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One wonders how much lower this election can sink. The furore over "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" sets a new benchmark. The idea that Barack Obama seriously intended to call Sarah Palin a pig is surely absurd. Yes, it was a stupid thing to say; and yes, many people in his audience enjoyed the implication; but I would be amazed if it was not just an injudicious unscripted remark. The Republican outrage over it is wholly synthetic. The Democratic outrage over the Republican outrage is mostly synthetic too--though not entirely, because there is some genuine anger over the way the race is going mixed in.
The Democrats urgently need to get a grip on this. When they rage at unfair Republican tactics, part of that fury unavoidably spills over into anger at the electorate for being so gullible as to fall for it. Far better to rise above this sort of stuff, and radiate confidence that the electorate will see through it. If Obama gets angry at the electorate, or can even be plausibly accused of it, he is finished.
I don't know whether I find Camille Paglia infuriating or compelling--often, I suppose, both at the same time. I thought this piece for Salon was excellent, despite the obligatory weirdness. I find her views on abortion inexplicable, and I'm not sure what it could ever mean to call nature "fascist" (as she does later on in the article), but I think she makes some very astute observations about the race.
The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick -- there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly -- though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into "Star Wars" -- a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.
After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.
Wow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy -- one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama's triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football -- or one of the great light-saber duels in "Star Wars"... This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.
Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.
Palin made sense to me as a VP choice, even though I did not think she would draw support from disappointed Clintonistas, or have more than a moderate appeal for centrist women. The polls suggest I was wrong on both points. It will be interesting to see whether this lasts when she is forced to explain her views on social issues, and how she might act on them as VP or president--as she presumably will be in the debate with Biden, if not before.
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|Hair of the Dog New Year's Day Cocktails and other Hangover Helpers.
If you think this sounds yummy, I'd sure ♥ it if you'd click to pin it, tweet it, stumble it, or share it on Facebook to help spread the word - thanks!
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New Year's.Or more specifically, the morning after. Ugh. That can be a rough, rough day, especially if you happen to have little ones and can't just veg out and let time (and a lot of quiet) reverse the effects of overindulgence.
The Cajun doesn't drink and I don't indulge much anymore myself, but let's face it. On New Year's Eve, most folks do! Just make sure you line up a reliable designated driver ahead of time, or plan to just take a cab. There are lots of free cab services on New Year's Eve - but be warned. They won't take you to another party. Only home. So make a quick phone call to your local newspaper or television station to find the number to call and plug that into your cell phone before you even leave the house.
Based on my past experience, if you're planning to indulge either home or out, might as well just go ahead and prepare for the inevitable hangover and hit the grocery and maybe even the liquor store today just to be prepared for it. And while you're at it check out the hangover smoothie recipe below - you'll need to pick up a couple things for that too.
effects of acetalhyde, from alcohol)
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Now, if you find what you really need is a bit of the "hair of the dog" for New Year's Day (been there done that), here's a few favorites of mine.
If you live down here in, near or somewhere around New Orleans, you absolutely know what Yakamein is. Let's just say, it's also known as "Old Sober" and very often consumed after a long night of partying, especially during Mardi Gras, making it a perfect New Year's Day hangover helper. Make it New Year's Eve to have at the ready for brunch.
If you think this sounds yummy, I'd sure ♥ it if you'd click to pin it, tweet it, stumble it, or share it on Facebook to help spread the word - thanks!
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text: After his second resurrection by God, with enhanced abilities, he sees his decisions and support of freewill to have been affirmed. Castiel begins to show pride, while remaining somewhat naive with regard to consequences. Crowley is able manipulate this budding sense of pride to get Castiel to start the angelic civil war. Castiel becomes dedicated to his own decisions, and tends to pass over other opinions, even Deans, in the absence of another clear course. He eventually double-crosses Crowley, taking in the souls of Purgatory alone. He then insists on worship from his former friends. He intends to be an involved god, a better and loving god who will not abandon the world. He renounces his dedication to free will, saying that angels need a firm hand. He is quick to smite those he feels to be hypocritical and unjust, and rewards those who have faith. However, Castiel is being influenced by entities inside him - including leviathans - and his actions become erratic and violent. He realizes he is not strong enough to contain the power, and at a prompt from Sam, he goes to the brothers for help. He is apologetic and humbled; after the souls are out of him he wants to find a way to redeem himself before the brothers. He eventually takes Sams madness on himself, freeing Sam. In episode 5.14 My Bloody Valentine, Castiel shows his deep affection towards raw meat, eating it in the room and unable to get to famine, one of the four horsemen. Here, we realize that Castiels vessel, Jimmy Novak is desiring the food which he cannot gain access to with the angel possessing him. Castiels insanity after taking on Sams memories of Hell seems to free him of some of his guilt, though it leaves his mind scattered. He was unwilling to fight due to his belief that he is a "jinx," though Dean convinces him to help kill Dick Roman. He also expresses some fondness for Meg despite the previous animosity that existed between them. However, after getting trapped in Purgatory, Castiel seemed to have regained his sanity, though he admitted there is no way to know for sure. However, his experiences have changed his personality somewhat and he is no longer as aloof as he usually is and has displayed a fondness for human things he took for granted such as watching television, which he never understood before. 4.01 Lazarus Rising.


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Today's guest blog post is by Stephanie C. Kane:
Tropical Storm Sandy takes a left turn into the Eastern seaboard and meets a Nor'easter, they say. Con Edison's Lower East Side power station explodes, darkening the iconic skyline from Midtown to Manhattan's estuarial southern tip, turning Ground Zero into an Iguazú Falls. Families, like mine, stranded in edifices towering above the flooding tunnel networks, familiar sidewalks evacuated, government agencies animated, the eco-blind presidential campaign rhetoric sidelined. "Often found underground, or on the periphery of cities, infrastructure remains largely invisible until the precise moment at which it breaks down," writes Pierre Bélanger in Ecological Urbanisms.[i] Wealthy and poor together experience the dread and thrill of a socio-natural disaster in this precise moment. But as events unfold, the different resources available for withstanding disruption reveal the biophysics of inequality. The sudden changes in earth, water and infrastructure simultaneously affect all people distributed in geographic and social space, but not in the same way. This is why, like climate change-related phenomena more generally, the design of and investment in intelligently integrated, eco-savvy infrastructure are social and environmental justice issues.
In recent decades, artists, environmental activists, urban planners and landscape designers have been reimagining the world's post-industrial waterfronts, in New York City and globally. But even as they reimagine the functions and aesthetics, the fixities and flows,[ii] of edge spaces, how many of the newly built environments have seriously grappled with the problems of flexibility, flooding, and problematic interconnectivities of the larger infrastructure of which they are a crucial part? (For a good example, see HafenCity . (http://www.hafencity.com/en/home.html).
As the sea surges onto Battery Park City's South Cove, mocking its hardscapes, inhabitants who might normally appreciate artist Mary Miss's conception of a jetty as "a place where people could smell the river, hear it, get their feet wet and actually go out on the water," are, if their electronics are working, more likely to attend instead to the monstrous swirl of fraudulent image-clouds about to devour the Statue of Liberty in the Twitter-world. While in the nearby backwaters of the Gowanus canal, the vitality of its art activism scene succumbs to the toxic legacy brought back by the Superstorm, reminding residents– what may indeed never be that far from sensory awareness—of the incompleteness of the Superfund clean-up.
So even as corporate interests are tempted to displace human agency and responsibility on to the storm, we cannot, as the Maritime Executives do, hold "Sandy Responsible for 300,000 Gallon Oil Spill on U.S. East Coast." Shell Oil and Saudi Refining (Motiva) surely have primary responsibility for risk management and recovery in the Arthur Kill channel, with continued assessments by the Coast Guard, NJ Department of Environmental Protection, and Middlesex County Officials. A responsibility we all share. For even as we want the lights to come back on and for recovery in hard-hit neighborhoods to proceed apace, we cannot simply stop at restarting the failing, increasingly hazardous systems of energy, waste, and transport that contribute to climate change and water degradation.
As reality and metaphor, Superstorm Sandy dramatizes the on-going encounter between a densely populated industrialized megacity and the aquatic environment which it inhabits. The concentration of economic and cultural transactions in New York City and its surround has been accompanied by concentrated industrial harms, only some of which are technically coded as eco-crime. Once upon a time, when indigenous peoples still roamed the island of Mannahatta alongside bear and beaver, coves and marshes slowed the full moon estuarial tides and springs and creeks flowed above and below ground: visitors to the Museum of the City of New York were provoked by an exhibit that altered our sense of future possibilities. Before such possibilities can flourish, however, we must end dependence on the most dangerous infrastructure: the four nuclear power plants in the New York-New Jersey region, one of which (Oyster Creek , Toms River NJ) went on "ALERT" when Sandy's storm's surge threatened to overwhelm the water pumps needed to cool 700 metric tons of nuclear waste in its rooftop storage pond—we were spared a Fukushima-scale disaster, this time. This includes "creeping disasters"[iii] that are too easily ignored when the weather is good, like the chronic problem of sewage overflows into the Hudson River upstate, which seems tolerable until a storm surge, like Sandy's, reverses the normal downstream flow back into the roads and homes from whence it comes. Aboard the Riverkeeper's patrol boat during the storm, Captain John Lipscomb captures the extensive intricacies of ordinary pollution mixing and intensifying in extraordinary times: "This is like an Exxon Valdez spill from nonpoint sources. … and instead of being from one source like a tanker, it's from a thousand different locations." We've got to get our collective heads around this.
Stephanie C. Kane is the author of Where Rivers Meet the Sea: The Political Ecology of Water, an ethnography of port cities in Brazil and Argentina (for excerpt, click here.) She is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Indiana University. firstname.lastname@example.com.
[i] pg. 332 in "Redefining Infrastructure (pp. 332-349)," in Ecological Urbanism, Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty, eds. Lars Müller Publishers (Zurich, 2010).
[ii] Desfor, Gene, Jennefer Laidley, Quentin Stevens, and Dirk Schubert, eds. 2011. Transforming Urban Waterfronts: Fixity and Flow. New York: Routledge.
[iii] Rosenthal, U. (1998) Future Disasters, Future Definitions. In What is a Disaster? E.L. Quarantelli, ed. Pp. 146-159. New York: Routledge.


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Curriculum Vitae
Fun Projects
Capturing fine-grained hand activity could make computational experiences more powerful and contextually aware. Indeed, philosopher Immanuel Kant argued, "the hand is the visible part of the brain." However, most prior work has focused on detecting whole-body activities, such as walking, running and bicycling. In this work, we explore the feasibility of sensing hand activities from commodity smartwatches, which are the most practical vehicle for achieving this vision. Our investigations started with a 50 participant, in-the-wild study, which captured hand activity labels over nearly 1000 worn hours. We conclude with a second, in-lab study that evaluates our classification stack, demonstrating 95.2% accuracy across 25 hand activities. Published at CHI 2019.
Interferi uses ultrasonic transducers resting on the skin to create acoustic interference patterns inside the wearer's body, which interact with anatomical features in complex, yet characteristic ways. We focus on two areas of the body with great expressive power: the hands and face. For each, we built and tested a series of worn sensor configurations, which we used to identify useful transducer arrangements and machine learning features. We created final prototypes for the hand and face, which our study results show can support eleven- and nine-class gestures sets at 93.4% and 89.0% accuracy, respectively. We also evaluated our system in four continuous tracking tasks, including smile intensity and weight estimation, which never exceed 9.5% error. Published at CHI 2019.
SurfaceSight is an approach that enriches IoT experiences with rich touch and object sensing, offering a complementary input channel and increased contextual awareness for "smart" devices. For sensing, we incorporate LIDAR into the base of IoT devices, providing an expansive, ad hoc plane of sensing just above the surface on which devices rest. We can recognize and track a wide array of objects, including finger input and hand gestures. We can also track people and estimate which way they are facing. We evaluate the accuracy of these new capabilities and illustrate how they can be used to power novel and contextually-aware interactive experiences. Published at CHI 2019.
BeamBand is a wrist-worn system that uses ultrasonic beamforming for hand gesture sensing. Using an array of small transducers, arranged on the wrist, we can ensemble acoustic wavefronts to project acoustic energy at specified angles and focal lengths. This allows us to interrogate the surface geometry of the hand with inaudible sound in a raster-scan-like manner, from multiple viewpoints. We use the resulting, characteristic reflections to recognize hand pose. In our user study, we found that BeamBand supports a six-class hand gesture set at 94.6% accuracy. We describe our software and hardware, and future avenues for integration into devices such as smartwatches and VR controllers. Published at CHI 2019.
Generating ideas and solutions, evaluating and refining them, and hopefully putting them into practice is the essence of an HCI professional's life, whether it be in software or hardware. As inventors and problem solvers, innovation is our game, and for this reason it is interesting to consider the lifecycle of HCI ideas. At first we might think that HCI, as a fundamentally technology-driven field, would largely follow along with other technology trends. Fortunately, many people have written extensively on the business and history of technology, creating a cornucopia of curves and charts to draw upon. In this article, I pull together a few notable ones to make the case that HCI does not follow a standard innovation lifecycle. Published in ACM Interactions, October 2018, cover story.
Despite sound being a rich source of information, computing devices with microphones do not leverage audio to glean useful insights about their physical and social context. Ubicoustics is a novel, real-time, sound-based activity recognition system that uses data from professional sound effect libraries traditionally used in the entertainment industry. These well-labeled and high-quality sounds are the perfect atomic unit for data augmentation, allowing us to exponentially grow our deep learning tuning data in realistic ways. We quantify the performance of our approach across a range of environments and device categories and show that microphone-equipped computing devices already have the requisite capability to unlock real-time activity recognition comparable to human accuracy. Published at UIST 2018.
Vibrosight is a new approach to sense activities across entire rooms using long-range laser vibrometry. Unlike a microphone, our approach can sense physical vibrations at one specific point, making it robust to interference from other activities and noisy environments. This property enables detection of simultaneous activities, which has proven challenging in prior work. Through a series of evaluations, we show that Vibrosight can offer high accuracies at long range, allowing our sensor to be placed in an inconspicuous location. We also explore a range of additional uses, including data transmission, sensing user input and modes of appliance operation, and detecting human movement and activities on work surfaces. Published at UIST 2018.
Low cost virtual reality headsets powered by smartphones are becoming ubiquitous. Their unique position on the user's face opens interesting opportunities for interactive sensing. We describe EyeSpyVR, a software-only eye sensing approach for smartphone-based VR, which uses a phone's front facing camera as a sensor and its display as a passive illuminator. Our proof-of-concept system, using a commodity smartphone, enables four sensing modalities: detecting when the VR headset is worn, detecting blinks, recognizing the wearer's identity, and coarse gaze tracking - features typically found in high-end or specialty VR headsets. We describe our implementation and results from a 70 participant user study. Published at UbiComp 2018.
Smart appliances with built-in cameras, such as the Nest Cam and Amazon Echo Look, are becoming pervasive. They hold the promise of bringing high fidelity, contextually rich sensing into our homes, workplaces and other environments. Despite recent advances, computer vision systems are still limited in the types of questions they can answer. In response, researchers have investigated hybrid crowd- and AI-powered methods that collect human labels to bootstrap automatic processes. We describe our iterative development of Zensors++, a full-stack crowd-AI camera-based sensing system that moves significantly beyond prior work in terms of scale, question diversity, accuracy, latency, and economic feasibility. Published at UbiComp 2018.
Walls make up a majority of readily accessible indoor surface area, and yet they are static – their primary function is to be a wall, separating spaces and hiding infrastructure. We present Wall++, a low-cost sensing approach that allows walls to become a smart infrastructure. Instead of merely separating spaces, walls can now enhance rooms with sensing and interactivity. Our wall treatment and sensing hardware can track users' touch and gestures, as well as estimate body pose if they are close. By capturing airborne electromagnetic noise, we can also detect what appliances are active and where they are located. Through a series of evaluations, we demonstrate Wall++ can enable robust room-scale interactive and context-aware applications. Published at CHI 2018.
Compact, worn computers with projected, on-skin touch interfaces have been a long-standing yet elusive goal, largely written off as science fiction. In this work, we present the first, fully-functional and self-contained projection smartwatch implementation, containing the requisite compute, power, projection and touch-sensing capabilities. Our watch offers roughly 40 square centimeters of interactive surface area – more than five times that of a typical smartwatch display. We demonstrate continuous 2D finger tracking with interactive, rectified graphics, transforming the arm into a touchscreen. We discuss our hardware and software implementation, as well as evaluation results regarding touch accuracy and projection visibility. Published at CHI 2018.
Paper continues to be a versatile and indispensable material in the 21st century. Of course, paper is a passive medium with no inherent interactivity, precluding us from computationally-enhancing a wide variety of paper-based activities. In this work, we present a new technical approach for bringing the digital and paper worlds closer together, by enabling paper to track finger input and also drawn input with writing implements. Importantly, for paper to still be considered paper, our method had to be very low cost. This necessitated research into materials, fabrication methods and sensing techniques. We describe the outcome of our investigations and show that our method can be sufficiently low-cost and accurate to enable new interactive opportunities with this pervasive and venerable material. Published at CHI 2018.
Systems for providing mixed physical-virtual interaction on desktop surfaces have been proposed for decades, though no such systems have achieved widespread use. One major factor contributing to this lack of acceptance may be that these systems are not designed for the variety and complexity of actual work surfaces, which are often in flux and cluttered with physical objects. In this project, we use an elicitation study and interviews to synthesize a list of ten interactive behaviors that desk-bound, digital interfaces should implement to support responsive cohabitation with physical objects. As a proof of concept, we implemented these interactive behaviors in a working augmented desk system, demonstrating their imminent feasibility. Published at EICS 2017.
