The biggest names in supercomputing have been brought together at modelingtheworld.com.

The highest-power computational efforts on the planet are working to solve science’s hardest problems, from protein folding and gene sequencing to climate modeling and quantum physics. Stimulant helped Microsoft Technical Computing illustrate their commitment to these cutting-edge efforts with an equally cutting-edge website.

ModelingTheWorld.com is a Silverlight-based website that features interactive HD videos of some of the most respected luminaries in the supercomputing field today. 15 are available now, with more throughout the year, and each has a rich array of time-synchronized “extras” that add context to the interviewees’ statements or link to other related videos. Synchronized transcripts enable captioning and non-linear navigation.

High performance computing comes alive through the stories of its own leaders.

Stimulant designed an entirely procedural layout engine to display all of the videos, reinforced by an intelligent particle system, to evoke a complex system of many elements that form a greater whole. The system features parameters such as gravity, attraction, and elasticity that allowed design and development team members to interactively dial in the look and feel. Subtle controls also exist for featuring some videos more than others. Particles swarm to videos the user is interested in. If the user wishes to browse in a more ordered way, such as by name or tag, all the elements intelligently make room for additional interface elements as they appear.

Stimulant’s deep background in digital media also allowed us to help art direct the look of all the interviews, to ensure that the emotional tone of the videos matched the exploration and playback environments. A richly interactive video experience is offered once a video is selected for viewing, built upon our past successes for Microsoft Research’s Project Tuva. Silverlight Smooth Streaming video automatically provides the right quality level for the user’s bandwidth, immediately and in real time.

ModelingTheWorld.com is a testament to Microsoft’s commitment to advancing the state of computing on a massive scale, and reaffirms Stimulant’s not-so-secret mission to use technology to tell stories in new and engaging ways.

Bing Mobile Application for Nokia

In early 2008, Microsoft announced that they’d be bringing Silverlight to the Nokia S60 platform and at Mix 2010, that effort took a big step forward with the beta release of the plugin for Symbian. Stimulant, which has been working with Silverlight on mobile platforms since its inception, was chosen (along with a few other elite agencies) to participate, helping deliver applications to showcase the runtime.

The application Stimulant worked on is a mobile variant of the Bing Bar desktop application. Stimulant worked closely with the Bing team and was able to reuse a significant portion of code and existing graphic assets, while adding in mobile-specific interactivity for this unique form factor. Much of the Bing Bar’s functionality has been ported, including stocks, weather, and real-time feeds of MSN content.

Got an S60 phone? Point your mobile browser at the demo application, located at http://silverlight.net/content/samples/s60/bing, and experience Bing in the palm of your hand.

It’s musical, it’s magical, and it’s free. Stimulant is thrilled to announce the release of TouchTones as a freeware application for Microsoft Surface.

TouchTones (formerly ToneGrid) is a multi-user collaborative music maker that doesn’t require any musical knowledge in order to make something beautiful. Just tap the colored spheres to get them started and change the melody in real time! TouchTones has a range of innovative features:

• TouchTones features four sounds and a four-octave “grid,” which acts like a keyboard.
• Up to four people can use TouchTones at once.
• Symmetrical controls on all sides let any user control any sound.
• Holding down a colored button while tapping an arrow with another lets the user play the grid like an instrument. You can even play chords!
• Volume control, reset button, and integrated help video makes learning and playing a snap.
• No written instructions are needed to learn how to use TouchTones!

TouchTones is being made available for free for any Microsoft Surface running Service Pack 1 or higher. If you’re interested in having Stimulant visually reskin the application, replace the stock sounds with something custom, or want additional features, just ask. TouchTones is designed to be fully customized to meet your specific branding goals. Feel free to contact us for any general inquiries regarding TouchTones.

To learn more about TouchTones, or to download the installer, visit Stimulant’s Product Page.

Stimulant, in partnership with Trapeze, helped WIND Mobile extend their core brand philosophy of “The Power of Conversation” to the in-store experience with a Microsoft Surface-based assisted sales application. Surface lives in the heart of the store in most WIND Mobile retail locations, providing delightfully simple access to key product information and facilitating two-way conversation between employees and customers.

As a consultative tool, the Surface table allows customers to compare devices and plans side-by-side, helping to identify the options that work best for them. Information is made available quickly, clearly and in one layer of engagement. Stimulant worked closely with Trapeze to bring the WIND Mobile brand alive on Microsoft Surface, leveraging custom sound design, playful 2D physics and object recognition, all carefully blended into a seamless and engaging experience. The application leverages Stimulant’s proprietary product comparison engine, as well as a custom content management system to enable easy updating across all stores. Like all of our projects, extra care was taken to ensure scalability and stability for years to come.

Subsequent versions of the application will focus on the customization of services and devices directly from Surface.

Kodak, a stalwart exhibitor at the annual Print tradeshow, did something different in 2009. They bucked the industry practice of bringing truly massive commercial printing presses to the show. Instead decided to attract attendee interest with final printed samples, and use a nearly all-digital environment to tell the story of the Kodak technology used to bring these printed materials to life.

Working with Kodak’s marketing firm Partners + Napier, exhibit design firm Mirrorshow, and our old friends Obscura Digital, Stimulant created software for Microsoft Surface that allowed trade show attendees to simply pick up a printed sample or object, place it on Surface, and have Surface reveal details on that object’s printing methods and what Kodak products were used in its manufacture. We created a byte tag recognition system that’s more robust than is typical, so that even large objects could be only partially placed on Surface but still be recognized by the system. Traditional “attract modes” were replaced with local “attract messages” to entice attendees to use the table even when another user was already doing so, leveraging the inherent multi-user capabilities of Surface. Our team also externalized all content so that the client could manage all content themselves, even after the trade show doors opened.

Hundreds of trade show attendees and booth personnel used six Surface units in the Kodak booth without a hiccup during the entire show. Sales personnel found it invaluable to have such information at their fingertips without requiring printed collateral, and trade show attendees could follow along or even acquire knowledge on their own, given the utter simplicity of Stimulant’s nearly-invisible interface, based on their own interests and needs.

Project Tuva is an interactive video application developed for Microsoft Research. It wraps up many of our team’s passions in one project: history, interactive video, education, science, and rich internet applications. We are thrilled to be part of the team that brought this exciting video portal to life.

Project Tuva is an interactive video experience that makes learning about science relevant and exciting through annotations authored by researchers and subject-matter experts. Project Tuva launched with Richard Feynman’s Messenger Series lectures, a cornerstone set of seven talks at Cornell University in 1964. These videos are enhanced with a number of different layers of contextual information: fully-searchable transcripts and captions, time-synchronized contextual “extras” that link to related web resources, the ability to take notes while watching, integration with Microsoft Research’s own amazing World Wide Telescope project, and more.

Bill Gates, a longtime admirer of Feynman’s ability to make science approachable and fun, secured the rights to footage of Feynman’s Messenger lectures. Microsoft Research made this lecture series even more relevant and evocative by adding interactive visualizations, bibliographic references, web links, commentaries by subject matter experts, and even the ability to take notes while watching.

Stimulant then provided refinements to Project Tuva’s initial interaction design, created a minimal and modern visual design, established systems for content management and editing, and developed the Silverlight online user experience. We aimed to create a flexible and reductionist visual design language that would let content be king and the video viewing experience take center stage. The app is built to scale over time, as the Feynman videos are just the tip of the iceberg.

Project Tuva is notable on several technology fronts as well. Written in Silverlight, it uses Smooth Streaming to dynamically switch between different bit rates of video without interrupting playback. This allows the video to play in a way that’s more immediate than the usual buffer-then-watch online video experience. It uses a sophisticated and fully liquid layout system to adapt to different screen sizes and viewing aspect ratios. All modifications the user makes to the interface’s layout are remembered between sessions. The entire application is, like most of our work, wholly data-driven, leaving many possibilities for future content needs and enhancements.

One of the best aspects of this project was, in fact, our clients. Microsoft Research is full of extremely passionate, brilliant, and funny people. They brought amazing ideas to the table and really made us deliver only our best work, which is just the kind of challenge we relish. Stimulant extends kudos to their entire team for giving us the opportunity to help bring Project Tuva to life. Project Tuva debuted at the 2009 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit.

Experience Microsoft Research Project Tuva online for yourself.

