BPN 1679: Mobile and video game John Lennon

I just picked up this news by Ralph Simon from the Facebook wire.

Dateline: Strawberry Fields, New York City
l. to r. Ralph Simon, Mobilium Global CEO, Yoko Ono & Niall Austin, CEO of Butterfly Games celebrating their just signed partnership to produce the first-ever mobile and video game featuring the work, graphics and music of John Lennon. The signing took place at Yoko's Manhattan home in The Dakota Building - John Lennon's piano can be seen in the background. This will mark the first time that any of The Beatles have signed a mobile games deal. "Let's keep that eternal John Lennon flame alive ... by bringing it to the modern generation of mobile "screenagers" and video gamers", said multi-dimensional artist, Yoko.

This is exciting news: the production of a mobile and  a video game featuring the work, graphics and music of John Lennon. The production will be in the hands of a very creative man and his company the Irishman Niall Austin. In the last edition of the World Summit Award Mobile he and his other company Omnimotion Technology was awarded for showing how gesture recognition and motion control technology works. This technology is working on apps that get children interested in sport and help stroke victims recover. It is great to see him accompagnied by Ralph Simon, member of the board of the World Summit.

 

 

 

March 1, 2014: Future Day

an initiative of  

Association of Professional Futurists

Cindy Frewen, Chair cfw(at)frewenarchitects(dot)com

Club of Amsterdam

Felix B Bopp, Chairman – felix(at)clubofamsterdam(dot)com

Humanity+

Adam A. Ford, Secretary tech101(at)gmail(dot)com

The Millennium Project

Jerome Glenn, CEO, Jerome.Glenn(at)Millennium-Project(dot)org

World Future Society

Tim Mack, President tmack(at)wfs(dot)org

World Futures Studies Federation

Jennifer Gidley, President wfsf.president(at)jennifergidley(dot)com

Movie on Future Day

 

 

BPN 1678: Celebrating public internet in The Netherlands

In the past week, there were celebrations in Holland in the framework of the introduction of public internet in 1994. The launch of De Digitale Stad (Digital City) on 15 January 1994 was commemorated. The event sparked off public internet in The Netherlands, which in less than three years registered one million internet users. Both events were celebrated, The Digital City in Amsterdam and public internet in The Hague. I was invited to speak at The Hague event.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam announced two happenings in the framework of the launch of the Digital City. The Waag Society and the archaeological department of the Digital City announced two meetings addressing the question: How free and open is internet yet? On January 15 the international campaign "The Internet is broken . Let's fix the internet.",  was joined.  This meeting was dealing with subjects as  secure and reliable Internet technology, the development of secure protocols, hardware and software NSA proof , designing user-friendly cryptography, supporting data protection legislation and the development of alternative social media and search engines . On January 16 , the results of the meeting "The Internet is broken. Let's fix the internet" were presented in the meeting Silent rough roadmap”.

The Hague

At the Museum for Communication there was an evening meeting, organized around the new permanent exhibition Muscom needs internet. There were three presentations.

Consumer internet

The first presentation dealt with 1994, the year in which consumer Internet made a breakthrough of consumer Internet in the Netherlands. From 1980 Dutch consumers could retrieve information through the online service Viditel and use a rudimentary e - mail service. Until January 1, 1997, this videotext service and its successor Videotex Nederland attracted 325,000 users who irregularly used the service. When the Digital City opened its doors in the context of the municipal elections in Amsterdam in 1994, internet was not only available for users in Amsterdam, but also available for  users from around the country. On March 23, 1994,  De Groene, a weekly, reported, that already 12,000 users were registered. And on January 1 1997, there were  1 million registered users in the Netherlands, using the services of several ISPs (Digital City, Euronet*Internet, Planet Internet and World Online). In 17 years videotext services had totalled 325.000 users, while internet tripled its users to 1 million in three years thanks to the disruptive technology of the Internet.

I also had an epilogue in my pocket, but I forgot to read it out in public. “Marshall McLuhan argued in his book Understanding Media (1974 ): A new medium is never an addition to the old media nor let the old media alone. The new medium does not stop with the pushing of older media until the new forms and positions have been found in the media landscape.

Online has started to conquer strategic positions in the media from 1970 onwards. Since the sixties online pioneers such Lickleder and Doug Engelbart saw a new world for themselves with electronic messaging services, video telephony, electronic ordering and shopping, electronic banking, electronic publishing and translation electronically. Almost all technical issues had been rudimentarily developed in the pre-Internet age.

But thanks to the internet a flywheel effect came into effect. There was a wide user base, and there was a great advancement in refining technology such as e-mail, icu, Skype, e-shopping, e-banking, digital publishing and translation. Now internet has already intervened in the technology and economics, but there  is still some teething to be done. Internet will dig deeper into everyday life, social customs and influencing lifestyle. Life as well as  the Museum for Communication needs internet.

Internet abstinence

The second speaker was Bram van Montfoort. This youngster has lived without internet for a year and has written a book about internet abstinence. He told about the trials and tribulations he has experienced in that year : no Internet and no Facebook. He noticed that he was struggling to enroll into college for a bachelor degree journalism. His responses to requests by letter were not immediate as with e-mail. And after a year in the monastery of analogue media thousands of emails awaited him. His experiences he shares via an analogue medium, the book Een jaar offline (A year offline).