Homes, offices and many other environments will be increasingly saturated with connected, computational appliances, forming the "Internet of Things" (IoT). At present, most of these devices rely on mechanical inputs, webpages, or smartphone apps for control. However, as IoT devices proliferate, these existing interaction methods will become increasingly cumbersome. We propose an approach where users simply tap a smartphone to an appliance to discover and rapidly utilize contextual functionality. To achieve this, our prototype smartphone recognizes physical contact with uninstrumented appliances, and summons appliance-specific interfaces and contextually relevant functionality. Published at CHI 2017.
Electrick is a low-cost and versatile sensing technique that enables touch input on a wide variety of objects and surfaces, whether small or large, flat or irregular. This is achieved by using electric field tomography in concert with an electrically conductive material, which can be easily and cheaply added to objects and surfaces. We show that our technique is compatible with commonplace manufacturing methods, such as spray/brush coating, vacuum forming, and casting/molding – enabling a wide range of possible uses and outputs. Our technique can also bring touch interactivity to rapidly fabricated objects, including those that are laser cut or 3D printed. Published at CHI 2017.
The promise of smart environments and the Internet of Things (IoT) relies on robust sensing of diverse environmental facets. Traditional approaches rely on direct or distributed sensing, most often by measuring one particular aspect of an environment with special-purpose sensors. In this work, we explore the notion of general-purpose sensing, wherein a single, highly capable sensor can indirectly monitor a large context, without direct instrumentation of objects. Further, through what we call Synthetic Sensors, we can virtualize raw sensor data into actionable feeds, whilst simultaneously mitigating immediate privacy issues. We used a series of structured, formative studies to inform the development of new sensor hardware and accompanying information architecture. Published at CHI 2017.
Small, local groups who share resources have unmet authentication needs. For these groups, existing authentication strategies either create unnecessary social divisions, do not identify individuals, do not equitably distribute security responsibility, or make it difficult to share or revoke access. To explore an alternative, we designed Thumprint: inclusive group authentication with shared secret knocks. All group members share one secret knock, but individual expressions of the secret are discernible. We evaluated the usability and security of our concept, which suggest that individuals who enter the same shared thumprint are distinguishable from one another, that people can enter thumprints consistently over time, and that thumprints are resilient to casual adversaries. Published at CHI 2017.
CapCam is a novel technique that enables smartphones (and similar devices) to establish quick, ad-hoc connections with a host touchscreen device, simply by pressing a device to the screen's surface. Pairing data, used to bootstrap a conventional wireless connection, is transmitted optically to the phone's rear camera. This approach utilizes the near-ubiquitous rear camera on smart devices, making it applicable to a wide range of devices, both new and old. CapCam also tracks devices' physical position on the host capacitive touchscreen without any instrumentation, enabling a wide range of targeted and spatial interactions. We quantify the communication performance of our pairing approach and demonstrate data transmission rates up to four times faster than prior camera-based techniques. Published at ISS 2016.
Many research systems have demonstrated that depth cameras, combined with projectors for output, can turn nearly any reasonably flat surface into an ad hoc, touch-sensitive display. However, even with the latest generation of depth cameras, it has been difficult to obtain sufficient sensing fidelity across a table-sized surface to get much beyond a proof-of-concept demonstration. In this research, we present DIRECT, a novel touch-tracking algorithm that merges depth and infrared imagery captured by a commodity sensor. Our results show that our technique boosts touch detection accuracy by 15% and reduces positional error by 55% compared to the next best-performing technique in the literature. Published at ISS 2016.
Smartwatches and wearables are unique in that they reside on the body, presenting great potential for always-available input and interaction. Additionally, their position on the wrist makes them ideal for capturing bio-acoustic signals. We developed a custom smartwatch kernel that boosts the sampling rate of a smartwatch's existing accelerometer, enabling many new applications. For example, we can use bio-acoustic data to classify hand gestures such as flicks, claps, scratches, and taps. Bio-acoustic sensing can also detect the vibrations of grasped mechanical or motor-powered objects, enabling object recognition. Finally, we can generate structured vibrations using a transducer, and show that data can be transmitted through the human body. Published at UIST 2016.
AuraSense enables rich, around-device, smartwatch interactions using electric field sensing. To explore how this sensing approach could enhance smartwatch interactions, we considered different antenna configurations and how they could enable useful interaction modalities. We identified four configurations that can support six well-known modalities of particular interest and utility, including gestures above the watchface and touchscreen-like finger tracking on the skin. We quantify the feasibility of these input modalities in a series of user studies, which suggest that AuraSense can be low latency and robust across both users and environments. Published at UIST 2016.
We recently used Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) to detect hand gestures using an instrumented smartwatch (see Tomo Project). This prior work demonstrated great promise for non-invasive, high accuracy recognition of gestures for interactive control. In this research, we introduce a new system that offers improved sampling speed and resolution. This, in turn, enables superior interior reconstruction and gesture recognition. More importantly, we use our new system as a vehicle for experimentation – we compare two EIT sensing methods and three different electrode resolutions. Results from in-depth empirical evaluations and a user study shed light on the future feasibility of EIT for sensing human input. Published at UIST 2016.
SkinTrack is a wearable system that enables continuous touch tracking on the skin. It consists of a ring, which emits a continuous high frequency AC signal, and a sensing wristband with multiple electrodes. Due to the phase delay inherent in a high-frequency AC signal propagating through the body, a phase difference can be observed between pairs of electrodes. SkinTrack measures these phase differences to compute a 2D finger touch coordinate. Our approach can segment touch events at 99% accuracy, and resolve the 2D location of touches with a mean error of 7.6mm. As our approach is compact, non-invasive, low-cost and low-powered, we envision the technology being integrated into future smartwatches, supporting rich touch interactions beyond the confines of the small touchscreen. Published at CHI 2016.
Devices can be made more intelligent if they have the ability to sense their surroundings and physical configuration. However, adding extra, special purpose sensors increases size, price and build complexity. Instead, we use speakers and microphones already present in a wide variety of devices to open new sensing opportunities. Our technique sweeps through a range of inaudible frequencies and measures the intensity of reflected sound to deduce information about the immediate environment, chiefly the materials and geometry of proximate surfaces. We offer several example uses, two of which we implemented as self-contained demos, and conclude with an evaluation that quantifies their performance and demonstrates high accuracy. Published at IUI 2016.
We describe a new method that estimates a finger's angle relative to the screen. The angular vector is described using two angles – altitude and azimuth – more colloquially referred to as pitch and yaw. Our approach works in tandem with conventional multitouch finger tracking, offering two additional analog degrees of freedom for a single touch point. Uniquely, our approach only needs data provided by commodity touchscreen devices, requiring no additional hardware or sensors. We prototyped our solution on two platforms – a smartphone and smartwatch – each fully self-contained and operating in real-time. We quantified the accuracy of our technique through a user study, and explored the feasibility of our approach through example applications and interactions. Published at ITS 2015.
User identification and differentiation have implications in many application domains, including security, personalization, and co-located multiuser systems. In response, dozens of approaches have been developed, from fingerprint and retinal scans, to hand gestures and RFID tags. We propose CapAuth, a technique that uses existing, low-level touchscreen data, combined with machine learning classifiers, to provide real-time authentication and even identification of users. As a proof-of-concept, we ran our software on an off-the-shelf Nexus 5 smartphone. Our user study demonstrates twenty-participant authentication accuracies of 99.6%. For twenty-user identification, our software achieved 94.0% accuracy and 98.2% on groups of four, simulating family use. Published at ITS 2015.
Touchscreens with dynamic electrostatic friction are a compelling, low-latency and solid-state haptic feedback technology. Work to date has focused on minimum perceptual difference, texture rendering, and fingertip-surface models. However, no work to date has quantified how electrostatic feedback can be used to improve user performance, in particular targeting, where virtual objects rendered on touchscreens can offer tactile feedback. Our results show that electrostatic haptic feedback can improve targeting speed by 7.5% compared to conventional flat touchscreens. Published at ITS 2015.
Gaze interaction is particularly well suited to rapid, coarse, absolute pointing, but lacks natural and expressive mechanisms to support modal actions. Conversely, free space hand gesturing is slow and imprecise for pointing, but has unparalleled strength in gesturing, which can be used to trigger a wide variety of interactive functions. Thus, these two modalities are highly complementary. By fusing gaze and gesture into a unified and fluid interaction modality, we can enable rapid, precise and expressive free-space interactions that mirror natural use. Moreover, although both approaches are independently poor for pointing tasks, combining them can achieve pointing performance superior to either method alone. This opens new interaction opportunities for gaze and gesture systems alike. Published at ICMI 2015.
