BPN 1401 Europrix 09 winners (3)

Category: Games

Monospace
Produced by: Daniel Lutz
Country: Switzerland

Created for the iPhone or iPod Touch, Monospace is a puzzle game requiring players to think in 2 and 3D dimensions. Its goal lies in maneuvering a blue box within a cube, in order to eliminate surrounding white boxes. But it’s not as simple as all that: not only are there rules governing how and when the boxes can be shifted, Monospace complicates the matter even further by switching the perspective. Each level begins with a 3D view; double-tap the screen though, and the stage collapses into a 2D image. It’s in this flat view that white cubes can be victimized by the little blue box. By changing the perspective, Monospace transforms simple puzzles into complex, mind-bending special riddles. The mechanics of play remain simple,
yet finding solutions to the more advanced arrangements can be mentally taxing.

My comment: Keeps you busy for a while. Play first the light version, to be downloaded from the app store.

www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=552211

Category and Overall winner
Swords & Soldiers
Produced by: Joost van Dongen Fabian Akker Gijs Hermans Jasper Koning Martijn Thieme Olivier Thijssen Ralph Rademakers
Country: The Netherlands

“Swords & Soldiers” is a 2D side-scrolling real-time strategy game for the Nintendo Wii and a wonderful and fresh mix of Real Time Strategy gameplay, with the graphical presentation of a traditional side-scrolling arcade game. In each level, two armies fight for victory by building up their numbers, upgrading their castles, gathering gold and casting spells. The game can be played either in single-player or split-screen multiplayer mode, and features three different factions: the strong Vikings, the devious Aztecs and the cunning Chinese. Each faction possesses a diversity of qualities, skills and tactics. A series of challenging mini-games can be unlocked as players progress through their chosen campaign. Comical graphical style and strategic depth are inherent to this game, which can be downloaded from the Wii shop.

Comment: To me the looked rather classic and Mario-like with side scrolling and various levels. Appearantly the jury members could not be dragged away.

http://www.ronimo-games.com/

Underwater Mayhem 2
Produced by: Robert Träffe Martin Barreby Tomas Hertz Orre
Country: Sweden

High speeds, sharp corners, water and weapons! Challenge up to 8 players to a race in this fun underwater PC internet game, customizing your vehicle to suit your playing style. Zoom with great precision through targets, twisting and turning, and collect weapons from special rings, which will also give you an energy boost or refill. In order to win, you must master the hazards and either shoot down all other players, or race to be first past the post. Level design, sound, graphics, controls and gameplay all work consistently together to make “Underwater Mayhem” a professional, exciting and balanced project.

Comment: Too fast for me, this game.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvmnpGvq78g

Blog Posting Number: 1401

Tags: games

BPN 1400 Europrix 09 winners (2)

Category: Mobile Applications

MobileDoc
Produced by: Gerald Madlmayr Andreas Jakl
Country: Austria

Life is becoming mobile in more than one way in emerging market countries; not only do more and more citizens own mobile phones – people are now on the move like never before. And this leads to busy roads, where traffic safety is low, and accidents a regular occurrence. Mobile Doctor has been designed to enable injured road-accident victims to instantly seek medical help via an application on their mobile phones. Navigation is simple and picture based, enabling people, including illiterates, to describe their condition and seek the most local relevant expertise. Once participating medicine-men and hospitals set their mobile status to “available”, their location is constantly broadcasted to the web, along with information from a database concerning their areas of specialisation. Accident victims are presented with a list of the most relevant help, and are directed there via GPS. In situations where every second counts, Mobile Doctor could prove to be vital.

My comment: The application looks like a simple solution. Yet the application will need more context and inbedding as well as support from the medical world and doctors’ associations.

http://www.symbianresources.com/projects/mobiledoc.php

Category winner: showtime!
Produced by: Kathrin Probst Christian Grossauer Christoph Engelmayer
Country: Austria

showtime! is a mobile application for interactive control of Microsoft Office PowerPoint slideshows via an iPhone or iPod Touch client. Designed to provide lecturers with optimal flexibility during slideshow-supported presentations, it enables freedom of movement and independence from the restrictions of stationary computers. Its intuitive handling via touch display supports the usage of slideshows as visual aids, and enables users to break away from the strictly sequential nature of traditional PowerPoint presentations. In addition, showtime! offers new features, such as a timer displayed on the mobile device, to help keep track of the overall presentation progress, and the option of viewing personal notes. All this is achieved through intuitive horizontal or vertical swipe gestures over the device screen – ensuring that eye contact is never broken between lecturer and audience.

My comment: showtime! Is a fabulous application for presentors. It will give them the opportunity to stay in contact with their audience without turning their back on them. Can’t wait to pick it up in the app store and use it in my next presentation. Should look really cool.

http://vimeo.com/5607223

toBed – interactive bedtime stories for iPhone and iPod touch
Produced by: Marc-André Weibezahn
Country: Germany

”toBed” is a concept for a platform for interactive bedtime stories on the iPhone. It exploits the device’s innovative input methods, such as multi-touch gestures, accelerometer and localization, to create new ways of interactive narration on an intuitive and almost invisible interface. The product offers a simple interactive experience, moving away from the fast-paced nature of PC video games and instead providing a glimpse of poetry on a user friendly device. By purchasing additional stories within the application itself, users can build their own collections of interactive bedtime stories.

My comment: A nice application, if you can’t get to sleep. But it will not be spent on me as I read business literature on an e-reader.
http://www.vimeo.com/5607223

Blog Posting Number: 140

Tags: Mobile

BPN 1399 Europrix 09 winners (1)

Category: Online/Web projects

The Cordless Show ‘Online Music Show’
Produced by: Dominic Dadson, Matthew Dadson, Aylwin Steele, Joe Newman
Country: United Kingdom

Up-and-coming musicians need no longer struggle to get recognized, thanks to this internet-based video music show. The Cordless Show creates a platform for unsigned British singers, MCs, bands and musicians of all genres to showcase their talent to thousands of music fans from around the globe, thereby helping to propel them to the next stage of their careers. Each month, five new artists are professionally filmed giving live performances and interviews, which are then streamed live on the internet and documented on the artists’ individual pages on the site. Not only are users and fans able to view the videos; they can also comment on the content, and even download the videos and mp3s. All profits are shared with the artists on a 50/50 basis – ensuring that everyone’s a winner. A feast for eyes
and ears, this web-based show will literally create fame.

My comment: Looks very professional. The team had high video and sound standards from the beginning. The team is talking to the BBC and Channel 4 for cooperation.

URL: http://www.cordless-show.com/

Category winner: Donkeypedia
Produced by: Joost van Eeden, Cristian Bettini, Pieter Crucq, Thijs van den Akker, Wytze Voerman
Country: The Netherlands

Asino the Donkey has already made a physical pilgrimage around the Netherlands and is about to embark on a walk around Europe, in Donkeypedia’s quest to document the identities of the continent’s youngsters. Laden with a solarpowered laptop and camera, Asino and his owner are digitally directed - by means of a website, GPS and a mobile platform - by local children from village to city, province to province, nation to nation, completing tasks and collecting stories, pictures and objects which represent the people and places they encounter along the way. Asino’s whereabouts can be tracked live on the Donkeypedia website, onto which images from his head-mounted ‘Donkeycam’ are constantly uploaded. These ‘memories’ can be tagged by children on a virtual online map, resulting in an ever-growing Internet kaleidoscope that reveals the European identity step by step.

My comment: Nice cross media project. The format can be applied to various countries and various animals such as: elephantpedia in India, rendeerpedia in Lapland, cowpedia in The Netherlands and kangeroopedia in Australia. Just to name a few options.

URL: http://www.donkeypedia.nl/

mite. Sleek time tracking for teams & freelancers
Produced by: Sebastian Munz, Julia Soergel
Country: Germany

Time tracking is vital for invoicing, accounting, and scheduling. This sleek web-based time tracking tool enables accurate tracking of every single minute of the working day. Using data collected from web-based platforms, iPhones, Macs, or a command-line interface, mite generates detailed visual company reports, to which flexible filters can be applied to squeeze out any information that matters. Time entries can be assigned to customers, projects, and services, and hours can be tracked manually or with the help of the built-in timer. On a daily basis, mite answers crucial questions concerning, for example, current company workload, over-time payment, and project duration, and additionally, points out areas requiring attention. Reports can be shared with customers, or printed or exported to a variety of file formats, and via an open API, developers can hack their workflow into the system.

