Looks like today’s Google logo “Happy Halloween featuring Scooby Doo!” is the first time they’ve used a carousel to paginate. Fittingly, it’s like flipping through a Sunday morning comic strip and brings back some great memories from when I used to watch Scooby Doo every weekend which always ended with “…and I would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!” From a customized game of Pac-Man to an embedded YouTube video for John Lennon’s birthday, Google has been creating more and more innovative “Doodles.” Check out the entire doodle collection.
YouTube has started rolling out a subtle new feature in embedded video players. At anytime you push pause, you’ll see a new arrow icon that, when clicked, will open the deep-link for the YouTube page the video lives on in a new window or tab. Because it’s the same size as the play button, it might take away from the prominent call-to-action to resume playback. So far, I’ve only seen it on the newer player UI, and is most likely not planned to be implemented in the older players, but it’s definitely a great feature.
My friends have launched their “travel inspiration” service Wanderfly today. Co-founded by Evan Schneyer, Christy Liu, and Cezary Pietrzak, “Wanderfly answers this basic question: ‘Where can I go?’”
Just enter your departure city, budget, approximate time frame, location (if you know a general vicinity, i.e., “Europe,” or you can be completely spontaneous and leave it defaulted to “Anywhere”), and interests (casino, eco, food, culture, outdoors, romance, shopping, spa, party, beach, entertainment, and/or luxury). “Get Going,” and the system will recommend custom-tailored locations along with flight and hotel options and a collection of things to do pulled in from services such as Foursquare, Yelp, Eventful, Nile Guide, Find. Eat. Drink, and Lonely Planet.
Some really cool stuff coming from Microsoft Research. LightSpace is essentially Surface without the table, encompassing the entire environment around you, and controlled by projectors and depth-sensing cameras. Definitely a push towards a gesture-based computing, LightSpace and future research will embrace “device-less augmented reality.”
LightSpace combines elements of surface computing and augmented reality research to create a highly interactive space where any surface, and even the space between surfaces, is fully interactive. Our concept transforms the ideas of surface computing into the new realm of spatial computing.
Instrumented with multiple depth cameras and projectors, LightSpace is a small room installation designed to explore a variety of interactions and computational strategies related to interactive displays and the space that they inhabit. LightSpace cameras and projectors are calibrated to 3D real world coordinates, allowing for projection of graphics correctly onto any surface visible by both camera and projector. Selective projection of the depth camera data enables emulation of interactive displays on un-instrumented surfaces (such as a standard table or office desk), as well as facilitates mid-air interactions between and around these displays. For example, after performing multi-touch interactions on a virtual object on the tabletop, the user may transfer the object to another display by simultaneously touching the object and the destination display. Or the user may “pick up” the object by sweeping it into their hand, see it sitting in their hand as they walk over to an interactive wall display, and “drop” the object onto the wall by touching it with their other hand.
Stumbled upon this awesome browser “game” while reading Gizmodo. It’s like a game of Asteroids on most any webpage where you shoot up objects on the site – just drag-and-drop the javascript code into your bookmarks menu, visit a site, and launch the code. You steer your ship with the arrow keys, and shoot with the spacebar. Like it says on the site, “it’s cooler if you make your own sound effects.” Have fun!
Stumbled upon this