Tomo is a wearable, low-cost system using Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) to recover the interior impedance geometry of a user's arm. This is achieved by measuring the cross-sectional impedances between all pairs of eight electrodes resting on a user's skin. Our approach is sufficiently compact and low-powered that we integrated the technology into a prototype wrist- and armband, which can monitor and classify hand gestures in real-time. We ultimately envision this technique being integrated into future smartwatches, allowing hand gestures and direct touch manipulation to work synergistically to support interactive tasks on small screens. Published at UIST 2015.
Most everyday electrical and electromechanical objects emit small amounts of electromagnetic (EM) noise during regular operation. When a user makes physical contact with such an object, this EM signal propagates through the user, owing to the conductivity of the human body. By modifying a small, low-cost, software-defined radio, we can detect and classify these signals in real-time, enabling robust on-touch object detection. Unlike prior work, our approach requires no instrumentation of objects or the environment; our sensor is self-contained and can be worn unobtrusively on the body. We call our technique EM-Sense and built a proof-of-concept smartwatch implementation. Our studies show that discrimination between dozens of objects is feasible, independent of wearer, time and local environment. Published at UIST 2015.
We introduce a technique for 3D printed hair, fibers and bristles, by exploiting the stringing phenomena inherent in 3D printers using fused deposition modeling. Our approach offers a range of design parameters for controlling the properties of single strands and also of hair bundles. We further detail a list of post-processing techniques for refining the behavior and appearance of printed strands. We provide several examples of output, demonstrating the immediate feasibility of our approach using a low cost, commodity printer. Overall, this technique extends the capabilities of 3D printing in a new and interesting way, without requiring any new hardware. Published at UIST 2015.
The promise of "smart" homes, workplaces, schools, and other environments has long been championed. Unattractive, however, has been the cost to run wires and install sensors. More critically, raw sensor data tends not to align with the types of questions humans wish to ask, e.g., do I need to restock my pantry? In response, we built Zensors, a new sensing approach that fuses real-time human intelligence from online crowd workers with automatic approaches to provide robust, adaptive, and readily deployable intelligent sensors. With Zensors, users can go from question to live sensor feed in less than 60 seconds. Through our API, Zensors can enable a variety of rich end-user applications and moves us closer to the vision of responsive, intelligent environments. Published at CHI 2015.
Acoustruments are low-cost, passive, and powerless mechanisms, made from plastic, that can bring rich, tangible functionality to handheld devices. Through a structured exploration, we identified an expansive vocabulary of design primitives, providing building blocks for the construction of tangible interfaces utilizing smartphones' existing audio functionality. By combining design primitives, familiar physical mechanisms can all be constructed. On top of these, we can create end-user applications with rich, tangible interactive functionalities. Acoustruments adds a new method to the toolbox HCI practitioners and researchers can draw upon, while introducing a cheap and passive method for adding interactive controls to consumer products. Published at CHI 2015.
We explore 3D printing physical controls whose tactile response can be manipulated programmatically through pneumatic actuation. In particular, by manipulating the internal air pressure of various pneumatic elements, we can create mechanisms that require different levels of actuation force and can also change their shape. We introduce and discuss a series of example 3D printed pneumatic controls, which demonstrate the feasibility of our approach. This includes conventional controls, such as buttons, knobs and sliders, but also extends to domains such as toys and deformable interfaces. We describe the challenges that we faced and the methods that we used to overcome some of the limitations of current 3D printing technology. Published at CHI 2015.
Smartwatches are a promising new interactive platform, but their small size makes even basic actions cumbersome. Hence, there is a great need for approaches that expand the interactive envelope around smartwatches, allowing human input to escape the small physical confines of the device. We propose using tiny projectors integrated into the smart- watch to render icons on the user's skin. These icons can be made touch sensitive, significantly expanding the interactive region without increasing device size. Through a series of experiments, we show that these "skin buttons" can have high touch accuracy and recognizability, while being low cost and power-efficient. Published at UIST 2014.
Air+Touch is a new class of interactions that interweave touch events with in-air gestures, offering a unified input modality with expressiveness greater than each input modality alone. We demonstrate how air and touch are highly complementary: touch is used to designate targets and segment in-air gestures, while in-air gestures add expressivity to touch events. For example, a user can draw a circle in the air and tap to trigger a context menu, do a finger 'high jump' between two touches to select a region of text, or drag and in-air 'pigtail' to copy text to the clipboard. Published at UIST 2014.
Toffee is a sensing approach that extends touch interaction beyond the small confines of a mobile device and onto ad hoc adjacent surfaces, most notably tabletops. This is achieved using a novel application of acoustic time differences of arrival (TDOA) correlation. Our approach requires only a hard tabletop and gravity – the latter acoustically couples mobile devices to surfaces. We conducted an evaluation, which shows that Toffee can accurately resolve the bearings of touch events (mean error of 4.3° with a laptop prototype). This enables radial interactions in an area many times larger than a mobile device; for example, virtual buttons that lie above, below and to the left and right. Published at MobileHCI 2014.
The space around the body provides a large interaction volume that can allow for 'big' interactions on 'small' mobile devices. Prior work has primarily focused on distributing information in the space around a user's body. We extend this by demonstrating three new types of around-body interaction: canvas, modal and context-aware. We also present a sensing solution that uses standard smartphone hardware: a phone's front camera, accelerometer and inertial measurement units. Published at MobileHCI 2014.
Research into on-body projected interfaces has primarily focused on the fundamental question of whether or not it was technologically possible. Although considerable work remains, these systems are no longer artifacts of science fiction — prototypes have been successfully demonstrated and tested on hundreds of people. Our aim in this work is to begin shifting the question away from how, and towards where. To better understand and explore this expansive design space, we employed a mixed-methods research process involving more than two thousand individuals. This started with high-resolution, but low-detail crowdsourced data. We then combined this with rich, expert interviews, exploring aspects ranging from aesthetics to kinesthetics. Published at DIS 2014.
We propose using the face of a smartwatch as a multi-degree-of-freedom mechanical interface. This enables rich interaction without occluding the screen with fingers, and can operate in concert with touch interaction and physical buttons. We built a proof-of-concept smartwatch that supports continuous 2D panning and twist, as well as binary tilt and click. To illustrate the potential of our approach, we developed a series of example applications, many of which are cumbersome – or even impossible – on today's smartwatch devices. Published at CHI 2014.
The average person can skillfully manipulate a plethora of tools, from hammers to tweezers. However, despite this remarkable dexterity, gestures on today's touch devices are simplistic, relying primarily on the chording of fingers: one-finger pan, two-finger pinch, four-finger swipe and similar. We propose that touch gesture design be inspired by the manipulation of physical tools from the real world. In this way, we can leverage user familiarity and fluency with such tools to build a rich set of gestures for touch interaction. With only a few minutes of training on a proof-of-concept system, users were able to summon a variety of virtual tools by replicating their corresponding real-world grasps. Published at CHI 2014.
Tablet computers are often called upon to emulate classical pen-and-paper input. However, touchscreens typically lack the means to distinguish between legitimate stylus and finger touches and touches with the palm or other parts of the hand. This forces users to rest their palms elsewhere or hover above the screen, resulting in ergonomic and usability problems. We present a probabilistic touch filtering approach that uses the temporal evolution of touch contacts to reject palms. Our system improves upon previous approaches, reducing accidental palm inputs to 0.016 per pen stroke, while correctly passing 98% of stylus inputs. Published at CHI 2014.
Lumitrack is a novel motion tracking technology that uses projected structured patterns and linear optical sensors. Each sensor unit is capable of recovering 2D location within the projection area, while multiple sensors can be combined for up to six degree of freedom (DOF) tracking. Our structured light approach is based on special patterns, called m-sequences, in which any consecutive subsequence of m bits is unique. Lumitrack can utilize both digital and static projectors, as well as scalable embedded sensing configurations. The resulting system enables high-speed (500+ FPS), high precision (sub-millimeter), and low-cost motion tracking for a wide range of interactive applications. Published at UIST 2013.
WorldKit makes use of a paired depth camera and projector to make ordinary surfaces instantly interactive. Using this system, touch-based interactivity can, without prior calibration, be placed on nearly any unmodified surface literally with a wave of the hand, as can other new forms of sensed interaction. From a user perspective, such interfaces are easy enough to instantiate that they could, if desired, be recreated or modified "each time we sit down" by "painting" them next to us. From the programmer's perspective, our system encapsulates these capabilities in a simple set of abstractions that make the creation of interfaces quick and easy. Published at CHI 2013.
The proliferation of touchscreen devices has made soft keyboards a routine part of life. However, ultra-small computing platforms like the Sony SmartWatch and Apple iPod Nano lack a means of text entry. This limits their potential, despite the fact they are capable computers. We present a soft keyboard interaction technique called ZoomBoard that enables text entry on ultra-small devices. Our approach uses iterative zooming to enlarge otherwise impossibly tiny keys to comfortable size. We ran a text entry experiment on a keyboard measuring just 16 x 6mm – smaller than a US penny. Users achieved roughly 10 words per minute, allowing users to enter short phrases both quickly and quietly. Published at CHI 2013.
