Entries Tagged 'idia619' ↓

I had fun playing with tellme.com and Goog411. I admit that I generally use Goog411 these days since the recognition is so good. But I really appreciate the more efficient nested menu output of tellme.com.

Goog-411 Transcript (click to listen)

Prompt: What city and state
User: Clarksburg, Maryland
Prompt: What business name or category?
User: coffee
Prompt: Searching
Prompt:
Top eight results
Number 1 Myorga Coffee on Stringtown Road
To select number one, you cna press one or say number one
Number 2 Starbucks on Frederick Road, Germantown
Number 3 Starbucks on Frederick Road, Germantown
Number 4 Starbucks Coffee on Germantown Road, Germantown
To start a new search, say start over anytime
Number 5 Starbucks on Frederick Road, Germantown
Number 6 Dunkin Donuts on Wisteria Drive, Germantown
Number 7 Mayorga Coffee on Wisteria Drive, Germantown
Number 8, Aqui Brazilian Coffee on Wisteria Drive, Germantown
Top of the list
User:
Number 1 -
Prompt: Number 8, Aqui Brazilian Coffee on Wisteria Drive, Germantown
Prompt: I’ll connect you or say details or go back
User: Text message (able to do this by reading instructions on website)
Prompt: Hold on, Sending text message
Prompt: Hang on and I’ll connect you, or say go back.

Text Message

Tellme Voice Transcript (click to listen)

Prompt: Main menu
Prompt: business search, ring tones, stock quotes, news center, sports, entertainment, travel, and popular shortcuts
User: business search
Prompt: hmmm. I didn’t get that. Please say one of our categories or say main menu
Prompt: business search
Prompt: I’m sorry, I still didn’t get that. To hear all the categories we have, say main menu
User: business search
Prompt: I’m sorry. I’m having trouble understanding. You can also punch the first three letters of one of our categories on the telephone keypad, for instance — okay, business search then.
User: Prompt: city and state please
User: clarksburg, maryland
Prompt: okay. what business, or type of business are you looking for?
User: coffee
Prompt: To narrow your search, you can say by intersection or you can say I don’t know
Prompt: Alright. When you hear the one you want, just say the number.
Prompt:
1) Mayorga coffee
2) Starbucks, in multiple cities - (There are two. Do you want the __ or the __)
3) Music Cafe, in Damascus
Prompt: You can say repeat, tell me more choices, or new search
Prompt: Sorry I didn’t hear you.
User: Tell me more choices.
Prompt: More choices
Prompt:
4) Dunkin Donuts in multiple cities
5) HUUI Brazilian Coffee, in Germantown
User: 5
Prompt: Okay, HUUI Brazilian Coffee at the 12615 Wisteria Drive Germantown Square
Prompt: The number is 301-540-3395. I’ll text you that info now.
Prompt: You can say share this listing, you can also say repeat the info or start over.


Of course, the user interaction is not yet complete. Users can still go from a link in a text message to map. But I don’t focus on the interaction with the map GUI.

Hooray! This took forever to do. Mostly, since OO programming is new to me… and so is Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3. I used a great Tweener class from the Google code repository. The elements of this assignment were actually very simple. Things like moving an object, altering properties in response to various events, manipulating sound, etc. The challenging things had more to do with designing object-oriented code.

I’m constructing a cadaver dog game! Of course!

Here is my final project game design. The algorithm is very ugly. Just a set of heuristics that won’t scale at all. But you have to start somewhere! I’ll comment more as I go… but there are still two assignments to hand in!

Lab 4 is a game design. But it’s actually just a practice game design based on a game at: Orisinal.com

I chose a game called Midnight Serenade.

In any case, I constructed a MindMap game design and posted it here. This is a simple game and simple game design. But this technique of using a MindMap to design a game is useful no matter how complex the game.

Well, I’m too embarrassed to post the source code. I wasn’t fully successful in implementing Lab 2. I had decided to use Flash 9 as a development environment. At first things were easy. Specifying the new document class in the FLA file (e.g., Lab2), I could create a separate ActionScript file with a class using this document class name (Lab 2). This represents the class of the root object. It is the display object in which other display objects are placed.

This part works just fine. I had some objects in the library which I could refer to and manipulate on the stage. The document class needed to extend either Sprite or MovieClip (if you plan to reference the timeline). More implementation details can be found here.

A key useful thing I learned is that:

Unlike other display object classes you make, the stage property of a Document class will always be accessible since the document class is inherently a child of the stage. Similarly, if you place any objects on the main timeline in Flash, they will already be children of the Document class when its instantiated.

So here’s the problem. I wanted to make twinkling stars. These would be generated and placed on the stage from a TwinklingStars class in another external AS3 file. But the base MovieClip object is actually in the library of the Fla. What I can’t figure out is how to get these to display on the stage. I spent copious amounts of time studying this and am stumped. It’s a both a novice issue and one having to do with little available documentation. More clues are available here, but my stars are still broken… so time for a break on this problem.

So here is Lab2 without source (for the time-being) and without stars.

For Lab3 (a maze), I will probably write the entire project in AS3 but embed objects from a separate FLA file.

On the second week of class, we started in on ActionScript. Our first assignment was rather easy… well, as easy as you make it. Starting with an animated ball, add something to it. I created the monstrosity referenced at the bottom of this post by using ActionScript. Over the next week, I’ll try to re-implement it in Adobe Flex.

The obvious advantage of Flash is the ability to draw and work on a timeline. I haven’t used WPF yet, but Lee Brimelow suggests that one of the great features of it is that it will generate code from the graphics you produce. Presumably, you will be able to do the same thing with Flash 9. If you could do both of these things in Flex, then it would it would be a killer tool. But, as he notes, Flex still produces very large projects as compared to Flash. Right now I’m thrumming my fingers on the table wishing I could be learning Flash 9. As it is, I’ll try implementing this Lab in Flex as an exercise in ActionScript 3 and also to get a feel for the differences between Flash and Flex.

So what about WPF? It’s supposed to be an analogue to Adobe Flex. As Andrew Shebanow notes:

WPF, WPF/E and Expression Blend were all designed first and foremost to address the designer-developer workflow as practiced in the Windows group at Microsoft. And based on what Robert Scoble wrote above, and on what I saw when I worked at Microsoft, this is a workflow that is all about having designers fit in with how developers want things to work. That’s why they put so much focus on things like having Expression Blend use the same project format as Visual Studio, having it work with Visual Studio’s version control mechanism, and so forth. When was the last time you heard a designer put any of those things near the top of their wishlist?

He goes on to say:

By contrast, Adobe feels that designers developing modern, interactive applications (whether using Web 2.0/Ajax or RIA technologies) want to build workflows that are first and foremost about delivering great designs to your clients. Those clients may be developers, but they might also be a corporate marketing department, or an online or offline content publisher, or any one of a zillion different content consumers. Adobe has designed Creative Suite, Apollo, Flex, and so forth to enable all these workflows, in a way that lets designers focus on what they do best.

Well, I’ve got a long ways to go to become a decent visual designer… but here’s what my lab does:

• Updates a dynamic textfield based on the location of a movieclip object
• Changes properties of that movieclip when certain conditions are met
• Chooses a random color from a list every time those conditions are met
• Plays a sound when these conditions are met
• Responds to a keypress

Not very exciting… but there you are. You can see and download the lab here.