It became clear that the pace of his life changed and that hand written letters became an art form again. I recognize the custom of writing letters. During my time in boarding school, but also during my studies, I wrote many a letter to my parents and friends, in which I told him what I had been through and what future ideals I was striving after. Those subject you will not see addressed in emails and FB postings.

The project Bram van Montfoort lasted for a year. There have been similar projects of internet abstinence previously, but they usually were shorter and of course in a different era and context. Jeroen van Loon, the third speaker, has spent two months without internet during his studies. He got RSI from internet and decided to ignore internet. In 2011, a college in Utrecht started a research project on internet abstinence for a week with sixteen people. They reported by video about their experiences and their " withdrawal symptoms". And in 1996, a number of Internet fanatics in Rotterdam had themselves locked up for a period of time. Public reports on the internet abstinence were published. Of course there are big differences between Internet users in 1996 and 2012. In 2012, Internet penetrated much more in the daily lives of people.

Muscom needs internet

Life on the needs internet project by Jeroen van Loon I wrote as once a posting, a project awarded in the European Youth Award (EYA). Meanwhile, the internet artist has collected more than 300 handwritten letters. This website of this collection now has a new design and is more accessible. Now users can look for letters by categories such as gender, age and region as well as categories such as leisure, online/offline and pre-internet. The letters tell the stories about their first experiences with internet by people worldwide. They cheer the ease of making social contacts, but also question big brother, while children indicate that they may sit behind the computer for a limited time. The Museum for Communication in The Hague has now made ​​a selection from this letter collection and putt eight letters on permanent display under the title Muscom needs internet. For the museum, this is a worthy entry into the world of Internet.

BPN 1677: Launch Digital City Amsterdam (1994)

 

Launch Digital City in Amsterdam

15 January 1994

  

 

BPN 1676: Sound of Colors

This is not a blog posting about synaesthesia, a neurological phenomenon of a joining together of sensations that are normally experienced separately (hearing green grass), but the posting will deal with cyborg, the joining of organic and material parts. In fact it will concern the first cyborg ever.

The word cyborg was not in my encyclopaedia till I met Ann Westfelt, a Swedish jury member of the Europrix Awards. In a conversation about trade literature a Scandinavian book on cyborgs was mentioned. But it took till 2004 before I was confronted with a real example, not a concept, again during a Europrix jury.

Neil Harbisson at the Europrix party, talking to Chiara Boeri, an Italian artist.

 

The project from Britain was an entry by the out-of-the-box thinker Adam Montandon. He had met Neil Harbisson, who suffers from a rare disease, achromatopsia. This condition is caused by genes, so that the affected people get monochromatism or complete colour blindness. They really only see black and white and their colour blindness differs from the variety with which the red and green colours can be distinguished.

For a student arts complete colour blindness is an absolute disaster as the colour palette is not more than black and white, not even grey. This was not only annoying for his study, but also in everyday life. "I confused red jam with tomato and orange juice with apple juice" Neil said in an interview. He also used to wear clothes in one colour, black.

After a lecture on cybernetics at the Plymouth University, given by the 23 -year-old Englishman Adam Montandon, Neil got in touch with him and told him about his disability. Adam looked into the problem for his graduation assignment. It was clear that he needed a camera and computer to record colours. But Adam also realized that only then the problem starts. Because how do you convert colour? With words you cannot fully specify the colour shades. Eventually he chose for conversion of colours into sounds. Neil got a camera on his head, a PC in his backpack and an earpiece. The structure he called Eye-borg.

Adam Montandon developed colour-to- sound conversion software, that worked dynamically. Each level got a frequency; in this way, the pure intensity of the colour can be determined and displayed. With a noise value Neil had to learn the pitch of the sounds. Red is translated in low noise , while violet has a high sound. And he did learn fast. Soon he started to wear colourful clothes on his blue jeans.

 

Passport photograph of Neil Harbisson

Soon Adam and Neil saw that technology is one solution, but they also saw the social implication. The gear has become part of his body. It has become a medical prosthesis. So he received a certificate from the National Health regarding his camera. In the meantime he has received a passport with a portrait photograph showing the camera.

Now a group of creatives wants to produce a documentary movie with the title Sound of Colors. The title shows similarity to The Sound of Music, the movie which plays in Austria. That country supported the Europrix Awards and the selection of the sonochromatic cyborg. But then in 2011 Arnau Gifreu Castells of the Universitat Ramón Llull – Universitat de Vic in Spain reports in Graz (Austria) about an audiovisual and online interactive documentary about Neil Harbisson and the cyborg, produced as part of a degree project. And now this project gets a sequel in an official documentary.

 

The official documentary about the first cyborg Sound of Colors will be a crowdfunded project. And now the circle is round. The crowdfunding organiser is the Spanish organisation Verkami, which in 2013 in Sri Lanka received the World Summit Award, the successor to the Europrix Awards. The project group is requesting 3.200 euro to produce the documentary.


