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http://www.maya.com/file_download/35/maya_universal_database.pdf

Ha, ha. Except that the people who wrote the article founded a design firm 20 years ago and have been practicing what they preach for all that time!

General Dynamics offers a product called CoMotion that allows you to visually explore your data and find interesting patterns and trends.

http://www.gdc4s.com/content/detail.cfm?item=32341561-76f9-40f8-8ad5-0f0d66dd240e

CoMotion is a commercial fork of Visage, a collaborative visualization platform designed at Carnegie Mellon University and MAYA Design:

• http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sage/visage.html
• http://www.maya.com/visage/base/papers/mayaDemo.htm
• Google: "visage site:maya.com"

General Dynamics offers a product called CoMotion that allows you to visually explore your data and find interesting patterns and trends.

http://www.gdc4s.com/content/detail.cfm?item=32341561-76f9-40f8-8ad5-0f0d66dd240e

CoMotion is a commercial fork of Visage, a collaborative visualization platform designed at Carnegie Mellon University and MAYA Design:

• http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sage/visage.html
• http://www.maya.com/visage/base/papers/mayaDemo.htm
• Google: "visage site:maya.com"

I haven't been able to try pipes yet, because the site is down. But I have a colleague who built something that sounds quite similar. It's called the Javascript Device Architecture. At the link, you can find demos and downloadable code. So, if you can't get to pipes, you could always try JDA out ;-)

I didn't build it all myself, I was just on the team, but we made a rig that simulated the Matrix BulletTime effect using 32 $20 Mattel Barbie digital cameras. The cameras were mounted on foam core and corrugated plastic, arranged in a big circle, and we used truck mirrors to get a wide angle effect. All the cameras were wired to a central triggering circuit, and we used a garage door opener as a remote control. You would go into the center of the circle with your friends and some props, do something crazy, and hit the remote. The cameras would fire --- then all the pictures would be sent to a printer which would print out a flip-book on cardstock so that you could see a low-tech animation of yourself spinning around doing whatever.

Here's some propaganda about the project.

For those who are around Pittsburgh or CMU,
an interesting company sprang up building
P2P based database technology (Maya Design).

For a good read, check out the following paper:
http://www.maya.com/web/what/papers/maya_universal _database.pdf

If you're using a computer at CMU (or one of Telerama's wireless hotspots in Pittsburgh), you can find out when the next bus comes near you at bus.maya.com. Perhaps it's not as glamorous as streaming Quicktime movies to your phone, but it's probably more useful ;-) That said, I hope someone solves the location-based services infrastructure problem. The bus hack depends on mapping IP addresses to lat/lons, which is incredibly brittle and evil.

For the record (I'm one of the researchers on the project), the prototype can control shelf-top mp3 players (we've implemented the control protocol for the AudioRequest device). (And one of the paper prototypes considered an office phone and voicemail system, though we haven't implemented that, so we're pretty confident we could handle your answering machine with no problem.)

The system will control anything you write a specification for.

Some neat features that the article sort of glossed over: the system generates UIs that are demonstrably better than traditional remote controls. It requires no programming at all. It can generate multi-modal interfaces (combining speech and GUI). It can generate interfaces for any form factor remote control device (this is the same flexibility that allows multi-modal interfaces).

The CMU page has lots of information about what the system is really capable of.

Oh, and yeah, the system is currently implemented in Java and it runs on Linux as well as PocketPC (in fact, the widgets look better on the Zaurus).

Unfortunately, our system is not smart enough to read slashdot and detect duplicate posts.

(Bias alert: I was the project manager for MAYA on the PUC.)

The article is a little light on the details. The PUC does some things that systems like the Pronto can't.

First, there is NO programming. Zero, nada. The appliance sends an abstract specification of its features to the remote, which then automatically generates an appropriate interface. This interface can be tailored to the needs or preferences of the user, and can take advantage of idiosyncratic features of the device being used as a controller (for instance, we could use a jog-wheel for volume if one is available).

The interface specification language is VERY abstract. So abstract that we can automatically generate interfaces in multiple modalities, like, say speech. We're working on mixing modalities.

Plus, our remote is two way. If someone else changes the channel, the remote's display reflects the change. This lets you design much better interfaces because you can hide features that aren't currently available. This minimizes the number of buttons you need and drastically reduces mode errors.

Find out more. Check out CMU's page and MAYA's more markety page.

P.S. The whole needing-a-laptop thing is because we hacked all this into a $75 shelf stereo we got from Best Buy. Obviously a production system would not have any such kludge.

I'm the Mike Higgins quoted in the article. The article is less than informative. If you want better info, try CMU's page. MAYA has a page too but it's a bit more markety.

The system is actually pretty neat: no programming is required. We're working on generating multi-modal interfaces. The remote is two-way, so it gives much better feedback than traditional remotes (leading to better interfaces).

I'm the Mike Higgins quoted in the article. The article is less than informative. If you want better info, try CMU's page. MAYA has a page too but it's a bit more markety.

The system is actually pretty neat: no programming is required. We're working on generating multi-modal interfaces. The remote is two-way, so it gives much better feedback than traditional remotes (leading to better interfaces).

Dealing with the city of Pittsburgh parking shit and most likely not having a driveway

My company does some "pervasive computing" research. In many situations it's convenient to use an iPAQ because they're quite powerful, even though the UI sucks. (Occasionally we've even done prototypes by hiding an iPAQ running Linux *inside* another piece of plastic.)

We've found that the Zaurus actually runs Java better than the iPAQ (the widgets come out nicer and it seems to suffer fewer drawing bugs). I also think the UI is marginally nicer than Pocket PC.

But these are all just in situations where we need a lot of horsepower and a really nice screen. For day to day use a Palm gets the job done best.

P.S. If you're curious, here are some pages about two projects that we've used iPAQs for:

Personal Information Portal (very out of date)

Personal Universal Controller (with CMU) We've tried the Zaurus on the latter and it works much better.