Stimulant followed up the excellent reception of the Microsoft Local Impact Map Silverlight with a special  edition for Microsoft Surface. Drawing on our previous experience with many Surface projects, we saw incredible value in presenting this application in a new medium.

We knew that the Local Impact Map would be used to facilitate conversations about corporate social responsibility between Microsoft and representatives of governments and NGOs. How could we make the map even more collaborative, emotionally engaging, and aid in forming strong conversations around corporate citizenship?

The challenge called out for a fresh approach: build a version of the Local Impact Map for Microsoft Surface. In this way, Microsoft representatives can kick off interactions with their government and NGO contacts, letting them learn how to use the application simply by watching, and then let them explore the map as the conversation continues. All the while, the participants are literally able to look each other in the eye, and neither is in exclusive control of the device, the software, or the content. This makes for an emotionally equitable experience for all concerned. This human emotional connection and transparent communication style is exactly what Microsoft wanted to convey.

The Local Impact Map: Surface Edition shares the same hand-made look and feel as the online application, and is fed by the exact same data sources. We completely refactored the interface to make the Local Impact Map appropriate for Surface, and this laid the groundwork for further innovation.

A photo of the application, showing a data visualization lens

We chose the metaphor of a lens as the cornerstone of our multi-user interface strategy. Onscreen lenses allow for viewing in greater detail. Each lens can even display different styles of data visualization from other lenses, rather than repainting the entire screen with a data visualization that only one user might be interested in. This also allows local content to be freely oriented towards any user. Global filters allow users to hone in on the citizenship topics that matter most to their constituents and communities. Rich support for photography and videos also helps put faces on those helped by Microsoft’s charitable efforts worldwide.

The Microsoft Local Impact Map: Surface Edition is rolled out on Surface units in Microsoft facilities all over the globe.

The Local Impact Map shows the community-level, positive human and economic impacts of Microsoft's citizenship efforts around the globe.

Stimulant loves technology that tells a story and makes a difference, so we were especially thrilled when the Microsoft corporate citizenship team asked us to design and build the Microsoft Local Impact Map, which details hundreds of stories about the positive human and economic impacts Microsoft makes around the globe.

We used Microsoft’s own technologies, especially Silverlight and Deep Zoom, to create a map whose look and behavior keeps the focus on what matters most: the positive impact throughout the world made by the corporate citizenship and responsibility programs at Microsoft.

Working closely with representatives from Microsoft’s Corporate Affairs, Citizenship, Branding, Environment, and Research groups, the Local Impact Map evolved out of a need to have a central, public showcase for stories – text, video, and images – that communicated the broad reach of Microsoft’s programs.

We also implemented a feature called “snapshots,” which allows users to “bookmark” any state of the application, so that the content can be sequenced and used as a presentation tool.

We’d like to especially call attention to Microsoft’s willingness to expose this content in a UI that looks hand-drawn and slightly imperfect, reflecting those human attributes that make life wonderfully unpredictable and beautiful. It made the project a complete joy to work on, and we think it exposes a side of Microsoft – its brand and its people – that many people don’t often get to see.

Check it out online!

Interactive webslices proivde quick access to rich content

OneRiot is a real-time search engine that finds “the pulse of the web” – the news, stories, and videos people are buzzing about right now. OneRiot’s search results reflect what people are reading, sharing and even twittering about on-line in real-time.

OneRiot asked Stimulant to help find a creative way to showcase their new video search functionality using IE8′s Webslices. Stimulant worked with OneRiot’s technical team to develop a custom API for an interactive Silverlight-based webslice that surfaces top videos and search results directly from IE8′s toolbar.

If you’re running IE8, grab the webslice here.

Interactive webslices proivde quick access to rich content

When it comes to engaging content and photography, National Geographic stands in a class of its own. Looking to build larger audiences for some of its most popular features, such as the Photo of the Day and Your Shot – Daily Dozen, National Geographic turned to Stimulant.

Building on the success of the One Riot webslice, Stimulant looked again to Silverlight to create 2 webslices that showcased the powerful imagery and timely RSS-based content in an easy-to-use interface. Stimulant was able to build a custom UI on top all of Natonal Geographic’s existing RSS feeds, requiring almost no intervention from the client’s technical team.

Looking to get more in touch with the world around you, both near and far? Grab the National Geographic News webslices for IE8.