How my day was...

[mdlbear]

My day at work was almost entirely taken up with the Patent Review Committee: a dry run in the morning for my presentation, and the meeting itself all afternoon. My walk got squeezed down to under half an hour.

But the presentation went well; I'll find out tomorrow whether it passed. In any case, the next step is to get back to turning it from a bailing-wire-and-duct-tape demo into a real system. I'm actually rather pleased with it -- it's a system of physical devices, not just software.

Somehow I managed to twist my right ankle, just standing up out of my chair. Aspirin and a brace seem to have taken care of the worst of it, but I'm grumpy. That was the good ankle.

Not my project, but it's cool as heck and launched today: iCandy.ricohinnovations.com. No Linux client yet, unfortunately; I'll see what I can do. [11-10: Note: iCandy is cool technology, but it's still beta at this point and the site might not be the best introduction to it. The somewhat-misnamed About Us page might be a better place to start. Note that you need a webcam and iTunes in order to use it; we're all hoping that the need for iTunes will go away, because it's just as useful for sharing links to photos and websites as it is for sharing links to music.]

Comments

[mdlbear]

As far as I know, iTunes is not required.

[brmj.livejournal.com]

The website lists it as a requirement:

PC Requirements

* Built-in webcam
* Windows XP/Vista
* iTunes

http://icandy.ricohinnovations.com/rocket2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=35&Itemid=67

Or were you just saying that it wasn't actually needed, even though it was on the requirements list?

[mdlbear]

Had the impression that it would work without iTunes (though you might not get the full experience), but could easily have been wrong. Will ask.

[(Anonymous)]

iTunes is required for the downloadable application; it's not required if you just want to scan a QR code under the Try It menu option or if you want to create an iCandy card under the Create/Create Card menu option.

[mdlbear]

I'm told by the main developer that iTunes is required. Bah.

Requirements

[(Anonymous)]

The downloadable app (for Mac/Windows) does require iTunes. The web version doesn't.

The advantage of the downloadablee app is that the qrcode reader is *really* fast. The flash qrcode reader on the web does an adequate job but isn't nearly as fast or as satisfying to use. We developed the web version for people who wanted to try it out withoug having to download an app or use iTunes.

iCandy is an outgrowth of multimedia research and tangible user interfaces. We use iTunes because it is a repository of multimedia and writing an application for iTunes was much more focused and straightforward.

Someday we might write a version of iCandy that doesn't require iTunes.