vir[us]

vir[us] This will take you to the VIRUS homepage. To login use the following:

1. username: scott | password: pass
2. username: billy | password: pass
3. username: ryan | password: pas

Have fun, test it out.

- Group 1

Powering Up!! or the reason I missed the field trip...

Hi class, I know it was last Saturday, but I thought I should tell everyone where I was working that afternoon seeing I didn't show up for the field trip. Northeastern held a mini gaming conference to attract new gaming firms to the area. It was slightly entertaining seeing this is the industry I want to get into, however, it was slightly depressing because the whole time people only spoke on the economics of game production and how hard it is to get a job in the industry. Lame.
Some good did happen however. I gave my portfolio to a few developers (Harmonix and Ironlore) although I truly don't expect any responses, I just hope they listen to some of my music. To prove this event really happened, here's a link! --- O Please Click Meee

Vwidder presentation visual aids.

Vwidder combines live uploadable mobile video and QR code tagging in one convenient package.
Implementation of QR codes creates the opportunity for a layer above any physical space. QR codes reference Vwidder videos posted by anyone anywhere. The QR codes themselves are put right in the hand of the user, enabling a new kind of communication as underground or overt as the user wishes.

QR codes in action:

Mobile printing:

These guys.

zink printing.

Thursday FINAL

FINAL projects will be presented on Thursday at 6:30 p.m.

Knock everyone's socks off!

Awesome Strep Throat

I am just getting over an awesome case of strep throat that somehow managed to hospitalize me for two days against my will and keep me from sleeping for 96 straight hours, so I am fairly certain I will not be participating in the Saturday field trip. I will, however, be in class for the final project presentations.

Saturday class | Thursday FINAL

We are meeting at 11:30 a.m. at 1369 in Central Square on Mass. Ave (not the 1369 in Inman Square!)

Each group will give an update on their final projects. This is your LAST chance to get any kind of feedback! I've heard very very little from you guys and am hoping that your projects will be a) inspired and b) finished. Remember, the majority of your grade is derived from this!

I also need to hand out evaluation forms. I know that Billy can't make it, but maybe someone can take the forms and give one to Billy?

We'll then head over to Art Interactive for a bit -- we should be finished by 1:30 or so.

Our FINAL will be Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in our class room. I will try to get some guest critics and shoot me an email if there's someone you want to invite. PLEASE reply to this post so I know you'll be coming on Saturday (it's NOT optional).

Saturday field trip

One thing of interest that I would not like to miss tomorrow is the Red Sox Yankees game at 3:55 Pm.... other than that I don't really care about much in my life as far as tomorrow is concerned... so if we could just not miss that, I'd be happy with whatever, so if that means going earlier or shifting it to another time, I don't care... or even just watching it at a bar wherever we are... that'd be sweet...

let me know...

Jake

Saturday Field Trip

Sounds good to me, nothing like a nice warm cup of coffee, a decent buzz, and the cyberarts festival. I've never been to this particular coffee shop, why this and not the good ol' starbucks? Is this coffee really good? Anyways, I am blogging again, I know I have not added anything for around a week, but I've been busy trying to get some substance together for my groups final project. We sort of slipped into a great idea with way to little time to implement. Anyways, this should make the final presentation real interesting!

-Scott

Saturday Field Trip

As the Cyberarts Festival is kicking off on Friday, I'm thinking we could take a field trip over to Art Interactive to look at their exhibit (thanks New Ryan for your tip!). So I'm proposing we meet on Saturday at noon instead of Thursday.

And that we meet at Art Interactive in Central Square.

We can do our group check-ins at the 1369.

I'll have details on our Finals Presentations this week.

2D codes to save vwidder?