Update Febr. 1, 2014: The official documentary about the first cyborg Sound of Colors was a  crowdfunded project by the Spanish organiser Verkami. The requested 32.000 euro has been pledged for and even more, while there are still 18 days left. So the making of the movie can start.

BPN 1675: 2014: already a memorable year

The new year has only just begun. Yet, for me 2014 is already a year to remember. It is 20 years since the Internet for consumers made ​​her entry in the Netherlands. On January 15, 1994 the ISP launched The Digital City ( DDS ) in Amsterdam.

The Digital City ( DDS ) started on Saturday January 15, 1994 with an television interview in the eight o'clock news. DDS was an internet project, intended as a discussion forum in the run up to the municipal elections of March 1994. The project was designed by netactivisten (Hack -Tic), the municipality and partly inspired by Marleen Stikker, the virtual mayor of the city. The town was based on community networks ( free nets) in the U.S. and Canada. The model of the city was chosen as a metaphor.

First DDS interface text without graphics (DDS Archief)

DDS Interface 3.0 DDS Archief)

 

DDS was a great success. In six weeks, 10,000 people applied for access to the city. By visiting the virtual mayor of organizations, but also to institutions, the project received much local attention, as the mayor visited organisations and institutions. And it were not only people coming from Amsterdam, but also people from across the Netherlands. After the project DDS went on as an Internet service provider. DDS actually opened the doors for Internet consumers by January 1994 and by January 1, 1997 the Netherlands  had registered 1 million internet consumers.

The success of DDS was surprising. There used to be an online and multimedia industry in the Netherlands. Online databases such as Kluwer Legal Database were used for scientific, technical and business research. Electronic messaging services like Memocom were separate, mainly business services. For consumers, there was the information service Viditel, followed by Videotex Netherlands. And for amateurs, there were the Bulletin Board Systems ( BBS ). Furthermore, there was there a beginning of a multimedia industry with text CD-ROMs, multimedia CD- ROMs and CD -i titles as well as a few electronic books. But this industry was only 100 million guilders ( 45 million euros) great in revenues and the consumer share was very low.

Internet, however, developed separately from this industry, mainly through the academic network SURF. As of 1990 there were ISPs and by the end of 1993 there were approximately 295 companies connected to the Internet. In May 1993, XS4ALL opened an Internet service to consumers. Although in the first two days, 500 consumers were registered, the number of subscribers grew slowly. DDS, however, was the driver and was a resounding success.

In retrospect, a number of factors accounted for this consumer success.

a. The number of households with a PC in the Netherlands had increased from 7 percent in 1985 to 34 percent in 1994.
b. People wanted to do more with the PC than gaming, word processing, accounting and consult encyclopedias on CD - ROM.
c. Internet came as a disruptive technology. Existing online and multimedia technologies had to adapt or eventually disappeared, eg videotex and CD-i. Out of the concrete mixer containing different technologies, eventually only Internet and email survived. Teletext and CD - OM stayed on, but played no important part anymore.

 

 d. Consumer internet was cheap compared to online databases. Moreover, the Internet technology was user-friendly thanks to hypertext, had more graphic opportunity and had greater potency multimedia ( text, image, video and sound). Besides, Internet combined with email.

e. Internet did not developed within the existing online and multimedia industry, but within the bosom of universities and scientific institutions. Companies that had internet installed proved attractive to students after completion of their academic studies.

For those interested, Reinder Rustema wrote a doctoral thesis on the Digital City in 2001.

BPN 1674: From trade literature to toilet paper

Although the sun is shining, it is today a sad day in Amsterdam. Today, the library of the Royal Tropical Institute will close. The last books - several thousand of titles: doublets, journals and written publications, mainly in English and Dutch - can be sorted and taken along. Then comes the old paper merchant who will takes the remains to recycle. The collection was already cruelly torn apart and components moved to other collections ranging from the prestigious Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt to the Knowledge and Documentation Center for Medical History in a small Dutch fishery village, Urk. That is the irrevocable end of the KIT Information & Library Services (ILS).

In the second half of the eighties of last century, I dealt with the ILS department of KIT. I was working at the newly founded Society for Information Services ( MIS ), which became active in 1986 and mainly worked in the market of electronic publishing. In their portfolio was CD-ROM. In 1987 the company produced the first test disc of the Legal Database Kluwer Datalex. Further, the company produced in 1988 several CD-ROMs amongst others KIT Abstracts for the Royal Tropical Institute, the CD-ROM version of the online database TROPAG & Rural (Tropical Agriculture) .

TROPAG is one of the oldest Dutch online databases with abstracts of official publications and so-called grey literature on tropical agriculture in Africa, Asia , the area of ​​the Pacific and Central and South America. The database was created from a magazine in which the summaries of articles from scientific journals were published. The texts were put in the graphic company Samsom Publishers. Here, in the second half of the seventies, the texts were already stored into a computer with a paper punch tape. Once the text was saved, there was a magnetic tape ready to be sent ​​by snailmail to host computers (servers, they are called now),  at that time the U.S. information services Dialog, SDC, and BRS. The database was included in the portfolio of the Dutch host organisation Samson Data Systems (SDS) for a short period (1981-1983).

