i finally took a look @ the cloud flow, really really nice, but need to be very well designed to be more usefull than cute. depends on the ideas of implementation.

really interesting how you did, is it possible to have the sources ?

Peace

Gabriel gb

I don’t know how many of you saw my stack test:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=-ffxaP3APeEhttp://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=-ffxaP3APeE

It also seems like a good organizational tool, and combined with clouds could make for some cool views.

well your stack could be used like space in mac, and the clouds could be used in each windows !?

got any news from ubuntu people ?

Peace

@Xelapond
Nice!
stacks in clouds? i love it allready!

@gabriel :
i think cloudFlow *could* be usefull to show hierarchical structures, like file systems, but not as it is now.
I’ll post the CloudFlow source once i’ve cleaned it up and commented it a bit more.

I’m pretty convinced that to make effective use of touch (and your fingers, if they are anything like mine) we’ll need new interface paradigm altogether.  I’m not very precise with my fingers and a lot of existing applications (and UI themes) require precise positioning to click on tightly-grouped buttons and skinny widgets.  Go ahead and try to pretend to use your fingers to interact with the form you get with “POST REPLY” feature of this forum and you’ll see what I mean

I agree we can’t throw away the existing application base, but on the other hand there are other applications we can explore.  I’m personally not motivated to get plain old X11 apps running on my table, but much more motivated to get new apps written for it ... what do I have in mind?

Trek-style comm link: by this I mean the ability to talk to anyone quickly, no matter where he/she is located.  Admittedly this has very little to do with touch and a lot more to do with locating technology, but still, the touch interface is the make/break factor.  I want to use touch interface to establish a link with a person in under five seconds.

Family photo album app: yes, there is a bunch of photo apps floating around, but when you have thousands of pictures organized in folders, there has to be a better way to look at them than randomly throwing a pile on the table ... that’s not how you look at your photos IRL anyway.

Kid-friendly games and puzzles: OK, I’m not looking to replace all actual toys with my table, but there are some toys that I think would benefit.  If your kids are like mine, they lose jigsaw puzzle pieces often, and they hate turning the pieces face-up first I’d like to code one up that would actually be challenging, and sane to work with.  I want one that will work with 5000 pieces, for example, without throwing ALL 5000 pieces on the workspace at the same time (that’s where the sane part comes in).

Environmental simulation: I’d like to simulate marine, desert, and marshland environments on my table.  We are an active family and I believe touch-based interface has a lot of value in this area. I’m thinking of using something like Ogre3D to help with this.  I know there are many simulators out there such as http://www.aridocean.com/ but I’m not aware of one that is distributed under open-source license, so I’m planning on writing one

Sorry for my question.....what is the IRC channel??
thanks somuch
roberto ( from italy )

#nuigroup on irc.freenode.net.

Hi all, I’ve been following the multi-touch revolution with passive amazement, but lately I’ve been reading a lot about it. I’m working on building a surface of some sort, but I haven’t decided on a setup yet. I think a MT os is an awesome idea. I’m a novice programmer and I wouldn’t be of much use there, at least not for a while, but I am pretty good with graphics and UI innovation. I have to go, but I will come back and post some of my thoughts on how a MT UI would work.

puddles:  I completely agree we should focus on new apps, but X11 is such a great foundation, we should use it to build these apps.  That will require some major renovation of X11, probably forking it so they don’t get angry at us

Its not that I want to get existing X11 apps running on the table, but until we have enough Multi-Touch apps, its a good idea.  I don’t expect anyone to write a Multi-Touch Schematic Layout program for some time

All good ideas, I specifically like the puzzle and photo app.  For the puzzle it would be really cool if you could put in your own picture, and specify number of pieces.  We do need a more advanced photo app, and I think Taha’s MediaApp is the best so far.

You should get on IRC sometime, you have some good ideas.

~Alex

Okay, here are some of my unorganized thoughts on an MT interface:

Because of the nature of Multitouch (the virtual becomes tangible), it seems obvious that we would want a user experience that is very natural. I think that in essence a ZUI is a good idea, but if it isn’t done right, it could go awry. I suggest that as a replacement for the File in Folder Tree system, we should move to a tagged and related system. When you create a file, you give it a name but you also give it tags. You can give it as many tags as you want. You are not required to give it tags. Also, when you are working on a project, you “relate” your files to the other files in your project. Think about it, when you are working on a document in real life, in your head you are going to associate it with the other documents involved in the project. You would probably place them with each other. So, you have all these files which have been tagged and “related” [replace with better buzzword]. All these files can be seen and manipulated in multiple places. If you had a photo of a flower, it might be tagged as a Flower, Photo, Nature, etc. It might be “in a relationship” with the wildlife brochure you’re working on. That file, while only taking up one spot in memory, appears under all our tags (these may be treated like dynamic folders) and in all of the relationships it’s involved in. If you want to find that file, you use a search bar which sorts results into different categories (files, tags, relationships, projects, applications). If you were using a ZUI it could fly around your desktop highlighting search results.

I think it should be a divisible interface, you can divide the screen in any way you want, as many times as you want. You could draw a line where you wanted it divided, and you can merge windows, etc. This way multiple people can work at the same time, and it would be a lot easier to multi task and to arrange your windows.

I think what would be the ideal is if we could get a completely object-oriented OS. I’ll elaborate on that later.

I like where this is going. If you guys haven’t seen this before check it out. Bumptop http://bumptop.com/