blankspace

blankspace is a distributed application platform based around a 3D display of a shared information space. It provides a medium for integrating applications, communication, and information services seamlessly within a shared online environment. Objects in blankspace represent information services and applications. Object services may range from small scripts (e.g. a news summary billboard that periodically retrieves and renders syndicated RDF news digests) to full applications (e.g. a file sharing client for the Gnutella p2p network). In addition to dealing with interactive objects, users have visual presence and may interact with each other. The system manages distribution of object state changes so that concurrent users share a synchronous view of the dynamic behavior of the objects. The state of the environment is maintained persistently by object databases at the servers.

Blankspace has an open architecture allowing access to the web and existing information services. It is extensible via Java libraries and applications, and Scheme code for scripting and applications. Objects may carry application code with them, stored either in the object database or at some other network location. The user interface is mutable just as the rest of the content in a blankspace environment, so custom UIs may be easily personalized to users' needs, or dynamically adapt to a particular task such as information organization.

polygon soup is our current prototype environment based on blankspace, intended to serve as a testbed for experimenting with building and using applications within the medium. Among the sample applications is a shared news/media site that allows multiple users to view and control live television streams and other information sources in a collaborative environment.

quick start instructions: 0. platform requirements.: 400+ mhz PC with Win9x, 2K, or XP, and a graphics card with 3D hardware (e.g. modern NVIDIA card); RealVideo and Windows Media decoders for streaming video support. 1. download/install Blaxxun Contact (or, if you're using Internet Explorer, you can use this link to install it automatically) 2. download blankspace bundle (a smaller bundle is also available if you already have a Java runtime [version 1.3.1 or higher]). 3. unzip the blankspace archive (contents will unpack to directory ./blank). 4. double-click on blank/run.bat to start the blankspace client

other stuff see release notes for further details download directory ...

questions: tk@research.att.com