Scott Janousek » Flash Mobile

Generative Art – A Practical Guide to Processing (Book Review Preso)

scottjanousek — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:41:55 +0000

I’m scheduled to give a book review on Matt Pearson’s Generative Art book at the next Boston Artist + Coders event. Here’s the preso:

Genart bookreview

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1st ever “Robot Film Festival” next week in NYC

scottjanousek — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 17:57:00 +0000

Next week, is reportedly the 1st ever “robot film festival” in NYC put on by Heather Knight and creator of keepon – beatbots, marek michalowski.

Here are some quotes from the cnet article from @heatherknight:

“Our goal with the film festival and the expanding community that we’re building around it is to explore modern relationships between mankind, technology and nature,” Knight said in a release.

“The films include stories about real and fictional robots, depicting interactions between robots, nature and society. They’re created with consideration of overall entertainment value, inspiration of future technologies, creativity and robot design.”

Here’s an example of what you might expect to see:

CodeLesson – “The Online Technology Learning for Professionals”

scottjanousek — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 16:30:12 +0000

Looks like there’s a new online training game in town and it’s called “codelesson”.

I haven’t done any (yet), but occasionally, if I don’t have time to invest into reading about a topic (i.e. WordPress plugins), I’ll do an online training video to fill the gap.

There appears to be a free etsy course right now, which might be neat to sign up to see what codelesson has to offer (and of course the ETSY API).

NYC Summer Workshops excursion (Creative JavaScript & HTML5 and Processing with Data Visualization)

scottjanousek — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:29:33 +0000

Last year, right around this time, I was giving my own workshop on Flash Mobile at Flash and the City.

This year, because of numerous factors (which I won’t talk about here), I decided to forgo FATC and travel to New York to participate in some workshops offered by some other folks I know and respect within the interactive community.

This past week(end) I had the chance to travel to NYC to partake in two really great workshops: Seb Lee Delisle’s (aka “seb_ly” on twitter) Creative JavaScript and HTML5 training and Jer Thorps‘s Processing and Data Visualization.

Here are some thoughts poured out about the excursion, in no particular format. I’m going to save up my “story telling” mode for after eyeofestival in a couple of weeks.

Travel
Jet Blue worked out pretty well. No snags except for a return trip delay.

I’ve taken the Train to NYC before. I haven’t worked out all the math, but it might be slightly cheaper to take the train, if you’re willing to do the 4hr RT commute versus the 1 hour plane ride from Boston.

Lodging
I stayed at the Ace Hotel, something recommended by a friend. Not bad. It wasn’t exactly downtown but it was close enough for both venues. The single rooms are more than adequate for a couple nights stay. I’ve had smaller rooms.

Since I only stayed a couple nights I didn’t really have a chance to explore more of the area around the hotel, nor the amenities. Definitely on my list for next time.

Workshops

Creative JavaScript and HTML5 training (Thursday & Friday) – The workshop was great. Most of the emphasis was on getting up to speed with Canvas.

Seb ran through Canvas drawing, particle generation, 3-D, game development with HTML5, and more.

“HTML5″ is not something you can do entirely in a day or two, but Seb did a great job at conveying the important pieces. The instant results were also gratifying.

I have a lot of thoughts about Flash and HTML5, but I’m not going to post them here. Rather, I’ll leave it to a new post.

Here are some the quick experiments I did during class.

For other people’s examples and some the class material, monitor the #creativejs twitter feed.

Our class was between 10 and 15 people, a good size for moving along with exercises and being able to cover a lot of material in a quick timeframe. Lisa also did a great job assisting Seb for logistical things, BTW.

Although we didn’t cover every part of the HTML5 spec, we did concentrate heavily on Canvas, where all the “magic” happens, and you can take your JS into many different creative directions.

I picked up A LOT of tips from Seb during this workshop, particularly with advise on tooling, frameworks, and other things related to HTML5. I’ll post about the stuff I find useful on my blog here.

