w00t!  The folks at IDEO are working their magic again, this time in the form of a DIY kit for creating Flash based multi-touch interfaces.  That’s right, IDEO-made sorcery is now available to all via the IDEO labs blog at labs.ideo.com, complete with an ActionScript API (on Google Code) … how can one not love that?

Apparently Flash was well suited for the task at hand.  According to the team at IDEO, “”Flash proved to be a very nimble way to support this type of exploration”.

You can check out the actual video showcasing the interaction on the IDEO labs blog.

Caleb Adam Haye
Fire, Inc.

Jared Ficklin of Frog Design once again blew up the spot with his exciting real-world and Flash-based auditory experiments.  In order to illustrate how sound travels, he showed how air, like sound, is transparent but still moves. Of course, Jared cannot explain any principal of physics without a (potentially dangerous) physical example.  So, he rigged up an air rifle created using a plastic trash can, filled it with smoke from a $29 smoke-machine, and shot the smoke in all directions… several times.It may not seem too significant on the surface, but beneath the surface it reveals the obvious joy Jared gains from working with technology that he loves.

In addition to blasting the audience members with smoke, Jared also showed his awesome Ruben’s tube video (which I originally wrote about here).  However, this time he managed to bring a safe version (containing little white objects as opposed to fire) and demonstrated that live.  In the end however, Jared, not being someone to let something as novel as “danger” stop him from teaching people the wonderful, physical mysteries of the world of sound, unveiled the actual flaming Ruben’s Tube at the Industry Leader dinner @ the SupperClub:

(Big up to KidBombay for the snap)

Jared also covered some major principles of working with audio in Flash, including destructive/constructive interference, the beauty of algorithmic spawning, and of course the transcendent truth that, “Flash loves Neil Diamond” (Apperently Neil Diamond tracks consistently result in good results within the course of Jared’s experimentation)

You can see a video of Jared’s Ruben’s Tube on my blog, caleb.org:
http://caleb.org/blog/uncategorized/rubens-tube-by-jared-ficklin-of-frog-design/

Caleb Adam Haye
Fire, Inc.

All though this is not the lost and found, a very distraught conference goer came to me today seeking everyone’s help in locating a lost ring at the conference. It will not buy you a Bentley but its return may buy you some good karma or a beer.

It is a large silver ring with a pink oval stone. If found please return it to the Masonic Information desk.

If the ring includes a finger they are only interested in the ring.

John Warno
Milk Labs

Danny Stilton, Design Director at IDEO, talked about all the cool stuff they do at the Flashforward 2008 conference but what was really interesting was the open source Flash multitouch experiments he briefly showed.

IDEO also announced the launch of their blog labs.ideo.com that is live today.

Their multitouch exploration is all open source under the Creative Commons license and available at google code, http://code.google.com/p/ideo-multitouch/.

I am excited to see what happens.

John Warno
Milk Labs