Blue Screen is an application designed to show a playlist of videos, while being able to receive pictures and messages via bluetooth and show these in a ticker tape. Aside from researching and designing, the people at the ID-StudioLab form a very social group as well, with drinks on Friday afternoons and by engaging in social and playful activities. At one time, a few of us came up with the idea to host an evening at the student body's cafe with karaoke, retro gaming and Blue Screen.
Blue Screen
I didn't have much time to create Blue Screen, so I made it in two weekends using Macromedia Director. When run, the application shows a full screen interface for importing movie files and managing these in a playlist. Movies can be added multiple times, which is convenient if you want to display a movie in segments. After setting a default message and default photo, Blue Screen is ready to start. While a movie (segment) in de playlist is being shown, Blue Screen will periodically scan the system's bluetooth download folder for new photos and messages to add to the ticker tape. In between playlist items, a slideshow of the last twenty photos will be shown. The application automatically backs up the playlist, messages and photos, in order to make resuming after quitting (or crashing) easier.
Blue Screen's first showing was at ID-StudioTap, hosted by members of the ID-StudioLab at the i.d-Kafee, the student body's cafe. Back then, it was called the "StudioLab BSOD" (Blue Screen of Delight/Death, or so I think), but I decided that "Blue Screen" would suffice. The crowd of tech savvy students had very little trouble of using their cell phones to get pictures onto Blue Screen. Some time later, I displayed Blue Screen at an HR Puzzle event at the request of the host and friend, Marcel van Driel. The last time I showed it was at a small expo called Design in Delft, organized by Marlies de Koning.
If you wish, you can download and try Blue Screen for yourself, but note that it will only work on OS X and is not optimized for Intel and your mileage may vary under 10.5. Instructions are in the readme file. The source (Macromedia Director MX2004) is also included.