On Day 1, I got a chance to sit next to Dan Shiffman. He was working on a cool piece of particle art: “RT @shiffman: cool piece of particle artfibonacci supernova particle spiral made in @seb_ly #creativejs workshop.”

For more info about Seb’s workshops, check out this page.

Processing and Data Visualization (Saturday) – I made it down to Jer’s studio in Brooklyn for his Processing workshop. We had a smaller, more intimate group for this workshop.

Since everyone was familiar with Processing, we were able to jump right into the mix with Data Visualization and how to leverage Processing.

There were a lot of good takeaways in terms of how Data & Processing can work well together, and Jer gave some pointers on how to go about looking at data, as well, as ideas on how to get interesting results from it.

First we started out doing basic scatter plotting and then moved into bar, and then grid representations of periodic data.

From there, we moved into working with the “We feel fine” API, and visualizing data from a data feed. I really liked the step by step nature of building up the visualizing tool.

Lastly, we had a chance to experiment with the NYTimes API. We built a basic tool for looking at historical data based on search terms.

Here are some of the experiments we went through. The nature of the workshop made absorbing the material fun.

There were also some hints at what might be “Processing 2.0″. I’m not going to say anything here though. I’m sure Ben Fry will announce what he can, on or after June 26th (i.e. eyeofestival).

For more info about Jer’s workshops, check out his workshop page.

“49″ Slidedecks about Mobile (via Lanyrd.com)

scottjanousek — Sat, 28 May 2011 00:10:24 +0000

I’m a big fan of slidedeck and have been using it for years to “host” my presentations over the years. It’s an excellent service, I recommend checking out.

As a user, however, the challenge there is that it’s more difficult to find material I’m always interested to hear about or learn more about. Search brings up a lot more material than I care to sift through, and of varying levels of quality, completeness, or correctness.

Lately, I’ve been using lanyrd to keep abreast of upcoming conferences and connect with industry professionals like myself.

As an off-shoot, I noticed that there’s a handy tie in to video, audio, blog postings, photos, and even presentations now. Very cool.

If you’re interested to read the latest and greatest conference material relating to mobile, be sure to check out lanyrd.

P.S. By the time you read this, “49″ might mean more (probably not less).

Google announced Google Wallet and their (mobile) payment initatives

scottjanousek — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:14:24 +0000

Mobile Payment is not nearly a new idea (Japan started doing it perhaps a decade ago, and it is now part of everyday keitai).

However, the adoption and more wide distribution of mobile payment has been lagging in other Western countries, including the US.

Basically our mobile sucked up until about 4 years ago. Now it’s not so bad. NFC is starting to appear in devices (like the Nexus S), and things like Square, and other payment devices (both physical and virtual) are coming to fruition.

It’s also fairly obvious that Apple is probably on the verge of inserting the NFC chips into their next round of devices as I write this as well … further driving adoption of mobile payment in the US and other places.

But, Google & partners are also making a big push with their endeavors. With the heavy adoption of Android (especially in the US), we’ll see more mobile payment into 2012 and beyond.

I think it’s going to be slow adoption in niche areas first, but I think it’s finally time we (read the “USA”) started moving beyond the physical wallets and purses, with virtual options. Don’t you agree?

Read the Google Event coverage on Engadget.

FITC 2011 (Toronto) Opening Titles

scottjanousek — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:59:21 +0000

FITC Toronto 2011 Titles from FITC on Vimeo.

The production quality on these things is awesome. They (MK12) should do a decomposition on how they went about the creation process (in fact, maybe they did at FITC, but I missed it?).

Global Android Activations, Oct 2008 – Jan 2011

scottjanousek — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:55:34 +0000

The best parts are the product launch spikes. Someone’s doing their marketing jobs correctly.

FOTB 2011 now has dates (Sept 11-14th 2011)

scottjanousek — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:03:08 +0000

FOTB 2011 – Sept 11-14th 2011, Brighton, UK

BTW: I’m not calling it Flash on the Beach anymore. To me it’s: “FOTB” 2011, now.

From writings of Ben Franklin …

scottjanousek — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 23:50:01 +0000

From writings of Ben Franklin …