[FoRK] Have some Phun, page composition/layout, image optimization

[Stephen D. Williams]

This happens to be a perfect thing to notice while in robotics class and 
while combining and synthesizing knowledge editing, visualization, etc.  
ideas.  I see this as an interesting basis for UI metaphor.  The feel of 
it is magically solid.  Of course, many of those ideas that seem great 
turn out to be cute but not efficient or practical.  At some point, I 
think it will just click.  Sort of like Google Maps and Google Earth 
suddenly made all of that geospatial data vastly more accessible and fun 
and mashable.

http://www.phun.at/
Based on new algorithms that allow stable real-time tractability in a 
comprehensive dissertation referenced at the site.  I think that 
robotics class has given me just enough insight to be able to unravel 
the math to put together an implementation (some day).  Although they 
seem to use "Jacobian" in a whole new way.

The way that web browsers and application windows should work, and other 
related solutions:
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mirad/research/adaptiveLayout/schrier08.mov
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mirad/

"Seam Carving": Semi-intelligent image editing for maximum information 
value:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_carving

Put all three of them together, add 3D in various ways with some other 
ideas I'm thinking of, and you've got a quantum leap in UI.

Plus some other knowledge representation / viz work along with cool 
insights from probabilistic reasoning class...

This should be a fun year.

Spicy Nodes is another run at the old graph navigation idea, with only a 
hint of the hyperbolic tree idea behind most of them.  It's sort of 
correct, but sort of useless after a while too.  Instructive, but not 
nearly enough to solve the problem.  I think I know part of what's missing.

http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/nodes.html


sdw

(Apologies if that middle link was from FoRK.  I thought it was, but 
can't track back to my reference.  An I'm sure you've seen Seam Carving 
recently.)