Art+Com: floating.numbers

Dennis Paul from Art+Com wants to spread the word about the Gestalt environment that Art+Com uses to develop most of their applications. Gestalt is “an open structured environment, designed to prototype and develop OpenGL- and Java-based sketches and applications.” It’s available for free download from SourceFourge.

Gestalt was developed by Dennis and his co-worker Patrick Kochlick. It is not an official Art+Com product but is used for most of their in-house development, such as their floating.numbers table that Dennis presented at the conference. I haven’t had a chance to look at it myself, but it should be of interest to any Java coders who want the power of OpenGL.

Koders.com is amazing. It indexes Open Source code into a massive search engine, making it dead easy to find that essential piece of code you need right away. Need to read Targa images? Need to find a FTP client library or sample code accessing Google? Just specify your programming language and search away. Have some source code you want people to use? Add it to their index.

ipodLinux.org: Doom

Somehow the game Doom (1.0, the old one) from ID Software has become the reference standard for Linux implementations, especially on devices that were never meant to run Linux. It seems that the practice is at least partly due to the oft-repeated yet unattributed quote: “If it runs DOOM, it’s a computer.”

Case in point: The iPod, object of desire and technological wonder. Just in case you weren’t happy just playing MP3s and Solitaire on your favorite lifestyle gadget, you’ll be thrilled to know that you can now install Doom on it, too. The guys over at iPodLinux have ported a version of the Linux kernel to the iPod platform. Lo and behold: It runs Doom.

So I guess that settles it. The iPod is de facto a computer. And if you’re curious just what features iPodLinux supports, check out their project status page.

Freesound is a project underways to create a database of audio samples released under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus license. In other words, they want you to be able to download and use these samples for almost any purpose you see fit, as long as you include information about the original author.

Sounds are organized by the now ever-so-popular tags system, and can also be rated by users. And since one of the most obvious uses of a sample is to make a remix, there is also a remix tree that allows you to view the different generations of remixed samples. There is even an API called Mootcher, available in C++ and Pure Data flavors.

Freesound is an initiative from the Music Technology Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Support them by giving them your samples.

While on the subject of Flash, it should be pointed out that there are now significant efforts in the Flash community to turn Flash into an Open Source platform. Noone knows how happy Macromedia really is about it, but it’s great news for developers. They can now bypass the Flash interface altogether, and code their ActionScripts in the Eclipse IDE and compile it in MTASC.

Not only does this development allow coders to create Flash apps without ever buying a Macromedia product. It also makes a lot of sense when you consider that it is often more practical to develop Flash applications in a proper programming IDE these days. Gone are the days when a typical Flash movie made extensive use of the timeline. Instead, Flash sites use event-driven programming with dynamically loaded resources. Flash is becoming more like a professional programming environment and less like a visual effects generator. And now we have the Open Source tools to make it even better.

OSFlash is an excellent resource for all your Open Source Flash needs.

From news.bbc.co.uk: The European Parliament has voted down a bill that could have led to US-style patents being granted for algorithms and software. This is good news for Open Source and Free Culture supporters. Individual EU countries might still grant and uphold patents, but at least we don’t have European-wide legislation enforcing them, which would make patents even more attractive to big corporations.

Piksel 05 is a workshop / festival / exhibition for people working with Open Source solutions for realtime media, mostly realtime video processing. Organized by Bergen Center for Electronic Arts (BEK), this is the third incarnation of the project. One of the most significant results (apart from networking a community of developers) has been the Piksel video framework, including the Livido and Frei0r plugin APIs. See piksel.org for details. BEK also has created their own Open Source realtime video processing software called MøB, running on Linux.

There is an open call for participation for Piksel 05, the deadline is 15 August. Only projects running on Open Source software need apply. Gisle Frøysland is one of the founders of the Piksel project, and will be speaking about this and other activities at the Generator.x conference.