introspectiveH » wii

Taking Wiimote Innovations to the Next Level

ewH — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:35:45 +0000

Recently, I came across some videos of a very smart dude name Johnny Chung Lee that has been doing some interesting innovations with one of my favorite toys, the Wiimote. Johnny Lee is a Ph. D. student at Carnegie Mellon, and his innovations are both simple and brilliant. He is doing work similar to Majority Desk, but taking it way beyond to the next level. The biggest shift in thinking is that he uses the Wiimote and infrared sensors in reverse, so that your hands are more free to move around naturally.

I love it; such a simple paradigm shift unleashes so many possibilities. If you don't agree, then check out his next video where he uses this same concept to provide a cheap alternative to both expensive electronic whiteboards and the upcoming Microsoft Surface, which is supposed to be priced between $5k – $10K.

Because of the high interest in the project, but lack of resources to pursue it full time, Lee released the Wiimote whiteboard project as open source…another brilliant move.

I'm swamped with requests for compatibility fixes, requests for Mac and Linux versions. … and as much as I would love to be able to get this working in the hands of as many people as possible, I don't have the skills or time to do all this alone. So, here is my call for help. I have created a SourceForge repository for all WiimoteWhiteboard development.

Over at Cynergy Labs, they have also picked up on the minority report/Wiimote concept and put together a really nice, polished application using a pair of real minority report type gloves. Thanks to my friend Karl Johnson over at Cynergy, for sending this one along.

Cynergy Labs: Project Maestro

I love the fact that these type of breakthroughs are being created with a $30 Wiimote and $20 worth of parts from Radio Shack.

Microsoft Surface: $10,000

Wiimote: $30

Making Microsoft's Surface an overpriced, big ass table: priceless

As a bonus, check out Johnny's latest project on head tracking with the Wiimote for desktop VR display. This is just freaking amazing and opens up a whole new can of worms.

Combine majority desk, maestro, and head tracking VR together and you could be fully immersed in a productive 3D environment using a minority report interface. Thanks Johnny Lee; I salute you.

gapingvoid gets it's wiihands on

ewH — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:53:11 +0000

Wow, this absolutely makes my day, month, and year. Hugh MacLeod is a very popular technology artist/blogger that communicates with drawings and humor. I am already a big fan of Hugh and his hugely popular blog gapingvoid. Now my good friend, James Governor of Redmonk fame, talked to Hugh about majority desk, and this is the result. Get your wii hands on, gapingvoid style!

My business cards from streetcards.com already sport the two gapingvoid designs below, and I just ordered more with the new wiihand design. AWESOME! If you order from streetcards, be sure to pay the extra for the matte finish; it's totally worth it.

majority desk – get your wiihands on

ewH — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:46:49 +0000

Majority Desk is a project that Dan McWeeney and I worked on this year for demo jam at SAP TechEd. It's basically a 3D rendered widget desktop ran by an open source physics server; and oh yeah, all user interaction is completely controlled by two Nintendo wiimotes. It supports full interaction with flash movies running on floating, spinning tiles. Cool, eh? Some of the demo widgets even consume web services from an SAP Netweaver system. See, and you thought business was boring.

Majority Desk is powered by Adobe AIR and takes major advantage of many available open source projects surrounding the Flex community. We used Open Dynamics Engine wrapped with Python for the physics engine, Papervision3D for the 3D rendering, WiiFlash for the wiimote interaction, Tweener for the visual transitions, and Doug McCune as an Flex open source fountain of knowledge. If you are interested, Dan is planning on writing a blog post with more of the technical details. I will throw a link up once it is posted, or you could just just subscribe to his blog, which you should do anyway. He is one brilliant dude, and working with him has been career changing. [UPDATE] Dan's post is up Majority Desk Architecture

So without further ado, check out the demo below.

Here is an exclusive interview that we gave to the Redmonk guys before our demo in Las Vegas. They were the first to see it, because those guys rock!

Here are some photos of us on stage during the demo and the next day in the Community Clubhouse. If you think majority desk looks cool on your monitor, picture it on a 30 foot screen in front of a thousand people. Yep, that's me with my back to the audience "showing them my good side". These photos come from Dan's Zooomr stream and Marilyn Pratt's Flickr stream.

This one comes from Nancy Margulies and her beautiful "Community Mindspace" mural

We had a blast and the crowd really enjoyed themselves. We couldn't compete this year because we won last year with SAPlink, so we chose to break all the rules and just focus on blowing the crowd's socks off. I think it worked.

Last, but not least, I want to give a couple shout outs to some of the people that gave us inspiration, support, and encouragement to work on this crazy thing.

Denis Browne – SAP Imagineering
Doug McCune – Independent Extraordinaire
Ryan Stewart – Adobe RIA Evangelist of Awesomeness
Matthias Zeller – Adobe go to man for all things SAP

Some other Adobe guys that make Flash/Flex/AIR exciting and fun to work with.

Some other SAP guys that helped with the videos and actually make SAP fun to work with, if you can believe it.

And of course, my Redmonk peeps for doing the interview and always having other great blog content.

Some initial reactions out in the blogosphere: