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).
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You all have the chance to use the emulator to test our metaphor, and experience how it works (please dedicate 3 minutes of your time to our anonymous evaluation). Our presentation page presents the design rationale along with the basic functions. However, when I present the emulator to people (in person) there's a question that always pops out: how did you do it? what platform is it based on?
Answers are pretty simple: we started by extending the blog (based on Wordpress) with some plug-ins available on the Web, and I wrote some more from scratch to implement the functionalities we...
In this last week the itsme tech team has worked on defining the architecture of Guglielmo, and sketching its APIs. Actually, it's been a great effort and we went through many different options and solutions, finally converging on the following one.
This is what we are implementing in the next month to support our current front-end prototype (which is also currently being improved and that might be demonstrated during our visit to the USA, for tutorials at GROUP2009 and CTS2009). We are also working to set up a way to release the code of Guglielmo 0.1, but (of course) we have...
itsme is an open source project, but this does not mean that contributing directly on our code will be the only way to integrate new ideas into our system. We have designed (and we are implementing) an architecture that allows extensions to be easily integrated, like simple plug-ins. The basic idea is quite simple: developers will be allowed to create bundles, packages to distribute customized applications or itsme components (e.g., new channels for itsme venues, possibly devoted to peculiar aims). These bundles will include a subset of the parts presented in the diagram below:
According to itsme system architecture, developers will...
Yesterday we made our debut in germany at EUD'09, with Giorgio's talk. The talk illustrated the main features of itsme(from a design and technology viewpoint), explaining how the roots of itsme workstation are grounded in the CSCW research, and the many interaction and collaboration possibilities itsme offers to interested groups and users. The audience was mostly composed of computer scientists, academics who do their research paying great attention to users. The talk was followed by a series of questions, mostly the ones that follows us everywhere: why are we planning to have a specific hardware, and not only developing software,...
Our technical workshop has been extremely fruitful. Before last Wednesday we had a clear vision of the Itsme interface and we had ideas on the role of each element of the GUI, also with respect to the contents to be managed... but we had very few things on paper on how to implement and to code those ideas. As you've read in a previous post by Nikhil that the tech team settled on the upper floor with plenty of post-its and markers, and now let me tell you what we did.
Day 1: We started from the definition of the logical...
