Final Works.

•July, 2007 • Leave a Comment

Vlog4 – Bye S139

•March, 2007 • Leave a Comment

Yes

It is 9 and 12 hour graveyard shift is over. I did do a lot but not enough anyways. I will have to pull 12hours like these quite some more to be able to survive. Anyways, my last vlog is not on the 3rd phase of my shift. Its about my last phase in IMM.

I made this video as a memory to the IMM S139 lab where I spent more time that I spent at home when I was a kid. I learnt a lot here from instructors, and students, made good friends and some enemies.. Nah.. It was my pleasure to be in this class where every student was supportive and understanding. The course was no doubt intense, but with the support of students and instructors everything was made much convenient. I don’t have much to say apart from that I will always remember S139 in my life which was like a home to all of us and we all were family. So here is the video that is a is dedicated to S139 Interactive Multimedia. I am happy to graduate but will be sad to leave home.

 

IMM S139:-

http://www.zenmix.com/zenmix/mix.swf?pranaysharma/Vlog4

 

Vlog3 – Phase 2 of 3 Graveyard Shift

•March, 2007 • Leave a Comment

Its been 6 hours

Its 3 am

My language explains how I feel. Things were going good but then I came with a huge target so that I cud do at least a little bit of it, But I feel disappointed at this point as half the work is also not done, and my half time is here. I have to pull up my socks now and get hard on the work to ensure a sound and peaceful sleep tomorrow (if I don’t show up for the class.) Sorry Dan. The vlogs are coming up good as the mood of the video is changed now. I still have the energy but most of it seems hyped up than it really is.

The song I have chosen is a motivational song and drives me for more work with less breaks. Headache, and eye pains don’t matter anymore and hardly felt with the on-going work stress increasing every-minute.

Its 3am

Its been 6hours.

Next 6 hours are the most crucial.

Al the best to me.

 

Here is the video file:

 

 

http://blip.tv/file/183995

http://blip.tv/file/get/Pranaysharmadelhi-Vlog3545.flv

Vlog 2 – Phase 1 of Graveyard Shift

•March, 2007 • Leave a Comment

Welcome back

Yes, the graveyard shift has started. Timestamp: 9pm.

I would be logging the report every 6hours and record the physical, neurological and psychological effects on a human body.. Not really.. Just doing my work and trying to get the maximum done. For which night is perfect and many of us here realize that and spend the nights in the lab like their own home. Anyways, the time has come to embark the beginning of this journey and here it goes. I am motivated and expecting a lot from this.

Lets see how much can I achieve. I have lots of movies with the books to keep me awake all night and also you can see the atmosphere in the lab is pretty cheerful but it will start going dull as the night approaches. So here it is..

My 1st Phase of the Graveyard Shift

I have chosen to use Zen Mix as i wanted to show with the help of the song the energy at that point and the hidden pain and will power to self inflict with it and enjoy it. The perfect song for the perfect moment. Also downloaded quicker.. ha ha/

 

Here are the video files:

http://www.zenmix.com/zenmix/mix.swf?pranaysharma/Vlog2

Vlog1 – Intro to Graveyard Shift

•March, 2007 • 1 Comment

Welcome to the world of vlogging.

ThAnKs to Dan Zen, and Multimedia Pioneering Class Assignment,  everybody has their vlogs now.

My Vlogs are not just indivisual events, but convey a story.

They have a beginning, a story and an ending.

They story starts with the beginning of IMM in but the phase I have shown was pretty much all around the course. Hectic..

This Vlog is just an intro of what is to come.

I enter the lab and instantly get to my computer and get down to work,

Group members flock around to discuss and share group projects. Hardly anyone knows I  was gonna be in the lab for next 12hrs straight. Yes, I had a lot of work pending so decided to pull a 12hr graveyard shift all through the night. Although not exactly graveyard, but I still call it coz I like it.

It was 9-9 show. 9pm I sign in and 9pm I sign off(if alive).

The show was good, and I hope u enjoy some clips of it and moments I mananged to capture with the help of my classmates whom I will talk about more in coming blogs.. Opps. Vlogs!

 

 

Here is my first video -  Intro to the Graveyard Shift

 

http://blip.tv/file/183991

http://blip.tv/file/get/Pranaysharmadelhi-VlogNo1974.flv

 

Mobile Technologies

•March, 2007 • Leave a Comment

Microsoft Corp and Fiat Group Automobiles SpA have unveiled a new version of their Blue&Me Bluetooth system for the automotive market.

Blue&Me is a Windows Mobile-based communication system that is integrated into a car. It has been developed by a joint venture established in 2004 between Fiat and Redmond and uses Bluetooth technology to allow vehicle occupants to make hands-free calls via their mobile phones or laptops.