However, online was costly and certainly for the developing countries. The telecom connections were also a major technical obstacle for those countries. Using the online database was not an overwhelming success. However, the advent of the CD-ROM in 1984 offered a different perspective for a text database. Although PCs with CD-ROM drives were not readily available in abundance in the second half of the eighties, the KIT ILS department, headed by Hans van Hartevelt, placed more CD-ROM players than there were available in the Netherlands from 1987 onwards. MID was commissioned to produce the text CD–ROM.. Since the CD-ROM production software was still in its infancy, the production and especially the mastering took longer than expected. But when the diffulties were overcome the CD - ROM went all over the world.

The TROPAG & Rural file still exists, but is now part of the CD-ROM portfolio of CAB International and available online with Wolters Kluwer daughter OVID. TROPAG & Rural will be a painful reminder of the rich stream of literature, while the last remaining books and magazines will be recycled to toilet paper.

BPN 1673: 25 years open Internet via Amsterdam

On November 17, 2013 it will be exactly 25 years since the former Mathematisch Centrum (Mathematical Centre), now Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam was linked up to the NSFnet, the network of the U.S. National Science Foundation. This connection gave the Netherlands and Europe access to the open Internet. It was the beginning of today's Internet for scientific institutes and universities and later for businesses and consumers.

Internet pioneers Jaap Akkerhuis, Daniel Karrenberg, Teus Hagen, and Piet Beertema (CWI) at Piet Beertema's farewell party at CWI on the occassion of his retirement on 16 September 2004. Source: CWI.

Until that date, the traffic of the precursor of internet was conducted via Internet ARPANET, the U.S. military network. This network was developed from 1969 and was shaped in 1975 when Vincent Cerf and Bob Khan for the first time used the term Internet in a lecture in which they described the TCP/IP protocol. The network was not only used for military purposes, but also research institutes and universities, which were allied to scientific research for the government. Through this network the Mathematisch Centrum made its first contact in 1982. Thanks to this contact the staff of the Mathematical Centre in contact with the Internet developments. When in 1985 for the first time the URL with the suffix.com was attributed to the American company Symbolics Inc., the staff, including the system manager Piet Beertema, looked out to get the suffix .nl in place. On April 25, 1986 The Netherlands was the first country to have a country suffix assigned. Piet Beertema became the first registrar of the .nl suffix. Not that it was a lot of work, as in the first two years only 87 URLs were issued.

The e-mail about the first open transatlantic Internet connection between CWI and the United States . Source: Piet Beertema.

In 1986, the academic network of the military network informed and in the network of the National Science Foundation, NSFnet, accommodated. In 1988 this network was independent, primarily aiming at academic institutions. And in the same year on Sunday, November 17^th, it was the day that the Mathematisch Centrum was connected to NSFnet. At 14:30h The Netherlands was the first country in Europe connected to the open Internet and registrar Piet Beertema received an e-mail stating that the Mathematical Centre in Amsterdam was the first institution outside the US with official access to NSFnet.

The connection also meant that Europe had access to NSFnet through EUnet. With the connection not only The Netherlands got access, but also Europe got access to an academic computer network, which later evolved into the world and open Internet. This network was not checked by soldiers and military industry, but was open, which had consequences for future users, such as free use.

The link-up of the Mathematical Centre with NSFnet opened the way for internet traffic from The Netherlands and Europe. Even today a lot of internet traffic from Europe to NSFnet passes through the Amsterdam internet exchange (AMS-IE).

The CWI will commemorate this festive anniversary on Friday, November 22, 2013 at the Amsterdam Science Park. Here, a plaque will be unveiled at the place, where the Dutch and European Internet started 25 years ago.

 

BPN 1672: Digital entertainment: immersive experiences, multiple revenue models

By Madanmohan Rao

 

Every two years, the World Summit Awards showcase the local diversity and rich creativity of ICT use around the world. Gaming as a sector accounts for more revenues than advertising or the movie industry in many countries around the world.

Five winners of the WSA 2013 awards in the e-Entertainment and Games category were honoured at the WSA Conference in Sri Lanka recently. They presented their gaming experiences and shared some useful words of advice for aspiring game developers and digital entertainers.

EVE Online from Iceland is a spectacular, captivating gaming experience where hundreds of thousands of players compete within the same virtual cosmic universe for riches, power, glory and adventure. The setting is outer space where solar systems are being inhabited with people from a range of professions: traders, entrepreneurs, pirates and commanders!

Making View from Norway offers superbly exciting experiences of Formula 1 racing, blending 360 degree camera and interactive responses. The experience goes beyond panoramic views at the highest speeds: it opens up new possibilities for application in tourism, education and documentaries.

Aqua Lingua from Lithuania lets you ‘see what you hear’ by converting into pictures and works of art. Water surfaces are stirred by emanating sound patters, and then photographed – thus making the invisible visible. It also turns out to be a great service for a gift!

Kinetic Stories from Finland is a series of storybooks for kids that mix traditional storytelling with the latest developments in motion tracking and speech recognition technology. Children take part in the stories through their movements and voice, which are also captured in the online screen. Print and video content can be interleaved in the narrative, thus bringing books to life.

 

WSA - Courtesy – Philipp Benedikt/Alexander Mattersberger

Interactive dance from Italy helps create new dance forms by translating and mapping body movements into innovative musical composition. The product can be used individually or in groups, by professionals and amateurs. Kids can use the product’s interactive video gaming dance applications.

Project leaders and founders from these games offered some insightful tips for the developers and entrepreneurs in the audience, as summarised below.

1.Tap mega-narratives. The frontiers of space have captivated the human mind since time immemorial, and always make for a good backdrop for immersive games and cooperative exploration.

2.Leverage adjacent and complementary media. Sound can map onto images – and vice versa, leading to interesting modalities for entertainment and gaming.

3.Motion blends well into gaming. The use of sensors allows physical motions to be seamlessly mapped into virtual environments, and can be harnessed for everyone from kids to adults.

4.Gaming allows for multiple business models, lending itself well for sustainable revenue streams. These range from individual or family subscriptions to embedded ads in freemium models.

BPN 1671: ‘Micro-multinationals’ develop e-commerce models

By Madanmohan Rao

One of the hottest segments of innovation in digital media has been e-commerce/e-business. Five winners of the prestigious World Summit Awards 2013 showed that innovators are pushing the frontiers of digital markets in emerging economies as well.

From payment and analytics to crowdsourcing and marketplaces, the diverse range of winners from around the world showcased their initiatives at the recent WSA conference in Sri Lanka, and also shed light on best practices for succeeding in the e-business space.

WSA - Courtesy – Philipp Benedikt/Alexander Mattersberger 

 

Springleap is a crowdsourced creative platform based in South Africa but with clients in the US and Europe as well. Global brands are using Springleap’s creative social media marketing campaigns to empower creatives and engage brand fans. The startup rewarded creatives with over $300,000 in the last year and placed them on magazines, sites and TV spots across the world.

Infoline from Ghana is a mobile and web service which connects consumers and businesses in emerging markets. Users of smartphones as well as basic phones can access and send messages to businesses; the data is mined for extraction of useful analytics for companies, which helps them understand and respond to their market segments more effectively.

Ponoko from New Zealand is a Web based marketplace for designers to make and sell products online. The ‘Personal Factory’ model helps them instantly verify, price and order prototypes and custom products. To date, Ponoko designers have produced over 300,000 custom products.

Conekta is a platform that allows businesses in Mexico to process online payments using both online and offline methods. Offline channels are generally disregarded by dominant payment solutions such as Paypal. Conekta is used for a range of transactions: selling physical products, taking donations, ecommerce offers, or enabling marketplaces for third parties.

TransferWise from Estonia is a smarter solution for international money transfers using P2P methods. Banks charge a lot for international money transfers but TransferWise brings the fee down to mid-market exchange rate. Customers pay a smaller, fully transparent service charge to access this facility.

The winners from these companies shared insights on the evolution and impacts of their business models, and offered useful tips for aspiring entrepreneurs in this space.

1. Keep an eye on regulatory changes. Mobile payment and international remittances are still subject to national jurisdictions, and changes in these regulations can alter the fortunes of digital payment providers.

2. Play in both spaces: smartphones and basic phones, especially in emerging economies. Basic SMS and voice services still have a useful shelf-life, but as smartphone penetration increases it will be possible to offer rich media apps and content as well.

3. Think micro-multinational. It is possible for startups, especially in tech and creative spaces, to operate simultaneously in multiple countries, leveraging various skillsets, pricepoints and timezones for effective project management and product delivery.

4. Tap the crowd but protect your brand. Leverage the power of creative crowds to offer speed and diversity in service to your clients, but ensure you have strict quality control and IPR compliance.

BPN 1670: Digital news strategies for entrepreneurs

The Internet and mobile phones have become the biggest disruptive force in the field of mass media, and continue to spawn new models of journalism and new businesses for entrepreneurs. Best practices in urban and rural media organisations were exemplified by the five winners of the World Summit Awards 2013 in the category of e-Media and journalism.

 

 

The WSA awards are known for recognising and rewarding ‘smart content for smart people.’ The e-news winners this year reflected the people power of the Arab Spring, and also new models of enterprise storytelling and aggregated funding. This category is unique as compared to other award winners since some of the projects operate under severe conditions of risk, both personal and physical, from government and commercial censors.

 

Marsad is an online observatory of parliamentary member actions in Tunisia. It reports member presence, discussion, voting, actions, resolutions, electronic media coverage and people feadback. Drafts, budgets, laws and all discussed material and resolutions of the parliament are free for access. Marsad thus uses ICT to promote political journalism and serve democratic practices in Tunisia.

 

Masrawy is Egypt’s favourite news portal, with a special focus in covering political news. It provides political news content, gender coverage, Islamic advice services, sports content, classifieds ads, and services for the SME market. It has presented experts’ advice on Egypt’s political and social scenario after the Arab Spring. The portal serves as a watchdog for the Egyptian Society.

 

Teckler is a blog aggregator based in Brazil but with content sourced from around the world. The site enables contributors to make money through content created on their own in text, audio, photo and video. The pioneering Internet multinational company from Latin America features content in over a dozen languages and raises revenues through advertising, for which bloggers also get a share.

 

WHATCHADO from Austria is a combination of storytelling handbook and standardised format of short films on real-life job descriptions. It was initiated and founded by former classmates and longtime friends who wanted to share insights on people’s jobs. The startup has more than 20 people originating from 13 different countries.

 

Rural Visual Journalism Network is an innovative initiative from Bangaldesh where trained district correspondents use Apple i-Pod Touch technology to produce multimedia stories from rural areas. The stories focus on addressing specific issues faced by media and by rural citizens of Bangladesh.

 

Winners of these awards spoke at the recent WSA 2013 conference in Sri Lanka, and offered sobering as well as inspiring words of advice to journalistic entrepreneurs.

1. Clearly define your code of conduct, and stick to it. It is fine to take positions and choose perspectives, but make them clear so that the audience understands where you are coming from. This helps positioning and then pitching to appropriate funders or advertisers.
2. Aggregation models work well in a world of fragmented content. Search is one way to get related perspectives together; aggregation offers additional benefits through collective bargaining for advertising revenues.
3. Leverage online media to make up for the shortcomings of mainstream media. Some issues are too controversial for mainstream media to cover, or are seen as not having enough commercial value – dig into these with broad and deep perspectives.
4. View narratives from multiple perspectives to tap new revenue streams. The same content is of different value to different professions and organisations – see who would be interested in paying for your content, or would want to be paid to be featured.

BPN 1669: Transform teaching into learning

By Madanmohan Rao 
 

Every two years, contestants from dozens of countries around the world compete to win the prestigious World Summit Awards for best e-Content. The awards are given in 10 categories and are rigorously judged by an international jury. The winners participate in an international conference where they present their projects and discuss their plans and impacts.

I was honoured to be a juror and moderator at the event, held recently in Sri Lanka. For the category of e-Learning and Science, here are my key takeaways from contributions of the winning entries, and recommendations for entrepreneurs who wish to make a mark in this category.

Science Learning Hub from New Zealand promotes student interest and engagement in science by providing contemporary, contextualised resources for school teachers from Years 2–10. It demonstrates the relevance of scientific research to our everyday lives, and links local science research organisations with science teachers. The project is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and managed by the University of Waikato.

Opon Imo from Nigeria aptly means Tablet of Knowledge. The Government of Osun State has developed and deployed a technology based learning system delivered on 150,000 provisioned Android tablets. They will be distributed to all the pupils of senior secondary schools in the state. The stand-alone solution consists of a compelling self- paced series of off-line courses, conducted in an interactive manner and backed by a library of relevant e-books and a testing environment.

Ludwig from Austria is a new type of learning game on the topic of renewable energy. The game is based on the curriculum and targeted to adventurers aged 11 years and above. The game is framed as a search for energy sources in space colonies, in a race against time.

PresentationTube from Egypt offers a free video presentation recorder (for Windows) and an online network to help teachers and learners in Egypt produce, upload and share quality digital video content. Video presentations can be used in various on-campus and off-campus e-learning settings to provide more realistic support to learner, and create engagement.

Aula365 from Argentina is the biggest educational network in Ibero America, with more than 3 million children, parents and teachers that collaborate and learn with it. There are more than 4,000 educational resources created by specialists in each subject. Teachers and parents are also involved along with students in activities for critical thinking, creative thinking, and cooperative intelligence.
Aula365 was judged the overall winner, and the project leaders of the other entries also joined them in discussing the impacts and learnings from their initiatives.

Here are my recommendations for aspiring entrepreneurs in this space:

1. This is the age of video, so leverage the full power of video in education to make the learning experience more engaging and less abstract.
2. Connect different kinds of learning objects and formats. Different people have different learning styles and preferences, so spread your content across a range of channels such as video, presentations, whiteboards, pictures and chatboards.
3. Rope in the experts in domain and pedagogy. The digital environment has spawned a wide range of models and theories of interactive, exploratory and cooperative learning. Bring in specialists from geography to gaming.
4. Experiment with a range of business models. Freemium and government support are some examples used in the education sector.
5. Emerging economies are in a good position to leapfrog in digital learning. There is not such a deep entrenched legacy of textbook publishers, so it is possible to make the leap directly into e-content via platforms such as tablets.

BPN 1668: Entrepreneurs in e-Culture

By Madanmohan Rao            

 

Thanks to mobiles and social media, digital culture projects can rope in a wide range of audiences and contributors locally and globally. Five winners of e-content in the category of e-Culture and Tourism were recognised by the bi-annual World Summit Awards, held recently in Colombo.
Here are my key takeaways from the innovative projects, and recommendations from the winners of these projects who presented their findings to an audience of ICT innovators and creators.

Verkami is the leading crowdfunding platform in Spain for cultural and creative projects. Artists can get in touch with their public, build audiences and fund their projects. In two years and a half, more than 1,300 projects have been completed, thanks to contributions from 160,000 cultural consumers, raising more than 6.2 million Euros. The platform claims a sustained 70% success rate (3 out of 4 projects raise the funds they are looking for).

Enajori from India is the first online monthly bilingual magazine from the state of Assam. Online content includes local music, cinema, literature, wildlife and tourism, as well as e-novels. It is enabled for mobile users also. There is a children’s section and participatory components such as Photographer of the Month. The site’s book catalogue lists publications dating back to the year 1849. The site already draws an estimated 250,000 readers each month, after less than three years of launch.

Southeast European Culture Portal from Serbia was established in 2003 in Belgrade as an online platform for culture and art in Serbia and the region. The site has daily updated news about events, cultural policies, open calls, debates, Photo Galleries, Artists’ Gallery, blog, as well as profile presentations of artists and cultural institutions.

Gorilla Highlands from Uganda is an interactive electronic book about southwestern Uganda developed using Apple’s free iBooks Author software. The landscape and people are presented through text, videos, and an extensive audio phrasebook in two local languages. The focus is not just on the famed gorilla habitats but tourism, culture and employment in general. A free Gorilla Highlands paper booklet has also been published.

Jumièges 3D from France offers a 3D tablet-based experience to view existing and prior architect models of historical monuments such as the Abbey. Mobile augmented reality, on site or through a free app, drives the visitor into the glorious past of the Abbey through different views and points of interest. This can be extended to other countries and monuments as well.

Here are the key takeaways for creative entrepreneurs from the ensuing discussion after the above presentations- 

1. The mainstream media focuses more on entertainment than culture – leaving the culture field wide open for innovators to use the breadth and depth of digital media and mobile tools.
2. Creative teams can be assembled from across the globe, thanks to the power of the Net. For example, Uganad’s Gorilla Highlands project has team members in Solvenia, Germany, Ireland, UK and Uganda.
3. For a sustainable business model, look for where the money is. For example, in cultural tourism, there may be more paying customers in the form of tour operators than government departments.
4. Go local, go global. Thanks to the Internet, global diaspora can be tapped as audience, contributors and even sponsors, as the Assamese portal Enajori shows.
5. Crowdfunding models work well even during hard economic times. Verkami’s contributions are specially relevant in Spain today where budget cuts are slashing cultural programs.
6. Don’t ignore offline strategies. Though the online model has much allure and scale, interesting and deep connections can open up through offline interactions also, such as through meetups and conferences.
7. Build a community of volunteers. Volunteers can often contribute as much (in some cases even more) than paid contributors for e-content. Learn how to engage and inspire volunteer teams.

Jumièges 3D was declared the overall winner.

BPN 1667: Social enterprises in healthcare

By Madanmohan Rao

Thanks to mobiles and social media, healthcare and environmental solutions are emerging in the consumer and citizen space, and not just in hospital enterprise IT and meteorological centres. Six winners of e-content in this category were recognized by the bi-annual World Summit Awards, held recently in Sri Lanka.

Here are my key takeaways from the project contributions, and recommendations from the winners of these projects who presented their findings to an audience of ICT innovators and entrepreneurs.

© Philipp Benedikt/Alexander Mattersberger
 

Mobile Technology for Community Health  from Ghana is part of service delivery for maternal health at Antenatal Care. It has two complementary applications: A Mobile-Midwife Application and a Nurse Application. Couples can both access MoTeCH messages via SMS (text) or voice in the local dialect or English. The service enables easy identification of both mothers and infants and saves time collating information to generate monthly reports, alerts and reminders.

Uepaa Swiss Alpine Technology from Switzerland is a mesh-networking app for alpine safety standards. The Uepaa app turns the smartphone of more than 25 million outdoor users into an alpine tracking, alerting and rescue device by using a wireless mesh communication technology developed by ETH Zürich.

Beatona is the Kuwait Official Environmental Portal, a “one-stop shop” for sharing authentic environmental information related to Kuwait in both Arabic and English. People of various ages can enrich their knowledge about the environment, and allows them to be part of the system by allowing them to contribute in improving the knowledge base through various online tools.

I-MOVE to Learn from China is a training game designed by physiotherapist. It has 5 mini-games to help children of ages 4-12 with motor delay and coordination problems. It uses Kinect for Windows sensor to detect body movements. Players have to use their body as a controller to challenge each level. Thus, students can have fun while they are doing training. The application is being developed on the iOS platforms for Apple devices and other platforms as well.

True-Kare from Portugal is an online service to simplify the life of people above the age of 65. It enables one person or institution to provide remote care to another person via mobiles and a Web portal, sharing information on medication and health indicators. In Portugal the service is being promoted by the main telecom operator and the main TV channel.

Here are the tips which these presenters offered to the audience of developers and entrepreneurs:

1. Include experts on your advisory teams and boards. Inter-disciplinary projects require a good mix of insights and knowledge from a range of domains.

2. Don’t use the Web and mobiles only to ‘push’ information to target audiences, but involve them also in contributing, ranking, rating and voting on information.

3. Pay attention to impacts: collect a range of quantitative and anecdotal outcomes.

4. Don’t ignore humble voice and SMS. In an era of hype and excitement about rich-media apps, there is still a lot of shelf-life for text and IVR as service channels.

5. Rope in operators as partners. Though mobile operators are not the mighty kings they once were as compared to app stores, they can still help deliver scale for a project.

6. Don’t look just at overall numbers of audience impacted, but also the depth of impact for each user. This is especially true in the case of healthcare projects, eg those which save or improve lives of the elderly.

