Don Kasprzak » Virtual Reality

Glass technology

donkasprzak — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 02:34:54 +0000

Is this all possible? Great product marketing nevertheless.
[youtube width="640" height="355"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GXO_urMow&hd=1[/youtube]

The New “Magazine”

donkasprzak — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:31:39 +0000

Apple’s iPad is already changing the landscape of print. This example seems to show how interactive a magazine can should be in the digital age.

Tags: iPad, magazine, Tablet, design, media player, innovation, trends

Transforming how we experience imaging

donkasprzak — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:33:28 +0000

Blaise Aguera y Arcas is an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, architect of Seadragon and the co-creator of Photosynth, a monumental piece of software capable of assembling static photos into a synergy of zoomable, navigatable spaces. Check out how this technology will change our approach to imaging.

Tags: Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Seadragon, Photosynth, design, TED, Virtual Reality, imaging, trends

Whats new is now old

donkasprzak — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:20:40 +0000

Microsoft’s Photosynth was a hit at TED last year and looked to be really promising regardless of running only on XP SP2 and Vista (shame on you Microsoft) but the same team along with the University of Washington has moved forward with new photo, video and VR technologies:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLLzV5qeKyk[/youtube]
This should be a very interesting mashup of multiple media formats. Great work and a wonderful tool for education.

Tags: Photosynth, photo, virtual reality, panaoramic, globalization, trends

Milwaukee has Google street views!

donkasprzak — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:45:46 +0000

Milwaukee has just been added by Google to their cool interactive Street View component of Google Maps? What a cool technology for the city and organizations to exploit in Google’s popular mapping service.

So feel free to email anyone and send a link permitting visitors to interactively tour Milwaukee via Google’s panoramic street view component. No mention in local media (newspapers, TV or radio) about Milwaukee joining this cool web tool.

With linking and embedding supporting this will provide a great resource for Web2.0 tools as well….like building the interactive frame right into your blog:

View Larger Map

Milwaukee joins great cities including San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, Minneapolis, Chicago, Miami, New York City, Boston and Orlando with support for Google’s street view technology.

It may surprise some around town that many established cities (including Seattle) are not yet supporting street view.

Wish the resolution of their camera was better….but its a cool start.

Tags: Google Maps, street view, interactive, VR, panoramic photography,
Web2.0, cool, trends

Tech futures in higher education

donkasprzak — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:34:16 +0000

Today’s Live Discussion at the Chronicle of Higher Education points to the growth of new technologies that will change the college campus. Gartner’s “Hype Cycle for Higher Education” focused on technologies that will transform colleges in the next 10 years: global library digitization projects, personal devices with campus network access, Internet2, e-learning repositories, quantum computing and virtual worlds.
I am very glad to see Internet2 getting more press as a key, defining technology for the future of colleges.

Tags: The Chronicle of Higher Education, Internet2, future technologies,trends

My latest read – The Tipping Point

donkasprzak — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 11:49:02 +0000

A long and exciting summer with Maxwell has taken me away from my daily reading. But I have just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and learned its just as great as reviews have suggested.

Chapter 3 (The Stickiness Factor: Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues and the Educational Virus) is a really great read and made a real impact in approaching a thread that is currently underway on Internet2‘s Teaching and Learning listserv.

The discussion is about the impact of SecondLife in K12 education. There are real questions about the validity of SecondLife.

After the initial hype of SecondLife (for higher education) peaked, colleges now find themselves in the same rut about really embracing SecondLife when virtual visits never really materialized. A lost leader? Probably.

Many including Wired‘s Chris Anderson are openly debating the ‘stickiness’ of SecondLife. Does it provide solid learning outside the classroom or studio?

Gladwell shares the great details from the 1960s around the hot technology back in the day … Television. Yes, television. The “process” to engage learning in the 1960s was Sesame Street. The success of Jim Henson and Frank Oz seemed to focus on their creativity yet overshadowed the amount of deep research and the micro-management of educational research to prove that tech gizmo of the day TV could not only educate kids but actually infect them to learn.

The Blue’s Clues educational show took the best of Sesame Street and did something better on TV, it ran each show five times in a row. Crazy? Crazy like a Fox! Their research showed kids could not all learn the lessons during a single episode so playing it over and over brought kids (up to the age of five) through repetition the lessons designed in the show. And it has been a success ever since.

Gladwell also conveys where Sesame Street was a hit and where it was a miss. While I (somehow) missed the episode where Big Bird changed his name to Roy…the kids didn’t and it proved to be a big mistake for the show.

So can we substitute SecondLife for Sesame Street & the Internet for Television to achieve similar results? Maybe. I believe too many comments regarding this thread focused on the technology. Some have jumped right into the platform issue? Platforms? What platforms? The web is the platform.

I’m not really impressed with colleges that buy an island or develop space in SecondLife. They have completely missed (as Gladwell suggests) the details of bringing engaging content inside their virtual walls. So for now SecondLife for K12 and HigherEd will continue to tip…the other way.

The Tipping Point Website

Tags: The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, reading, Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues, SecondLife, chris anderson, Internet2, learning, educational content, trends

Copywrong

donkasprzak — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:06:24 +0000

The real golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
I’m always disappointed to see how copyright handcuffs what an artist can create. For example:

This message is from RealViz’s Stitcher program, a photographic virtual reality rendering program. “Due to legal issues” you cannot look at an image if the camera focal length is really wide.

What could a visual artist create without this man made limitation?

