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Abstract:

Forestry finder is a piece of software available online for anyone, but particularly loggers, to use as a way to save a gps location in order to orient yourself or find it later. Using this online app one can easily mark and remember the exact position of biomass, yourself, or the boundaries on a job site. The simple design and incredibly low barrier to entry means that even the most technologically challenged logger can join.

Press Copy:

The Forestry Industry has been one of the most resistant to change, but Forestry Finder hopes to change that starting now. Taking into consideration user experience, quality of product, and a manageable learning curve this online app will begin to look at many issues that were considered to be intrinsic to this work force.

Forestry Finder is as easy as turning on your smartphone and visiting “Benzo32.com”. After signing up its as easy as pressing a single button! Every click will cause you to leave behind a marker at your current position, allowing you to mark boundaries of job sites, show which areas have been cleaned of biomass, and indicate where a machine was left if you leave the area.

Links to online material:

Benzo32.com

Outside Email Address:

Unravler@gmail.com

This website is dedicated to the avid Disc Golf players across the country in an attempt to expand the social aspect of the sport. As both a course archive and open ended trading system, this site was designed to broaden the disc golf community by allowing players to connect with each other and explore the courses in thier state while not breaking the bank.

Tiny Tactics is a mobile game about beings and their influence on the environment around them. Mobile games as a whole are quick and, for the most part, only superficially interactive. Through the use of the turn-based strategy format, Tiny Tactics tests not only creative problem solving but probes the limits of the mobile multiplayer experience, within an environment full of different characters and methods of play. The players, both working toward a common goal and contesting for territory with opposing factions, will shape not only their own game experience but that of every other player in the game.

What would you say if I made the claim that YouTube is badly designed? Now, whatever your response might be, I’ll plainly state that I can’t just make a better YouTube, I’d need just a little more than just a semester to see that project through. What I am able to do is turn my focus towards a specific portion or feature of YouTube and through accumulated expertise, devise a means in which that feature in question can be be executed more effectively.

The unsuspecting victim this year is YouTube’s comment system, IE the easiest and most direct method of contributing ones own thoughts to a video. Let’s think about this system in broad context, in order to voice your thoughts about a specific portion of the video, you have to scroll down, take the frame of the video away from your line of vision and use text to describe, what is essentially a visual medium. YouTube made an early attempt to bring the the video’s frame into the users consideration with the annotations system, but users are still stuck using text to be specific about video. My takeaway from this attempt is that YouTube was close to creating a more commentative system, but it needed just a little more of a shakeup to the formula for the systems efforts to really make an impact. My proposed capstone project is exactly that shakeup in question.

My capstone isn’t what one might refer to as a video upload site, as video isn’t even hosted on the site. Instead, this site hosts stillframes of video and treats each frame page as it’s own unique gallery, and the stillframe itself as a canvas for the user’s creative interest. Instead of text, users are given several image editing tools to help in bringing their observations to form through the use of (tentative:) pencil, filter and fill tools. Once users are done with their contribution, their creation is saved to both the frame’s page and additionally the main page, giving users a sense of the kind of content that is published. When I originally devised the project, I came up with the idea that the site could be used to highlight cinematic elements of video and crowd source the act of rotoscoping (live action animation), but since the project’s unveiling, I’ve heard uses ranging from the possible like tracking animal movement, to the extremely unlikely, like usage in court to analyze video-based evidence.

Say One Thing (SOT) is a one man social experiment application. At its core SOT is a posting comment system with the added benefit (or detriment) of being completely anonymous. More anonymity than usernames and passwords. SOT has gone all the way to literal nothingness when it comes to the idea of a digital person.

Say One Thing strives to bring people further away while at the same time bringing their ideas together. The only way this can be achieved is through completely taking away outside and inside digital influence. Posters will post and commenters will comment on posts. Any chance of getting closer to anyone is nullified and made impossible.

The importance of this complete anonymity is huge. Any kind of influence such as a post history to read through or a username can have a significant effect on a person before they make a post. SOT is trying to achieve a place where users can solely post exactly what they would post without influence. And to see how people react in an unchained environment. Say One Thing is coded and designed by Andrew Heretakis and the beta is currently available here. (Site subject to change)

Forestry finder is a piece of software available online for anyone, but particularly loggers, to use as a way to save a gps location in order to orient yourself or find it later. Using this online app one can easily mark and remember the exact position of biomass, yourself, or the boundaries on a job site. The simple design and incredibly low barrier to entry means that even the most technologically challenged logger can join.

