Michael Rohs (right) and Sven Kratz (middle) from Deutsche Telekom Labs came over from Berlin for a three day visit this week to discuss projects, ideas and where to go next from what Michael and I have been working on over last one and a half years. Together with John Dawson (left), who's just started his PhD with me (literally - he started on Monday), we had some intense and quite productive brainstorming sessions to map out interesting areas of research. It'll take some time to sort through the all, but we managed to come up a good plan for the coming months and deadlines.

While they were here, Michael and Sven also got the usual round of demos including the ambient kitchen, all the different tabletop systems we've got assembled in Culture Lab, a very tiny glimpse a Jayne's digital jewellery (she wasn't there) as well as the CAVE (immersive video and a bit of VR). On the photo, John, Sven and Michael are just about to embark on some life-size Quake-type experience - properly outfitted with the stylish shutter glasses required for the 'true' 3D experience...

Rising sun...

I just came across a post on a research project by Adobe, which makes manipulating video very easy and straightforward. I remember having read about a similar research project before, it might have been Zunavision but I'm not sure. This is, of course, exactly what is needed for Immersive Video [1] to make it the perfect playground for evaluating dynamic public displays. It also brings us closer to the scenario, where video cannot be trusted anymore. There is a great movie with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, Rising Sun, where a whole lab works full time over a weekend to manipulate video evidence in a murder case.

[1] Singh et al.: Immersive video as a rapid prototyping and evaluation tool for mobile and ambient applications, Mobile HCI 2006, DOI, PDF.