I've been thinking long and hard about how to take vwidder to the next level of media convergence. Yasmine Abbas lectured at the most recent installment of Upgrade! this past Thursday at AI. She had some great things to say about multiple mobilities, neo-nomadism, and our changing urban landscape which she blogs about on her kaywa blog. What caught my interest most was the work she's doing with Wentworth students to create mobile hyperlinks along the freedom trail using 2D codes like the one pictured above. Project Dimo intends to enable trail goers to snap a cell phone picture of these 2D codes that will then link them content on the web pertaining to that location (examples in the Dimo blog). The 2D codes themselves work much like a barcode and researching them further it turns out they can control a number of functions on your phone including browsing, sms, saving contacts and dialing numbers. Research also proved that these may not be so hard to implement. Connexto and Kaywa both offer free code generation and software that make this possible. Kaywa even offers online services like blog hosting to ensure that content translates to their reader, although other blogs and rss feeds seem to translate as well.

Can this help vwidder become more collaborative? public? friendly? fun? While this is a cool way to advertise your website and mobile feed, is there a way we can link our real time mobile video blog to 2D tags where people might discover this public video space? Can said phones reading these codes view Vwidder videos? These are all questions that make me wonder if 2D codes are a direction worth going in but I submit my query to the mercy of the class. Any input?

Vir[us] folks -- LOOK AT THIS

You Vir[us] folks should look at this project: http://www.opensourcecinema.org/

Ties into some of what you guys are doing (though I think the strength of your proposal is that it transcends and embraces multiple media and content creation concepts)

Field Trip Next Week!

So I want us to do a field trip next week (since we won't meet on Patriot's Day). This will also be our last meeting before you guys present your jaw-dropping pieces the next week, so I want to have it serve as a team check-in, as well.

I thought that I could meet with Group 1 45 minutes early for a project check-in and run through. Then we could do our field trip and then Group B can do a project check-in for 45 minutes.

I was thinking of the ICA -- it's free on Thursday evenings, so we could meet there next Thursday (the 19th).

Any other suggestions?

Vwidder gang -- READ THIS!

Hey Vwidder gang -- this post is right up your alley (from the Yahoo Videoblogging Group)

Update:
You need to look at this guy's Twitter Vlog. How will Vwidder be different? That is the big question for your group!

Hand-held Histories as HyperMonuments

Check this project out -- inspiration to you Vwidder and Vir[us] folks?

Eisenstein's Monster

Check out this cool video sculptural piece... maybe you Vwidder folks could envision somesort of browser/mash-up tool like this?

VIR.US Web page direction

Hey everyone, I have the flu. I just wanted to show everyone what our direction is so far. click right here to take a look at the full sized version of our site layout So Billy and Ryan, please try and do your best without me tomorrow. Ryan if your back from Maine, I hope your feeling better.

-Scott

Notes on Vwidder

Wanted to check in with where we're at. We've branded our project Vwidder (tagline: what are you viewing?) and set up the back end using existing functions of blip and blogger. This is more for convenience in prototyping rather then building our own engines etc. The idea is clearly taken from Twitter but instead of updating a text status you can give visual perspective on what your are doing through your video enabled cell phone. Sending blip posts to blogger is in effort to provide more options for aggregating videos on the page. I've set up and tested the back end and Mike and Jake are handling the blogger layout. Some issues we're thinking about for future prototyping:

• How is our page different from looking at just a blip channel.
  
• Is there a way to give identity to each post and poster or simulate a given identity for posters? This was a Ravi concern but I kind of like the idea of leaving it open, people can always title their videos (subject line of the MMS message) as a way of standing out or identifying themselves.
  
• Is there a third function we can build into the site? SMS updates of our RSS feed people can subscribe too so they know when a new video is put up for instance? Perhaps we can also publish the "vwidder stream" as a podcast or find other ways people can access videos via mobile. Still looking for ideas to keep it different and interesting.
  

Have I missed anything? Mike and Jake feel free to chime in. These are just my notes since I can't make tomorrow's class. Sorry again for that. Feel free to give me a call or email!

-Ryan