The immersive web
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008We’ve been having a look at some new developments in web-based technologies to improve and evolve the user experience of the browser.
One great example is PicLens by Cooliris. This transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for online photos and videos. It’s a small download, but once installed improves the user interface significantly and offers all sorts of possibilities when displaying content. We’re trialling it with Visual Arts folders for example. Highly recommended.
Another is Tag Galaxy. This is basically a cool way to display shared photos from Flickr. Just type in a keyword and wait for the results to display in a planet-like orb. Related tags are then displayed in a solar system arrangement. Great fun.
Just launched, as a proof of concept, is Aurora from Adaptive Path. The best way to describe this is that people, places and things are represented by objects in a three dimensional space. Closely related objects are clustered together and users can rotate through these as required. Try this video for more details (sorry about the link only - the embed code didn’t work in Wordpress)
Clearly, as more learning takes place via the web, anything that can be done to improve the experience and facilitate access to information will ensure that learners are, in turn, more inspired and engaged.
