ICM MIDTERM PROPOSAL

PURPOSE:

in order to present a unique and fascinating insight into people’s interest in weddings and obituaries, Diego and I are going to create an interactive platform with which the user can examine these two events using the NYTimes RSS feeds. it is also a commentary however on the types of people who would submit wedding announcements versus the types of people who are deemed worthy of announcements (as in obits).

GOAL:
create two swarms that are rotating around two foci on our screen.
one swarm represents obituaries
the other represents weddings

the user will be able to roll over one of the objects which will bring up a small block of information with a photo and the announcement

STEPS:

- requesting the xml data from the NYT RSS feed
- create a new String that will find and replace all of the hexadecimal for apostrophe (which is giving us problems) with “/’” (apostrophe in processing)
- save the new String as the old String
- save the file in our folder
- create two classes of objects, weddings and obituaries
- have objects rotate/swarm around focal points
- create a mouse rollover effect that detects when the mouse is over the object
- create a timer effect that detects how long the mouse is over the object so that it will hover and grow while a pop-up screen appears with the linked information from the NYTimes
- when mouse rolls out, the object will return to size and to the swarm

CODE:

the initial code is here.