking the product life cycle to a new level where increasingly China based companies are taking over more and more of the product process. WAVE Comments Much of what was presented at ETech 2008 may not happen but there were enough insights that the conference offered much to ponder. From an hardware perspective here is what we found most interesting. The O’Reilly organization is in the Open Source camp and ETech reflects this. But ETech is not an Open Source conference. References to Open Source were everywhere here and we take this as reflection of the role that Open Source is playing. Over the last year we have seen Open Source increasingly taken for granted as a basic building block for many forms of software, from embedded to enterprise. Even at CES Open Source is showing its presence in consumer products. Here at ETech attention is directed to platforms, Web 2.0 and hardware. But our attention was focused on products. It is not always evident when it is being used as many companies do not announce its use – especially in embedded applications. It is early to gauge the impact of Openmoko but we were impressed with the intent. The notion of an encompassing mobile platform which is totally open is compelling. A lot of thought has gone into it. The premise of Openmoko is that this could be the foundation platform for Ubiquitous Computing. It makes a compelling argument but time will tell. We also found compelling the impact that Openmoko is having on chip suppliers to participate in Open Source. As was stated in the presentation – the slowest moving organization in any company are the attorneys. From a different perspective the OpenCV Vision Library is an impressive accomplishment. With over 500 functions, 1.5m downloads and a run rate of >25,000/month it has gained significant interest if not usage. Now that Willow Garage has picked up a major OpenCV role it is likely to continue to grow and improve as was stated in the presentation. Just based on what the WAVE has seen in the last year Open Source continues to gain an increasing role in providing foundation code for many software, and increasingly hardware, products. |
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