It does this using a voice-recognition system, which is said to need no training or learning, due to its advanced linguistics. It transfers and automatically updates an address book, from up to five different mobile phones. In addition it features a USB port in the glove box to allow playback of music files stored in MP3, WMA, WAV formats.

  • configurable databases
  • phone and address books
  • alarm clocks and stopwatches
  • Games, such as RPGs like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy
  • Daytimers
  • Varying degrees of image enhancement capabilities, such as the option to create borders, to create animations, and more.
  • Instant Messenger
  • Calculator, Calendar, Schedule note and Memo pad
  • Playback of downloaded music
  • Recording and playback of voices, music, images and pictures
  • Portable music player (MP3 player etc.)
  • Navigation by GPS
  • Viewing and listening to TV and radio (FM/AM)
  • TV phone
  • E-money service and various certification functions through Untouched IC card (FeliCa etc.)
  • Various services with NTT Docomo’s ‘osaifu-keitai (mobile phone with wallet function)’
  • E-money service e.g. ‘Edy’
  • Function as ‘Suica,’ which can be used for a season ticket and a train ticket
  • Cmode: vending machines which can be used with QR code and ‘osaifu-keitai’ of a mobile phone
  • Crime prevention buzzer (with the automatic report system to the police)
  • Pedometer
  • ‘Read aloud’ system
  • Touch-pad system
  • A fingerprint/face certification system for the protection of personal data
  • Mobile centrex service with wireless LAN

In recent years, some cell phones even have the capability of being used as debit or credit cards and can be swiped through most checkout lines to buy everything from mascara to jet planes, as more and more companies offer catalogs for cell phones.

Some newer models allow the user to watch movies and/or television. Most keitai can be connected to the Internet through services such as i-mode. Japan was also the first to launch 3G services on a large scale. Users can browse text-only Internet sites, and many Japanese sites have sub-sites designed especially for keitai users. One of the most popular services allows users to check trainJapanese mobile phones have the capability to use very large sets of characters and icons based on JIS standards that define characters for industrial appliances. More than one thousand characters including all of the Latin alphabet, hiragana, katakana, kanji and special characters like cm (centimeter), arrows, musical notes and more can be used to compose messages. Japanese mobile phones also use emoticons differently from Western mobile phones (see Japanese emoticons).

These character sets are used extensively, and often in a way that do not use their original meaning by relying more on the information based on the shape each character has. For example, ‘\’ may be attached at the end of a sentence to show that they are not happy about the event described. A sentence like “I have a test today\” (translated) might mean that he or she didn’t study enough, or that the test itself is depressing. Some of these usages disappeared as suitable icons were made but these newly made icons also acquired a usage not originally intended. Another example deals with the astrological symbol for Libra (♎). It resembles a cooked and puffed mochi, and is sometimes used in a happy new year’s message as mochi are often eaten then. The symbol for Aquarius (♒) resembles waves, so this would be used to mean ’sea’. The number of icons gradually increased and they are now colored on most cell phones, to make them more distinct. ASCII art is also used widely and many of them are faces with expression.

Social Networking in the web 2.0 world

•March, 2007 • 3 Comments

guest speaker–Wayne McPhail, president of W8NC (http://www.w8nc.com), a Canadian marketing and communications company specializing in emerging technology.

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.” From Wikipedia, the free encylopedia

Web 2.0 is an term referring to the ongoing transition to a full participatory Web, with participation including both humans and machines. Web 2.0 is characterized by the following themes:

The Read/Write Web: In which the Web is seen as a two-way medium, where people are both readers and writers. The main catalyst for this is social software, allowing communication and collaboration between two or more people.

The Web as Platform: In which the Web is seen as a programming platform upon which developers create software applications. The main catalyst for this is Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, allowing communication between two or more software applications.

It is important to recognize, however, that “Web 2.0″ is not anything other than the evolving Web as it exists today. It is the same Web that we’ve had all along. But the problems, issues, and technologies we’re dealing with are in many ways different, and so using the term “Web 2.0″ is a recognition that the Web is in a constant state of change, and that we have entered a new era of networked participation.

RSS is a family of webfeed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

Users of RSS content use programs called feed ‘readers’ or ‘aggregators‘: the user ’subscribes’ to a feed by supplying to their reader a link to the feed; the reader can then check the user’s subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked, and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user.

The initials “RSS” are variously used to refer to the following standards:

  • Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
  • Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
  • RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)

RSS formats are specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats). RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an “RSS feed”, “webfeed”, “RSS stream”, or “RSS channel”.

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person’s life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

Blogs are alternatively called web logs or weblogs. However, “blog” seems less likely to cause confusion, as “web log” can also mean a server’s log files.

