Europrix TTA 2007 nominations

The nominations of the EUROPRIX Top Talent Award have been published. The list and screen shots are available online. As a juror I can now talk freely about the nominations (but I can not say anything about the winners). Of course anyone can go through the list for him/herself and look at the entries and links, but I just show my personal preferences.

In the category Mobile Contents is the most hilarious entry CHEFi Interactive Cooking Guide from Israel, produced by Igor Ginzburg of the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design. I should perhaps be more precise. The promotion movie is most hilarious. The project is very practical. The entry is about a mobile cooking assistant. No screens in the kitchen as even kitchen builders once would you like to believe. Just a simple mobile. Dowload the recipe and you can start with the spaghetti. The project took the fancy of Reuters for a report. But have a look at the promotion movie under the Reuters one. It is a riot. Besides this practical solution for cooking, Igor Ginzburg knows how to sell his project. He will go a long way in the interactive marketing world.

In the category Interactive Computer Graphics the entry Mijn naam is Haas from my home country the Netherlands produced by Sanneke Prins from the Utrecht School of the Arts has been chosen. It is a beautiful DVD-ROM production for young children. It combines storytelling and nice graphics. Besides it is an aid for teaching languages regardless the specific language.

In the category Interactive Installations and Interactive TV there was an intriguing entry: Performative Ecologies from the UK by Ruairi Glynn, Bartlett School of Architecture. On the site it says: 'Performative Ecologies' examines the potential of responsive environments to engage in gestural and performative forms of non-verbal communication and conversation. To me it was the installation has charm by its intelligence and capacity to learn.

In the category Content Tools and Interface Design the entry Strip Mine from Slovenia by Andraž Tori, RTV Slovenia was surprising. The project follows the trend in broadcast archiving to cut video up in small independent parts (mico-chunking). A photograph, the digital text of the item and the link to the video are presented. The text is automatically linked to items in Wikipedia and bloggers are alerted by the Slovanian broadcast to the item; they can quote the right text of the item in their postings. (I guess they should have another name. I know what a strip mine is in mining. But I guess the entry will be searched by the wrong people; yes a dirty mind is a joy for ever!).

In the category Digital Video and Animations the entry Life-Line from Hungary by Tomek Ducki from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design is very impressive. It is not online yet, but it should be published on YouTube. It is really worthwhile.

The winners in the categories and the overall TTA winner will be presented with the awards in Graz (Austria) on November 24, 2007.

Tulse Luper Journey to end today
Last year The game Tulse Luper Journey won the Europrix Top Talent Award 2006 in the category of Games. It is part of Peter Greenaway’s multi-platform project: The Tulse Luper Suitcases. Tulse Luper is the lead character in an ambitious series of projects initiated by film director Peter Greenaway. So far, the project includes three feature films, a series of DVD’s, travelling exhibitions, books, publications and this online game produced by the Dutch company Submarine. The online game finishes today. For many a player or researcher it will mean that they do not know what to do with their time. As one of the participants Hikari expresses this on the forum: “So uh... what happens after the contest is over?”

Blog Posting Number: 895

Tags: competitions

Culture of the Information Age (6)

Art composition basics in media design studies

Present at the conference was also Dalia Matijkiene (see the lady left on the photograph), a lecturer at Vilnius College of Construction and Design Interactive Design Department. We had met before in Tampere in 2005 during the VociNet workshop. Dalia had made a profound study on the art composition basics in media design studies. From her study she draws the following conclusions:

1. Analysis and summary of publications on art composition theory based on tradition of Modernism permits to distinguish following principles: integrity, expression, organity, structure, style, rhythm, proportion, symmetry. Discussing various principles of composition authors, often from their subjective experience, interpret and group them in totally unrestricted ways. Thus becomes blurred the very system of composition principles in educational discipline “Fundamentals of Art Composition”

2. New tendency emerges in the post-modern culture: the search for harmony and unity that incorporates artistic elements of classical and ancient cultures as the basic purpose of human existence and creativity. This creates premises to combine into integral system various principles of art composition developed by modernists and construct a new model of art education on the basis of this system.

3. The essence of the presented model is harmony of all principles of art composition. The harmony is ruled by two laws: integrity (unity of idea and form, parts and totality) and expression. These main laws are concretized by different principles: unity is characterized by organism, structure, and style; expression – by symmetry, proportion and rhythm.

4. In composition these principles and laws interconnect and act as a unity, thus the chart of this model relates with the emphasis on the center and even distribution around this center. The chart forms a six-angled star – the universal symbol of all cultures in the world, which means the essence of creative work. At the some time this form and it’s development reflects the structure of media products/art such like internet, interface, interactive structure of games etc. and their features – periodic, multi-linear, pointed to the center (user/consumer), determinant consistency.

Besides conclusions, Dalia showed the Unity of Composition Principles Chart and a series of drawings illustrating the principles of design: style, rhythm, organism, symmetry, structure, proportion. These principles shape the idea of thedesign. Her presentation and some 30 drawings will be published in the December issue of FreesideEurope.

Blog Posting Number: 894

Tags: media design

Culture of the Information Age (5)

Preservation of net art

How do you preserve internet art? That was the question which Anne Laforet (photograph from Flickr) posed in her presentation. For her Ph.D. she is researching the models of preservation for net art in museums. Of course the first question is: what is Internet Art? This looks like a simple question, but it is hard to answer. The simplest answer could be: art within and for the Internet. But that is just the problem. The real time presentation is hard to repeat after a while. Besides defining net art, it is difficult to exhibit and preserve it.

Museums have been confronted to these difficulties and have to devise new strategies to face these. That is one of the reasons why museums or galleries have not bought any net art. For example the Tate Gallery in London exhibits net art works it commissioned but has not any works acquired so far.

Anne Laforet looked at models which are emerging to deal with the aspects of preservation and made an inventory. She could point to three models: Variable Media for museums, initiatives in web archiving, archives of institutions dedicated to new media art. She also developed her own model for which she uses the metaphor of an archaeological museum.

