White Glove Tracking :: A Nerd Tribute to Michael Jackson

Tributes for Michael Jackson are showing up everywhere since his untimely death a few weeks ago. Some of the brightest are user-generated and open source. Here are two that I love.

WHITE GLOVE TRACKING
White Glove Tracking is an open source project initiated by Evan Roth and Ben Engebreth with support from the Rhizome Commissions Program and the Eyebeam OpenLab. A description of the project from the website www.whiteglovetracking.com:

On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located. wgt_data_v1.txt is the culmination of data collected.

Users may download this data set and use it to manipulate the video, specifically, MJ's white glove. The nerd herd is in full song with the King of Pop. My favorite is the Giant Glove by Tim Knapen



Be sure to check out the gallery for some really great applications! www.whiteglovetracking.com

ETERNAL MOONWALK
You may have seen this but it's worth mentioning and you don't have to be quite as geeky to participate. The site invites users to upload a video of themselves doing the moonwalk. Once uploaded, it cycles through the submissions as if the moonwalk were being passed on through each window. It's really ingenious. One feature that takes it to the next level is that each participant's name, location, and social contacts are displayed beneath each video. Hit the user up via facebook, twitter, or email. Quite cool.

www.eternalmoonwalk.com

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