At present, touchscreens can differentiate multiple points of contact, but not who is touching the device. We propose a novel sensing approach based on Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing that enables touchscreens to attribute touch events to a particular user. This is achieved by measuring the impedance of a user to the environment (earth ground) across a range of AC frequencies. Natural variation in bone density, muscle mass and other biological factors, as well as clothing, impact a users' impedance profile. This is often sufficiently unique to enable user differentiation. This project has significant implications in the design of touch-centric games and collaborative applications. Published at UIST 2012.
We present Acoustic Barcodes, structured patterns of physical notches that, when swiped with e.g., a fingernail, produce a complex sound that can be resolved to a binary ID. A single, inexpensive contact microphone attached to a surface or object is used to capture the waveform. We present our method for decoding sounds into IDs, which handles variations in swipe velocity and other factors. Acoustic Barcodes could be used for information retrieval or to triggering interactive functions. They are passive, durable and inexpensive to produce. Further, they can be applied to a wide range of materials and objects, including plastic, wood, glass and stone. Published at UIST 2012.
Touché proposes a novel form of capacitive touch sensing that we call Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS). This technology can infuse rich touch and gesture sensitivity into a variety of analogue and digital objects. For example, Touché can not only detect touch events, but also recognize complex configurations of the hands and body. Such contextual information can enhance a broad range of applications, from conventional touchscreens to unique contexts and materials, including the human body and liquids. Finally, Touché is inexpensive, safe, low power and compact; it can be easily embedded or temporarily attached anywhere touch and gesture sensitivity is desired. Published at CHI 2012.
Touch input is constrained, typically only providing finger X/Y coordinates. We suggest augmenting touchscreens with a largely unutilized input dimension: shear (force tangential to a screen's surface). Similar to pressure, shear can be used in concert with conventional finger positional input. However, unlike pressure, shear provides a rich, analog 2D input space, which has many powerful uses. We put forward five classes of advanced interaction that considerably expands the envelope of interaction possible on touchscreens. Published at CHI 2012.
Since the advent of the electronic age, devices have incorporated small point lights for communication purposes. This has afforded devices a simple, but reliable communication channel without the complication or expense of e.g., a screen. For example, a simple light can let a user know their stove is on, a car door is ajar, the alarm system is active, or that a battery has finished charging. Unfortunately, very few products seem to take full advantage of the expressive capability simple lights can provide. The most commonly encountered light behaviors are quite simple: light on, light off, and light blinking. Not only is this vocabulary incredibly small, but these behaviors are not particularly iconic. Published at CHI 2012.
Phone as a Pixel is a scalable, synchronization-free, platform-independent system for creating large, ad-hoc displays from a collection of smaller devices, such as smartphones. To participate, device need only a web browser. We employ a color-transition scheme to identify and locate displays. This approach has several advantages: devices can be arbitrarily arranged (i.e., not in a grid) and infrastructure consists of a single conventional camera. Further, additional devices can join at any time without re-calibration. These are desirable properties to enable collective displays in contexts like sporting events, concerts and political rallies. Published at CHI 2012.
Researchers and practitioners can now draw upon a large suite of sensing technologies for their work. Relying on thermal, chemical, electromagnetic, optical, acoustic, mechanical, and other means, these sensors can detect faces, hand gestures, humidity, blood pressure,proximities, and many other aspects of our state and environment. We present an overview of our work on an ultrasonic Doppler sensor. This technique has unique qualities that we believe make it a valuable addition to the suite of sensing approaches HCI researchers and practitioners should consider in their applications. Published in IEEE Pervasive.
We consider how the arms and hands can be used to enhance on-body interactions, which is typically finger input centric. To explore this opportunity, we developed Armura, a novel interactive on-body system, supporting both input and graphical output. Using this platform as a vehicle for exploration, we prototyped a series of applications and interactions. This helped to confirm chief use modalities, identify fruitful interaction approaches, and in general, better understand how interfaces operate on the body. This paper is the first to consider and prototype how conventional interaction issues, such as cursor control and clutching, apply to the on-body domain. Additionally, we bring to light several new and unique interaction techniques. Published at TEI 2012.
TapSense is an enhancement to touch interaction that allows conventional screens to identify how the finger is being used for input. Our system can recognize different finger locations – including the tip, pad, nail and knuckle – without the user having to wear any electronics. This opens several new and powerful interaction opportunities for touch input, especially in mobile devices, where input bandwidth is limited due to small screens and fat fingers. For example, a knuckle tap could serve as a "right click" for mobile device touch interaction, effectively doubling input bandwidth. Published at UIST 2011.
OmniTouch is a novel wearable system that enables graphical, interactive, multitouch input on arbitrary, everyday surfaces. Our body-worn implementation allows users to manipulate interfaces projected onto the environment (e.g., walls, tables), held objects (e.g., notepads, books), and their own bodies (e.g., hands, lap). A key contribution is our depth-driven fuzzy template matching and clustering approach to multitouch finger tracking. This enables on-the-go interactive capabilities, with no calibration, training or instrumentation of the environment or the user, creating an always-available projected multitouch interface. Published at UIST 2011.
Modern mobile devices are sophisticated computing platforms, enabling people to handle phone calls, listen to music, surf the web, reply to emails, compose text messages, and much more. These devices are often stored in pockets or bags, requiring users to remove them in order to access even basic functionality. This demands a high level of attention - both cognitively and visually - and is often socially disruptive. Further, physically retrieving the device incurs a non-trivial time cost, and can constitute a significant fraction of a simple operation's total time. We developed a novel method for through-pocket interaction called PocketTouch. Published at UIST 2011.
When viewing LCD monitors from an oblique angle, it is not uncommon to witness a dramatic color shift. Engineers and designers have sought to reduce these effects for more than two decades. We take an opposite stance, embracing these optical peculiarities, and consider how they can be used in productive ways. Our paper discusses how a special palette of colors can yield visual elements that are invisible when viewed straight-on, but visible at oblique angles. In essence, this allows conventional, unmodified LCD screens to output two images simultaneously – a feature normally only available in far more complex setups. Published at UIST 2011.
In this paper, we define a new type of iconographic scheme for graphical user interfaces based on motion. We refer to these "kinetic icons" as kineticons. In contrast to static graphical icons and icons with animated graphics, kineticons do not alter the visual content of a graphical element. Although kineticons are not new – indeed, they are seen in several popular systems – we formalize their scope and utility. One powerful quality is their ability to be applied to GUI elements of varying size and shape – from a something as small as a close button, to something as large as dialog box or even the entire desktop. This allows a suite of system-wide kinetic behaviors to be reused for a variety of uses. Published at CHI 2011.
SurfaceMouse is a virtual mouse implementation for multi-touch surfaces. A key design objective was to leverage as much pre-existing knowledge (and potentially muscle memory) regarding mice as possible, making interactions immediately familiar. To invoke SurfaceMouse, a user simply places their hand on an interactive surface as if there was a mouse present (see images on right). The system recognizes this characteristic gesture and renders a virtual mouse under the hand, which can be used like a real mouse. In addition to two-dimensional movement (X and Y axes), our proof-of-concept implementation supports left and right clicking, as well as up/down scrolling. Published at TEI 2011.
We developed Pediluma, a shoe accessory designed to encourage opportunistic physical activity. It features a light that brightens the more the wearer walks and slowly dims when the wearer remains stationary. This interaction was purposely simple so as to remain lightweight, both visually and cognitively. Even simple, personal pedometers have been shown to promote walking. Pediluma takes this a step further, attempting to engage people around the wearer to elicit social effects. Although lights have been previously incorporated into shoes, this is the first time they have been used to display motivational information. Published at TEI 2011.
TeslaTouch infuses finger-driven interfaces with physical feedback. The technology is based on the electrovibration principle, which can programmatically vary the electrostatic friction between fingers and a touch panel. Importantly, there are no moving parts, unlike most tactile feedback technologies, which typically use mechanical actuators. This allows for different fingers to feel different sensations. When combined with an interactive graphical display, TeslaTouch enables the design of a wide variety of interfaces that allow the user to feel virtual elements through touch. Published at UIST 2010.
Devices with significant computational power and capability can now be easily carried with us. These devices have tremendous potential to bring the power of information, creation, and communication to a wider audience and to more aspects of our lives. However, with this potential comes new challenges for interaction design. For example, we have yet to figure out a good way to miniaturize devices without simultaneously shrinking their interactive surface area. This has lead to diminutive screens, cramped keyboards, and tiny jog wheels - all of which diminishes usability and prevents us from realizing the full potential of mobile computing. Published in IEEE Computer Magazine.
Skinput is a technology that appropriates the human body for acoustic transmission, allowing the skin to be used as a finger input surface. In particular, we resolve the location of finger taps on the arm and hand by analyzing mechanical vibrations that propagate through the body. We collect these signals using a novel array of sensors worn as an armband. This approach provides an always-available, naturally-portable, and on-body interactive surface. To illustrate the potential of our approach, we developed several proof-of-concept applications on top of our sensing and classification system. Published at CHI 2010.