My comment: Would love to have the program. You can try the program for free for a period of time. Think that the creators should have a business model of selling the software to companies for internal use.

URL: http://mite.yo.lk/

Blog Posting Number: 1399

Tags: web, online

BPN 1398 Europrix 2009 winners

(c) Sjoerd Wanrooij, 2009

The Utrecht development team of the Nintendo game Swords & Soldiers has been awarded the award in the category games, but also the allover award of the Europrix 2009. Besides this Dutch entry the project Donkeypedia project received the award in the category Online/Web projects. The awards were handed out on the Gala night of the Europrix 2009 in Graz (Austria). More than 350 entries from the European Union and associated countries competed for the prestigious Europrix award. Just 20 projects were nominated for the award, of which 7 projects were crowned in their category and one of the 7 as overall winner.

Category winners

Category Online/Web projects
Winner: Donkeypedia, Netherlands

Category Mobile applications
Winner: showtime!, Austria

Category Games
Winner: Swords & Soldiers, Netherlands

Category Interactive Computer Graphics
Winner: Vuvox, Israel

Category Content Tools & Interface Design
Winner: Flow-er, Israel

Category Interactive installations
Winner: akustisch, Switserland

Category Digital Video & Animations
Winner: desconstruct, a stereoscopic experiment, Germany

Overall winner
Winner: Winner: Swords & Soldiers, Netherlands

Special Award for the project with the best business potential
Moogo.com, Ideakone Ltd, FI

Special Jury Mention for a game with a high level of interactive storytelling
The Adventures of Tinger, David Scharf, GER

More on the Europrix Festival in later blogs.

Blog Posting Number: 1398

Tags: multimedia

BPN 1397 Dutch government: new approach to copyright on internet

The Dutch government is seeking a new approach to copyright on internet. Two main measures are forthcoming: abolishing a surcharge on physical media and a ban on downloading content from an illegal source. Other measures are a better supervision of collecting societies and an improvement in the position of authors and artists. The measures are a reaction to the recommendations of parliamentary working party on copyright.

The government has concluded that the surcharge on physical media or the so called levy for the home copy has grown out of fashion due to the memory expansion of computers. This coupled to the download capacity of internet, it is more proper to download content than to buy an information carrier. It hardly does matter where and when a movie is viewed, music is listened to and games are played.

So paying for making a copy of a protected work should be organised differently. In fact it is better to organise this through the market parties such as the copyright owners, consumer organisations, entertainment industry and internet providers. They can best develop business models which are closer to the consumers and copyright owners such as monthly subscriptions for listening to music. The government is willing to support this trend in lieu for a ban on illegal activities for enrichment. In this way the government sees an opportunity to establish a market in which consumer buy content in a legal way and copyright holders are insured of revenues. This will imply that not only in the case of illegal uploading of protected content action can be taken, but also in the case of downloading from an evidently illegal source. The government will take out three years in order to work out the legal measures. The Dutch government makes clear that the ban on downloading is not to hassle individual internet users, but to ban activities of commercial parties.

The Dutch government will come with a bill to improve the contractual position of authors and performing artists. The supervision of collecting societies will be strengthened on good governance, financial management, investment policy and renumeration.

The collecting societies have been under fire recently as they have suggested surcharges on many items. The collecting society for physical media had suggested a levy on MP3. The collecting society on music copyrights had suggested unreasonable tariffs for using music on private sites such as blogs. A wave of indignation gathered strength and in hardly two weeks time the collecting society BUMA/STEMRA retracted the proposal for private sites.

Blog Posting Number: 1397

Tags: copyright, collecting societies

BPN 1396 E-readers in the pipeline

In the past weeks e-readers have been at the center of attention. Amazon.com has gone international with the sales of its e-reader, at last. And Barnes & Noble has introduced its e-reader with two screens. But now announcements are coming from different nooks (!): tire manufacturer Bridgestone, hardware/software manufacturer Creative Labs and consumer electronics manufacturer LG. In the meantime, Apple is still quiet about its iBook or iTablet.

