The concept of You Over There is to embed a person in another cultural environment using live video and audio streams.
The idea I have in mind makes use of projectors , 2 X 2way mirrors ( 1.5’ x 4 – 5’) , speakers, etc. For this project I would make use of 2 live video streams per mirror ( 1 of the user for the web and another is of the environment to stream to the other video).

The live video will be projected onto a 2 way mirror which is backed with a screen of vellum, so that the video can be seen and wont pass through the mirror. The two mirrors will ideally be set up in two different locations with very different cultures but in similar environments such as parks or schools or bars etc.

I would also like to make a website for this project with all 4 live streams so other people can look and compare cultures.

Ideally to make this work I would have used 4 cameras and 4 computers for streaming but since that is not possible I will attempt to use 4 cameras and two computers ( 2 cameras per computer). I did some testing on what is possible and found the following:

- quick time broadcaster allows only one stream at a time
- made a copy of QT broadcaster and tried streaming 2 videos using the 2 qt broadcaster but all it did was hang my computer
- I installed wirecast and streamed one video using that and one video using qt broadcaster which worked pretty fine
- Only problem with the above is that wirecast is not free it costs $449 for a license .
- Shawn suggested using FMS to broadcast the videos which I will look into.

1) create an installation which shows live video streams from one part of the world to another and people can interact with other people some how.

- maybe have the live stream projected on a mirror so the person looking into it will be embedded in the stream.Also have a mirror at the other end? Some how i want to combine cultures using live web so people can experience different cultures.

So last week in class we were supposed to work on something using text marks.

Textmarks is a free sms service which allows you to text something to it and it ables you to pull it using php and do stuff with it. When you register with textmarks they give u an id and when you text something after the id to 41411 you can pull the message.

So Alberto came up with a cool idea where a user inputs the address where they are and where they want to go and an sms is sent to them with the exact time the train is coming to the closes station you have to go to. Kind of like the transit feature in google maps. After some research we found that it is not possible to scrape the google transit information and the New York MTA has not made the information public like other cities yet.

Therefore our idea was kind of put on hold till we find a better way to scrape the information we need. So i decided to give textmarks a try. I was trying the example from the class example.

Unfortunately i was not able to get it to work. I uploaded 4 files to the server:

- textmarks_phone.php ( which was to store in the text file the hex value for changing the color from the sms)

- textmarks_ex.php(the script used t pull the hex value from the text file and change the color, done using Ajax)

- textmarks.txt ( the text file to store the hex value)

- ajax.js

But the problem i kept getting was a URL error in ajax.js. I checked all the URLs and still same error. So im still working on it.

When any television has a so called “return path” it is known to be interactive. That is the information flow is two way for an interactive television, from the broadcaster to the user and vice versa. Interactive television has been around for quite some time now. Another feature of an interactive television that it has the ability to offer each user different content at any given time. Even though all TV’s are interactive as it allows the viewer controls such as audio and channel but the real interaction is having more control over what they want to see and maybe even influencing the outcome of the show. For me personally I see interactive television a mix of television and gaming. That is a player has control of the characters and the story line of a video game and I would some day like to see a viewer have such control in television.

One of the earliest interactive programs was Winky Dink and You. This program made the children buy a transparent sheet which was placed over the screen. Then when required the children were to draw on the sheet using ordinary crayons. This show was later discontinued as the children started coloring directly on the TV screen.

SMS driven shows are quite popular nowadays SMS based voting shows such as American Idol and the Finnish choose your own adventure Accidental Lovers where viewers can send an SMS to choose how the narrative should unravel.

I feel that for a television to be truly interactive the viewer should be have control of the viewing experience via SMS, phone, email, etc. The viewer should be able to control not only the narrative of the show but also the camera angles, subtitles, language, etc. Shows like Big Brother make use of two screen interaction. That is a viewer watches the episode on the television and then they can go online and vote who will win contests, who can be voted out of the house, etc.

Film has made an attempt by making interactive films which allows the user to skip the scene they are watching to a new scene randomly and still have a narrative in place. Films such as Switching and Late Fragment allowed viewers to watch the movie in the leisure of the viewer’s home using a DVD player and allowed the viewer to skip back and forward of a scene. The scenes were mapped with various different possibilities taking into consideration which scene has been watched and hasn’t. The scene map is very complex.

The content for interactive television is the most hardest to produce as it has to change and make sense at the same time when the viewer decides something should happen. The difficult part is that each viewer has a different liking and the content should cater to various types of viewers.

In the mid 90’s WebTV was launched. It is a piece of hardware which you connect to your television and phone jack and cable and gives the user internet on the television. Later the company was taken over by Microsoft and was renamed MSNTV. The MSNTV package hardware is basically a set top box, wireless keyboard and a wireless remote. MSNTV tried to bring internet to the television. Personally I feel the whole concept of sitting on your sofa with a keyboard on your lap checking and typing e-mails defies the whole concept of the TV.

Interactive advertisements are being implemented by NBC for Dish TV subscribers. The reason for the development of interactive ads is because due to the rise of DVRs viewers are no longer watching ads; they just fast forward the ads and watch the show. So what NBC implemented is tagging ads. So if a viewer is interested in a product or service seen in the ad they have the option to click it and get more details about the product. After the viewer is done interacting with the ad they are they returned to the same place of the show where they left. It is becoming a very popular with revenue from interactive advertisements expected reach $2.9 billion.

