Your very own Tron Cylce

You can get your very own Tron cycle now just before you go to see TRON : Legacy the remake of the Dusney classic TRON.This is the creation of Florida bike shop The Parker Brothers Choppers it is one of the 10 street-legal Tron Light Cylces. It was created from scratch using images from online to design it as in the movie it wasn't actually created just virtual as The Parker brothers "Keeping in mind, no one ever made this bike before" stated. It consist's of a steel-frame, fibreglass bodywork and a V-twin engine from the Suzui TLR1000 and all the essentials such as brakes etc to make the vehicle street-legal. The Tron is weighting in at 474 pounds with a leght of 100 inches and 23 inches wide. The Parker brothers are selling these new pieces of technology at a whooping $55,000 each and there nearly all gone with just 4 left. You can view the testing stage of the Tron below.

VIA: Geeky Gadgets

TrueView: The Ad Skipper, Advertiser's Are Happy About

YouTube are the creators of this new ad format TrueView that lets users skip over ads that they aren't interested in. The way the TrueView ad unit operates is that it begins playing then you'll notice a five second countdown timer once thats complete an arrow shall appear leaving you skip the remainder of the ad if your not interested and take you back to the content you initially wanted to view. Advertisers are initially happy about the latest results as they only pay if the user doesn't hit the "skip" button so in theory everyone watching the ad has a general interest in the ad. Since this is a new system it is unknown how affective the technique shall be since TrueView is new to a user they might be engaged to see what happens and not press the skip button at all. Also worth noting is that all ads aren't going to be in this format as the original format is still available and the choice between each format is up to the advertiser.

VIA: Tech Crunch

Jumo: Social Networking for Charities

This is Chris Hughes (co-founder of Facebook and Chief Digital Organizer for Barack Obama's presidential campaign) latest venture Jumo a social network focused on charities and non-profit organizations. Chris aims to create a social networking site to "do what Yelp did for restaurants" which is "to help people find them and evaluate them". Each charity or non-profit organization will have their own designated page  with relevant news articles, Twitter posts and YouTube videos. The website aims to give small charities and non-profit organizations a platform to be recognized on the world wide web and a strong media presence. Its not the first attempt to give charities ability to be recognized on a large media scale as there is already the Global Giving website and Facebook application that gives people ways to find charities. Chris claims that the website's purpose isn't about getting donations like Global Giving but to "deepen ties between its users and their favourite causes". You can give charities but each organization needs to be tax exempt to be able to access donations. This could be the solution for online donations as in 2009 there was $300 Billion donated and only 6% was donated online. 

   

VIA: NYTIMES

Sont atracTable: Just like in the movies

Remember those futuristic screens Tom Cruise in Minority Report used be swiping all around the place that just looked crazy well there nearly here for all of us to use with this latest piece of Sony Technology the atracTable. Sony have teamed up with Atracsys, a Swiss optical tracking company for this impressive project. The tables interface can analysis body movements and act on any gesture or movement from your body or any part of your arm. Sony have claimed it will be able to determine a users age sex and even "emotion". This product will go on sale as a 35-inch HD ready unit for business or industrial.

BendDesk : A Fascinating Innovation of a Work Desk

Media Computing Group presents BendDesk an desk environment that combines a horizontal and a vertical interactive surface that are seamlessly connected by a curved surface. They have created a system that avoids changing input modalities by supporting direct touch and pen input on the entire surface. It combines a multi-touch area with an physical desk you can use to hold your laptop do your homework or even eat on just like any normal desk. BendDesk release date is unknown yet, but if you wish to find more information the original publication can be found here.

VIA : Engadget

Issues while creating poker app

When creating the screen for working out the percentage of a players cards the main issue I have come across is how a user will select a card. I have designed and studied the following options for the user to pick a card.


Option 1 - Drag & Drop
I would position all the cards at the bottom of the screen all visible for the user. The user would select one card drag it up to where he wants to place it. The card would "collide" with the place the user wants to place it. I would have a loop constantly checking for "collisions". The main disadvantage I came across is the fact all the cards would be grouped closely together not looking very attractive for the interface.

Option 2 - Keyboard for inputting cards
The user would select an area they want to place a card and a keyboard would appear from bottom of the screen allowing a user to input the card they wish. The main disadvantage is I would have to jail break the iphone interface to manipulate the keyboard and that wouldn't be regarded as a good programming or design.


Option 3 - Select a card from different screen
The user would select a card they want to input for example "Hole Card 1" they would be taken to a separate screen with all the cards on the screen they select one that is now "Hole Card 1". The screen is very clustered from my tests once again. 


Option 4 - Double Pecker
The user would select a card they want to input for example "Hole Card 1" a double Pecker would appear from bottom of the screen allowing a user to select a card their selection would now be "Hole Card 1". From my research this is a nice neat solution without breaking good coding practice and I will have to prototype before implementation like I did with the other options but this seems to be the way I will tackle the issue.

DEIS elearning Department

On Monday the 22nd of November were given a talk by Shane Croinn a Senior Multimedia developer for DEIS elearning department.The talk was very informative as it consisted of an insight into DEIS's current and past projects and a general framework when dealing with clients. We were given a quick background story of the company which has 4 employees at the moment. As being a student in CIT I always associated DEIS with the blackboard system online for the college and I didn't associate them with anything else. Ciaran was quick to outline their commercial projects they were previously involved in such as citibank and postbank (finical elearning with video and green screens), O2 (Assesment Modules), vodafone (Explaining offers to employees) and AIB (Marketing Animations). They are currently working on Flagship EU (Language practice with a networking platform using ELGG) and HDSLR Video (Shooting & Post production for a CIT Promo). He explained the framework for dealing with customers.

1. Brief with customer
2. Quotation
3. Contract
4. Project work begins
5. Client review
6. Sign off

This was a good insight into a CIT based company who deal with commercial projects outside the college. Shane also informed to us about Enterprise Ireland and their participation in new and upcoming small businesses. He also explained about their innovation vouchers just in case we wish to start up our own business. In conclusion I found the talk very informative and interesting and id like to take the opportunity to thank Shane Croinn for coming in and giving the talk.