WE ARE CURRENTLY MAKING CHANGES TO THE M3DCAM WEBSITE, IN THE MEANTIME KEEP UPLOADING YOUR 3D PHOTOS AND WE WILL BRING BACK THE PHOTO INTERFACE

Mystic Paul sporting a natty pair of Lava Girl glasses

m3Dcam is an application that allows you to use your mobile phone camera to create 3-D anaglyph images.The 3D images can then be either viewed on phone screen (using suitable pair of 3D glasses) or saved to a community website .

Mobile SprayCan (www.mobspray.com)

Since the first appearance of modern man one trait of human behaviour in our interaction with the physical environment appears to be an inherent desire to leave our mark on a particular object or space. ‘SprayCan’ graffiti that appeared in the 1970s is but a modern extension of this phenomenon, yet it divides communities and generations in terms of how it should be dealt with in terms of either complete acceptance or punitive action. In this project we have developed a system that tries to bridge the divide as it both provides writers with a means of tagging their environment, using mobile phones and RFID tags, whilst minimising the physical effects to the landscape for the communities where it resides. Mobile SprayCan Project

Mobile Spray can site marker

TxT Books (www.thetxtbk.com)

Screenshot from www.thetxtbk.com homepage.

TxT Book is an open, collaborative storybook based upon the technique of ‘Exquisite Corpse’ which was developed by surrealists in the 1920’s for creating accidental poetry. Users may only submit a maximum of 160 characters (standard SMS length) to the book at a time and they may only view the previous person’s entry when considering their own. In order to ensure some kind of (shallow) cohesiveness, when a user is submitting their entry, the database is locked-down to ensure that the entries follow on from each other (in a chain). Once a user has entered his/her story (or their allotted timeslot has expired), the database is unlocked to allow others to participate.

Users can submit entries to TxT Book via two different methods – from their PC or from their mobile phone. By allowing different methods of input, TxT Book seeks to compare the popularity of the two.

TxT Book will attempt to examine the spread of information in way which is not intrusive (this is not viral marketing!), free and, hopefully, quite fun. We will initially seed TxT Book by sending out an SMS to friends containing a link to the WAP submission page. Once a user submits an entry to TxT Book, they are then asked if they would like to forward the original SMS to a friend who might be interested in contributing.

On visiting the TxT Book’s homepage, users are automatically served content based upon the capability of their browser (WAP enabled browsers receive dynamically generated WML files, whilst PC users are delivered XHTML content). Users may also subscribe to an RSS feed of the story which contains the latest submissions.

TxT Book Website

A modified version of the thetxbk was created for the Spoken Word tent at Roskilde Rock Festival July 2007.

Roskilde TxT Book 2007

LocoMash (www.locomash.com)

Locomash is a mobile mass observation system to allow groups of individuals equipped with mobile camera phones and GPS to create real time spatial and temporal photographic mash-ups around particular events or places.

LocoMash of the Wray Festival

• Data (often user derived) over software;
• Collective intelligence (for example group filtering);
• Open standards “Above the Single Device”;
• Niche markets or the Long Tail;
• Use of context;
• Emergence resulting in constant evolution (perpetual Beta).

Whilst some of these concepts might be alien to traditional console games developers, the very nature of the mobile games environment and the broad demographic of game players would appear to offer enormous potential for this industry. However, if Mobile Games 2.0 is to become more than a mere buzz phrase, we will need to overcome the current fragmentation within the market and provide a platform that facilitates the majority of these features. To achieve the principles of Web 2.0 in Mobile Game 2.0 it is worth seeking inspiration for the by evaluating the solutions that have evolved in that environment, ascertaining their relevance to mobile. In this regard Widgets are seen as a primary enabler of Web 2.0 as they utilise open standards, are easy to distribute, and have a mechanism for continued evolution. As Nokia has recently introduced two flavours of Widgets for mobile, in this project we have explored:

• How Widgets address the concepts previously defined for Mobile Web 2.0;
• Potential mechanisms for social interaction;
• Distribution mechanisms and possible revenue generation.

Boom!

Widget investigating user generated content in games.

• BOOM!

4 in a row

First multiplayer widget game using WidSets channel API.

• 4 in row

3D Bombus

First 3D widget game using WidSets

Mobslinger (mobiles! we dont need no stinkin mobiles!)

Mobslinger is a game that enables spontaneous stimulated social interaction between mobile phone users by utilising proximity information from Bluetooth. This innovative game takes the form of a wild west, quick draw, ‘shoot-em-up’. Mobslinger runs as a background application on Symbian Series 60 smartphone which periodically scans for other users in the vicinity who are also running the mobslinger application. Once detected, a countdown timer is initiated on both phones which alerts the user by sounding an alarm and vibrating the phone. The user then has to ‘draw’ their mobile and enter the randomly generated number which has appeared on the screen as quickly as possible. The person with the fastest time is the winner and the loser is ‘killed’, which means their application is locked out from game-play for a set period of time. The game is playable in a number of different modes that allow different numbers of players and game play. The modes are Quick Draw, Bloodbath, Last Man Standing, and Outlaws.