1. Within the museum context, Jon Ippolito, an artist and a curator at the
Guggenheim Museum, came up with an original approach, Variable Media, which perceives the artwork outside of its medium, so that it can evolve, be re-created, for instance when its original medium becomes obsolete. Every art work is considered individually, more as a score than a finite, unchanging object. The variable media approach is not focused only on net art, but also deals with every contemporary art form, that puts an emphasis on process rather than on the object, such as conceptual art, land art, minimal art, installations and performance.

2. Archiving the Avant-Garde, subtitled Documenting and Preserving Digital / Variable Media Art, is an initiative from the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. Associated with Variable Media and other structures, Archiving the Avant-Garde develops, and tests, models for notation, cataloguing, accession, and emulation within the museum environment.

3. To deal with the challenge of preservation, some institutions focus on documentation strategies. Such an institution is V2_, not a museum per se, but a centre devoted to unstable media art based in Rotterdam. The goal of the V2_ archive is to document the artworks and projects presented or produced at V2.

As a fourth model Anne Laforet proposes and hybrid model using the metaphor of an archaeological museum. Archeology proceeds by fragments, assembling objects of different status and in different states which makes sense when put together. It knows how to deal with voids, gaps, missing parts, and through a re-contextualization, how to propose a plausible state of what the original situation could be, while maintaining open alternative hypotheses. The status of what is displayed and shown is significantly different in an archaeological museum compared to an art museum: visitors are aware that what they are seeing and experiencing as reconstructed; they do not expect to see an object that is identical to what it was when it was made. The status of the artwork recreated through the combination of museum and archaeological methods is changing or, at least, is challenged and interrogated. This model deals with net art works and their context.

Het present conclusion is: the first three models are being tested but the fourth is not implemented yet. Such a project could take the form of a partnership of organizations with different scopes, methods and goals. The resulting institute would become a living archive, a research space, with fragments of artworks which could be updated and re-activated in multiple ways.

The full text of this and the other presentations will be published in the December and March issue of FreesideEurope.

Blog Posting Number: 893

Tags: net art, preservation

Culture of the Information Age (extra)

Thursday night the conference was closed with a dinner and a concert. The organ concert was given in the Lutheran church of Siofok. This church is rather new and has been designed by the Hungarian architect Imre Makovecz. The architect mixes religious symbolism with old folk art as can be seen from the outside by daylight and from the inside. Inside this church you can see a turned over ship, a symbolism in relationship with the Balaton Lake; but you vcan also see the symbol of the hat of the early inhabitants of Hungary. Inside the church everything is from wood, donated by Fins. The vicar of the church explained the meaning of all the symbols such as the eagle entrance and the Jacob's ladder.














The next morning part of the group had to catch the plane from Budapest airport. So we got up early not to get caught by the traffic jams in Budapest. When the travellers has been delivered at the airport by the coach, the rest went into Budapest for a quick tour. We were the first vistors at the cittadel with a great view on the river Danube.








Then we went to the Buda side of the city and had a view on the National Library on the Pest side (see picture left). We also passed the National Parliament and ended the tour at the national square near the Zoo.

Culture of the Information Age (4)

Narrowing the Gap on the Net in Publishing

The second day of the conference Culture of the Information Age, opened with a presentation by Péter J. Sós, a Hungarian communications expert and lecturer in tourism, entitled Narrowing the Gap between the Private and Professional Publishing on the Net. Péter started out with the obvious statement that life has changed due to technology, economically and due to a new infrastructure. People have a lot of technology around: CD-ROM and DVD, digital cameras, even in the mobile phones, digital sound recording, mp3 and USB and FireWire plug-ins (everything to everything). We have gotten also cheaper tools accessible for many people. In the infrastructure there are many new opportunities: blog space and video sharing service for free; cheap on-line storage capacity (or for free); cheap web site builder software; easy-to-use picture and video editing software (e.g. PhotoShop, etc.). Today the creator can publish immediately and if the content is “on”, it will always remain available.

These possibilities offer the chance for everybody to express himself/herself. This fulfils the ancient urge of mankind to create and to disseminate – just as in the “good old times”. It is no more than a new dawn of the Folk Art. The urge is the old one, just the tools are new: story telling on-line, fine art and music with cameras, picture and music software. The old Folk Art was performed to the audience, usually the local community. The New Folk Art is performed to the Net Communities across the borders and time zones. In both cases you will get instant feed-back.

The New Folk Art is visible on the fan sites of popular novels, movies, etc., usually containing creative variations, new “parts”, fantasy-games, drawings, music. But there are also new groups like sub cultural virtual communities, but also the new communications industry with tourism compilations of state and regional promotion. An absolute new group is the group of people creating PowerPoint slide shows by photoshopping photographs of fine arts, thematic compilations (from cars to hard porn) and interesting and weird things. (In the picture Hungarian politicians have been photoshopped). But nobody of the viewers knows if the author was amateur or professional. There is not a clear line between personal and professional postings. In Hungary Mr. Gyurcsany used the blog as a political promotional tool; he hijacked the news of the first the first bird flu in Hungary before Hungarian television was able to check and broadcast it.

But there is nobody talks about the responsibility of the blogger. Today well known bloggers have big audiences as if they were a journalists. But the responsibility of the journalist is depending of the general media culture of his country. On the other hand I the bloggers’ job is subjective. Question is of course whether readers know that. Another question is copyright. But nobody knows, which content is copyrighted and which is not. An author can not follow the spread of his/her content. So there is no author, no risk, no responsibility
Also the private rights are easy to hurt. Everybody can upload false or stolen documents, pictures, videos, etc.; and this is done. Once false content is on the Net, it can not remove it any more.

But in the public space there are also problems such as cross-border racism, which cannot be stopped or the political offences. In Hungary, for example it is forbidden to publish opinion surveys eight days prior to voting. But as a private individual you can ask the information and you will get it even as an e-mail, ready to be sent around as a chain mail. In Hungary there is also an advertising stop 24 hours prior to voting. But you still can receive mails and other information on-line, and the servers abroad can provide you with actual political content

Péter J. Sós finished up his presentation with a warning: if you will receive a chain mail message or see “amateur” or “private” pictures or videos, think that it is nothing else, but a fresh piece of the New Folk Art Worldwide.

Péter’s cautionary talk was in my opinion right on a lot of point. Copying copyrighted information to other places on the net, basically hijacking postings, is happening. Recently I was alerted that one of my postings was hijacked, published on another blog and provided with ad random links which led to mature adult sites. I am not happy with such a hijack, but what can you do. But I thought that Péter was also a little too bleak in his presentation. He stressed for example the fact that the reliability of bloggers can not be tested. I disagree with that as a professional blogger can be confirmed for his reliability by co-bloggers.

Blog Posting Number: 892

Tagging: blogging, photoshopping

Culture of the Information Age (3)

Tagging as empowerment

The first day started out with a crash course blogging for two students (see photograph; two girls left) of communication sciences. They created an account with Blogger and started blogging. In the first days they put seven postings to the web. They had problems with uploading a series of pictures, a weak point of Blogger.

One of the presentations was made by Peter Mechant (see photograph), a Belgian researcher at the Media & ICT research group of the University of Gent. He is interested in enhancing or enriching participation in culture through the use of social software features. He started out analyzing Web 2.0 and social software. Web 2.0 consists of three characteristics: sociological, technological and economical. On the sociological side Web 2.0 a word like empowerment is used. Ajax, ruby on rails, lightweight programming models. Syndication is part of the technological characteristic. And the economic aspect looks at user generated content and especially long tail as an economic model. Peter Mechant rather uses the term social software. He put ten definitions to the audience. One of the ten definitions is from S. Butterfield, who defines social software as software that people use to interact with other people, employing a combination of the following five devices: 1. identy; 2. presence; 3. relationships; 4. conversations; 5. groups. Peter Mechand’s own definition is: software that enables communication through digital technologies during which people connect, converse, collaborate, manage information and/or form online networks in a social, bottom-up fashion. Social software has the following characteristics:
- is mediated through digital technology;
- enables communication;
- helps people reach certain goals – it enables content (management), communication, collaboration and community (forming);
- works bottom up;
- is based on principles of social networking and user participation.

He makes it concrete by asking the question, whether you as a jazz fan would like to have a virtual arts centre of the future, where you could:
- listen to the concerts;
- watch video fragments;
- be informed about the latest jazz news;
- keep your own calendar;
- share information with other jazz fans;
- create your own webpage and content repository;
- walk around in a 3D environment, …

The Finnish researcher Ulla-Maaria Mutanen describes the relation between visitor and arts centre:
- reactive consumption: visitor consumes passively what the museum offers, consumption ‘in situ’;
- proactive consumption: visitor consumes actively, he/she consumes information before visiting the arts centre (for example online search for information);
- private production: visitor creates something to reflect on what he/she sees;
- public production: visitor creates something to reflect on what he/she sees and shares it with others.

He has applied the concept to the website of the arts centre Vooruit in Ghent. He and the research group looked at the website and changed this from a static website to a virtual community. Much attention was paid to tagging as tagging is a social and personal act. Tagging is in fact a way of empowerment.

Blog Posting Number: 891

Tags: tagging

Culture of the Information Age (extra)

The conference started today. It is a small group of scientists (see photograph left). The conference has been organised by Györgyi Rétfalvi (see photograph left), a communication specialist at Kodolányi János University College; in the back Milverton Wallace, the chairman of the conference.



Around the conference hall there are many statues at which force you to smile.



The harbour and the lakeside of the Balaton lake.



Jurate Vazgauskaite from Lithania closed the first conference day with her digital installation. She showed an ad random image and sound generator.



In the evening we went to a high point in the area of the Balaton lake (photograph left). After the climb we were treated to wine tasting at the cellar at the Chateau St. Christophe winery, set up by two brothers. During the wine tasting we were offerd a plateau with Hungarian cheese and crudities.

Culture of the Information Age (2)

Arts and sociology

At Budapest airport I was picked up by a hostess of the Kodolanyi Janos University College. We arrived late at Siófok, a lakeside town at the Balaton lake. As the season has passed it is very quiet in town; the railway station is deserted. Today I hope to have a glance of the lake.

The conference will start today. I have been thinking about the title of the conference and looked at the presentations to be given. There are roughly two streams. In one stream culture is narrowed down to art in the information age; this gives way to presentations about contemporary art, an exposition on art education and media design studies, but also to preservation of net art. There will even be a presentation on a digital installation. On the other there is the sociological stream about mass media, culture 2.0, private and professional publishing and even e-commerce.

I have chosen for the more sociological stream in my presentation, stressing the change in the use of technology, looking at the use of the computer and the influence of computing. In 1970 I returned from the USA to the Netherlands to start a career in publishing. I got a job with a publishing company which was just setting up a new general encyclopaedia. The project remotely introduced me to the computer, which was hidden in a locked room and closely guarded by a small group of people. In the next ten years I remained in the encyclopaedia domain and saw computing as a production improvement and perhaps as a new way of publishing. By the end of the decade there were roughly 100 people in the Netherlands who could spell the word online and most of them had a library or a publishing background. In 1980 I moved into digital media setting up a studio which produced videotext pages. Without knowing, we were busy with e-commerce, producing pages with advertisements and job vacancies.

