I think one of the major differences from last year will be  tablets. Within the space of 12 months Android has seen the emergence of  quite a few tablet releases running either an upscaled smartphone OS or Honeycomb. If I remember correctly; just one Android tablet was on view at Droidcon 2010! This year’s conference and unconference will be filled high with talk and discussion on the future of tablet as well as smartphone running of Android. We’re also seeing the emergence of Android on other platform and it will be interesting to see how the community responds to Blackberry’s emulation of Android applications.

As with previous Droidcon conferences, there will be a community-led Unconference  on day 1 which consists of a full-day Barcamp and Democamp. Lost at this point? – a barcamp is where the attendees propose the structure of the day. Day 2 is packed full of talks including CommonsWare’s Mark Murphy, Google’s Richard Hyndman and Nick Butcher.

The conference takes place every year at the Business Design Centre in Islington which is a great location to get to from all over London. Nearest stations include:

Registration is open over at Droidcon’s website

Twitter: @DroidconUK Use these tags: #droidconUK #droidcon

Our stand captured the attention of quite a few visitors although not quite well enough for the judges; who awarded newcomers Northumbria University best stand. Nevertheless our friends downstairs on Brunel University’s Product Design stand did manage to get one award, out of the thirteen in total, which went to Buster Palmano.

As mentioned in my previous article, Made in Brunel 2011, my own piece of work on display was again Culturebook which is an Android mobile application. There was overall a very positive response to the concept and even some visitors expecting to find it on the app markets but alas it remains a prototype for now.

Our stand was made up of three pods each with three iMac machines so that we could each display our work. In addition we’d secured the space directly in front of the main entrance to the VC room. We made the most of this space by having no less than three large LCD screens to each display our project showreels on in a continuous loop.

Brunel Digital Media 2011 Work Showcase

The projects on display consisted of a range of work from our two courses which were Multimedia Technology & Design BSc and Broadcast Media Design and Technology BSc.

Ailu

Short 2D/3D animation about a curious little girl who, whilst playing in her backyard, chases a solitary frog into some nearby woods. She soon realises that she has become lost in unfamiliar surroundings. Chi Yu

Annotate That!

A brand new way to share and express your opinions via the web by leaving annotations on a web page. Dean Claydon

Roxxi

A concept and prototype for interactive television advertising giving users the choice to receive information about a product or have a product added directly to their online shopping account. Rishee Patel

Simple Symphony

A website created to educate users about the fundamentals of instrument notation. Fiona Cullen

Roll Tomorrow

The concept of this project is to combine 8mm film footage with HD digital footage in order to create a film trailer. Keahn Rahimi

Below

A short 3D animation about a man who, after believing what he reads in the headlines about swine flu, descends underground in an attempt to escape what he perceives as his impending doom. Laurence Dawes

Washers & Sundries

A short film exploring the idea of 2D animated hand drawn characters that come to life off of the page and interact with their surroundings and human counterparts. Mike Malone

Music Moves My Life

The project’s theme was inspired by how music helps people in their everyday challenges, efforts and tasks. Rakesh Mohun

Thanks goes to all of those involved with the setup and running of our stand at New Designers 2011 including staff and students of Brunel University.

There myself and over 250 of my fellow students were exhibiting our work ranging from conceptual, physical product artefacts to electronic and multimedia prototypes.

My own piece of work was Culturebook which is an Android mobile application I’m hoping to develop further. It’s a portable museum application and website to be used throughout a range of museums nationally and abroad.

To my surprise we saw the highest number of visitors yet in the show’s history (est. 2004). This year we put great effort into utilising social media and the website to promote Made in Brunel. I myself helped alongside others to engage with and attract followers on the Made in Brunel Twitter profile.

The show is predominantly run and organised by volunteering students who have worked incredibly hard during their study to make the Made in Brunel 2011 exhibition happen.

Further information about the show and projects can be viewed on the official Made in Brunel website.

The iPhone Tracker is just one of hundreds and thousands of applications which track and broadcast our every movement set to enter the app markets in the years ahead. The argument as to who’s responsible over educating users on any potential risks remains unclear. Both Apple and Google have in place the mechanisms and features to warn users of any such exposure. It’s up to them how clear, detailed and meaningful they make them.

So it has to be questioned: do the masses who are currently buying these smartphone devices have enough awareness and interest in what such apps do or don’t do for their personal security and privacy?

On one hand we may want these kind of capabilities in our phones to keep track of where our nearest and dearest are (primarily in the instance of lost children). On the other hand we’re all too aware of the cruel and nasty minority in our global community who have, and will continue to, exploit such technology for all the wrong reasons with terrible consequences to all who fall as victims.

As ever there are pros and cons to such apps and ultimately it is up to the user to weigh these up prior to installing an app. This is no different from the decision process you will probably have made in downloading this article today: do I click on this link? does it look trustworthy?, hmm not sure but I’ll weigh up the risks and click the link..

Artur began by demonstrating JAWS that is a screen reader used by the blind on the Windows platform for a range of operations including surfing the web. Another alternative to JAWS, which Artur has used, is the less commonly used NVDA.

On loading a webpage the screen reader spoke out all of its elements in a linear view. This showed how specific the reader is in stating every part of a page and how structural layout is crucial in allowing a blind person to easily interpret it’s subject, content and navigational elements.

Headings Tool
Typically blind people don’t use the mouse/touch pad for screen reader use but use solely the keyboard. Atur demonstrated frequently throughout that he just as non- blind individuals like to skim a page’s content; perhaps only absorbing titles and subtitles. Screen readers have the functionality to do this in the form of keyboard shortcuts that can jump over content such as paragraphs to speed up the process of interpreting and finding information on the web for the blind.

Artur was keen to show off some of the features used in Yahoo’s homepage, which has specifically been designed with functionality for screen readers. In combination with JAWS he demonstrated the headings tool that tells the user of all the page’s visible headings. It provides the functionality to select and go to any of the listed headings. This is particularly useful when reading the results from a search engine request.

Language Options
Based on the language attribute of a page the JAWS reader is able to alter the pronunciation that the computer voice uses. This is limited to a selection of the most common spoken languages globally including English, Spanish and French. Artur also demonstrated a manual option for changing the screen reader’s language output.

JAWS as a product
To the audience’s amazement in the presentation Artur revealed that the price tag attached to JAWS is around £1000 for a fully licensed version. This does not include update fees, which occur yearly. When asked about subsidies and discounts Artur did mention of some minor reductions in cost to the blind but nothing significant.

An alternative open source and free alternative, which Artur also uses, is NVDA. It’s not clear whether or not this product matches to the same standard of functionality which JAWS has. Judged by the statistics of those using it; it would seem not to.

JavaScript & Flash
Artur also demonstrated accessibility to page elements that are JavaScript based. The Yahoo homepage has quite a number of elements that load using JavaScript. The JAWS screen reader was still able to read content within the loaded element which was set out in a clear, structured form.

The audience asked some questions about the use of Flash content by the blind and whether it was possible to interpret it with a screen reader. Artur gave a mixed response on the matter stating that he has successfully used Flash with readers such as JAWS and NVDA. This does all depend on properly layered source files when developing in Flash which have meaningful names along with buttons that follow good naming conventions.

London Web Meetup Video: