I was thrilled to see Obama’s inauguration ceremony, not only because of his charisma and what he represents, but also because it was the beginning of a digital era in the presidency of the United States. The White House changed its website to a more collaborative one and CNN joined Microsoft to use Photosynth (MS’s latest photo 3D navigation technology) as an interactive collective album dedicated to the ceremony.
The result was amazing, a very rich collection of pictures of D.C. the Mall sent by people that were there at that very specific moment. I may say that even though the technology was not new for me (as I´ve seen some videos about it before), that was the moment where it really caught my attention.
Later on I thought - Why not use YDreams’ hardware solutions to interact with such a rich interface? In the same week I got a call from Rene de Paula, a Microsoft Brasil User Experience Evangelist, asking for a meeting. What a coincidence. I had no doubt, he needed to see this idea working. So I teamed up with Renan at our Rio de Janeiro office to build this prototype.
The main idea was to use hand gestures to control the navigation in a more appealing scenario than a computer desk. This video illustrates the result, I hope you all enjoy it.
Microsoft Techdays, one of the biggest tech-events in Portugal, is underway at the Lisbon Congress Center from the 11th to the 14th of March. The four-day event is aimed at “IT professionals, programmers and students” in related fields and is expected to draw over 2000 visitors.
YDreams will be on hand with their ubiquitous Magic Book, a yWalk (interactive floor projection) and one of their latest developments yFaces, an augmented reality-based app that manages to positively surprise users everywhere.
YDreamer Pedro Matos will be participating in a key-note speech about Virtual Coast, a prototype developed by the creative technology provider that runs on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform, and will be used by IGP (the Portuguese Geographic Institute) to develop a series of next-generation geographical applications. Antão Almada, from YLabs, the company’s R&D unit, will also give a talk about “building support infra-structures and applications for events such as Techdays” tomorrow at 17:15 in Room A7.
Techdays 2008, March 11th - 14th Venue: Lisbon Congress Center (Centro de Congressos de Lisboa) Portugal