Technorati Tags: copyright, photography, virtual reality, artist, creative

Internet2 – Performing Arts

donkasprzak — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:15:02 +0000

Fall 2006 Internet2 Member Meeting
Performing Arts Advisory Group (Invitation Only)
December 06, 2006, 11:45 AM – 1:15 PM
Location: CC23 A

A lot of big news in this session. The one that will capture the imagination of many — the London Symphony Orchestra is now connecting to Ukrena, Europe’s Internet2 and available for new educational and performance based events.

Cleveland is really out in front with a group of performing arts events. The Cleveland Ingenuity Festival has brought many Arts groups together. Milwaukee could benefit from this group, especially with the international film festivals.

NYSERNet is building “Manhattan connects” while Notre Dame is broadcasting theatre performances over Internet2 in China and Italy. This was refreshing to hear and really a call for inspiration.

Technorati Tags: Internet2, Chicago, Performing Arts, Cleveland, Art, HD, high def, digital video,

Internet2 – OSTN Film Festival

donkasprzak — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:08:42 +0000

Fall 2006 Internet2 Member Meeting
Internet2 OSTN Film Festival
December 06, 2006, 7:30 AM – 8:45 AM
Location: CC21 C

The Open Student Television Network OSTN is now an Internet2 affiliate just this week.
This was a great session..and a standing room audience.

This will be a great opportunity for students (as access to tools continues to climb yet pricing continues to drop) opening the door to more and more student artists. This is for the BFA seeking student, not the professional film maker.

Wisconsin is really the great Midwest film resource with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, Madison’s Wisconsin Film Festival. Milwaukee also hosts the European MediaArts Film Festival at MIAD.

Technorati Tags: Internet2, Chicago, OSTN, Cleveland, filmmaking, HD, high def, digital video,

Internet2 – 2nd Life session

donkasprzak — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:12:37 +0000

Fall 2006 Internet2 Member Meeting (Live netcast and video on demand information)
Teaching & Learning in Massively Multiplayer Virtual Worlds: Second Life Adventures in Learning
December 05, 2006, 8:45 AM – 10:00 AM Location: CC11 B
David Antonacci, University of Kansas Medical Center
Marcus Childress, Emporia State University
Jean Gardner, Topeka Shawnee County Public Library
Randy Stout, Kansas Board of Regents

Second Life had a new announcement at Internet2 yesterday – Cisco is now providing access to their content in Second Life. Not only is this great for education but a nice nudge to those who may not yet see the emerging movement in this virtual world.

Engaging students in virtual worlds for education is the goal of this session. This is also to push 2nd life as a broad communication for engaging faculty for virtual educational programming.

At first 2nd Life gets in the way of your 1st real life and then your first real life gets in the way of your 2nd life!

Opened to the public in 2003 — now over 2 million real users.Â 2nd Life is so big Congress is actually looking to tax your accounts in 2nd Life.

Technorati Tags: Internet2, Chicago, 2nd Life, trends, virtual, interactive, gaming

My latest read – Assembling Panoramic Photos

donkasprzak — Sat, 06 May 2006 20:54:31 +0000

Its been great getting this book to serve as a bit of inspiration:

Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer’s Notebook (Designers Notebook)
Good VR photography and digital tools providing a fresh look, new approaches, and most of all inspiration.
Want to grab my camera and fly to Venice.

Tags: photography, virtual reality, VR, panoramic

VR Art Museum Exhibit

donkasprzak — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 08:34:55 +0000

An art exhibit in Queens for those who can become apart of the Museum’s exhibit via VR.

NYTimes Website

1st Titan Moon VR!

donkasprzak — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:42:18 +0000

Less than 48 hours after landing a interactive VR of the moon of Titan is now available for you to scan the surface of a moon 900 million miles away from Earth. Enjoy!

Titan moon VR

VR helping disabled

donkasprzak — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 21:52:03 +0000

Virtual Reality is helping people with special needs extends their physical reach.

Full Article

NYTimes VR archives

donkasprzak — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:45:06 +0000

The New York Times has kept an archive of VRs shot by their staff. Today they include updates for the Republican convention and George Bush’s acceptance of the nomination.

Full Article

Next generation home buyer

donkasprzak — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:31:26 +0000

Shopping for a home with a BlackBerry, Palm or PocketPC? Now you can access wireless VR imaging.
Full Article

VR at the first Olympic games?

donkasprzak — Sat, 31 Jul 2004 07:54:18 +0000

The Summer Olympics start in Athens, Greece Aug. 13, but you can jump-start the celebration with a visit to â€œAncient Olympia: A Photographic Odyssey,â€? which has its world premiere Tuesday, July 27 at the Cornell Museum of Art and History.

Running through Sept. 11, â€œAncient Olympiaâ€? features 18 large-scale images of places where the Olympics originated more than 3,000 years ago in Greece, shot in glorious color, 360-degree rotary panoramic, wide-angle 120 mm, 35 mm and fish-eye formats.

A complementary exhibit contains artifacts from the first modern Olympics held in Greece in 1896, on loan from the Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale. Also included are a series of bookmarks featuring an Olympic panorama on one side and a descriptive history on the reverse, as well as a series of bookmarks illustrated with an Olympic panorama on one side and a descriptive history on the reverse.

Full Article

VR helps cancer recovery

donkasprzak — Sat, 31 Jul 2004 07:50:41 +0000

New research in Virtual Reality show patients interacting with traditional VR (head sets and gloves) helps relieve patients symptoms following therapy.

Full Article

Panoramic VRs at conventions

donkasprzak — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:59:31 +0000

In addition to blogging our political conventions, panoramic VR imaging is also being hilighted in The NewYork Times.

Technorati Tags: culture, VR