Tag Archives: Ideas

Ideas for October 18th

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  • Peer-side scripting – Have any programmers come across this idea yet? Simply put, you automate the user interface and functionality of your P2P software application with scripts.
  • Student-owned schools – Especially useful for colleges and universities. It would make more sense than corporately-owned or state-owned schools, especially technical/community colleges.
  • XUL controls for SVG animation and Ogg playback – I’m hoping that the Mozilla folks have planned on this idea (for Firefox 4, which looks like it will have SMIL and Ogg playback), which should be feasible given the fact that XUL, as both a runtime and a markup language, is mostly dependent upon JavaScript and XML (the latter being what SVG is dependent upon) for interpretation.

That’s it for now.

Free Animation License rough draft

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Admittedly, it sucks at the moment, but I’ve written out a rough draft of the Free Animation License.

Have a looksee; it will certainly change with further additions.

Also, this is meant to cover any imagery that may be used in an animation or slideshow, hence the inclusion of several different image media. However, I especially intend this to be used for SVG animations, since such animations are completely text-based and text-editable (in other words, you should pull up an SVG file like this and open up the “Page Source” window for it in either Firefox or Opera).

In other words, this license is meant to be more like a combination of the GNU Free Documentation license (GFDL, used for text publications, especially Wikipedia) and the Free Art license when applied to text-based graphic animation (2D or 3D), and less like any of the Creative Commons licenses, which have found greater exposure as licenses of choice for those who want free publicity for, I guess you could call it, “binary media”, or media that is processed and manipulated by the machine (most music and graphics files) rather than by text (anything XML based).

Idea: Tabbed surfing in SL

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Of course it would bog down the entire current user experience (like it can be bogged down any further…), but what if future navigation of Second Life and other virtual world networks was in the form of multiple tabs, one for each place in which the user wants to be at once?

This would allow for in-world multitasking, moving/transporting objects from one place/Sim to another, and granting the user a freer range of movement from within the desktop client application.

Another phrase to co-opt: “Edubuntu Studio”

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I think there has only been one mention of “Edubuntu Studio.”

Anyway, I think that there is a market for an “Edubuntu Studio” or some desktop Linux distribution that is geared, in both form and function, toward open multimedia production through educational mediums and institutions.

In other words, a Linux distribution that will target this particular market.

Who knows? Some adults would prefer the look and feel of an Edubuntu Studio distro to other, more “manly” desktop distributions of Linux.

I can picture Edubuntu Studio as having the playful, cute look of Edubuntu and the multitude of multimedia apps like Ubuntu Studio. Hopefully, the multimedia apps will be easy for the younger student users to use in classes (or at home, if homework needs to be done), although I doubt that most Linux-based FOSS multimedia creation software are geared towards that crowd at the present.

Plus, this distro could set an incredibly low barrier of entry for adult users, at least in comparison to the basic desktop Ubuntu distribution and the like. I could see adult users taking to Linux-based FOSS applications which are on par with the likes of iLife (if not Adobe CS3) or other multimedia creation software suites, at least for creating and organizing basic multimedia in 5 minutes.

Augmented reality and lucid dreaming

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I don’t think the two have been discussed together yet. I’m only mentioning them because lucid dreaming is often described by its proponents as being a form of mentally-generated, private virtual reality, while augmented reality is the blending of virtual reality and “real reality.”

So let’s think: what if lucid dreaming could be applied for the generation of augmented reality, or what if future instrumentations could allow for such? More like live, publicly-viewable and interactive lucid dreaming or something like that.

The iphone OS web browsing experience needs improvement

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Sure, I am certain that trying to navigate the web using another device would be unnecessarily tedious in comparison, but the amount of times that I have to “zoom into” a typing form in safari is indicative of the web design threshold faced by the browser. Simply put, navigation of the web with Safari on the iPhone OS is hindered by the lack of web design and legibility geared to easy surfing on any form factor.

So it kinda sucks to type this post, too. 😛

Yahoo Groups: the real reason why MS wants Yahoo so badly?

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Consider for a second how Microsoft has migrated most of its MSN-branded services to the Windows Live brand (MSN Hotmail = Windows Live Hotmail, MSN Spaces = Windows Live Spaces, MSN Messenger = Windows Live Messenger), but has not touched its MSN Groups service since 2006, when the “unprofitable” MSN Chat service was shut down.

In fact, it mostly looks the same as it did back in 2003, when the homepage was changed from a mostly blue color to its current purple facade.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! Groups, which has historically been the largest web-based e-group service, has not made much improvement to its service in recent years. However, it has made paltry, barely-incremental improvements over the years in comparison to the moribund MSN Groups service. Furthermore, Yahoo! Groups has a very poor search function, but it is much better in returns than MSN Groups’ search function.

I think, in that case, that Yahoo! Groups may be one of the prize properties that Microsoft may want to add to its roster of services, primarily for sheer volume of members and ad revenue.

Let me coin the following term:

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“Compositing file manager.”

There, I did it.

A file manager (e.g., Finder, Windows Explorer, Nautilus) combined with a compositing manager, resulting in graphically-nifty visual effects for browsing and viewing files.

Think Nautilus, but with Compiz Fusion-like visual effects for navigating between the Theora movies in your…erm…private stash.

You heard it here first, even though folks have wanted CF-like effects in other applications for years, without understanding that CF can only do windows and everything outside the windows (e.g., screenlets and launcher docks).

This would be especially useful for the multitouch interaction that we’ll probably see with Compiz before the year is out.

I could imagine something like the following, but with multitouch interactivity:

A PC maker should buy a smartphone maker

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Seriously, if Apple’s implementation of the smartphone can spark a flurry of similar implementations by traditional phone makers, then I think that one of the major PC makers (NO, not Dell or HP) should buy one of the smartphone makers.

Why?

Because a PC maker could envision a smartphone as being more of a smaller-sized laptop, and could both design and build it – hardware-wise – to handle alot of what is often left to laptops/notebooks to handle.

This would take the smartphone from being a simple “phone + email and text” to a simple “mobile desktop computer + phone;” clearly, the smartphone makers are focusing on the former, while Apple, a desktop maker, is focusing on the latter.

Why doesn’t the ANC have a Lavender League?

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I think that if the African National Congress claims to represent the post-apartheid era’s diversity (they already have the women’s league and youth league), then they should also accommodate those who have been sidelined even by the ANC until only fairly recently in the party’s history.

In my opinion, the lack of an LGBT-friendly presence of influence within the ANC’s organization speaks a bit about how the organization’s politics have stated a shallow, forced support for South Africa’s gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders. It may also be a translation of the demeaned stature of LGBTs in South African society, as they have never been fully or truly accepted as human beings by the populace both before and after apartheid.