A podcast is a media file that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.[1] Like ‘radio‘, it can mean both the content and the method of syndication. The latter may also be termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. The term “podcast” is derived from Apple’s portable music player, the iPod. Known synonyms for the word pod are capsule, case, container, hull, husk, shell, and vessel.[2] A pod refers to a container of some sort and the idea of broadcasting to a container or pod correctly describes the process of podcasting.[3] More about the name itself can be found in the History of podcasting article.

Though podcasters’ web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital audio formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically, using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.

Some Sites referenced by McPhail

http://www.youtube.com

http://www.vox.com

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.secondlife.com

http://www.myspace.com

Sheridan Multimedia Community

•November, 2006 • Leave a Comment

An audience in a theatre, playing the same multiuser game!!

•November, 2006 • Leave a Comment

November 6th, 2006

060308.jpgWe live in exciting times in the game industry. Every decade or so there is a major paradigm change in games that produces whole new genres of content. There was a jump from text games to 2D sprite games, a jump from 2D sprite games to 3D, a jump from single-player games to multiplayer, and a jump from multiplayer to massively multiplayer. Video games as a consumer media type are really only about 25 years old. It took over 25 years for video to move from the movie theatres into people’s living rooms via television. The game industry we know today is just a toddler that bears almost no resemblance to the mass media form it will ultimately become. Games are already the dominant medium consumed by most young males. Within our lifetimes gaming will grow to become the dominant medium for almost all consumer demographics.

It would be a great idea to have a MultiUser game theatre where a number of people can join in and compete against each other. It would be not only entertaining but a lot cheaper than for an individual to play that same game.

This would require a special cinema adapted for this purpose. Seating up to a thousand, every seat would have a game console control pad in front. The general idea is that at a set time one console game (maybe Basketball) is played by the entire audience at the same time.

Some of the similar works with a bit less details would be Cinema / Movie Theatre Games Console where it was not a multiuser game, rather average button press would be used to determine the way the onscreen character would react.

We have a living console of a similar model where multiple users can play against each other in a theatre. This is ESports Arena whose stories can be seen here and there on the net.

With more of these projects coming on its way, we can surely expect a theatre soon to be opened next to us, inviting us all for a multiplayer arena where we will all FIGHT TILL DEATH!!!

Audience control the outcome of a movie

•November, 2006 • Leave a Comment

 November 6th, 2006

controlmovie.jpg

The future and the present, after enrolling in this course all seems as one, its cliche now.

The aesthetic history of media can be described on the basis of a drift towards greater realism for improved immersion of the viewer: with images becoming more detailed and spatial due to the introduction of perspective, with photography as means of mechanically reproducing specific views, with pictures that began to move, later even to talk and take on natural color. On the other hand, there have been setbacks too: for some reason, neither 3-D movies nor Smell-O-Vision really worked. But what about the one-way relationship between media and audience as the crucial obstacle for realistic media? Even a high-resolution Imax movie will not give the viewer feedback the way “real reality” does so easily. So its time that media begins to show some interactivity in order to become a serious surrogate for reality..

The first interactive moviemap was produced at MIT in the late 1970s of Aspen, Colorado. A gyroscopic stabilizer with 16mm stop-frame cameras was mounted on top of a camera car and a fifth wheel with an encoder triggered the cameras every 10 feet.

Then, Mike Figgis brought parallel narration in split-screen format to the cinemas with Timecode (1999). Viewers were not required to choose among the four pictures, but instead were guided by the director’s sound design.

It for this every chaging nature of man that makes him create new when he is bored of usual that makes us reach a stage today where we can control a movie which we watch. Few companies like Flash and Quicktime already geared up to support interactive video.

Interactive movies allow the user to do more than just play and pause a linear presentation, providing a variety of ways to directly manipulate the media.

Some quick notes for developers to learn and use the features of interactivity in movies by quicktime can be found at http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Quicktime/QuickTime.html

Peanut Gallery provides a working example of Interactive Movie where user can chose from a variety of options like animating a character just by pointing at the screen, laughing out, or by simply clicking in the Actions window. People can save their own custom movies and share among other users who can further interact and save their own version.

It would be great to see work like this majorly in theatres so that people can actually immerse themselves in movies and relate movies to real life and enjoy more.

Another big step was Virtual-Reality Movies by University at Buffalo researchers — aimed at transforming the movie-going experience, virtual-reality drama, The Trial The Trail, is a brand new type of dramatic entertainment, where instead of identifying with the protagonist. The audience becomes the protagonist. in a darkened theater and passively watching a story unfold, human audience members in this interactive drama stand up, don gloves and headgear and become immersed virtually in the world of the characters on the screen.