Victoria Bush Fire Appeal Prints

I just got a mail from Aaron Spence, and publish it here to help get the word out: “G’day Everyone, We’ve been deeply moved by the tragedy of the Victorian Bushfires. Wanting to do something, but being 2,000km away and with my funds invested in Panedia, I decided to create a site to sell large high quality prints, with all profits going to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal.

Please pass this link around to the people you know. My goal is not to divert funds already set aside for donation, but to sell to people who have already donated, or weren’t planning to, particularly from outside Australia. We’ve priced the prints at 1/2 what we normally sell them for, so they’re accessible to most. Thanks, Aaron Spence of panedia.com.”

News from Panodigg: new design and external vote button

As consequence of the good acceptance of the VR community, at Panodigg we thought we had to do things better, in order to improve the experience. That’s why we used another, more evolved template and made some customizations to it. We also changed the logo in what we think is more appropriate.

The last added feature is the EVB External Vote Button, which allows voting from the external site where the story link points to, or even if the button is on a completely different page then the story link is pointing to. A special code is also available for WordPress users.

You can see an example of the use of the EVB here:  (please scroll until you see the vote button)

DO U PANODIGG?

all the best
your Panodigg team

Ideum MT2 Multitouch Table beats Microsoft Surface in size & resolution

Exhibit and media design firm Ideum have cocked a snook at Microsoft with the launch of their MT2 Table, a multitouch-table which, at 50-inches running at 1280 x 720, is both larger and higher resolution than Microsoft’s Surface. The MT2 Table, which can respond to multiple points of contact across the display and recognize gestures, is intended for museum use, and as such has an aircraft-grade aluminum frame and thick tempered glass top. Underneath there’s a 2100 ANSI projector with a 2000:1 contrast ratio.

via Slashgear

Press Release:

Ideum Releases Ruggedized High-Resolution Multi-touch Table For Museums

CORRALES, New Mexico (February 4, 2009) Ideum, an exhibit and media design firm, has announced the release of the first ruggedized multi-touch, multi-user table built specifically for museums.

The MT Table supports multi-touch and multi-user interactions. It has a bright 50″ (diagonal) surface with a high-resolution (1280 x 720) display which is higher than Microsoft’s Surface multi-touch table. The large display also makes it easier to facilitate multiple simultaneous visitors interacting with computer programs through the use of multi-touch gestures. Visitors can use hand gestures to manipulate images or media or to interact with computer-based programs.

“We’ve been working with museums for a decade and we wanted to create a platform where visitors could interact with museum content, programs and one another in new and meaningful ways,” said Jim Spadaccini, Director of Ideum. “The intuitive nature of multi-touch interaction, the large surface and low table height: all of these factors contribute to the visitors experience. The table is both a physical and social platform, it does what the traditional computer kiosk cannot do.”

The table, which stands 31″ tall with heavy duty locking casters, is wheel-chair accessible and meets standard ADA requirements for height; an important consideration for museums. The table is automated and can safely shut itself down when the museum closes for the day.

The MT is also incredibly durable with a frame built of aircraft-grade aluminum and a surface of thick, tempered glass. All of the components of the MT Table are industrial grade and built to withstand the demands of busy museums, including hands-on science centers.

Ideum has partnered with Natural User Interface (NUI), a Swedish technology company specializing in multi-touch solutions to provide the base software package. Each table comes with NUI’s Snowflake Software a fast and reliable gesture recognition multi-touch software package. This software allows developers to create their own applications with Flash, C/C++/C#, Java, Python, and other programming languages.

Snowflake also comes with a set of basic applications: Viewer (media viewer with support for image and video media types), Draw (basic drawing application), 3D model viewer (.3ds and .obj file format support) and others. The MT table also includes TouchEarth (Google Earth with a multitouch interface).

Ideum is currently developing custom software for The Don Harrington Discovery Center in Amarillo, Texas and Vulcan Park and Museum in Birmingham, Alabama. These museums will have the first two tables, with installations scheduled for March. The installation for Vulcan Park and Museum will include two multi-touch kiosks making it one of the first permanent exhibits in the world to use multi-touch technology throughout the gallery space.

Ideum develops computer-based exhibits and installations for museums across North America. Since the firm was founded in 1999, it has worked on over 70 projects that have explored a variety of science, history, art, and cultural topics. Ideum-developed exhibits and Websites have won numerous awards over the years including; the American Association of Museums’ MUSE Awards, the Webby Awards, the Pirelli International Multimedia Awards, the Museums and the Web Conference “Best of the Web,” and other industry awards. To learn more, visit: www.ideum.com

Join us at Panodigg.com, It’s fun! ;-)

I’m terribly late (apologies) with the new Issue 32 of VRMag, mainly due to 2 reasons: I had a child (most time-consuming hobby I ever had) and was busy setting up a new site for the VR community and beyond. VRMag 32 is in the works …
but meanwhile … I would like to invite you to take a few minutes to checkout:

Panodigg.com

Those familiar with Digg.com will immediately be at ease and understand that it’s a Digg site for the VR community,
for everybody else let me say that it’s a place where you can post stories with a thumbnail (if u wish) and a link to a panorama or a VR projects, that you particularly like or find interesting, be it your creation or from somebody else.