But the culture started to change when by 1990 internet was transferred from the academic realm to the business and consumer environments. The personal computer became a household product, and e-mail was the main trigger. From 2004 internet started to change from a social point of view. For the first time a link was laid between culture and technology with Web 2.0. The French sociologist Dominique Wolton had already remarked that the greatest renewal of digital media was the two-way communication which worked from a clear cultural identity. “Communication is not only a technical phenomenon”, he said, “it is an anthropological phenomenon. Communication is more than an exchange of messages. It is also the ability to listen to and understand the sender of the message. No message makes any sense in itself, but the sense comes only within a context, a cultural identity within which the message can be understood.” (NRC Handelsblad, Nov. 20, 1998). (This quote I have borrowed from an article by my business partner Hans Sleurink on open source)

Information changed from one way information from a sender to a receiver to e-content: “E-Content is digital information delivered over network-based electronic devices, i.e. symbols that can be utilised and interpreted by human actors during communication processes, which allow them to share visions and influence each other’s knowledge, attitudes or behaviour. E-Content allows for user involvement and may change dynamically according to the user’s behaviour. It is a subcategory both of digital and electronic content, marked by the involvement of a network, which leads to a constant renewal of content (contrary to the fixed set of content stored on a carrier such as a CD-ROM, or the content broad-cast via TV and Radio). This constant renewal of content in tie with its dynamic change allows for a qualitative difference, thus making it E-Content.” (Bruck, Peter A. et al. (2005), E-Content: Technologies and Perspectives for the European Market. Berlin, New York, pg. 8)

And not only internet started to change, but professional publishing and broadcasting in general started to change. Private publishing, called fancy publishing up to that time, became en vogue with user generated content such as blogs, Flickr, YouTube and social networks such as Linkedin, MySpace, Facebook started to show up as well as mobile social services like Twitter and Jaiku. Internet has penetrated our life deep into our nerves.

It looks like it will be an challenging day intellectually. Yet I hope to catch a glimpse of the Balaton lake.

Two students have set up a blog on the conference. It will report on the lectures and have photographs of the sessions and event.

Blog Posting Number: 890

Tags: art, sociology

Tags: journalism, media, culture

Culture of the Information Age (1)

The luggage is standing ready in the hall. I still have to get mentally ready for the trip to Hungary. I have been invited to the conference Culture of the Information Age at the Kodolányi János University College at Siófok. From Google Earth I learned that this college is at the Balaton Lake, outside Budapest.











It will be my second time in Hungary. In 2000 I was in Budapest for a weekend workshop. It was a nice stay and I had some time to look around the city. I went to the top of Pest with the beautiful church and I saw the parliament buildings along the Danube. Later in the week I will go to Budapest and stay there till Sunday morning, when I will return home.

The conference is going to be interesting. It is about the culture of the information age. So there are presentations about contemporary art, mass media, preservation of video art and narrowing the gap between private and professional publishing. I have been asked to give a presentation about blogging as a journalistic tool. The lecture will give me plenty of opportunity to go from culture in the information age to journalism and from there to blogging.

I will meet there Györgyi Rétfalvi, who lectures at the university. I will also meet my old friend Milverton Wallace, whom I known a long time for the Netmedia Awards and later on the annual conferences on the Media and the Internet, Europe's premier Internet conference for journalists and media managers (see http://www.net-media.co.uk/).

The program looks like this:
Wednesday 10 October
8.30 Breakfast (Sárkánykert Restaurant)
9.30 – 10.00 Dr. h. c. Péter Szabó Ph.D Professor, Head of Department, Rector
Official Opening of Conference
Morning Session 10.00 – 11.50
Chairman of sessions: Milverton Wallace
10.00 – 10.30 Vladimir Matijko: Contemporary Art: What’s Next?
10.30 – 11.00 Matviychuk A.V.: Mass-media in the Context of the Problem of
Ecological Transformations of Thinking
11.00 – 11.20 Coffee Break
11.20 – 11.50 Dalia Matijkiené: Art Composition Basics in Media Design Studies
12.00 – 13.30 Lunch (Sárkánykert Restaurant)
Afternoon Session 13.30 – 16.00
13.30 – 14.00 Peter Mechant: Culture2.0 Making Human Cultures, Past and Present,
Accessible Online
14.00 – 14.30 Györgyi Rétfalvi: Gloomy Sunday: Life of a Cultural Product in the
Analog and in the Digital Age
14.30 – 14.50 Coffee Break
14.50 – 15.20 Anne Laforet: Models of Preservation for Net Art in Museums
15.30 – 16.00 Jurate Vazgauskaite: Presentation of her Digital Installation
18.00 – 21.00 Dinner and wine tasting outside Siófok (Departure by bus)
Szt. Kristóf Cellar H-8621 Zamárdi

Thursday 11 October
8.30 Breakfast (Sárkánykert Restaurant)
Morning Session 9.30 - 12.00
9.30 – 10.00 Péter J. Sós: Problems in Consequence of the Narrowing the Gap
Between the Private and Professional Publishing on the Net
10.00 – 10.30 Jak Boumans: Blogging as a Journalistic Tool
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee Break
11.00 – 11.30 Maryana Malchik: Problems of Electronic Commerce in Ukraine
11.30 – 12.00 Milverton Wallace: Summarizing the Results of Culture of the
Information Age Conference
12.00 – 13.30 Lunch (Sárkánykert Restaurant)
13.30 – 15.30 Editorial Board meeting of FreesideEurope (Participants in alphabetical
order: Jak Boumans, Krisztina Kodó, Andrey Matviychuk, Lila Marie
Moberg, Levente Olvasó, Györgyi Rétfalvi, Milverton Wallace and those
interested)
18.00 – 19.30 Dinner (Sárkánykert Restaurant)
20.00 – 21.30 Church Organ Concert (Performed by: Miklós Teleki organist)
Makovetz Church H-8600 Siófok Fő street 220.

Blog Posting Number: 889

Tags: journalism, media, culture

E-Book article in Croatian paper

During the first week of September I was in Croatia for the World Summit Award Grand Jury 2007. After the jury work there was a e-Content Summit, at which event many members of the press were present. I got to talk to Vesna Lausic, a journalist for the Slobodna Dalmacija in Zagreb. She wrote an article about the iLiad for the Sunday newspaper of September 16, 2007.

Mindtrek 2007 (7)

Disruptive media in a convergent market

This is a nice title to keep people in suspense. The element innovation is in it as well the consolidation of the present market. Yet the presentation was about TV and print, or to be more specific about TV and newspapers and the presenter was Mr Jan Geissler, a researcher with Vodafone.

Mr Geissler started out with a short presentation on research at Vodafone. Media is the largest section of the research department in Vodafone. The research method Vodafone uses is to start a research project as a submarine; it will only surface when there are results to show. Mr Geissler has been involved in the project Papyrus, a project on electronic newspapers and DVB-H. It was the first time I heard about the project.

He started out giving statistics about the average daily media consumption in Germany:
- Internet: 26 minutes;
- Magazines and books: 12 minutes;
- Newspapers: 24 minutes;
- Television: 230 minutes.
And he sketched the average family situation in Germany. The family Miller pays 4-8 euro rent for a 3,5 rooms of 89 meters in a house with multiple parties. The family has a Grundig TV set, cable television and VHS.

This is the background against which the project Papyrus is set and researching DVB-H and newspapers. DVB-H is the standard for mobile interactive broadcast. In 2004 the first trial was held in Berlin with 200 users. In the meantime mobile broadcast is being deployed in Italy. Of course the DVB-H consortium would like to see the use of mobile interactive broadcast for the Olympic Games in China. But Vodafone saw also other applications for DVB-H as carrier for electronic newspapers.

The newspaper business is declining rapidly. It still has a 46 billion euro turn-over worldwide. The newspaper business now invests in online editions and social media and experiments with digipapers like mobile, e-readers and hopes for electronic tabloid newspapers. The advantages are seen as a lightweight newspaper, updates with wifi, to be printed anywhere with dynamic, customised content and advertisements.

Vodafone did not choose for the e-readers like iLiad and STAReBOOK as Les Echos did. It started working together with Benq, a joint venture of Siemens, in developing the electronic tabloid newspaper. But Benq sunk and so did that part of the project. The consortium, in which Bertelsmann participates, is now investigating other digital paper producers like Plastic Logic.

The presentation did throw up observations and questions. Interesting is the observation that broadsheet are getting smaller to the size of tabloids and perhaps in the future to magazine size, while the electronic newspapers are getting larger, from small telephone screen SMS like messages to A5 e-readers like the iLiad and STAReBOOK with a view on an electronic tabloid or even broadsheet.

Another question is: why should the digipaper succeed. Although presently advertisement revenues still go to television, internet takes more annually.

But the real question is of course whether the generation under 35 years of age still need a newspaper, regardless whether it is printed or a digipaper. A generation which has been fed with Google News, why should they buy an electric tabloid?

Blog Posting Number: 888

Tags: newspapers, e-reader, digipaper

Mindtrek 2007 (6)

Lifelong wiki

On Friday morning the Dutch delegation paid a visit to the Tampere School of Media and Arts, a department of the Tampere University of Applied Sciences, where Cai Melakoski was the host. Jarmo Viteli of the Hypermedia Lab paid also a visit and explained how his institute was working. In fact you could only start working in the institute by bringing along a grant from an institute or a company. If the subject is interesting another grant can be requested for further study. Eventually the researcher can end up with a teaching assignment. Many subjects are being covered. On Thursday the Dutch delegation had heard about a study into game development. At the Hypermedia Lab research is performed into the methods of concepting. By describing the methods the researchers and the sponsors of the study, among which is Nokia, the researcher hope to be able to produce a description of effective methods and hope to produce a toolbox for concepting or ideation as the researchers call the first phase of developing a game.

During his talk Jarmo mentioned some research items and hit upon a lifelong wiki or a personal wiki. This created some rumour. He indicated that this could be an item for further research. When people start a wiki early in their life, they can create a personal wiki about their life. Later on they can store their wiki on their stick and present it to a candidate employer.

The idea is interesting. Presently there are already books in which parents can describe the first days of their kids, put in the photographs of the first steps of their child. But with digital media it can be even more interesting with movies and sound. When the kids are in primary school they can keep their own log and integrate the report cards from school. When they are in high school they can integrate their school assignments and reports and the collection they have built up of stamps or songs. But they can also integrate the messages they send to Facebook, Twitter or Jaiku. Of course also the official documents can be integrated, but not be tampered with.

Much of this kind of software is already created by social sites like MySpace and Facebook, but the difference is now that the software stays in the private realm. It will need a search engine, not just text, but preferably also of image searching. Besides this type of software one would need extracting software to create a public file for getting admission to a university or for preparing a job interview. This file could be sent to a potential employer. Or one could take a USB stick along. The USB sticks will have to have a capacity beyond the present 2GB. In a jesting mood, I have suggested that my grandsons of 2 and 4 years would need a USB stick of a Terabyte by the time that they reach the age of 18 years.

I wonder what will happen to the stick at the end of a person’s life. Will the stick be burnt during the cremation like the horse was buried in the grave of a general? Or will the stick be archived in the national archive?

Blog Posting Number: 887

Tags: wikipedia

Mindtrek 2007 (extra)

Thursday evening after the conference, a reception was held in the old town hall. It is an old building in the center of Tampere. It is famous as from its balcony the voting rights for women were confirmed in 1905 and one year later the right for women to be chosen to the contitutional bodies; with that decision Finland was the first European country not only to recognise the right to voting to women, but also the right to be elected to the constitutional bodies. The old town hall has a beautiful chandelier in the reception hall and it sports a nice collection of paintings.

After the reception at the old own hall the show Cause and Effect was on the programme. It is a one hour program by Chris Hales and Teijo Pellinen (first picture). The show starts with an ice hockey duel; the puck is pushed forward by the shouting of the audience.










Besides the intensity of sound as an interface, other interafces such as light and yellow gloves were demonstrated. An they worked.










At the end of the module with the yellow gloves, they were returned to the presenters by throwing them on the floor. The show ended with another ice hockey match. The score was 3 to 3, when the light bulb of the beamer died.










By Friday afternoon the Dutch delegation had to return to Helsinki Airport. The bus driever suggested to take a touristic route along lakes and the city of Hämeenlinna. It was a beautiful tour. The Dutch delegation split in two groups, flying with Finnair as well as with KLM. The Finland trip was over.











The photographs marked with the date in yellow have been taken by Cai Melakoski. The last picture was taken by myself.

Mindtrek 2007 (5)

The Finnish gaming industry

On Thursday morning there was a session especially for the Dutch delegation (see photograph by Cai Melakoski) on mobile games. The organisers of the trip of the Dutch delegation, Hans Sleurink of Media Update and myself, had requested this special session with the following brief: (a) overview of the state of art of the Finnish gaming industry; (3) a mobile game developer, which turned out to be Nokia; (3) mobile game development for education; the delegation got an encore with a presentation of mobile gaming education.

Mr KooPee Hiltunen started his presentation with a reference to a recent report about the Finnish gaming industry (please register to read the full report). Here is the summary:
From an industry of a few companies in the late 1990s, the industry has, since the mid 2000s, become an integral part of the Finnish content export industry. According to a study published by Neogames in 2006, the growth rate in 2004-2005 measured both by net sales and employment effect was 50%(Publication of the Finnish Gaming Industri, Finnish Game Companies 2006/Neogames). The growth rate for 2006-2007 is, based on this study with a smaller sampling (11 companies), estimated to be approximately 20% in both sectors.
In 2005, the annual net sales of the gaming industry were estimated to be approximately EUR 65 million and involved the employment of approximately 1,000 people. There is no aggregate figure for 2006 but simply in light of this study we have reason to claim that the above mentioned figures grew in 2006 and the growth seems to continue at approximately a 20% rate in 2007.
According to our estimate, the 2006 net sales of the Finnish gaming industry was EUR 70-80 million and involved the employment of 1,200-1,300 people. In a gaming industry culture export report compiled by Neogames for the ministry, the 2012 vision includes the following figures:
- Employment 2,500-3,500 people.
- According to our estimate, this is the structural employment of the gaming industry in Finland. In addition, the Finnish gaming industry is likely to employ approximately 1,000 people in international subcontracting companies. In addition, a considerable number of Finnish gaming industry professionals also work abroad.
- Net sales EUR 500-700 million of which 90% from abroad
- Net value of sales EUR 1.3-1.5 billion. The figure takes into consideration unit sales but not the indirect employment effect of the industry or the skirt industries.
- 50-60 gaming companies. The industry becomes centralised.
- Average company size approximately 50 people (now approximately 10 people).

In an earlier study, the strong development of the Finnish gaming industry was estimated to be based on four factors:
- technological and content know-how of the companies
- excellent price-quality ratio of gaming production
- delivery reliability
- international growth in the mobile entertainment sector.

In light of this study, the above mentioned issues have remained strong competitive factors.

The study also confirmed the finding that the dependency of the Finnish gaming industry on mobile operations is no longer true. For instance Max Payne (Remedy), FlatOut and FlatOut II (Bugbear) and Habbo Hotel (Sulake) prove that the front extends to PC and console games as well. This side also shows signs of new implementations in utilising digital distribution.

Mobile game operators are, however, still strongly represented and in the mobile sector in particular the technological lead gained in the late 1990s seems to be important especially as the number of mobile devices increases and, in order to be successful, a single game must be developed for several hundred different handsets both in the European and US markets.

An interesting growing trend is in handheld devices. Both PSP and to a wider extent DS seem to interest new players. It remains to be seen whether it is possible to build a solid business only on these devices.

So what are the game developers doing, Mr KooPee Hiltunen (see photograph) asked himself. Four years ago 75 percent of the game company employees – many former Nokia employees) - were in mobile games, using Finland with 5,3 million inhabitants as a testing ground stimulated by education and Nokia. But it is no longer mobile anymore. Mobile has become complex due to the fragmentation in handsets. Only big firms can handle the porting to this range of devices. Besides mobile gaming did not get the push from N-Gage as expected. The Nokia effect faded away. Mobile is no longer the entry platform; when needed, companies subcontract porting to big companies as they can build porting production streets for the diversity of mobile phones. Big companies of 160 employees are Digital Chocalate, owned by Trip Hawkins, or Mr Goodliving and Universum. The small companies do the concepting, while subcontracting the technical development.

There are many similarities between Finland and the Netherlands. Both countries have a relative small amount of in inhabitants with Finland 5,3 million people and the Netherlands with 17,2 million inhabitants. Both countries have a minority language. Both countries work cost efficient as the standard costs of living are high. Both markets are small and can be exploited as test markets; so companies have to go global immediately. The Finnish gaming industry is reliable as it is not overpromising or underdelivering.

Blog Posting Number: 886

Tags: games, game industry games, game industry

Mindtrek 2007 (4)

Politics and digital media

It is not often that delegates to a digital media conference are addressed by a leader of political party, which disagrees with the present copyright rules, is against DRM technologies and an elimination of blank media tax. In fact in Europe there is only one party with this profile and that is the Pirate Party in Sweden. The keynote address Copyright vs Civil Liberties was given by Rick Falkvinge (see photograph). The Pirate Party was founded in 2006, which was an election year in Sweden. The party came in the political scene with a bang: it entered the top ten parties in Sweden, but it did not get any seats in the constitutional bodies, as it did not have a four percent threshold. All in all the victory was sweet, but not good enough to participate in power dealing immediately.

The party is not a typical political party, which has opinions and convictions about everything. It is a political party based on intellectual property; as such it is unique in the world. The party is the result of a conflict and legal procedures over file sharing. This triggered a reaction with Rick Falkvinge and he founded a political party.

History always repeats itself. What is happening now with digital media is exactly the same as when the printing press arrived 400 years ago. The basic rules for access to knowledge and culture are changing, and the pillars of society are moving to reflect that. Today's politicians are too caught up in everyday squabbles to understand the sheer scale of what's happening right before their eyes. Yet copyright is founded on economic principles; it is commercial property. But with internet this is changing. Formerly theatre was in the public eye and people paid for that and copyright was paid to the author/publisher. But if we cannot download in private, it starts touching the field of civil liberties everywhere. The mail secret principle will go out of the window. Can you imagine that the post office has an opinion about the content of your letter; can you imagine that AT&T has an opinion about your telephone call? Society will have to choose to have privacy or copyright? If they choose privacy, out will go the whistleblowers and in will come the self censorship, which means loosing your identity. The real civil liberties will be touched.

The Pirate party has a policy on copyright, which can be summed up in four points:
- Copyright is commercial: The copyright monopoly must only cover commercial activities. Any noncommercial collection, use, derivation or distribution of culture and knowledge shall be explicitly encouraged. This means that file sharing and sampling are both set free.
- Reduced copyright term: The now commercial copyright monopoly must be drastically shortened, it is indefensible as is. No investors calculate their investments on a 100+ year lifespan of a book or movie. The party suggests five years from the time of publication.
- Ban on DRM technologies: Digital Restrictions Management is effectively corporations writing and arbitrarily enforcing their own copyright laws. The party has a parliament to write such laws, thank you very much.
- Elimination of blank media tax: To top it off, blank media is taxed in Sweden, and the taxes go to the record industry. This tax is indefensible.
Apart from copyright reform, the party is also calling for the complete abolition of the patent system, including software patents, and severely strengthened privacy safeguards. More information about these policies can be found on our web site.

Despite the fact that the party did not get any seats in the constitutional bodies, it is starting to share in the power. Other Swedish political parties are seeking advice from the Pirate Party and the party members are invited in Brussels. The party did not loose any of its ambitions. It wants to run two campaigns: the European Parliament campaign to be held in 2009 and the national parliament campaign to be held in 2010.And in both cases the party aims to capture seats.

You can view photos from the conference in the albums:
- MindTrek Conference 2007 photos by Kai Ansio MindTrek Conference 2007
- MindTrek Awards Party 2007 Photos by Kai Ansio Tampere Uni. Hypermedia Laboratory 15 yrs Party by Kai Ansio
- MindTrek Conference 2007 day 2 photos by Kai Ansio
If you want to tag and comment the photos and see photos uploaded by the conference, please visit group MindTrek Friends at www.facebook.com.

Blog Posting Number: 885

Tags: copyright

Pirate Party

Mindtrek 2007 (3)

Digital exhibitionism

Mindtrek has as theme: Back to the Future. As a start of the conference a concept video for a hypothetical product, called the Knowledge Navigator, was shown, which Apple Computer produced in 1987. Voice control was predominant in the video as well as an intelligent interface.

But the first presenter Teemu Kurppa did hardly go back in the future. He told about the company Jaiku; the name is a word combination between the Japanese poem form haiku and the Finnish word yukku?). I had not heard of the company yet, but I should have known as Tim O’Reilly said at the occasion of the launch of iPhone the memorable words: I love my iPhone, but bah, no Jaiku. So he was missing Jaiku badly; question is of course whether I would miss it.

I understood that Jaiku is a mobile social network. Or, as the founder of the Jaiku Jyri Engestrom, defines it as an object-oriented sociality. The service is about aggregating the personal textual, photographic and video activities and that of your friends on the web. Jaiku brings together streams of reactions and discussion and indicates locations, current calender data. The service entails web, chat, SMS/MMS, rich mobile content, mobile web and third party applications such as a gateway from and to a Blackberry.

Teemu Kurppa described the service as routing content such as text, photographs and videos or even better mobile story telling with shorter messages. Mobile is involving people in an event.

In the back of my mind a mental tickertape kept telling me Twitter, Twitter. Jaiku is a service like Twitter, but different. Twitter is more a social text service; Jaiku is a router and organiser of social events and mobile interaction.

Jaiku is a start-up which picked up see funding and has now 7 people working worldwide. It is basically burning venture capital money at present. A real business model is not present; it is important to grow as fast as possible internationally. Jaiku users can be found in the USA. There are presently 500 users online all the time with traffic of 20Mb per month.

I talked with some people of the Dutch delegation about the service. Would they use a service like that? What make people tick when they use such a service, which muy business partner Hans calls digital exhibitionism (but he is far over 35 years of age)? I can only see that I am not in the target group. Kids are messaging the whole day and telling what they do. I guess that they like to tell their peer group that they are still alive and kicking. But more companies have their angle in the pond: Yahoo groups, Hyves, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and now Jaiku. A lot of personal information can be gathered through these services. Some kids will be come quite unhappy about letting out personal information. Or they might just end up in a group which takes a direction they do not like. Recently I talked to a girl from Polish descent. She had joined the group I love Polish girls; the group tuned into a prostitutes’ bulletin board.

Blog Posting Number: 884

Tags: social network

Mindtrek 2007 (extra)

Mindtrek always has a fine social agenda. After the conference presntations it started with a reception in honour of the 15th anniversary of the Hypertext Media lab, where Jarmo Vittelli is active. Beside drinks ther was the inevitable professors band; this time without the singing saw












Also at the reception was Sohvo Sirkesalo (above), all dressed up for the award presentation at the gala. The gala was openend by the Mindtrek chairperson Jarmo Vittelli (below left) and and vice chairperson Irina Blomqvist (below right).










The winner of the Mindtrek Award of 2007 was Mindvision Oy. They took home a prize of 20.007 euro. After the awards ceremony the band played on in the seventies nightclub of the Scandic Rosendahl Hotel.

Mindtrek 2007 (2)

Up to Finland

Yesterday was full of suspense. Would the delegates to Mindtrek be in time on the plane to Helsinki and would the bus be in time to bring us to Tampere. In Helsinki it turned out that all the delegates were present. Some delegates had left the day before and spent a day in Helsinki. The bus was late; the driver looked in the wrong arrival hall. But by six o’clock we were on our way to Tampere; a trip of two hours.

During the trip the delegates presented themselves to each other. We have an interesting group of people. There is one entrepreneur and the rest comes from various levels in education.

Mindtrek is being held in hotel Scandic Rosendahl. This hotel is outside Tampere on a ridge near a lake. To the other side you can climb a stairway to a panorama tower; an exercise regularly done by the ice hockey club of Tampere. It is a hotel dating back to the seventies, patterns which still can be seen in the carpet on the floor. The hotel looks like a budget hotel with sauna and a swimming pool.

In the afternoon I had received an SMS from the cook of the hotel with the two menus:
M1: Lightly smoked salmon and creamed mushroom;
M2: Very fresh elk stake (hunting season started in the weekend) with dark mushroom sauce and chateau potatoes.
Drinks: 2 beer or wine.
After dinner: coffee and tea.
By 20:30h we had checked in and were ready for dinner. Cai (see picture below; Cai left)) spoke a word of welcome, also on behalf of his colleague Sohvi Sirkesalo (see photograph; in the middle). After dinner the delegates were welcomed to the afterparty of the Open Mind conference.
The first day of the trip went well with a little glitch of the bus driver.

Tomorrow morning the conference will start. A trainload of people will come from Helsinki and bebussd from th railway station to the hotel. At ten o'clock the conference will be openend by Jarmo Vitelli, the director of the Hypermedia Lab. We will start with three key-note speakers: Mark Ollila (Nokia), Jyri Engeström (Jaiku), Zak Greant (FOO associates) will speak on ”The age of literate machines – a visionary look at open source”

Blog Posting Number 883

Tags:

Mindtrek 2007 (1)

Mindtrek 2007

In my posting of yesterday I referred to my next trip. After Salzburg I will fly to Finland, where I will attend the annual conference Mindtrek. In fact, as business partner of Hans Sleurink of the news and information service Media Update I will accompany a delegation of Dutch educationalists to the conference.

In 2005 Hans and I organised a trip for educationalists and business people to Tampere. It was a great success as there were almost forty people in the delegation, thanks to a European grant for regional business development. This time the delegation is smaller as we do not have a grant; besides it is a week after PICNIC 07 in Amsterdam.

Today we travel to Tampere via Helsinki. There we will have a coach waiting for us to bring us to Tampere. We purposely did not fly on from Helsinki to Tampere, not for ecological reasons, but for social reasons. In a bus it is easier for people to introduce themselves and get to know each other. Once we have arrived at the Scandic Rosendahl Hotel just outside Tampere, where the Mindtrek Conference will be held, we will continue the introduction during the welcome dinner and bring in the Finnish hosts. My friend Cai has been appointed the chaperone of the Dutch delegation, but more Finnish friends will join us at the dinner.

The Mindtrek program looks very attractive. On Wednesday and Thursday they have interesting key-note speakers such as Mark Ollila of Nokia on games, Zak Greant on literate machines and Rick Falkvinge on copyright and society. After the key-note speeches the audience will break up for different tracks: Social Media, Open Source Business & Innovation, Games as Services, Ubimedia, Government, eGovernment – Virtually Yours. I guess that the ubimedia (love the term) and games and services will be the favourite tracks. On Thursday morning there will be a special session for the Dutch delegation. The subject will be mobile gaming; a state of art of the Finnish game industry will be presented, the state of art of mobile gaming and how Finnish multimedia school departments teach the subject. On Friday morning there will a session in the Tampere School of Art and Media. Cai will tell about the Finnish University system of colleges and university and will show the delegates the premises of TAMK, his school.

The delegates will have access to all social events. So they will be present at the Mindtrek award party, but also at the Tampere City reception. Besides there will be an interactive movie session Cause & Effect by Chris Hales; I am sure that this will be great entertainment.

Of course the question will be asked why we organise such a trip to Finland. Besides the effect that everything that comes from far tastes better, I had learned Mindtrek to be a very guiding conference in a country which has always been in the forefront of digital media and these days of course in the forefront of mobile media. The conference will now be held for the eleventh time. And to adstruct my position I would like to refer you to an overview of ten years Finnish digital media, written by my friend Tommi Pelkonen, who is these days working for Satama in the Netherlands.

By Friday night we will return to the Netherlands.

Blog Posting Number: 883

Tags: digital media

Digital paper seminar in Paris

Last night upon my return from Salzburg (the flight was okay; thank you) and before my flight to Tampere (Finland tomorrow, I found a message, in French, in my mailbox from Bruno Rives of Tebaldo. In the mail he announced the seventh edition of the Tebaldo Round table this time on Electronic Paper for communications, strategies and risks, to be held in Paris on 26 October, 2007.

This sounds interesting. After the introduction of two e-reader versions for the French financial newspaper Les Echos, it is interesting to see that a seminar with a wider scope than only Les Echos is devoted to the subject. During the seminar a presentation will be given about the place of the novel on an e-reader by an editor of the publishing house Flammarion. Bruno Rives himself will present the State of art and take the case of Les Echos to talk about economic models. Another speaker will talk about the place of the e-readers for the press projects and editors. A representative of Ganaxa will talk about the announced project in Japan and China. There will also be an introduction to the architectures, preparation and continuous production.

There will be more presentations on the use and experimentations in this field for the press, editors and libraries. There will be a presentation of the GeR2 e-reader of Ganaxa, digital paper as a large sheet, the development of digital paper and colours and the flexible digital paper from Samsung, Polymer Vision, Fujitsu and E-Ink.

It really looks like a very interesting seminar. But it is in France (I will have to travel again), it is in French (read French, but speak a little tourist French) and it will take two days of travelling. Yet I am very tempted to go.

For more information and the registration form:
http://www.tebaldo.com/seminaires.htm

Blog Posting Number: 882

Tags: digital paper, electronic book, e-readerdigital paper, electronic book, e-book, e-reader