Archive for the ‘RIA’ Category
Modeling The World
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.
Project Tuva selected as a 2010 Webby Honoree
Project Tuva has been selected as an Official Honoree by the Webby Awards for the Best Use of Video or Moving Image. A big thanks to our great friends and partners at Microsoft Research for the chance to collaborate on the creation of a meaningful experience for this amazing content.
Project Tuva
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. More…
Microsoft Local Impact Map
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.
YourReebok 3D Landing Page
Your Reebok Homepage
Stimulant collaborated with online retail experts Fluid, Inc. to create an interactive 3D sphere for Reebok’s customized product page. This sphere is a rich, data-driven visualization of users of Reebok’s customized shoe system (also designed and developed by Fluid) and the designs these users have created.
Stimulant provided final interaction design polish and all 3D technical execution of Fluid’s design concepts. Fluid’s an awesome bunch and a great team to collaborate with. It was a good exercise to keep our 3D chops nice and sharp.
Belated kudos also go out to Carat Interactive, who drives the overall Reebok.com look and feel (which was refreshed and relaunched this year).
Silverlight.net Showcase
Using Silverlight to promote Silverlight on Silverlight.net...we love recursive projects!
Silverlight is seen as Microsoft‘s answer to Flash, but being a new technology, driving adoption is key. Stimulant partnered with StepChange to create an interactive, juried showcase of leading rich internet applications for their flagship platform site, Silverlight.net…using Silverlight to promote Silverlight.
Silverlight Around the World
This data visualization on Silverlight.net underscored the RIA potential of Silverlight 1.0.
Silverlight isn’t just a way to deliver video (although it’s brilliant at that); one can use it to build all manner of rich internet applications (RIAs). Microsoft needed a way to show off the RIA possibilities of Silverlight in a context that highlighted the platform itself.
Creating interaction beyond the computer.
From desktop to device, multi-touch to gestural, and portable to permanent, Stimulant creates magical multi-user experiences that bring people together.