iPhone
110 Stories Twin Towers iPhone App becomes a reality
I’m so happy to be able to write that “110 Stories” app which I previously wrote about launched today. The app recreates the Trade Towers through three principles – orient, augment and comment. You activate the app on your iPhone or Android smartphone and you’ll be guided towards the World Trade Center site. Once properly oriented the augmented reality kicks in and renders the silhouette of the towers. You then snap a picture, fine tune the image, add a personal story and submit it to www.110stories.com. The photos and stories are already pouring in and you can see how well the app really works in re-creating the towers against the NYC skyline. I thought that one especially powerful images was created tonight by Lisa Liebow who’s photo shows the 110 Stories towers imposed over the columns of light shining up from NYC.
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110 Stories: Augmented Reality Twin Towers iPhone App
There are a lot of different efforts being put forth for the upcoming 10th anniversary of September 11th. The best one I’ve seen so far is called “110 Stories” which is a personal vision and project of Brian August. He wants to build an app that will recreate the Trade Towers through three principles – orient, augment and comment. You activate the app on your iPhone and you’ll be guided towards the World Trade Center site. Once properly oriented the augmented reality kicks in and renders the silhouette of the towers. You then snap a picture, fine tune the image, add a personal story and submit it to www.110stories.com. The project is still in the fundraising stage at Kickstarter.com and he just reached his initial funding goal but we all know when it comes to app development you can always use a little extra so please go and donate (even a $1) to get this app built in time for the tenth anniversary.
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Wacom Bamboo: An iPad stylus I can actually use
Like most creative types I know, I suffer from a debilitating problem where I’m rarely able to make it through a meeting without being able to describe an idea without having to draw some part of it. This historically meant that I carried a velum tablet and Sharpie everywhere and the desks of my designers are littered with these notes and sketches. Enter the iPad and my thought that I could evolve this process but I’ve really had a hard time finding a good sketching application and more importantly a stylus I actually like and can use on a regular basis.
Through course of my travels and speaking at various conferences I’ve been given a number of different stylus to try out and none have made it more than 24 hours before I gave them away to someone else because I didn’t like them. The latest was the Griffin Technology stylus which always seemed to get good reviews but when I got my hands on it I was really surprised to find it was really tiny. Think the stubby little pencil you used to use at miniature golf courses when you were a kid to keep score tiny. So it lasted less than a day before I got tired of feeling like I was drawing with a kids warn down crayon.
A solution to both of my problems can from someplace I didn’t expect but probably should have – Wacom. The same people that made the Intuos tablet I have been using to design with for years created an application and stylus that I really love and now use all the time. The Bamboo Stylus is shorter than a full sized pencil but it’s big enough that you can use it without it feeling undersized. When I started using the stylus it needed some time to get broken in. At first there would be about a one second pause before the stylus would be recognized by the iPad but the more I used it the better it got and now there is no delay at all when I draw with it.
The more important part of the solution is the Bamboo Paper iPad application which was created for sketching ideas with features like multiple colors and pen types, multiple types a lined and graph paper, undo / redo and the ability to easily email your sketches instead of so many other applications that more of a fine art focus. The one downside of the app is that you are only able to create one notebook which is kind of a pain as it would really be nice to be able to create multiple notebooks broken out by client, project, etc.
The Bamboo Stylus runs about $30 and the Bamboo Paper app is free so if you have been looking for a great iPad sketching solution I really recommend this one.
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NYC’s Big App Ideas Competition
I found an interesting site today call NYC BigApps from New York City Economic Development Corporation and the NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications that asks a simple questions – If you could have any application to make New York City better, what would it be? The goal of the competition is to have the public submit ideas for Apps that could benefit residents, visitors or business in NYC and be subsequently developed for the NYC BigApps Competition; and to engage the broader public as well as the developer community in identifying technology that could improve quality of life for New Yorkers. The ideas range from the smart and practical like “I want a NYC app that creates a social network within apartment buildings, allowing for better communication and easier transitions for new tenants” to the more humorous like “I want a NYC app that turns my subway commute into a snowboarding challenge where people are encouraged to stand while maintaining balance within the subway car.”. Submissions run through July 28th so if you have any good ideas submit them now.
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Word Lens: Realtime augmented reality language translation
I know it sounds jaded but there just aren’t many mobile applications that really impress me anymore. The last one that comes to mind is Flipboard that is an incredible app that formats your social media into a dynamic digital magazine. I still use and enjoy Flipboard every day but when a good friend of mind sent me a link to a new app today what I saw blew Flipboard out of the water. It is called Word Lens and it is a $5 iPhone app that uses augmented reality in the most amazing way I have ever seen to translate English to Spanish or Spanish to English words on-the-fly. It is kind of mind blowing because being the jaded designer I am I admit that it sounds and the video even kind of looks like a gimmick that need the perfect circumstances to work. But it really works and it is a real ‘wow’ moment when to see it work. It is one of those things that gets my heart racing a little because I can see the astounding possibilities for this type of technology to completely change travel, eliminate those cheesy little translation dictionaries and completely change the way the world experiences foreign languages and countries.
