Some “moving out” moments as we get ready to move to our brand new headquarters:
Boxes emporium at Alcântara’s Offices, 10 am:
On the other side of the river, at Caparica’s main room, YDreamers finish playing a real life game of Sokoban:
And then they celebrate!
Production room finds some lost bottles amidst the moving and also celebrates! In sepia tone!
By then YLabs is also celebrating the discovery of a new revolutionary technology (their daily routine) and the fact that they have figured out how to seal up the moving boxes
People at Alcantara’s offices open up umbrellas, defying bad luck and paying tribute to all the floods they have been subjected to during the last year
In the meanwhile, someone forgot to tell the HW department that they should be engaging in silly celebration and phototaking, so they stare in disbelief at their PC screens when celebration pictures start circulating on the internal mailing lists
And speaking of silliness, someone found out that thinking out of the box is really the way to go
In the very near feature we’ll have a new version of the Virtual Sightseeing Scenic Viewer, our Augmented Reality landscape exploration device. Here’s a teaser, courtesy of Pedro Cardoso, our Art Director:
It’s a game that uses a platform with 5 sensors (switches), each with a symbol. Sequences of symbols are displayed on the screen and the player has to step on them accordingly. The player can just step on these symbols or freestyle dance…
Guitar Hero uses the same concept applied to a guitar. The player holds a fake guitar with five colored buttons and it has to press the sequence displayed on screen.
At YDreams we have a great team of graphic designers, interface designers, flash designers, industrial designers, web designers and illustrators. That’s a lot of designers, that’s a lot of talent. But we want more, and now we are looking for an interior designer.
As YDreams becomes more and more a deviser and producer of immersive interactive spaces, either for showrooms, stores, fair booths, museums, exhibitions or others, having a full-fledged interior designer among our ranks is now essential. So, creative, open-minded, interested people, just follow this link and tell us why we want you to work with us.
One of the Portuguese artist’s famous robot “Swarm Paintings” is the cover image for the first 2008 issue of Artificial Life magazine (published by MIT Press). The Swarm Paintings by Leonel Moura are created by a computer running an ant algorithm that is connected to a robotic arm. More info about Leonel Moura here.
Campus Party Brazil 2008 opened last week expecting 30 thousand visitors. Yesterday, the event closed its doors accounting for an incredible figure of 50 thousand people throttling around YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo!, Intel, CAIXA – Caixa Econômica Federal, Telefónica, Limão, Windows Live, and many other exhibition stands.
Both interactive games were a huge success: the Poupançudos game (CAIXA) had nearly 7,000 players (including the minister of culture Gilberto Gil), and Intel’s game was played by 4,700 people. Our 3 Bluetooth men went around with the Bluetooth appliances in a backpack.
CAIXA – YBillboard and people waiting in line to play Poupançudos game
“If design is by nature a problem-solving discipline, what happens when designers and other creative professionals are themselves asking questions about the present, and the future, of our societies?”
The iPhone put multi-touch screen displays in the spotlight, and with it a technological debate that is becoming cyclical even in YDreams’ own internal forums.
As Ivan recently reminded us, you should never leave home for a multi-touch debate without reading Bill Buxton’s excellent seminal paper on the topic. Bill Buxton, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft, basically presents a series of pros and cons about multi-touch, as well as contextualizing the history of its development (it goes as far back as 1982).
“Everything is best for something, but worst for something else“, is the recurring sentence on the document, and one that interface developers (like YDreams) work hard to always keep in mind.
Nonetheless, even if Bill Buxton’s paper allows you to throw off some misconceptions about the subject, there is also the “hype” dimension of multi-touch that has been recently witnessed and should not be written off easily. (continues)
The 2008 record breaking 28th edition of the FITUR, one of the world’s biggest tourism fairs, took place in Madrid between the 30th of January and 3rd of February. The 170 country strong fair boasts some impressive numbers, with its 879 stands sheltering over 13.000 different exhibitors across 150.000 m2 of exhibition area. Some 9.000 accredited news reporters from 60 different countries and a total of 250.000 participants (150.000 professionals) crowded 12 huge pavilions for 5 days.
YDreams Med was on hand as the interactive installations provider for the Consorcio de Turismo de Madrid stand, the tourism agency for Spain’s capital region.
8 different Magic Books were set up on 42” plasmas while a 4 m wide plasma-wall hosted yLabs’ newest installation – yFaces (yes, the ‘cartoon thing’ used for the first time at Microsoft Innovation Day in Brussels). The application had speech and thought balloons with phrases promoting the region, popping up over people’s heads.
The stand was a huge success, with all the main institutional players being encouraged to explore the yFaces plasma-wall by the stand’s reps. This installation really proved to be their golden baby. Later on in the day more good news with the Consorico de Turismo de Madrid stand taking first prize for FITUR’s “most innovative and functional” space at the venue, and Portugal’s stand the prize for best stand in the countries category.
Check out this short clip (1:39) courtesy of Internet TV station Libertad Digital about the Madrid stand, where YDreams’ magic is featured in the main spotlight.
YDreams Brazil has took part too, at Limão (
