User Interface Prototyping, Expeditely |
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Project idea: Use Expeditee with its in-build Javascript DOM manipulation to allow for the rapid prototyping of user interfaces.
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After
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Project idea: Spatial Hypermedia Video Editing and Annotation environment Details: Develop video editing capabilities that parallel existing audio editing capabilities. Focus on an area of use, for example: as a video editing suite (aka AfterEffects), as a way of interacting with course lectures that have been videoed, or to support realtime video conferencing.
Variations: allow crowd-source annotations; augment linking between resources using Near Identical Image Detection (typically coded in C/C++); | |
Long Distance Cricket |
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Project idea: Build a computer system that let's teams in different locations play a game of cricket!
Variations: Consider same idea but applied to a different sport. | |
Winter Pursuits |
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Project idea: Virtual Reality Winter Biathlon set in real-world locations.
Variations: Cross-country skiing? Downhill skiing? Hotdog (jumps and flips) | |
The Tip-Off |
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Project idea: location aware, self-sufficient travel app that helps when you're travelling overseas. Goes a lot further than maps, time-zones, weather: e.g., tipping customs, how much does that really costs? (i.e., with sales tax, converted back to NZ dollars), word and phrase translation facility, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, photos of things that would be hard to translate, laid-back-searching (acknowledges that you won't be on-line all the time).
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The Tip-Off, Spin-off project: a universal translator |
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Project idea: Think Star Trek!
Variations: i) point the phone at some text, have it OCR'd, translated, and the displayed and spoken back to you in your language (or vice versa). Allow editing, and voice over recording. All GPS information to be pushed out to world map DL of details (ideally need to think of way of providing incentives for crowd-sourcing and avoiding 'pranks'); ii) focus on making system operable in a crowded room (e.g., around the dinner table)—discreet ear-piece, sensor for telling which way a person is looking, amplify sound emanating from that direction more. | |
TIM: The Incredible Machine meets Einstein |
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Project Idea: Develop a puzzle solving game along the lines of TIM: The Incredible Machine, only using principles of Quantum Mechanics to solve.
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Not What You See |
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Project idea: develop a game that uses eye-tracking software, where the game-play element comes from when the user looks at something on the screen, it quickly disappears. (Spin off project idea from TIM Meets Einstein above). There are quite a few open source projects that provide eye-tracking and gaze following capabilities: Google search
Variation: use a 3D games environment? Use Oculus Rift head gear (note someone in the team would need to have access to such gear as it looks unlikely, through, the university to be able to source such gear in time for the start of the project). | |
Not What You See 3D ... Boo! |
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Project idea: the above project idea but in 3D with a ghoulish twist. Eye-tracking software could potentially work on this (if you setup was, say, projecting onto a large screen). An alternative would be to look at using Oculus Rift virtual reality head gear. Note: someone in the team would need to have access to such gear as it looks unlikely, through, the university to be able to source such gear in time for the start of the project. | |
Parasitic Indexing |
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Looking to deprecate this project idea Project idea: Use user's web browsers Javascript processing ability in combination with AJAX calls to parasitically index and more importantly keep indexing the web so it is always up to date.
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Getting the Band Back Together: Networked digtial music stand that listens |
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Project idea: A music group in rehersals (and performance?) each has a tablet that displays the sheet music to their part of the piece. The tablet allows the musicians to augment what can be done with traditional paper: no need to keep a folder full of music (that has a habit of spilling out, it's all contained in the tablet, organized as a digital library); annotations that don't damage the page can be added (and used when searching to locate a piece or music, or page), page turning is incrementally drawn over the top so there is more time to see the last line of music being played; the tablet can listen to what is being played and decided when to start a page turn.
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Taking pain out of Repetitive Repetitive Repetitive tasks in a graphical environment |
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The planets align, its time has come! Project idea: develop an environment that monitors how you are interacting with you graphical applications (for example, typing in the days of the week in Excel), and offer assistance when it notices a repetitive task (would you like me to finish typing in the days of the week for you). We have some prior experience developing such software software, with a project called Familiar—see this article and the thesis the work was drawn from—but the technique it was built on (Apple Scripting) was not widely use, and so the approach never reached its full potential Time has moved on, and the use of graphical desktop environment has matured. While there there is still universal monitoring capability built into our interactive desktop environments that is application agnostic, at Waikato we have recently developed an extension to the open source X-Windows system (that Gnome, KDE, Unity and many other popular desktops are built on) that comes very close. The aim of this Smoke and Mirrors project, then, is to look at developing a contemporary version of this.
Variations: Apply the same idea of capturing all events, but limit the scope to operation within a Web browser (we mostly live there all the time these days anyway!); or alternatively apply the scoping idea but to Expeditee (a project on a trajectory for becoming a replacement desktop environment!). | |
Torrent TV |
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Over in the UK the British library has started the continual recording of 22 TV stations for archiving purposes, with a focus is on current affairs. Their solution uses some pretty high-tech, high-spec computer equipment. The idea behind Torrent TV is to look to achieve the same thing, but adopting a crowd-sourced approach to capturing the TV content.
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Number 8 Wire and Home Security |
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Project idea: inexpensive home security, kiwi style. For example: enable web cameras to be hooked up and used as motion sensors; have the ability to log in remotely and switch lights on ...
Variation: Shift focus from Home Security to Smart Home. Prof Mark Apperley has a research interest in this area, and has offered to by some IP IEC Power Controllers to help out with the project. | |
My Book App: Don't be a rip-off |
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Project Idea: Develop a mobile app that lets you take pictures of pages in books, magazines, etc. (just a few pages, such as that mouth-watering recipe you've read seen in a magazine you're reading at a cafe!), crops the photo to just the page, looks to separate out the text and images from the background, and apply OCR to the text. The processed photos are then bundled up and turned into a "mini" book that is then stored with your other books on your smartphone/tablet etc. Fits in with existing book software on phone (e.g., Kindle), or else provides its own book management system (e.g., Greenstone).
Variations: Have the content synced so you can access it from your other devices. | |
HathiTrust ESP |
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Project Idea: Motivated by the idea of image guessing game ESP, make a compelling game for people to play based on the content stored in the HathiTrust (aka the academic research community's version of Google books). As a side effect of the game, the HathiTrust is enriching its metadata about the items it contains. As a starting point: consider a game where images fly towards you. You have to swipe images to the left that contain maps, and images that contain sheet music to the right, anything else, you let it go by. The game is played simultaneously by someone else. You both have to make the same decision to gain points -- but done in a way so people can't "spoof" the game. Game play ideas: Images get harder over time? The speed of the images flying towards you speeds up? Gestures are more interesting then swipe ... get more physical?
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Dynamic Junior Scrabble |
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There is a junior version of Scrabble that is fun to play (even as an adult!), and is based around the idea of a board that is already fixed with the words on it, and the game is player's taking turns to add two tiles to the board from their hand each time (which they then replenish from the pool at the end of their turn). If, through the act of placing a tile, a player completes one of the words, they get a token. If the tile complete two interlocking words, they get two tiles. At the end of the game, the player with the most tokens wins. Project idea: Create a tablet-based version of this where the board that is created is different every time. In creating a fresh board the set of times the game needs to play with changes (note: the set of tile's isn't just the aggregation of all the letters on the board, there are around 4-5 more tiles than spaces on the board, and some of the element of skill comes from what those letters are). Another aspect that the project could develop is that the age of the players could be taken into account at the start, and the words chosen become more difficult the older the kids are.
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Kids Arithmetic: What's the point? |
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Project idea: design a tablet app that let's kids practice their arithmetic skills through working out the answers to set questions, such as: 29.21 x 1.03. Input is by finger of stylus, with emphasis in the design of the software in allowing the student to enter things in the order they want in the position they want, in working out the answer. Using the same core implementation, in another set of exercises, the student it solving algebra equations. Variations: English (e.g., what letters can you combine with a word "core": from ife you can get to life and knife and so on—maybe from there, go on have the app let them compose poems?); Geography, History, ... | |