This semester I had to develop an Android application for our CS450 class and without any experience, I felt a bit lost. Fortunately, I found great ways of learning Android. First of all, I followed training articles provided by Google. They got me started with confidence. After a while, I started searching through Google for desired results like SlidingDrawers or onTextChanged events. The Stackoverflow.com is the best place to reach professional feedback and even for learning stuff.
I recently found an amazing personalized interactive infographics which is supported and fed by Foursquare check-ins! It is published for the celebration of 4sqday (16/04/2013) as a great surprise for every member of the application. It demonstrates every single check-in that you have made in last year. If you are using the app too often–like me, I am sure you’ll find it very useful. Here is a snapshot of my check-ins in Connections tab.
If you are a Foursquare user and want it to try for yourselves, you can reach the service from here.
Google has a good database that includes several data for public use. You can search for the closest data set you want and get that immediately. This could be really useful for people who want to practice in data visualization in terms of both info-graphics and interactive computer&art projects.
In order to find an interesting project idea that could attract both of ours attention, we sat together with Begum and discussed some ideas. But soon enough, I realized that we did not actually tried to find the idea, but we were trying to find the medium in which we should work on. After finding out this, we dig deeper into our interests with more small-talks, and finally came up with some ideas. They are still in the progress; as soon as we find a finalized idea, we will publish it in our group blog.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgndaw2AGhI&w=640&h=360%5DI also utilized above video from SIGGRAPH in order to get inspiration. Even though they are more complicated than we could handle this semester, they were able to give me some ideas.
Before you start to read this, I want you to take a look at New York Times Project: Snow Fall. It speaks for itself…
They achieved a great leap in how we expect a story to be told. The visuals, page design, the interaction is quite satisfying. In the near future, people will demand such story telling from the internet as opposed to ugly and crowded websites.
Also you can find some examples of Computer Graphics that are used by journals. You can open the webpages by clicking on the images.
I found this great video from TED that explains how art, technology and design influences everyday perception of people. John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, starts his talk with his own experiences and goes on to stress the importance of creative thinking about the leadership. Leadership is a little bit refracted from our topic; however at the end of the day, he stresses not only the importance of leadership in computer and art concept, but also addresses to those who think that technology and art subjects are irrelevant.
Mert Toka 