Yesterday evening we presented the latest version of the itsme prototype to CSCW2010 participants. We think we captured their attention and got very interesting feedback, but I won't write about that. I think it's more interesting to write a brief report about what was new in our prototype, compared to the last we showed online and during other demos.
We have a brand new way to deal with email: beside the preview-based approach, allowing to send new messages very quickly, we have now integrated Mozilla Thunderbird, so that users can use it to access all system mail (the standard way to...
On January 12th we released FSter, Guglielmo's Virtual File System. Since then, besides carrying on the implementation, we have been fostering and monitoring online discussions about it. Moreover, we have taken the opportunity offered us by Tracker guys to give a very short presentation about FSter at FOSDEM 2010 in Bruxelles. If you happen to be there next weekend (February 6-7), why not stop and talk with one of the four members of the itsme team that will be there? Lorenzo, Bob, Michele, and Fabio will be extremely glad to answer all your questions about our projects.
Here's an extended verion...
In this video we show (without any comment) some of the latest features we have introduced in our software prototype. Actually, these are glimpses from a work in progress, let's call them our technical experiments: we have great interaction designers that are finding the best ways to interact with stories and venues. Meanwhile, our development team is stressing the technical features of our prototype, and testing if some of the ideas designers propose are feasible. What you see might not fit into itsme os, but still it's there and we like to show what we do to our community...
It's been a while since we defined the first prototype architecture for itsme OS, at the beginning of this year. Of course, implementing it whe found some ways to improve it, by using flexible solutions, better tools than the ones we first adopted, and by consolidating the elements providing us with ground for innovation. The following diagram shows what we have now in our latest prototype (which is actually quite different from the one we showed you in our latest video – as you can see from the post header... and maybe we'll do a new video soon).
[caption id="attachment_3333" align="aligncenter"...
It's been some months since we showed (on this site) our prototype. Of course, our code has evolved – both in its visible part and in what's running underneath (Guglielmo). In this video, you'll see the itsme graphical user interface as it is now (well, some days ago: October 2009) and a quick demo of the functions we have:
interaction with panels and venues: re-arranging them, filtering contents with channels and subvenues, drag and drop, and so forth. We omitted showing how to create a new venue and renaming it, but it is possible, of course :)
working with Linux applications:...
Mentioned below are some features that are being implemented in the prototype as far as the frame panels is concerned, and some open issues that emerged from our discussions.
But first, what are frame panels in itsme OS?
The frame is the uppermost layer of the itsme OS that includes all the elements that must be accessible at all times independent from the actual visualization. In order to make these elements always available the frame is composed by several sliding panels, appearing and disappearing according to the user interaction.
In itsme two kinds of panels are provided: temporary spaces for unorganized contents (the...
Since when we launched the emulator, some times ago, we've been collecting feedback and improving this software demonstrator. Bugs have been fixed, performances have been improved, and several new features have been added. We've produced a new video, very short, to present the major ones:
Drag and Drop: it is possible to create new private messages by simply dragging and dropping a person to the messages channel.
Highlight: related things are coloured in yellow, simply move your mouse around to quickly see what's related.
Comments: posts with new comments since the last visit to the emulator appear in green, and by opening a...
The Interaction Design team is not the only one going through a process of assessment and refinement of the choices made so far: the tech team is also working on an extensive redesign of the frontend for the itsme prototype.
The prototype has always been a tool to validate technical choices, with the nice side effect of putting into practice the ideas coming from the ID team. While being the right thing to do at the time, this meant that... well, let's face it: the prototype was pretty ugly ;)
In the last months we carried on a redesign effort, which went...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_tq8OMIY7I]
A couple of days ago we had an internal demo of our software prototype: apart from minor problems with screen resolution on my virtual machine, it's been quite good. We showed how we are integrating the itsme front-end with Guglielmo, our meta/data management system. We presented two scenarios:
writing and saving a new document with gedit, from within the itsme UI;
composing and sending email, and getting replies into the right venue.
This means we have Guglielmo running and the itsme front-end exploiting its services, we are successfully integrating some simple Linux applications (text editing) and communicating via email. Moreover, we have the...
We are running a survey to understand the impact of the itsme Emulator on our community with an aim to collect and elaborate the feedback coming from this tool to improve the final product we are working on: the itsme operating system. While the evaluation is in its full swing, I thought it would be just fair to give everyone a sneak peak into the responses we are getting (even if we are not discussing them all already). Please note that we are not analysing or concluding anything as of now. The evaluation is still going on, so if...
