About
GestureWorks®—patent pending—is a comprehensive gesture-based development environment for ActionScript. This authoring environment was designed and developed by Ideum, an interactive design firm formed in 1999. Ideum develops custom applications, and since 2008 it has designed and built integrated multitouch tables.
The GestureWorks development environment was born out necessity. The concept emerged in 2008 as Ideum took on the difficult task of developing its first multitouch and multiuser application. Rather than reinvent the wheel each time we created software, we began to develop our own rudimentary framework. Seeing a need for a more advanced way to author multitouch applications we began to dedicate time to developing the framework itself.
In the summer of 2009, GestureWorks was released as a free alpha. Later that year, we made it available as a commercial product. In early 2010, GestureWorks 2.0 with over 200 gestures and an innovative Open Source Gesture Library was released.
In September of 2010, Ideum was awarded a $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation for Open Exhibits, an open source software collective designed to help informal science education (ISE) organizations develop more innovative exhibits. Ideum released and later open-sourced a version of the GestureWorks 2 SDK for educational use that was developed prior to the grant.
In addition, through Open Exhibits, a series of multitouch enabled modules have been developed. Most of the modules found on the Open Exhibits website are fully compatible with GestureWorks software.
At CES in January of 2011, we announced our first hardware bundling deal. GestureWorks software became available for purchase with Touch Revolution multitouch monitors.
The development of GestureWorks 3.0 began in spring of 2011 and was supported in part by the Venture Acceleration Fund (VAF), launched by Los Alamos Lab to assist with innovative Northern New Mexico companies.
In the summer of 2011, Ideum announced the release of the MT55 Platform and MT55 Pro multitouch tables. These tables come with a lifetime Professional license for GestureWorks® and a number of GestureWorks developed applications pre-installed.
In November of 2011, GestureWorks 3.0 for ActionScript was released. This latest version of GestureWorks was built entirely from the ground up. The 3.0 release also included; GestureML, the worlds first markup language for multitouch interaction and a new, advanced multitouch simulator and gesture analyzer.
In early 2012, Ideum released the MT65 Presenter, a massive 65″ integrated multitouch wall which also includes a lifetime license for GestureWorks.®
Expect new features and new offerings as we continue to develop the most comprehensive gesture-based authoring environment on the planet. There is much more to come. Please contact us if you have any comments or questions.