The Pixel Farm

A few months ago I blogged about the “voice notes” tool that John Kuiphoff and I had developed.  This tool was designed to allow visitors from anywhere in the world to access images and provide comments in the form of short audio notes using nothing more than their web browser.

Over the last few months we have refined this prototype and have folded it into a larger set of synchronous web-based tools designed to help enhance communication between instructors and students in an online learning space.  Using the Social Syllabus course delivery framework as a platform, John and I enhanced the system’s existing communication structure to take advantage of a range of next-generation communication and collaboration tools, including:

1. Audio commenting system.  The audio commenting system gives users of Social Syllabus the ability to easily post audio “notes” into almost any facet of an online course.  Using an embedded Flash interface, faculty and students can record their voice using their computer’s microphone.  In addition, the voice notes tool also lets users edit their audio note before saving it to the public class space. Currently this functionality is limited to the course blog and calendaring modules of Social Syllabus, but we are working to expand it to other areas of the site, including giving faculty members the ability to create their own ad-hoc podcasts on the fly.
   

   in-line audio player for Social Syllabus

2. Lecture streaming system. The lecture streaming system gives instructors of a course the ability to stream out their lecture without having to download or install any software on their machine.  Using an embedded Flash movie, professors can easily broadcast their webcam and microphone to students from within Social Syllabus.  Professors can get up-to-the minute statistics on the number of live viewers, and we are working to build in an “archive” feature that lets instructors store their lectures for later delivery.
   

   Broadcasting a class

3. Social Search: The Social Search tool is a meta-search engine that enables instructors to rapidly search multiple Internet sources for relevant course content.  Typing a keyword into the social search interface will cause Social Syllabus to return resources from a wide range of external sources, such as Delicious, Digg, Youtube, Twitter, Google Scholar, Amazon Books and Scribd.  Materials found via the social search can be incorporated into an online course and made available to students with a single click.
   

   The 'social search' meta-search feature

This week I decided to try and hook up an augmented reality scene so that it can be driven by SMS messages. The app below lets you vote for your favorite flower using your mobile phone – just text the appropriate code (”craigk red” or “craigk blue”) to 41411 to cast your vote!

The system is built using the public version of the TextMarks SMS aggregation system, a pair of back-end Perl scripts and, of course, Flash + Papervision.

Vote for your favorite flower!

Check out a video of the project in action:

This week I’ve been playing around with the shared object feature of the Flash Media Server.  So far I’m really liking it!  I was able to whip up a pretty basic prototype of a web-based virtual world without too much fuss – feel free to check it out.

Just me and MC Hammer hanging out in the metaverse

As of today the world can do the following:

1. Avatar identification
2. Synchronous  text-based chat
3. Click-to-move functionality within the world
4. Appearance editor (change your own avatar’s look)

The appearance editor is still very rudimentary, and changes made to your avatar don’t yet ripple out to other users.  I was having a real tough time figuring out how to send out complex AS3 objects using the Shared Object feature of the FMS.  The documentation explicity states that sending any AS3 class via a Shared Object should work. What the documentation fails to tell you is that you need to prepare your classes in a very particular way in order for them to retain their integrity after being serialized by the FMS encoder.

I should have a fix in place for this real soon – I’m uber excited about being able to share non-trivial AS3 objects in real time!

This week John Kuiphoff and I worked to create a prototype of an audio collaboration tool for the Social Syllabus project.  As you may or may not know, educational applications of technology are a major passion of mine, and for a long time John and I have been working to explore ways in which rich media can be integrated into online frameworks that are designed to support instruction.

Our newest project, code named “Voicenotes” (working title), is an “audio markup” tool that gives anyone the ability to easily add their own voice to an image on the Internet.  Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, visitors can record an audio note simply by placing a virtual pin on top of a picture and speaking into their computer’s microphone.

The voicenotes interface being applied to the New York City subway map

A major criterion that I apply to almost all of my work is that the end product be web-deliverable, and Voicenotes is no exception.  Using a Flash-based client interface and a connection to a back-end Flash Media Server, this project is completely web-accessible from any computer that has an attached microphone and an active connection to the Internet.

Recording a new voice note

John and I will be refining Voicenotes over the next few weeks in an effort to fold its functionality into the larger Social Syllabus initiative.  Stay tuned!

To play around with Voicenotes feel free to visit http://socialsyllabus.com/voicenotes/

This week I attempted what was, when viewed in retrospect, an ambitious plan whereby I would combine my existing “Craig tube” video conference feature with the magic of Augmented Reality.  You can check it out by clicking on the ‘Craig Tube’ button above.  Keep in mind that it only works when I’m actively broadcasting!

Let me show you my snail garden

While I’m working on this project I’ll also be working on a RTMP based audio recording project with John Kuiphoff.  In this project we will attempt to capture audio snippets via a web interface and create system for overlaying this content on top of external content (images, documents, etc.)