We have always wanted a cross platform free video editor, and it looks like the VLC people might be about to come up with the goods. Only available as source code at the moment – I haven’t had the time to build it and try it yet, but looks very promising in the video
The symbolsurfing site on the big tree is now live. The research project is working with five places looking at the use and development of the software with people who use their services. We are also making the software available for anyone to download and use.
The site has links to download the relevant software and instructions for setting it up. We welcome your feedback and ideas about it. As the project continues we will be adding pages with more information and ideas.
Have a good weekend.
The symbol surfing project is made possible by a grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
Happy New Year everyone. Hope you had a good Christmas, and are enjoying the snow.
The Consumer Electonics Show is on in Las Vegas (no I’m not at it), and lots of companies make new product announcements here, and show stuff thats in development.
Light Blue Optics are demoing a small interactive projector, called the Light Touch. Works on any surface and detects fingers without needing any special treatment to the surface.
I can think of lots of great ways you could use this with people. Looks really interesting
If you’ve been to The Rix Centre you may well have met Ajay. He’s a bit of a whizz with photoshop, so he has knocked up a Christmas image for us.
Have a great Chistmas, see you next year.
Have been using Polymorph for years for prototyping stuff, but the new kid on the block is sugru. They have a twitter page as well were they talk about how the first run that they thought would last for a couple of months sold out in 6 hours.
Polymorph involves using boiling water, and cools to a hard plastic, sugru involves nothing hot, and cures to a rubbery feel. Looks like they will complement each other very well. I imagine it will be really useful for making things more grippy and easier to hold. Unfortunately I found it just after it sold out till early next year, so can’t say for sure.
More good videos how to use sugru, and an interview and demo.
Available for Android phones.
Of course having posted last week about a camera with a decent mic built in, but still no external mic socket , I have since found a flip like camera that has an external mic socket.
Its the Kodak Zi8. This is not the cheapest place to buy it (I leave you to search yourself to see what options are available) but it does have good product pages showing you the details. There is a review here
Simon tried some of the handheld HD video cameras last month and reckoned the Kodak Zi6 (he didn’t have the Zi8) was a really good combination – high quality video with simple to use controls and not overloaded with features that you didn’t need that would just confuse people. The one stumbling block was the sound wasn’t great. Now you can fix that.
I blogged about the Sixth Sense system before. In this new TED talk the creator of the system Pranav Mistry talks more about the system, and his plans to open source it so everyone can use it.
If anyone is going to Learning Disability Today next week, we will be there. I think we are in the Media Zone somewhere. I will be around on the day and have demos of the symbol stuff for people to play with, so drop by to introduce yourself if you read this blog and are there.
The sound quality on cheap video cameras with built in mics is often not very good. Zoom, who are better known for making sound recording gear have got a Flip like camera with good mics on it. Still no external mic option, but you can use headphones to monitor the sound as you are recording. I have used a Zoom audio recorder with mics like this and the audio quality was really good, so would expect this to work well too.
Of course you can’t get it all in one package yet – this will only do video at 640 by 480 – but if the audio is good we often perceive the combined effect to be higher quality than high res video with bad audio.
Another one for the Christmas list (in case anyone out there is feeling generous)……
