soda visit

matt gould, of soda.co.uk fame, visited us this morning and gave a presentation on a couple of their recent projects. the main focus was on sodaconstructor, at sodaplay.com; an experimental program that began life as a little project by one of soda's team. a groundbreaking concept and word of mouth has earned it a huge following (250,000+ users!), and even spawned it's own fansite.

there's no set goals, instead users construct shapes from lines and dots, and then apply mathetmatical rules (such as elasticity and gravity) to allow them to move. you can also save your creation and share it with other users.

i had a little chat with matt afterwards, and it seems they're investigating commercial and educational possibilities for the applet, as well as allowing third parties to develop api's for it. exciting stuff... go play!

it was pretty cool to get an insight to the history of the product and company, i just wish i wasn't so damn tired after last night