Title: Crowdcast

Author: Brandon Poli

Abstract: In my 4 years of undergraduate study at the University of Maine, I’ve had the privilege to begin a career of amateur sports broadcasting at WMEB 91.9FM, UMaine’s student radio station. I was able to gain experience through attending live sporting events and broadcasting them over the radio. None of this would’ve been possible without the opportunity WMEB gave me.
However, with the growing culture of e-sports, video games played to a professional and competitive level, that made me realize there does not yet exist this same type of opportunity for amateur broadcasters to get started like I did. That’s where CrowdCast comes in. CrowdCast is an online community for those who want to get started in e-sports broadcasting, or “shoutcasting” by providing them a space to post content and get feedback, as well as some “raw material” to broadcast over. They will learn and grow through their experiences providing content for the subreddit while also getting tips and tricks from those who have more experience in broadcasting (like myself).

This capstone project is currently live at reddit.com/r/Crowd_Cast and my capstone blog can be found at policapstone.wordpress.com.

How many ways are there to tell a story?  What does it take to tell a story?  Experiments in Digital Narrative takes a look at a few potential ways to create unique stories based on user interactions.

The project consists of a few ideas, each developed separately over past two semesters. The experiments focus on variables, decisions, and our senses, and will be presented in demo form for capstone presentation.

Author: Leslie Hood

Epitaph is an interactive fiction piece in which users explore their own thoughts and feelings regarding mortality in relation to human-computer interaction and attempts to find emerging cultural norms. It’s based on emerging research in a new field called “thanatosensitivity.” Users explore the story, scattered and fragmented across the internet, of two sisters who are separated by decades, by technology, and by death. Depending on how the users explore, they can learn more about the fate of the sisters and the future of someone close to them. The story is written in such a way to encourage users to think about the role technology plays in their lives – and their deaths.

Public deployment – writer’s workshops virtually and in real life on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays

Through the process of working with my initial graduate internship at Liberty Farms, I have compiled a good selection of clients for future design  projects. When I took a trip to San Francisco, I showed some some of my portfolio to people and from there I was able to generate 3 new clients and this is important because it was a major shift in my capstone that helped me and made my capstone a stronger project.
As stated initially I had one client, but from showing my work I was able to generate 3 additional clients, so now my capstone has moved from making 1 wordpress based website, to selection of wordpress sites that can be used to show my progress and understanding of the wordpress itself. With this many wordpress sites being made I made the decision to make my capstone into a business portfolio presentation rather than a wordpress presentation. It is with the development of my understanding of wordpress as well as my business minor, that I can combined the two to create a successful career and portfolio to display on capstone night.

With my capstone being so based around wordpress and the progression, I really want to be able to showcase the fact that people can build functional websites rather than just blogs with this new technology. Overall the shift from hardcoding websites to creating wordpress based themes with enhanced widgets, is becoming a growing trend that offers a huge market.

Overall I chose wordpress rather than squarespace or any other web building app because it is more rounded and servers/hosts are very fond of using wordpress based sites. The transitions and working with wordpress as well as the amount of tutorials is something that makes it a good choice to start a business. For my business and the clients I am currently helping, their understanding of the web design and design in general is very minimal, so given my experience and past knowledge, learning wordpress features and has translated in actual work and has created a job for me. As stated before I have 3 new clients on top of the existing clients that I am already working for which is a good start to running a business and makes me want to learn the new technology that much more.

In Orono, Maine, finding an apartment or house to rent is often a challenge for students. Livin’ Easy is a website that helps students locate an apartment or house easily and affordably. Livin’ Easy has pictures of available houses and apartments for rent, geolocation maps and personal reviews. It will allow the user to find or lease an apartment, see reviews on properties and contact landlords within minutes. Livin’ Easy will be a convenient way for students to search for off-campus housing. They will appreciate how much time and effort they will save by using this site and it will make finding a place to live more enjoyable.

In Orono, Maine, finding an apartment or house to rent is often a challenge for students. The University of Maine community lacks a well-designed housing website that combines renting, subleasing, reviews and access to landlords into one site. The only housing websites that do exist are poorly designed, do not update themselves and are not effective in assisting students locate housing. In order to solve this problem, Livin’ Easy was created.

Livin’ Easy is a capstone website that was designed to help students locate an apartment or house easily and affordably. The website is visually appealing and has simple features that will allow the user to find an apartment to lease, sublease an apartment, see reviews on properties and get in touch with landlords within minutes. Livin’ Easy will be a convenient way for students to search for off-campus housing. They will appreciate how much time and effort they will save by using this site and it will make finding a place to live more enjoyable.