Minput is a sensing and input method that enables intuitive and accurate interaction on very small devices – ones too small for practical touch screen use and with limited space to accommodate physical buttons. We achieve this by adding two, inexpensive and high-precision optical sensors (like those found in optical mice) to the underside of the device. This allows the entire device to be used as an input mechanism, instead of the screen, avoiding occlusion by fingers. In addition to x/y translation, our system also captures twisting motion, enabling many interesting interaction opportunities typically found in larger and far more complex systems. Published at CHI 2010.
Human perception of time is fluid, and can be manipulated in purposeful and productive ways. We propose and evaluate variations on two visual designs for progress bars that alter users' perception of time passing, and "appear" faster when in fact they are not. In a series of direct comparison tests, we are able to rank how different augmentations compare to one another. We then show that these designs yield statistically significantly shorter perceived durations than conventional progress bars. Progress bars with animated ribbing that move backwards in a decelerating manner proved to have the strongest effect. We measure the effect of this particular progress bar design and show it reduces the perceived duration by 11%. Published at CHI 2010.
A cord, although simple in form, has many interesting physical affordances that make it powerful as an input device. Not only can a length of cord be grasped in different locations, but also pulled, twisted and bent — four distinct and expressive dimensions that could potentially act in concert. Such an input mechanism could be readily integrated into headphones, backpacks, and clothing. Once grasped in the hand, a cord can be used in an eyes-free manner to control mobile devices, which often feature small screens and cramped buttons. We built a proof-of-concept cord-based sensor, which senses three of the four input dimensions we propose. Published at CHI 2010.
Although network bandwidth has increased dramatically, high-resolution images often take several seconds to load, and considerably longer on mobile devices over wireless connections. Progressive image loading techniques allow for some visual content to be displayed prior to the whole file being downloaded. In this note, we present an empirical evaluation of popular progressive image loading methods, and derive one novel technique from our findings. Results suggest a spiral variation of bilinear interlacing can yield an improvement in content recognition time. Published at CHI 2010.
Mark Weiser envisioned a third wave of computing, one with "hundreds of wireless computers in every office," which would come about as the cost of electronics fell. Two decades later, some in the Ubiquitous Computing community point to the pervasiveness of microprocessors as a realization of this dream. Without a doubt, many of the objects we interact with on a daily basis are digitally augmented – they contain microchips, buttons and even screens. But is this the one-to-many relationship of people–to-computers that Weiser envisioned? Published in IEEE Multimedia.
Whack Gestures seeks to provide a simple means to interact with devices with minimal attention from the user – in particular, without the use of fine motor skills or detailed visual attention (requirements found in nearly all conventional interaction techniques). For mobile devices, this could enable interaction without "getting it out," grasping, or even glancing at the device. Users can simply interact with a device by striking it with open palm or heel of the hand. Published at TEI 2010.
We developed a magnetically-driven input approach that makes use of the (larger) space around a (very small) device. Our technique provides robust, inexpensive, and wireless input from fingers, without requiring powered external components. By extending the input area to many times the size of the device's screen, our approach is able to offer a high C-D gain, enabling fine motor control. Additionally, screen occlusion can be reduced by moving interaction off of the display and into unused space around the device. Published at UIST 2009.
We present a method for identifying the order of stacked items on interactive surfaces. This is achieved using conventional, passive fiducial markers, which in addition to reflective regions, also incorporate structured areas of transparency. This allows particular orderings to appear as unique marker patterns. We discuss how such markers are encoded and fabricated, and include relevant mathematics. To motivate our approach, we comment on various scenarios where stacking could be especially useful. We conclude with details from our proof-of-concept implementation, built on Microsoft Surface. Published at ITS 2009.
Physical buttons have the unique ability to provide low-attention and vision-free interactions through their intuitive tactile clues. Unfortunately, the physicality of these interfaces makes them static, limiting the number and types of user interfaces they can support. On the other hand, touch screen technologies provide the ultimate interface flexibility, but offer no inherent tactile qualities. In this paper, we describe a technique that seeks to occupy the space between these two extremes – offering some of the flexibility of touch screens, while retaining the beneficial tactile properties of physical interfaces. Published at CHI 2009.
Despite touch being a rich sensory channel, tactile output is almost exclusively vibrotactile in nature. We explore a different type of tactile display, one that can assume several different textural states (e.g., sticky, bumpy, smooth, course, gritty). In contrast to conventional vibrotactile approaches, these displays provide information passively. Only when they are explicitly handled by the user, either with intent to inquire about the information, or in the course of some other action, can state be sensed. This inherently reduces their attention demand and intrusiveness. We call this class of devices texture displays. Published at CHI 2009.
On-body interfaces will need to notify users about new emails, upcoming meetings, changes in weather forecast, stock market fluctuations, excessive caloric intake, and other aspects of our lives worn computers will be able to monitor directly or have access to. One way to draw a wearer's attention is through visual notifications. However, there has been little research into their optimal body placement, despite being an unobtrusive, lightweight, and low-powered information delivery mechanism. Furthermore, visual stimuli have the added benefit of being able to work alone or in concert with conventional methods, including auditory and vibrotactile alerts. Published at CHI 2009.
When conversing with someone via video conference, you are provided with a virtual window into their space. However, this currently remains both flat and fixed, limiting its immersiveness. We present a method for producing a pseudo-3D experience using only a single generic webcam at each end. This means nearly any computer currently able to video conference can use our technique, making it readily adoptable. Although using comparatively simple techniques, the 3D result is convincing. Published at ISM 2008.
We present Scratch Input, an acoustic-based input technique that relies on the unique sound produced when a fingernail is dragged over the surface of a textured material, such as wood, fabric, or wall paint. We employ a simple sensor that can be easily coupled with existing surfaces, such as walls and tables, turning them into large, unpowered and ad hoc finger input surfaces. Our sensor is sufficiently small that it could be incorporated into a mobile device, allowing any suitable surface on which it rests to be appropriated as a gestural input surface. Published at UIST 2008.
Numerous methods have been proposed that allow mobile devices to determine where they are located (e.g., home or office) and in some cases, predict what activity the user is currently engaged in (e.g., walking, sitting, or driving). While useful, this sensing currently only tells part of a much richer story. To allow devices to act most appropriately to the situation they are in, it would also be very helpful to know about their placement – for example whether they are sitting on a desk, hidden in a drawer, placed in a pocket, or held in one's hand – as different device behaviors may be called for in each of these situations. Published at UIST 2008.
Using OpenCV's Haar cascade face detection functionality, I was able to throw together a real time head tracking program. I coupled this with several 3D demos, including a Johnny Lee style targets demo. Performance is surprisingly good. On my 2.16 Ghz MacBook I am tracking at 25 frames per second - sufficient for real time interaction with no obtrusive reaction delays. Additionally, I've optimized the code so that only 50% of a single processor core is consumed (and that's on my relatively slow laptop).
The size and resolution of computer displays has increased dramatically, allowing more information than ever to be rendered on-screen. However, items can now be so small or screens so cluttered that users need to lean forward to properly examine them. This behavior may be detrimental to a user's posture and eyesight. Our Lean and Zoom system detects a user's proximity to the display using a camera and magnifies the on-screen content proportionally. Results from a user study indicate people find the technique natural and intuitive. Most participants found on-screen content easier to read, and believed the technique would improve both their performance and comfort. Published at CHI 2008.
Numerous factors cause progress bars to proceed at non-linear rates (e.g. pauses, acceleration, deceleration). Additionally, humans perceive time in a non-linear way. The combination of these effects produces a highly variable perception of how long it takes progress bars to complete. Results from a user study indicate there are several factors that can be manipulated to make progress bars appear faster, when in fact they are not, or potentially even slower. Published at UIST 2007.
Television was once championed as the "electronic hearth" which would bring people together. Indeed, television shows provide a common experience, often affording even total strangers a social connection on which to initiate conversation. However, a fundamental shift in how we consume media is degrading such social interactions significantly – an increasing number of people are no longer watching television shows as they broadcast. Instead, users are favoring non-live media sources, such as Digital Video Recorders, Video-On-Demand services , and even rented physical media (e.g. Netflix). Published at UXTV 2008.
Conventional program guides present television shows in a list view, with metadata displayed in a separate window. However, this linear presentation style prevents users from fully exploring and utilizing the diverse, descriptive, and highly connected data associated with television programming. Additionally, despite the fact that program guides are the primary selection interface for television shows, few include integrated recommendation data to help users decide what to watch. iEPG presents a novel interface concept for navigating the multidimensional information space associated with television programming, as well as an effective visualization for displaying complex ratings data. Published at UXTV 2008.
