Technical Information

In order to complete this mobile guide, we had to overcome many obstacles. How to the guide would function was clear from day 1, but how to get there?

We started out with some photos at each stop of the tour. These were then used as backgrounds in the flash animations, but we will come back to that later. We then put together a script with the different narrators and recorded them ourselves with a microphone and a laptop. These voice tracks were then modified in order for the voices to fit better into the context, and not to sound too much like ourselves.

Ok, now we had photos and sound. In order to make the animations for the tour, we had somehow to combine all of these parts into one. We also manipulated photos of real people from the 18th century and turned them into ghosts - our real guides. All of this modifying and manipulating were done in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Further we imported the backgrounds and ghosts into Macromedia Flash 8, where the animations were created. Since the mobile phones could not handle advanced action scripting, such as looping we had to make the animations quite long and extremely linear. Every animation were created according to the timeline set by the voice recordings, and when the animations were done we imported the voice tracks. The movies were then converted to .3gp, which is the supported video format in the mobile phones.

Then, in order to integrate these videos into the walk we put them online and could then access them using semacodes. Semacodes are monochrom shapes that are constructed based on a given URL. There are several software applications for mobile phones, such as Upcode and Semacode, that "read" these files and then accesses the URL through the phone. This way all the "user" have to do is to scan the semacode with the mobile software (e.g. Upcode) open, through the mobile camera and then the phone itself downloads whatever information the URL provides. In this particular case, the URL leads the user directly to the movie files, which are then opened in Real Player on the mobile.

It is also possible to improve the download time by saving the files on the phone and access them locally through semacodes. This is done in the same way as above, with the only exception that the files are on the phone instead of on a internet server. This, however, is not very beneficial when it comes to larger files, since the phone memory is restricted.

Enjoy!

Donedonedone!

We've done it people! Today was the day of the official presentations and demonstrations and our group did really well, as usual. I'm proud of you all, proud of our work, and I'm so glad that we work so well together. As we all know, finding a functioning group where everyone does what they should is difficult, which is why it's all the more brilliant to work with you guys. Thank you for a wonderfully executed project work and I look forward to continuing working with you next year!

And Cicci, you bake the best muffins and chocolate cakes EVER.

Have a great summer everybody! Or as our lovely ghost Törnström would say.. See you on the other side! ... of the summer!

- Eve.

Blueberry cupcakes and working Semacodes

Hey you all.

We did it. We have completed a very nice guided tour through a mobile phone.

I would as "social coordinator" just want to thank you all for being such a great group to work with.

Start thinking about new cookies that I can bake for next group work.

See you tomorrow. Last day before summer. Jippiiieee!!!!!!!!!!!!

New server

Hey,

Daniel said that we could upload the files to the musis server tomorrow if nothing else works!

See you!

Finished movies

Hey guys,

all movies are to be found here:

The only thing left is now to make the semacodes work!

See you tomorrow!

When?

I know we're supposed to meet at Cecilia's place tomorrow, but did we set a specific time?

- Eva.

library books

A reminder that the books we borrowed needs to be returned on Tuesdays. I will bring mine on Monday when we are going to go through our tour.

And the book is finished.....