Taboca Laboratório

 

Tear-off Inspiration in São Carlos at major public University

 Physically walking in the Computer Science department at ICMC-USP - Sao Carlos, one may find some inspiring tear-off ads posted in their panels. Today when I did my research among many of the SxSwI talk proposals ( SxSwI trending proposals ) I decided to print out some of these and physically post in this local community in Sao Carlos. What if physical walls could impact people in good ways instead traditional ads?

     
Click here to download:
Tear-off_Inspiration_in_So_Car.zip (722 KB)

 

Overview of TelaSocial - Social Kiosk Project in Drumbeat

 This video is a 5 minute overview of the TelaSocial project in Brazil which is also now available with an English project home page ( current under construction ) in the Drumbeat project site. This video is provided here to serve as an introduction to folks that are interested to know more about the project - our page at the SxSwI proposals interface provides a short explanation. You are also welcome to visit the project page in Portuguese at TelaSocial.

 

A Home Social Walk Experience

First I wanted to say thanks to the contributors that quickly answered the quest we did at Mechanical Turk. In this post, at the end, you will see links to each of the published video and and credits to each individual. This experimentation was an effort made in collaboration with these contributors from around the world. The quest was along the line " Let's socialize the walking machine experience --- provide an amateur video POV first person and help someone to do their exercises".


This experimentation is an attempt and call for the community to think about new ways the web can be used in our lives. I got motivated to run this experimentation when I visited my parents place and found that our walking machine was alone and dirt. Then I remembered I once used mechanical turk and was able to get a bunch of contributors to help out with descriptions. Since now every camera can record video I thought would be interesting to call the community to support this effort and ask them to shoot first person videos and upload using a flexible license to support the idea of a social walking machine. This experimentation does not feature the TelaSocial social kiosk stack yet. When I decided to create this Mecanical Turk task ( or Quest ) I asked contributors to put the videos online and if possible to put an open license. In this example you will see the machine and video however the idea is to add more to this experience, perhaps additional meta-data and richer elements that could turn this experience into something even more pleasant. I did a walking myself, using one of the videos ( the first one in the following list ) and it was really nice to feel that someone did that fresh video as a means to help me out.  Now let's imagine if each video had geo-based information and all sorts of information related to the place. Another interesting approach would be to actually have improved socialization of the walking experience --- to have someone walking with you along the road perhaps. While this experimentation did not use TelaSocial Social Kiosk system we believe that it indeed represents a case that relates to the whole idea of a social kiosks and also it is certainly something outside our traditional view about Desktop or Mobile. The following list has the videos we received for this quest.

Tracy -
Garret Black -
Sandeep Pampally -
Solange G. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIdQucUAXts
Tatyana -

 

TelaSocial Project presented at Drumbeat Project

Last Friday I had the opportunity to present TelaSocial slides at the very first Mozilla Drumbeat event in São Carlos, Brazil. This event was brought by Mozilla in partnership with Esfera from São Paulo. Drumbeat is a type of incubator project from Mozilla; the site states " a global community using web technology to understand, participate, and take control of their online lives". It is a good news that while Drumbeat keeps the beat of openness, it suggests the language of Web technology ( I also read Web standards ) as a means to reach this openness. Our contribution to this event was towards this vision. I felt it was a good opportunity to present TelaSocial project idea to Drumbeat community and its organizers. This is an early stage Mozilla-powered project that aims to bring open Web content to local communities first in university spaces and schools, and hoping to expand to other public spaces too. TelaSocial is also referred as the XULRunner-based Social Kiosk and offers a standards based experience that renders Web content in a way that programming can be remixed by local communities; as opposite to the traditional TV model where programming is not customized. The pilot project (portuguese pt-BR link) is now being tested at University of São Paulo at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science in São Carlos ICMC-USP.


The demonstration was running during the event in wall in a 24x7 style and "covered" #drumbeat tags, Drumbeat web site RSS, and also a clock widget. The 5 minutes presentation was a select number of slides that talked about the pilot project.

The following demo shows the template we have used at the Drumbeat event. This template explores a three panel view with a timeline indicator and two panels with RSS and twitter channel.

Filed under: Drumbeat Mozilla Firefox Taboca Labs TelaSocial
 

Expresssion Widgets nominated Best Web Hack

Expression Widgets is our first project in the education space. The project was originally submitted as an idea to the Mozilla Jetpack for Learning Challenge. Now you can check additional information, see the demo video and also access the first prototype, which is a Jetpack application available for initial tests at the Expression Widgets project web site. The project was nominated by Mozilla as one of the winners in the category named *Best Web Hack*. Check other projects and Jetpack for Learning project pages.


Filed under: ExpressionWidgets Jetpack for Learning Jetpack Mozilla
 

SocialKiosk Firefox Extension goes live for tests at ICMC/USP

This week we are exercising the 3rd round of tests of TelaSocial at ICMC department / University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. This project is also known as the Firefox-based social kiosk application and is being developed as a Firefox extension. This is a heads up that we are customizing this system for this department and at the same time working in the source code to have it available under an OSI approved license.

 

ExpressionWidgets + JetPack for Learning Update

Expression Widgets is part of the JetPack for Learning, an effort to support open education. The project proposes a system that leverages the web browsing experience and the JetPack infra-structure, and support learners to collaborate and produce open-based educational resources. The model proposes a collaboration environment where students express their thoughts as part of ongoing sessions, such as a lecture given by a professor.
 

Flux awarded in Innovation and Compatibility

December 15th, 2009 - Flux, was awarded by Mozilla as a winner in the first Mobile contest for Fennec the mobile version of Firefox.
Here is the winners information from Mozilla. This award was followed by a communication note from Mozilla mobile judges team " There were many fantastic mobile add-ons submitted to the Mobile Add-on Challenge. Yours, in particular, demonstrated a consideration towards mobile usability (understanding the capabilities and constraints of the mobile device), innovation and compatibility."

 

Quick Page Drawing and Flickr Upload for Mobile

 Flux is a simple snapshot and draw application available as an experimental addon for Fennec - the Mozilla mobile browser. The app is available on AMO ( addons.mozilla.org ) and allows users to capture Web pages, draw with brushes, and upload the generated images to Flickr. If you want to test and develop with Fennec on your desktop, you can use the XULRunner-based application which runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

 

JetPack for Learning Submission

(download)

Project Abstract

An annotation system that uses JetPack infra-structure and introduces
a concept of expression widgets. The model leverages the browsing
experience and JetPacks are used to support learners to annotate using
Web language, given a live session - let's say a lecture given by a
professor. The model is suggested initially as a rich annotation and
collaboration framework where students can interact with a variety of
Web-based widgets. It explores various communication forms such as
text, canvas-based drawing, SVG, MathML, and also some interactive
scenarios where teams can build together. The annotated resources are
organized and kept using simple wiki pages with less rules to the
server and more focus on possibilities for team-centred conventions.

Notes:

This project was submitted to the JetPack for Learning Design Challenge organized by Mozilla and supported by MacArthur Foundation.

Attached PDF reviewedon December 1st

Filed under: canvas Firefox Extensions JetPack MathML Mozilla Labs open education SVG Taboca Labs
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