Visit from James Eberhardt

The guest speaker for our IMM class for Multimedia Pioneering was James Eberhardt. We have previously been looking at building applications for the large viewing media. The second half of our Course we are looking at building applications (prototypes) for small media viewing such as cell phones.

James is a Director of Technology and concentrates more on development than designing. His list of work includes speaking at the FITC in Toronto in 2007 speaking about Flash Lite on Building Mobile Applications for usability. He was previously the Director of Technology at Marblemedia and now works at Design Axiom and teaches Flash Lite at George Brown College in Toronto.

His credits include (but not limited to) the following:

The Border Mobile Contest
Seductive Shorts
This is Daniel Cook


Some of the key points of James' talk was a brief history of mobile devices and that although we have progressed, we still have a long way to go in the development of computing. This is good news for those interested in entering the field of mobile computing. He covered various information on Devices, SMS/MMS (Short Message Service and Multimedia Messaging Service), GPS (Global Positioning System), 2D Barcodes and Flash Lite.

He provided a few demonstrations on capturing images and how the GPS can track the location where the picture was taken. Another demo was of the 2D Barcodes which is currently being used to provide information that you capture with your cell phone and it will provide you with more information on the site you are visiting. 1D Barcodes are used by Groceries Stores to all you scan items, Post Offices, etc. The 2D does not replace the 1D, but rather the 2 technologies will co-exist. 2D allows you to hold more information making it perfect as an enhancement. Barcodes that were used were QR, Shotcode and Dynametrics.

Communication and Streamlineing have always been very motivating for me. I believe that mobile computing will be more predominant in a few more years when costs for Internet access is reduced. As James pointed out, there are not many jobs for Mobile Programming, but it is great to get a head start on this exciting technology.