Yesterday at the first Grand Prix Formula 1 race in Abu Dabhi the name of Bridgestone as tire preferred manufacturer was all over the dazzling race circuit. But Bridgestone will stop with Formula 1 as it is changing its business direction. Part of this change was announced as Bridgestone is working on an e-reader with colour screen. The e-reader will have a 13,1 inch touch screen with 4096 colours grades and have a refreshing time of 0,8 seconds (as opposed to 15 seconds with E-Ink screens). Not only the screen, but also the substrate will be made of flexible material. There is no date of issue nor a set price or the names of any e-reader developers.

Also hopping on the bandwagon of e-readers is Creative Labs, the hardware/software manufacturer for music and graphics The company has shown a working model of its first e-book reader, tentatively named the MediaBook. The device reportedly has a touch screen, text-to-speech function, and an SD memory card slot. It will run on Creative's Zii System-On-Chip technology and will be Internet-enabled. It will run videos, pictures, text, and services in one device. Creative is talking to 10 international and local publishers to provide content for the MediaBook, with fiction, newspaper, magazines, education materials, and textbooks. No word on pricing and availability.

Another development has been shown by consumer electronics manufacturer LG. They have provided the e-reader with solar cells. Take your e-reader in the sun for four or five hours and you extend the battery life with one day. Again no word on pricing and availability.

And so far no word about the iBook or iTablet of Apple. It is said that Apple has an e-reader in the pipeline, but the crucial element of the e-reader is the colour screen. Given the announcement of Bridgestone the colour screen should not be too far off nor the iBook or the iTablet.

But with the appearance of colour screens and high refreshment rates, it also means that the function of the e-reader will be widened. A colour coffee table book can be published for the e-reader. But with the fast refreshing rate also colour video clips can be shown. And will a book than still be a book or a newspaper a newspaper.? Or will we just have an all in one tablet for games, movies, books and newspaper?

Blog Posting Number: 1396

Tags: e-books, e-readers

BPN 1395 Another day in the history of internet?

By lack of a proper telecom history, October 29 has been claimed to be a historic milestone day in Internet. On October 29, 1969 the now 75 years old computer scientist Leonard Kleinrock is said to have sent his first e-mail between the UCLA computer and the computer of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) of Stanford University in Menlo Park. The statement in many a press article today – even in a Dutch ministerial communication – is rather presumptuous; it creates more history than internet proper deserves.

What did Leonard Kleinrock do? In 1969, the US Defence department started up ARPANET. It was during the cold war and the Arpanet was intended to continue working as network, even if the network in one part of the country had been bombed out. Thus far computers had been linked up sequentially and if the defence computers in Washington, DC had been hit, the whole network would be out of order. So packet switched networks were developed. In these networks messages were put in packages with a destination address and the packages could take many routes in order to reach its destination. So when Washington had been bombed out, messages from New York could take another route to Los Angeles. Arpanet became the world's first packet switched computer network. In Arpanet the defence department , universities and consultancies worked together in the development. On October 29 communication between the nodes at Kleinrock's lab at UCLA and the lab of Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse, at SRI was established. So from that day onwards Mr Kleinrock could send files, no e-mails, to Douglas Engelbart and vice versa. On December 5, 1969 the network was expanded to the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Utah.

Did Kleinrock send an e-mail? No. He sent a computer file. When more people started to use the network they had to get a mailbox on one of the computers, which required an address consisting of a name and a computer name. Proper switches had to be designed. This resulted in the present e-mail address of a name, the @ sign and the computer name. This solution was designed by Roy Tomlinson in 1971. Asked what his first message was, he did not know, but supposed that it was the Gettysburg address, written in capitals.

Was this the start of internet? No. It was the start of Arpa network and Arpanet was at that time a packet switched network of two computers, which grew into an international network and for which the X25 protocol was developed. Arpanet only became internet-like when in 1982 the TCP/IP protocol was defined and when Vincent Cerf started to use the name internet.

Internet proper only started when in 1989 the later Sir Timothy Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web (www), a hypertext system. In this system users could put documents on the net and link them to each other without a central administration. One year later the first web browser was published, the first web server installed and web editor introduced. In the same year Sir Timothy Berners-Lee built a website on a Next computer. That development has grown into internet proper. In 1995 there were 16 million users worldwide; at the end of 2008 there were 1.6 billion users. It is only internet when www is stamped on it.

Blog Posting Number: 1395

Tags: internet, www, web