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Real world experiences bring Tron Legacy to life
It’s funny how the smallest things can set us down a path that will change the rest of your life. For me the lightcycle sequence in the original TRON was one of those things because it was unlike anything I had ever seen and I became obsessed with 3D animation. That obsession influenced my decision on where to go to college to peruse 3d animation and work as a 3D animator after I graduated. So I am more than a little excited about the new movie Tron: Legacy.
One of the promotional items for the upcoming movie was created by Coke Zero called LiveCycle which draws on other real life games like the Mini Getaway Stockholm to create a real life version of the Tron Lightcycles game. Running the LiveCycle application turns you and your smartphone into a lightcycle that draws a wall behind as you move through the city. The more opponents that run into your wall the more points you score but don’t get cute because there is a speed limit detector that will keep you from jumping in your car.
Another TRON incarnation has appeared on London’s Southbank using projection mapping technology to bring the QEH to life in with visuals and the Daft Punk soundtrack. Inside you will find a re-creation of Flynn’s Arcade with original TRON arcade games, a Light Cycle replica and the TRON: Evolution video game.
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3D movies in the palm of your hand (without glasses)
I thought this was an interesting new direction on the 3D video craze in this case done with your cell phone and it’s done without those clunky glasses. It’s called a i3DG and is an analog extension to an iPhone or an iPodTouch that converts its 2D display into a layered 3D view. It uses the technique of placing a half-silvered mirror at a 45-degree angle in front of an image that is created in three strips (seen below) so when it is projected it creates depth in the image. The advantage is that you don’t need any special equipment or techniques to create the 3D image – you only need the i3DG.
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MINI Getaway Stockholm
Mini has launched a pretty cool iPhone app driven driven real world game for the launch of the new MINI Countryman.The game starts out with the simple challenge of asking you to find a virtual Mini located somewhere in Stockholm. Once you are within 50 meters of the Mini a button appears and you can take the Mini for yourself. You then realize that since you have taken possession of the Mini that other people are then trying to come after you to take it if they are within 50 meters of you. The app screen then changes over to show you the enemies that are coming for the car. At the end if you have the virtual Mini in your phone after one week you win a real version of the car. I think it’s a great concept because it utilizes the players in the game to keep the game going so it’s constantly in motion and energized by new players who don’t let it die off after the initial thrill wears off.
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Flash CS5 app development revived by new App Store guidelines?
If it hadn’t been for a tweet by Joshua Davis this morning I would completely missed that Apple very, very quietly put out a press release that announced some big changes to their iOS Developer Program license.
The first big step is that for the first time ever they will publish App Store Review Guidelines that will finally make their app review process public. Even more intriguing is the statement “We are continually trying to make the App Store even better. We have listened to our developers and taken much of their feedback to heart. Based on their input, today we are making some important changes to our iOS Developer Program license in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 to relax some restrictions we put in place earlier this year.
In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.”
SO… the million dollar question I am trying to get answered is if this means that you will be able to develop apps in Adobe Flash CS5 again or if it will have to revised to comply their statement that “the resulting apps do not download any code”. Does this mean all our outrage over their behavior lately worked at least a little? Is there still a small contingent within Apple that still gives a crap about the creative community? I’m not holding my breath just yet but it is nice to think that maybe Apple is stopping at least part of their childlike behavior. If you hear anything more about this or if I get any updates I’ll post them in the comments.
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Great mobile app development tools
We all don’t have the luxury of a dedicated mobile development team so you need to find tools that will let you quickly and easily prototype your ideas and then actually get them built and posted. Over the past 6 months I have found two tools that can really help you out as you try to bring your grand mobile vision to life with a skeleton crew and a phantom budget.
Briefs
When I design for mobile, especially iPhone, I am a fiend for testing and tweaking my designs based on workable prototypes. The challenge for me has been that I just don’t have the time to learn all the features of Apple’s developers kit to be able to sit and work through my prototypes on my own which meant I had to do it in Flash and test it on my screen or put static comps on my phone. Neither solution was close to idea since the usability wasn’t right when I did it on computer and comps on my phone were in the right environment but had no interaction. Then I found Briefs which is a toolkit for packaging your mobile concepts into prototypes that run live on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
A brief is a single binary XML file that contains the structure and layout of your concept. All resources, including image data are bundled inside of a single .brieflist document. The structure of a brief is broken down into scenes and actors. Using a hierarchy of these objects, one can define an entire application flow and position controls into a designed layout. Right now you create the app by downloading their Starter Kit and doing some extremely simple coding where you define the stages, the graphic location and the position of any buttons. There will be a version in the App Store soon.
I have used Briefs a lot and it has been an essential part of my design process as it allows me to test user experience models and designs on anything from pencil sketches to full blown designs. If you are designing for the iPhone I would high recommend investing the minimal time it takes to get up to speed on it.
Mobile Roadie
Mobile Roadie is an interesting tool is a Web based app development framework that gives you all the tools to create and maintain iPhone and Android apps. Depending on your needs you can get Core, Plus or Pro packages with each tier adding more controls and options with the Pro package giving you almost complete creative freedom to create an app that looks exactly the way you want it to. Since it is a mobile framework the content is downloaded into the app which isn’t the standard experience but it does give you the flexibility to update the structure and content without having to push a whole new app that the use will have to download an update for. t is a really good solution for any designer, agency or company that doesn’t have the budget to hire an entire mobile development team but needs to create a mobile app presence.
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