Hierarchical file systems mirror the way people organize data in the physical world. However, this method of organization is often inadequate in managing the immense number of files that populate users' hard drives. Systems that employ a time-centric or content-driven approach have proven to be compelling alternatives. Kronosphere offers a powerful time and content-based navigation and management paradigm that has been specifically designed to leverage universal cognitive abilities.
The simple sling is often neglected when reviewing the long history of ranged warfare. Scholars typically focus on the simple thrown spear, atlatl, throwing axe, bow, and crossbow. However, in experienced hands, the sling was arguably the most effective personal projectile weapon until the 15th century, surpassing the accuracy and deadliness of the bow and even of early firearms. Published in the Bulletin of Primitive Technology.
Using the RCBIS package developed by Stacey Kuznetsov and myself, Jeff Borden put together a image clustering package. The application was created using the Prefuse information visualization toolkit and a K-means clustering method. The latter used a distance metric the RCBIR engine calculates when given two images.
After several months of intense development alongside Stacey Kuznetsov, the Rapid Content-Based Image Search (RCBIS) engine was ready for use in user oriented programs. The most obvious and appealing project was to develop an image search engine which took not text, but a sketch as input.
Ineffective and insufficient commenting of code is a major problem in software development. Coders find commenting frustrating and time consuming. Often, programmers will write a section of code and come back later to comment, potentially reducing the accuracy of the information. Speech Enhanced Commenting is a system that takes advantage of an unused human output - voice. This system allows users to speak their comments as they program, which is natural and can happen in parallel to the user typing the code.
Checking passwords often requires a complex algorithm, but computation time is generally small. For users on their local machines, it's insignificant. However, if the password needs to be checked by a remote login server, things become more expensive. Secure connections have be negotiated and databases have to be queried. Throw in a few thousand users and your are looking at a serious load problem. Visual hashes can reduce the burden on login servers by eliminating some unnecessary login attempts.
During the 2006 and 2007 summers, I spent eleven weeks in Turkey assisting an archaeological expedition at a Greco-Roman city named Aphrodisias. A small Geographical Information Systems (GIS) team worked on producing maps to assist the project, both in surveying the region and artifact collection. Creating site level contour maps was a major effort in the first season. I primarily worked on developing methods for predicting the location of ancient sites, such as iron mines and forts, and the routes of aqueducts and ancient roads.
Compilers are quite possibly the programmer's most frequently used tool, and yet often overlooked. Over the course of 2 months, I coded up a compiler in C++ for a medium-sized language dubbed 'A'. The compiler supports all the goodies, including: arrays, pointers, function calls, recursion, type checking, static scoping, and more. The output: executable PPC assembly.
People place different levels of importance on applications they use. This importance is often transient. For example, when the user is in a rush and wants to quickly check their email before they leave, the email application should not have to wait on other applications. However, other times, the user might accept a longer launch time because they also value background processes, like a downloading a file or transferring pictures from their digital camera. Anticipating user needs is practically impossible. However, users provide a wealth of feedback in the form of gestures.
Over the 2005 summer, I had the pleasure of working at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, under the leadership of John Barton and Stephen Farrell. The development team consisted of Chris Parker, Meng Mao and myself. We worked on a unique application which blended aspects of personal information management, social networking, and content management. The project was dubbed Enki, after the Sumerian God of Knowledge.
In 1624, the Dutch established their first outpost about 150 miles north of Manhattan, up the Hudson River, called Fort Orange. It was located near the modern city of Albany, NY. Interestingly, the environment was similar to that of prehistoric Manhattan. The plant life was similar, with spruce, fir, birch, and poplar dominating the area around Fort Orange. Because archaic groups and a fledgling European outpost relied so heavily on the local environment to survive, there are many commonalities in how they lived. Using this similar environmental context, one can explore how each group, with their different technologies and social traditions, adapted and survived.
This page is dedicated to describing my work for the OS Bakeoff, which was the finale to a semester long advanced operating systems class. Students started by building their own shell, and later added support for booting the OS (on X86 hardware), paging (protected memory management), multiple program environments, scheduling, and preemptive multitasking to name a few.
With the advent of computers, which could perform millions of mathematical calculations per second, new topics and problems in geometry began to emerge and the field of computational geometry was born. As the subject evolved, a number of new applications became apparent, ranging from computer vision and geographical data analysis, to collision detection for robotics and molecular biology. This paper discusses perhaps one of the oldest and most celebrated computational geometry problems; the convex hull.
A multithreaded server capable of pipelining HTTP requests from multiple concurrent clients. Features an LRU cache to store frequently used files in main memory and supports a full compliment of MIME types via an external config file. All in about 500 lines of Java code...
This page is dedicated to research I conducted in my high school's science research class. I presented the work at several science competitions and ultimately filed a patent for the technology during my freshman year in university. This page is very out of date.
BaLiS was my first attempt at designing an AI (high school). It uses a priority matrix that builds as a virtual bacterium explores. Different items are encountered, such as food. The bacterium exhibits certain behaviors based on what it finds, and adjusts it's memory accordingly.


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Pair our fresh mint vest with our fabulous Kente print shorts. Versatile and comfortable for sleeping and brunching! ...Read more
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Pair our fresh mint vest with our fabulous Kente print shorts. Versatile and comfortable for sleeping and brunching!
- Vests wont lose their shape while remaining soft and comfortable.
- Luxurious shorts super soft organic cotton / silk blend
- All our products are machine washable
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Equals of the Apostles and Teachers of the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius - Troparion & Kontakion
Troparion — Tone 4
Divinely-wise Cyril and Methodius, / equals-to-the-apostles and teachers of the Slavs, / entreat the Master of all / to strengthen all nations in Orthodoxy and unity of mind, / to grant peace to the world and to save our souls.
Kontakion — Tone 3
Let us honor the sacred pair, who translated divine scripture / pouring forth a fountain of divine knowledge from which we still draw today. / Now as you stand before the throne of the Most-high / we call you blessed, Cyril and Methodius, / as you fervently pray for our souls.


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Jolt Awards 2014: The Best Programmer Libraries, April 22, 2014 Astonishing collections of software bundled with superb design and coding tools
Jolt Productivity Award: ComponentOne Studio Enterprise 2013 v3
ComponentOne Studio Enterprise is a full set of UI controls for both legacy and modern platforms including:
Desktop: Windows Forms, ActiveX, WPF, WinRT XAML, and Compact Framework.
Web: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, HTML5, and Silverlight.
Mobile: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, HTML5, Windows Phone, and WinRT XAML.
The controls fulfill the needs of different kinds of applications, websites, and apps. The gauge controls are a breeze to customize and make it easy to generate impressive user experiences for dashboards and balanced scorecards.
One of the key features you will find in this huge control library is that it offers great support for legacy controls. For example, the library still supports legacy ActiveX, Compact Framework, and Windows Forms controls. Thus, if you developed a Windows Forms project that used the legendary ComponentOne FlexGrid, you can continue using it, and you can leverage your experience with it in the new platforms that include this grid, such as WPF.
The nicest thing about legacy support is that the new library version also includes new features for the legacy platforms and controls. ComponentOne Studio Enterprise simplifies the support for touch-based interfaces by providing touch-enabled controls in all the supported platforms. You can touch-enable a Windows Forms or WPF project without additional effort when you use the controls included in the library. However, the library goes a step further to solve touch-based interface problems and provides the new TouchToolkit for Windows Forms that allows you to add touch support to an entire application by adding a component to a form.
The new version of the library includes solutions for all target platforms to simplify theming the controls. Theming is usually a problem when working with third-party controls, so the new solutions are extremely welcome for management of the presentation aspects for each control.
The complete set of controls (called Wijmo) is built on HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, SVG, jQuery, jQuery UI, and jQuery Mobile. Wijmo makes it easy to transition from Web to Mobile with great touch features and added support for both Bootstrap and AMD (Asynchronous Module Definition).
The documentation delivers many well-organized examples for some of the platforms that allow you to easily master how to work with each control. However, Wijmo controls, in particular, need far more examples of features that are otherwise not demonstrated in this package. Gaston Hillar


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Technologically advanced pipe and cable/sonde locating system complete with ULS receiver and multifrequency transmitter for all line and sonde locating applications!
The New Standard in Underground Locating!
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Arriving Soon Goldak's Exciting
New Blade Series Line Transmitters
To learn more and be notified when the Blade Series units are ready to ship, please fill out the form fields below and you will be the first to know when you can purchase an exciting new Blade Series product.


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Supremacy MMA breaks all the rules of traditional MMA fighting games, embracing fast-and-furious arcade-style combat and the bone-crushing brutality of underground MMA fighting. Unbound by traditional MMA rules, Supremacy MMA pulls no punches.


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The top prize in the sixth annual Marion County Park and Lake Chili Cook-off stayed very close to the parking lot where the cook-off was held. Lake residents Gordon and Judy Pendergraft won the $100 first prize for their "award-winning chili."
Bob Priest, who also resides at the lake, sampled the chili offerings at the lake, and he said he liked the Pendergrafts' entry because it was meaty and flavorful without being overly spicy.