All the stories are published in the “upcoming” section of the site.
The community of Panodigg users will then vote and discuss them, and when a certain number of votes is achieved the stories are promoted to the front page in a very democratic way.
Finally a VR community site where no editor is in control but only the site users.
It is also a social site since you can create your complete profile, become friend with other users, private message with them, as well as tell friends about your stories (posts) and a lot more …

A few important things:

-Panodigg is not hosting panoramas
-We removed the nofollow tag so that each story title(link) becomes a good referrer for google
-RSS feeds are available for upcoming, published, and each category, you can even track a specific users posts if u wish.

Special thanks to the early users during the initial test/debugging phase.

what are you waiting for ? You’re just one click away from Your Daily Dose of fresh panoramas: Panodigg.com
Have fun !

All the best
marco

Get inside a Halloween Pumpkin

Thanks to Bernd Dohrmann you can experience the inside of a Halloween pumpkin, with spooky sound.

Three weeks before Halloween, Bernd’s son rushed to his dad asking for a huge pumpkin to place in front of the door. Bernd found a 37 kg one, at a farm not far away from where he lives. When he and his son had to decide about the grimace, they could not find a compromise and – for that reason – they carved three different ones. ….. in the VRMag article you can see more making of images and experience the interactive virtual reality panorama.

George Clooney’s Villa Oleandra in Laglio on Como Lake

VRWay recently published Arounder Como-Lake.

Situated on the shores of Como Lake (a.k.a. Lario Lake), Como is a small city full of charme, able to enchant visitors from all around the world. Its history is connected to the Duchy of Milan and later on to the Austrian Empire, until it was liberated by Garibaldi, in what was to be known as the San Fermo’s battle.

Partially enclosed among old medieval walls, the city is a shopping heaven and – in the meantime – it is full of history, as the Dome, the San Fedele Church, the Broletto and the Casa del Fascio (to name but a fews) show.

The city and its region are worldwide famous for the villas which dot the landscape and which host famous personalities, such as George Clooney.

The lake and its small villages in the Come area are a vacation must for a lot of people (mainly English and German), who spend their Summers with the feet in the crystal clear water of the lake, fascinated by the beauties of places as Menaggio, Bellagio and Cernobbio.

Among many beautiful locations and sightseeing you can also enjoy a nice view on George Clooney’s Villa Oleandra in Lario.

The Falkirk Wheel in Scotland

Linking the Forth and Clyde Canal to the Union Canal, the Falkirk Wheel is the most modern structure used to connect basins all around the world. So said, if you’re barging in Scotland, forget the time needed to the water to move from dam to dam, waiting for enclosures to refill. 24 metres high (79 ft), the Wheel does everything by itself, replacing something as 11 locks in a single shot.

Designed by Nicoll Russell Studios and engineers Binnie Black and Veatch, the Wheel has been built by Butterley Engineering. Together, they did something unique: the only rotating boat lift of its kind, the Falkirk Wheel – in fact – doesn’t only connect Glasgow to Edinburgh, it even revives for recreational purposes, a water route which had fallen into disuse and it is considered today among the tourist attractions in Scotland. “The Falkirk Wheel Experience” offers roundtrip excursion.

Bill Ward took outstanding panoramic images of the Wheel, to view them and discover more about the Falkirk Wheel and Bill Ward go to the VRMag article.

Tahiti & French Polynesia

The Polynesian islands were inhabited since AD 300 (let’s say it straight: somebody understood the meaning of the word “location”) and did not share a common story until they fell under French Protectorate in 1889. What is sure, is that they were visited by several explorers such as Ferdinand Magellan, Jacob Roggeveen, Samuel Wallis, Louis Antoine de Bougainville and James Cook, who fell all in love for the places.

34 years old, living in Tahiti (lucky you, Greg!), Gregory Panayotou wants everybody green with envy, when watching where he lives since 2005. Seriously, after two endless months of rains (with a Summer that began something as five days ago), you should have seen my face, while opening the panoramic images hosted in his blog, direct2brain.net.

Beautiful panoramas and more infos about Tahiti & French Polynesia and Gregory can be found in VRMag’s article.

Gisele Bündchen at Rio Fashion Week

Ayrton Camargo and Andréa Simões photographed Gisele Bündchen for “Jornal do Brazil”. Since the team is highly appreciated by the former newspaper’s digital editor Cristina de Luca, it was given carte blanche to approach the Fashion Rio Week and Collcci fashion shows. Since Gisele Bündchen is the Brazilian version of the American dream, and every Brazilianis in love with her, and every girl dreams about a similar path to glory, Ayrton and Andréa came up with the idea of transposing the dream in a VR.

To create it, Ayrton shot something as 250 pictures of Gisele Bündchen on her three appearances on stage, meanwhile being careful to keep the camera at the same exact point. The best ones were later mounted on the bubble during the night, in a frightening Photoshop and stitching work, to which Andréa added all the sounds.

Read more about Gisele, Ayrton, and the details about this incredible shooting. In the VRMag article you can view 3 interactive panoramas of Gisele Bündchen at Rio Fashion Week.

Panoramic Photo Book of Beijing China

Tamas Varga is a restless soul, always busy with projects which enter into his mind and come out as a finished product, where aesthetic crosses VR photography.
One of those project has to do with panoramic photo albums in book’s formats. The business started within his city, Budapest and thereafter moved to Beijing. In both places, Tamas was able to capture great atmospheres, which take into consideration the soul of a place. Typical and at the same time unique spectacles are the leading thread of his images, which are accompanied by texts in English and Chinese.

Read more about this project and view beautiful interactive panoramas in VRMag’s article.