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August 3, 2007
Microbe Mail Visualization
I know it's hard to tell from this screenshot but Anymails is one of the coolest open source developments I've seen built with flash and processing. It reads mail from Apple's built-in mail app (yes it's Mac only) and you can even download the source file to study how it's all done.
via Presurfer
Anymails is a project by Carolin Horn from Germany. It's a visualization of received emails. Emails are pictured as microbes. The project was developed during the MFA thesis 'Natural Metaphor For Information Visuzalization' at the Dynamic Media Intitute Boston in 2007.
How a microbe looks and moves depends on the condition of the represented email. The age of an email (when it was received) is shown by the size and opacity of the animal. For instance, a new email is big and opaque, an old email small and transparent. The status of an email (unread, read, responded) is shown by two animal attributes: the number of hair/feet and velocity. An unread email is hairy and swims fast; a read email has less hair and does not swim so fast anymore; a responded email is hairless and barely moves.
Posted by tranism at 3:11 AM | Permalink
Comments
hey, can someone help me run this successfully on my mac? I have followed the instructions about downloading 'processing' and putting the files in the library folder, and adding email address in the database, but I still can't get it to work.
this is the error message I get.
2007-08-03 14:08:52.818 java[11612] SetAlphaValue >> load failled for identifier: (null) >> numberOfItems: 9
2007-08-03 14:08:52.856 java[11612] Can't open input server /Library/InputManagers/Smart Crash Reports.bundle
2007-08-03 14:08:53.185 java[11612] PerformSwizzle Error: Class not found
AppleMailReader: // ERROR // Unable to convert preferences plist!
AppleMailReader: You will have to point me to it with loadMailboxes().
AppleMailReader: Fine. Used this converter: /Users/yashrg/Documents/Processing/tools/converter
Unable to load sqlite: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /Users/yashrg/Documents/Processing/libraries/AnyMails/library/libsqlite_jni.jnilib:
AppleMailToolkit.getConnection(): Could not connect to the database ( jdbc:sqlite://Users/yashrg/Desktop/Envelope Index ).
java.sql.SQLException: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: open
at SQLite.JDBCDriver.connect(JDBCDriver.java:68)
Posted by: yash gupta at August 3, 2007 11:12 AM
yes, I put the tools folder inside the processing folder in user/yashrg/documents/ and I also put the anymails and maus folder in /users/yashrg/documents/processing/libraries/
one thing I kinda figured out is the first line, setalphavalue is a hack for having translucent windows in osx. I am uninstalling it now, and will report back on how it goes.
Posted by: yash at August 3, 2007 11:41 AM
I have a macbook pro with intel core 2 duo processor, 2.17 ghz and 1 gig of ram. (but as u might know, tiger can still run ppc applications)
I don't even see the loading screen when I run it. so don't tell me to 'wait for some time' ;)
Posted by: yash at August 3, 2007 1:00 PM
hi long,
i just mailed yash about his problems.
just did an update to the download and i'd like to ask you to remove the link to the old file. please just link to the page, that way it's easier for us to publish new versions.
btw. the new version includes an application, 3 easy steps to get it running (see included readme) ...
thanks,
F
Posted by: Florian Jenett at August 4, 2007 3:48 AM
Awesome. Link updated. THANKS!
Posted by: Electro^Plankton at August 4, 2007 10:49 AM