"I want some spice, but not too much," Priest said.
Second prize and $50 went to Dustin Koehn and Nick McGovern's "D&N chili." Third place and $35 was awarded to Billy Frary's "burnt end brisket chili." The competitors' choice trophy was awarded to Karl Schafer and his "Karlose green chili."
There were 17 contestants this year, up more than 20 percent from 2011. Organizers sold 220 tasting kits and raised $1,498 for the lake despite dreary weather and competition from the football game between Kansas State University and the University of Kansas.
There was also an impromptu contest for people who sampled the chili. Rick Myers offered a prize of $100 to anyone who could eat an entire bowl of his "last stop chili" without a beverage. Three contestants stepped up to the challenge, but only Leslie Greenemeyer walked away with the $100 prize.
John Walters of Palmer, Alaska, made the longest trip by far of any competitor. He had three separate styles of chili made with wild game, including moose chili. Walters said he made the trip to see Park and Lake Superintendent Steve Hudson, who he considers a brother.


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Southwest football standout J�Veon Walker is comfortable having the ball in his hands, whether he�s hauling in a pass, speeding down field with a kick return or reeling in an interception.
Southwest football standout J�Veon Walker is comfortable having the ball in his hands, whether he�s hauling in a pass, speeding down field with a kick return or reeling in an interception.
And the Stallions certainly wouldn�t have it any other way as they prepare for the official start of practice Aug. 1 and for their season opener Aug. 23 at home against Jacksonville.
�J�Veon is a tremendous athlete and we have got to get him the football, and we are going to,� Southwest coach Phil Padgett said. �He�s working hard. He�s worked hard this spring and he�s had a good summer to this point, and we are excited about what he brings to the table.
�Without a doubt he�s going to be a guy who gets the ball.�
The 17-year-old Walker sure doesn�t mind getting his touches as he hopes to lead the Stallions to another state title after Southwest won the NCHSAA 1-AA championship last season.
The 6-foot-1, 192-pound walker likes toting the pigskin. He, along with his teammates and coaches, know that each time he gets the ball he has a chance to score. And Walker has proven that time and again as a wide receiver, safety and kick returner.
�I like all positions. I just like having the ball in my hands,� Walker said. �I have been thinking about it the past couple of years of what can I do with the ball? Can I juke somebody or try to break a tackle? I just get that mentality to just score.�
That�s exactly what Walker did in Southwest�s 44-34 victory over Swain County in December in the state final.
He gave the Stallions an early spark by scoring on a 40-yard touchdown run for 6-0 lead and then boosted his team by returning the second-half kickoff 94 yards for a score to extend its lead to 23-13.
Walker also had a first-quarter interception and nine tackles out of the secondary. He was named the state title game most valuable player.
After the season, Walker was named to the first team of The Daily News all-area team as a receiver after he finished with 20 receptions for 475 yards and eight touchdowns to go along with seven interceptions.
�That state championship game brought him to the next level,� Padgett said. �No doubt about it.�
Walker has since watched film of the state final several times.
�I just think, �Dang, that�s really me,�� Walker said.
It sure was.
Now Walker uses that game film as a tool for this season. It motivates him to win another championship in his final year. He agreed with Padgett that his performance made him a more confident player. Walker also said that his effort against Swain County put other coaches, teams and college recruiters on notice about just how good he was on the field.
�I sort of felt like while the season was going on that I was kind of getting under-looked, but I just played my role,� Walker said. �We were a running team, but when pass plays were called, that�s when I stepped up to make a play.�
As a sophomore in 2011, Walker had seven receptions for 121 yards and a touchdown.
Fast forward to this year�s preseason and Walker�s name has gotten around to college recruiters. He said North Carolina has offered him a scholarship and he�s heard East Carolina and Charlotte were prepared to offer him as well.
Walker is being recruited as a wide receiver.
�I think I�ve handled it well,� Walker said. �I�ve just maintained my focus on getting right for next season.�
But while his mind is focused on the season ahead, Walker also thinks about his former teammate Shak Pershey, whose drowning death last month saddened him and the Southwest community.
Walker and Pershey were close friends. Walker will never forget Pershey and is dedicating this season to his teammate.
�I�ve been talking to his sister lately because she knew how close we were,� Walker said. �I think about all the things he did and all the great things that came his way, leading us to the state championship.�
And now Walker wants to honor Pershey by leading the Stallions to another title, saying, �It�s better to have two rings than one.�
But Walker doesn�t just want to get himself prepared for the season. He also wants to help get the entire Stallions� team ready.
�I�ve been lifting, training and working on my techniques, footwork and speed,� Walker said. �I also get them (teammates) pumped up and ready to go. I tell them what they are doing wrong during drills, and I make sure everybody is lifting in the weight room.
�I want to lead them to a state championship. That�s all.�


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I developed a script to show the agents most recent and upcoming callbacks. You can adjust how far back and how far forward you want the callbacks to be displayed, I have it set to display callbacks 1 hour before and 1 hour after the current time.
It's pretty cool my agents love it. I'm not sure if I want to put a pricetag on it yet or just give it out for free, would anyone else like to have it?
Here is what it looks like:
I'm still working on some small additions...


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Also, what about fossils, and stars (light years away from earth)?
Does anyone know how they would actually answer? Just curious.
Views: 509
Clearly, god is such a devious character that he emplaced photons en route to Earth so that it appears that there are stars and galaxies spread all across the Universe. Obviously, this is to test the faith of scientists to weed out non-believers. Well, at least that is the implications if we are to believe the nonsense from the young Earth creationists.
When I was a kid and questioned how fossils came to be.. I was told Satan did it. It didn't make sense to me then and even less so now.
For a funny take on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9Wx6-c8VSo
Based off conversations I've had .. They only seem to pay attention to the carbon (C14) dating and how inaccurate it is to date things beyond 60,000 years. They totally disregard the other types of radioactive dating.
It's also true that the C14 method needs calibrating. Which has been done. But they can use C14's need for calibration to try to argue that the method is inherently bogus.
Mineral dating (most famously U-238->Lead 206, but there are MANY others) doesn't have any of these problems and can date into the billions of years quite easily. Which is why the less clever creationists ignore it, and the more clever ones have to come up with additional bullshit arguments against it.
Radiometric dating is inherently flawed, and god created the light from the stars reaching earth when he created the world.
There is a quantum creation model that suggests the universe was created in a very small space, and then stretched rapidly to it's current size. That stretching caused a time dilation and through some rather creative inverting led to an old looking cosmos, but a young earth. Somehow the early days on earth actually equated to billions of years by modern standards while the later days of the (expanding) cosmos covered billions of years by modern standards. I can't remember the exact name of the theory or the author, but if you run across it then check it out - although it still leads to the oomphalos fallacy of last Thursdayism.
That seems like an interesting attack for the creationist. However, I don't know how it would hold up against astrophysics, etc.
Well, you gotta give 'em koodos for epistemological plasticity. :D
It holds up fine if you're willing to ignore facts & logic. Otherwise? Not so much at all.
They say it's flawed and mistaken. They say fossils are a result of the Flood and that stars only appear further away because Goddidit.
The flood caused it, for them the flood caused everything that they don't understand. They say radiometric dating is not accurate, you can say anything is inaccurate, doesn't make it so.


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A two-year study at the University of Pennsylvania showed the way federal law enforcement agencies communicate is decidedly not secure. How not secure? You can jam them with this ridiculous pink pager. It's like The Wire, only the exact opposite.
The group was able to spy on "every Federal law enforcement agency in the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security," listening in on conversations about undercover agents, informants, and ongoing and future operations. The main problem with the radio in question—the P25 digital two-way radio system—seems to be that the setting to turn encryption on is confusing as hell. This led to a lot of unencrypted messages and more than a few overheard conversations attempting to instruct users how to turn encryption on, but really having them turn it off.
Most embarrassing, though, is that the radios themselves are susceptible to jamming. An attacker can target only a single uplink channel and deny the entire network. That low of a threshold allowed researchers to effectively jam the P25's signals with a $30 preteen pager. A pager, people. And because the hardware necessary to cripple whole networks on the radio is so cheap, the researchers warned of an Ocean's Eleven-esque scenario where thousands of the devices are placed in locations around a city, attached to taxis or in public places. Which would be chaos. [WSJ]
You can keep up with Kyle Wagner, the author of this post, on Twitter and sort of Google+.


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The Sho-Me State APBTC (MO) will host 2 conformation shows and 1 weight pull on Saturday and the Ralph Greenwood Memorial show and 1 weight pull on Sunday at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia, MO. For more show information contact Mike/Nichole 816-365-4777 or email@example.com , Danny 816-868-9619 or email@example.com or Russ/Kim 816-228-1512 or email@example.com
Saturday AM - Chico Perez
Saturday PM - Gary Hammonds
Sunday (R.G. Memorial Show) - Kate Greenwood