The system is built around two Macintosh servers. One server handles the attendant's touchscreen, and sends commands to the lighting system, the video system, the audio system and the audience response system. The second server handles the audience response touch-screens, distributing commands to the audience terminals and collecting audience responses; it also generates dynamic graphics and audio for the projection screen.

The audience terminals are PDAs running the Windows Pocket PC OS. These execute a Macromedia Flash-based supervisory program which communicates with the audience response server via Ethernet. Under command of the server, the PDAs load Flash fragments from a web server which assemble into the user interface. User input is reported back to the server, which maintains the users' balances. Configuration is done using XML.

Subcontracting for Northern Light Productions of Boston, I wrote all of the PDA and audience response server software, using Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Director, Java and C++. I also consulted extensively on the user interface design for the show.

You can find information on the New England Economic Adventure at <http://www.economicadventure.org>. I also photographed and built a panorama of the theater. You can see it here in three different sizes: (172 kB), (832 kB) and (2.3 MB).

Work in the 21st Century

This project was for the Boott Cotton Mills Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts. It is a 36-station interactive theater. Video from a videodisc player is mixed with graphics from a Macintosh computer and projected on a 60" diagonal projection TV. Each visitor sits in front of a voting pad with five buttons and LEDs. During the program the visitors are asked their opinion of various issues; they use the voting pads to indicate their preferences. The results are dynamically graphed on-screen and compared to previous audience's results.

Subcontracting for Cambridge Studios in Newton, MA, I wrote all of the Macintosh software, including the Director code, the external module used for controlling video playthrough, and the external module used for communicating with the voting pads.

Five kiosks for the John Hancock Observatory

In partnership with Myriad Inc., I created five different touchscreen kiosks for the John Hancock Observatory in Boston, MA. Each featured a 21" touchscreen driven by a Macintosh, built into a custom kiosk. The kiosks were designed to be robust and maintenance-free, with full event and error logging as well as automatic rebooting. They had accumulated a combined 100,000 hours of trouble-free use when the observatory closed in the fall of 2001.

The five kiosks feature four different software packages. Panorama (which appears in two kiosks) features eight high-resolution images taken from the roof of the John Hancock Tower. The images form a 360° panorama of Boston. The screen displays one image at a time, along with icons on each visible landmark.

The visitor can pan all through the panorama, or touch an icon to see the name of a landmark, along with a magnified view. The visitor can also bring up a list of landmark names; touching a name pans the view to the proper direction and then shows the landmark name and magnified view. A built-in authoring tool allows the Observatory staff to add landmarks as necessary.

Discover Boston and Discover Historic Boston are trivia quizzes. Each has a database of forty multiple choice questions matched with appropriate colorful cartoons. When a visitor starts a quiz eight questions are randomly chosen from the database and offered to the visitor. After the eight questions the visitor is given his score.

How Do I Get There? shows a map of Boston, marked with forty landmarks. A visitor can touch a landmark on the map, or choose a landmark from a scrolling list. After choosing a landmark he can ask for directions via foot, public transportation, or car. The directions are shown on the screen, and can then be laserprinted along with a high-resolution map.

Eight exhibits at The Computer Museum

I wrote eight kiosk-based exhibits for The Computer Museum (RIP):

• Make your Own Cartoon (scripting and then playing a cartoon)
  
• Make your Own Movie (recording video and assembling it into a commercial)
  
• The Talking Computer (learning about speech synthesis)
  
• How Tall Are You? (measuring a visitor's height using ultrasound and then giving the results using digitized speech)
  
• Programming a Computer (programming an on-screen car)
  
• The Networked Exhibit (the predecessor to The Networked Exhibit described here, except using four physical computers linked to a central server)
  
• The Giant Computer Application (displayed on The Walk-through Computer 2000's giant monitor)
  
• TeleMed (exhibit on remote medical diagnosis)