Another type of interactive television content are ARGs (augmented reality gaming). A company in Canada called Xenophile media created a sci-fi show called Regenesis. It was an ARG which had elements of mobile as well as web incorporated to it. The people who watched the show were not considered viewers, they were considered as investigators. They were given clues on the show which made the viewers actually make calls or go to different physical locations or enter a chat room, etc. Even though the show is scripted and the viewers cannot really change the plot of the story, personally I feel there is some kind of interaction here as it does require the viewer to do something to understand the story.

The real question I have is , is the future of interactive television set top boxes with the ability to choose what people want to see combined with an element of gaming or will there be a more interactive element to the production of the TV shows so that viewers can play a role on how the narrative is scripted? Will TV remotes be the new gaming controller which includes a d-pad or a joystick and lets you control the characters or camera angles in a partially scripted show?

I also feel that the future is in the convergence between internet and television such as maybe bringing in an element of social networks on television to connect the viewers. Other trends are broadcasters changing their production model to suit the interactive TV model.

I was teamed up with Celina to do the story telling presentation for Live web. The object of the presentation was to tell a story using what we learned in the previous class. So we had to tell a story using Shared Objects in Action Script and the FMS ( flash media server).

So after much brainstorming we decided to make an interactive story with a voting system ( made with shared objects ) and make use of a chat server to tell the story ( thank you meebo).

We made a flowchart of the story. We typed one piece of the story in the chat and then when it was time for the viewers to vote they would drag and drop their ballot in the yes or no column. Then according to the majority of the viewers the story would change. We ran out of time so we used the Meebo chat room and embedded it in the php page.

It was quite interesting working on the content. I found it a little taxing working on the content than the technology part. Writing an interactive story and making things link in the story was way more difficult than i thought. Celina was awesome at writing the story though.

Story telling Link

After 6 weeks of user research, by survey, one on one interviews, conceptualizing, more conceptualizing, wireframing etc we came up with a concept called Serendipity. The assignment was to come up with a concept for a mobile device with aspects of location sensitivity, digital music and social networking.

The initial stage was to do the user research to find out what users do or want with respect to the requirements of the concept.The primary research was done by scraping the web for knowledge about products or services already existing in the market today.

We then conducted the secondary research.First we sent out an online survey. Around 40 surveys were filled and studied. The we conducted one on one interviews with various people with different background.

After we studied all the research we came up with 5 or 6 concepts which we narrowed down to one called ” Serendipity” . Serendipity is a mobile application that allows users with similar music tastes in a given radius location to connect to each other.

The next step was to come up with personas of people who are actually going to use this mobile application which we conceptualized.

Once the personas were developed the story board of the user journey was created.

The last step was to create the wire frames of the mobile application. A wire frame is a visual guide used in design to suggest the layout of fundamental elements in the interface.

Finally we had to create a presentation and present it in front of the class, prof and some external people from RGA. We recieved valuable feed back and it was truly interesting to get feed back from people from the industry.

FINAL PRESENTATION PDF

So Ben , Thomas and I decided to do the Eat with friends idea as out mid term for Live web. The concept here revolves around the idea that, many people do not like eating alone. That is they would like some kind of company while eating. So we came up with a concept which allowed people to eat with their friends via the web.

We used the Flash media server for streaming live video. Right now we allow 2 people to eat together but not together. The FMS was a little tricky as it was done in AS3. We made changes in the AS3 for optimized performance. That is so that the user does not hog the bandwidth and there is minimum delay in the broadcast.

We also added a registration page and also a login page using PHP. So when a person registers their information is saved in the database. The login page is to authenticate the user. The project is not fully done. It is only in the prototype phase. We need to work on the design and layout of the page and tweak the AS code a little to make the video better and also to logout so that the FMS does not get filled up.

http://www.itp.nyu.edu/~sp1650/liveweb/eating/register2.php

E-eat with me:

People stream what online what they are eating at the moment live. You can tag your stream according to what your eating and people can view it and maybe type questions or comments to the eater.

or if people are eating alone and need company for eating you can connect with another person eating along.

Truth or dare online :

Groups are made with friends. Each friend can ask a question or dare another friend to do something all through video. Then the person who has to do the dare has to do the dare and upload the video. There may be a point system and one person can be crowned king or queen of TorD.[ youtube meets truth or dare ]

Ben and i was working on an online live karaoke system where users can vote and a winner can be selected. Here we made use of 2 quicktime broadcasting videos and an audio live broadcast for playing the music. Since the whole system is live the audio had to be played live or when a user logs onto the page at anytime the music would start from the beginning. The polling is done in AJAX and it is done in a real simple way with out using a database.

http://sanjaypapinazath.com/live_web/week4/karaoke3.html

This weeks assignment was to make use of widgets in php and upload and retrieve data from a database. My example gets data from the user inputs it in a database and gives a link to the user as output.

Genie James gives you a wish : check it out.

http://sanjaypapinazath.com/dwd/class5_what3.php