something in the way

Alchemy is going to shake things up a bit.  As witnessed before from Quake running in flash and now ODE compiled to run in flash using Alchemy (LLVM based). It is an early test but shows what could be possible.

Mihai Pricope has a post with sources on how he got the ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) a great open source physics engine for 3D, running on the AVM2 Flash Player virtual machine.

I’ve took Alchemy for a test and decided to compile ODE (Open Dynamic Engine). Just to add yet another physics engine to the Flash World. It was a hell of a ride but I finally got to produce some bouncing balls :). For a still unknown reason some as 3d libraries have been very slow to render 6 translucent walls and 2 balls. Papervision3D seems to move quite decent.

You can download the ode sources from here. To recompile them do (you need to have the Alchemy environment turned on):

Flash 10 will become mainstream shortly and with that the possibilities of using Alchemy in your projects is becoming a reality for production.  But what specifically can you do with Alchemy, a project that helps to compile C/C++ code into AVM2 capable files?

Alchemy described from Adobe:

With Alchemy, Web application developers can now reuse hundreds of millions of lines of existing open source C and C++ client or server-side code on the Flash Platform.  Alchemy brings the power of high performance C and C++ libraries to Web applications with minimal degradation on AVM2.  The C/C++ code is compiled to ActionScript 3.0 as a SWF or SWC that runs on Adobe Flash Player 10 or Adobe AIR 1.5.

Alchemy is based on the LLVM Low Level Virtual Machine that allows new levels of code translation.  Maybe this can lead to more effective and performing code to run on the iPhone with flash player 10. Or some type of system that allows flash developers to code in AS3 or take projects and get them ready to run on the iPhone much like some of the Java to Cocoa compilation systems and Unity3D using mono to compile down to iPhone capable code.

A ESAD – Escola Superior de Artes e Design (Matosinhos), em parceria com a Galeria Mundo Fantasma (Porto), vai receber James Sturm no workshop Exploring Comics e na conferência Life in Comics. O workshop vai ter lugar nos próximos dias 9,10 e 11 de Março, coincidindo este último dia com a conferência que decorre no auditório [...]

Evan Willians, criador do Twitter, explica o espetacular crescimento e os diferentes usos da ferramenta no TED.

Child labour is a grave problem that threatens the future of our nation. Today underage labour deprives thousands of children in India of an education and these children are forced to work in hazardous and unhygienic work environments. To free them from the clutches of child labour is a challenge that they as citizens must take up. Each individual’s contribution cn help after current situation; this was the essential message to be communicated in the ambient space. A life-sized statue of a child, dressed in rags carrying a box above his head was sculpted and placed against a wall backdrop. The box filled with some weights was tied to a rope running over a set of pulleys and attached to a donation box at the other end. The words, “Your contribution can end child labour” was painted over it. This installation was placed in several malls with high volume footballs across the city. The response received was overwhelming. As people contributed to the cause by donating over half a million rupees (and counting…), its gradually increasing weight resulted in the box on the child’s head to rise. People were held speechless, moved by the interactive imagery of this piece and driven to be a part of the change.

“Your contribution can end child labour.”

Advertising Agency: JWT, Mumbai, India
Creative Directors: Tista Sen, Shammsunder Gooud
Art Director / Copywriter: Shammsunder Gooud
Photographer: Avadhut Hembade

The other day a question was brought up around the desired sample size of an upcoming usability study. This is a very common question, and the answer is a little different than you might expect. Usability testing does not try to determine attitudes or motivations or even preferences. It instead focuses more on understanding aka “sense making” qualities as they relate to success rates and discoverability. It turns out that people’s ability to make sense of things is surprisingly similar – similar enough to justify the use of what might be considered to be very small sample sizes.
Most usability researchers I know test with 8-12 users.
There's a nice graph in Nielsen's article about sample size that shows the diminishing returns as sample sizes increase. Read more: "Why You Only Need to Test With 5 Users".

Here's an even better article: "Beyond the 5 User Assumption," which shows that random samples of 10 users from a larger sample of 60 will reveal at least 80% of the problems.

Further support comes from this exploratory interviewing study done by MIT that also found talking to 20 customers identified over 90% of the needs and that the new needs found greatly diminished after this.

We can extrapolate from these studies to assume that 10 is a good number of people to recruit. Throw in an industry average 20% no-show rate, and you should raise the number to 12 to ensure that on average you can actually test 10 people.
No doubt this is only a rough guideline, because you may need a larger sample if the research questions warrant this. A good example would be when the target audience differs among attributes that would impact their work flows and needs, such as mobile workers versus office-based, people who work alone versus collaborating often, etc.

If you thought Apple was good at marketting their products by taking others down, RIM “GUAVA Ad agency” has just offered them some competition. In a stunning, funny, and extremely clever ad, BlackBerry takes a shot at Apple. Literally.

A must watch for anyone and everyone. Go ahead, hit play!

As noted on MacDailyNews, “Actually, the video is what is known as a “spec” spot that’s meant to drum up business for the agency or production house that created it, in this case, “GUAVA,” out of New York City. Often, agencies make Apple-related specs spots for existing and invented products as it gets them the most coverage (it worked this time, too). “

[via Rimarkable]

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Good design is as little design as possible

Got a webcam? Want to try a cute augmented reality demo/toy on your PC (Or Mac)? Then visit the Toyota IQ Reality site.

Although the wow factor of this demo will wear off after a few minutes, it’s worth bearing mind the potential applications of this technology. On Wikipedia there is a of current & future Augmented Reality applications, and some of them sound ground-breakingly cool. Imagine a Doctor being able to overlay real X-Ray data over a patient, so they see their broken bones. Imagine working on your car engine and wearing goggles that show you the names of all the parts and where they belong. Imagine the immediate potential for location aware services like satnav, tourist guides and friend finding. Sounds far fetched? It’s not. Some of these apps already exist!

Many thanks to John Gibbard who posted this link on the IxDA mailing list a couple of days ago.