7. Examine a range of business models for sustainability. A mix of subscription and hospital service bundling works well for e-healthcare.

 

Presentations of the projects can be seen on the site of the World Summit Award

 

BPN 1666: World Summit Awards recognizes social innovators

 

© Philipp Benedikt/Alexander Mattersberger
 

On Saturday, October 26, 2013 the conference was closed and at night the award ceremony took place. All delegates moved by train to the beach esort Mount Lavina for this occassion. My coleague from India, Madanmohan Rao, wrote a blog posting about the winners and drew his conclusions.

Every two years, contestants from over 150 countries around the world compete to win the World Summit Awards for best e-Content. The awards are given in 10 categories and are rigorously judged by an international jury according to criteria such as meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

The winners are honoured at a gala and also participate in an international conference where they present their projects and discuss their plans and impacts. I was delighted to be a juror and moderator for the category of e-Inclusion and Empowerment. Here are my key takeaways from contributions of the winning entries, and recommendations for social entrepreneurs who wish to make a mark in this category.

Blindsquare from Finland is an augmented reality GPS application for the blind. It obtains information about the surrounding environment from Foursquare and Open Street Maps. Its algorithms enable it to determine the most relevant information, and then voice it out using high quality speech synthesis. For example, “What’s the most popular café within 200 meters radius?” or “How much longer before I get off my train?”

The Specialized Educational Portal from Romania is initiated by the Ministry of National Education. It services 14,000 students with special educational needs, and consists of an online environment to observe, discover, prove, verify and measure results of different experiments and simulations. The portal uses avatars to embody the roles of teachers, learners, peers and observers.

Sheeplive.eu from Slovakia was initiated by the civic association eSlovensko. It uses an animated environment with sheep as main characters to teach children about safer use of the Internet, mobile phones and new technologies. The project has developed 652 tools with over two million downloads in two years for products such as quizzes, ebooks, games, and wallpapers.

New Urban Mechanics of Boston and Philadelphia from the US is a multi-city civic innovation incubator and R&D network dedicated to improving the lives of city residents. It helps innovators connect with government through project proposals to improve urban civic life using.

TAM Hub from Saudi Arabia uses contests and crowdsourcing to help citizens identify pressing problems and then collectively put together solutions. The portal is used to link and expose entrepreneurs to contests and provide them with tips to clarify their ideas and projects. It allows the public to engage with entrepreneurs and express their opinions about the most liked ideas or projects. The initiative is expanding to five other Arab countries.

In the panel discussion at the conference, these social innovators had a range of useful lessons to share with other aspiring entrepreneurs:

1. The toughest moment for an entrepreneur is when you have a seed of an idea but no one believes it can become a tree. But don’t give up!

2. The best moment for those working in social enterprise is not money or prizes but when people thank you from the bottom of their heart for what you are doing, eg. a teacher’s best moment is when a parent of a differently abled child thanks you for teaching them.

3. Engage the entire ecosystem and not just the target audience, eg. the parents and friends of differently abled students.

4. Leverage the power of the crowd not just to solve problems but also understand the problem itself, frame it in different ways, and prioritise it with respect to other problems.

5. Use business models like syndication and licensing to spread your good work in social entrepreneurship. Partnership and alliance management strategies are key: choose partners who truly share the social values and ethical principles that you respect.

6. Don’t shun government: reach out to them and win them over as partners, because they can help truly scale your project in the long run.

The overall winner in this category was judged to be BlindSquare, a laudable achievement for a team which includes only app developer! If one app developer alone can achieve such excellence, imagine what millions of inspired app developers around the world can do!

BPN 1665: WSA Global Congress Sri Lanka (1)

Harvesting fascinating fruit: What the WSA Global Congress in Sri Lanka has to offer

The Global Congress, featuring fascinating fruit from the tree that is the Internet, is getting closer and closer. It is time to celebrate the World Summit Award (WSA) and the World Summit Youth Award (WSYA)! On the 23rd of this month we jump right into the program, so we hope that our winners, experts and special guests already planned what to put in their suitcase: once we start the Congress in the tropics and begin to harvest the best e-content fruits, there will be long, but equally fascinating days for everyone who joins the journey to the island.

As a little appetizer, check out some of the highlights of the program of the Global Congress.

Wednesday, October 23: Young insiders and VIPs

Starting off with a bang: after a city tour through Colombo, provided by young Sri Lankans who know every inch of the town, we head for the Presidential Secretariat! His Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa, The President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, will open the event.

Thursday, October 24: Start your Harvest, Work and Win

The Global Congress is nothing for late risers: the harvest starts at 8 in the morning, when we begin with workshops for the 40 winners of the World Summit Award and the 18 winners of the Youth Award. Guided by experts like TEDx Ambassador Niki Ernst and "Father of the mobile ringtone" Ralph Simon, the winners will learn how to sell their e-content fruits in the most efficient way. Later on the same day: WSA winners present their products, Innovation sessions with ICT professionals, and a Business Matching World Café, moderated by the WSA Chairman Prof. Peter A. Bruck.

Friday, October 25: Innovation, Innovation! Learn what e-content fruit the Internet-Tree will produce in the future

Want to learn something about Social Entrepreneurship, the Knowledge Society and the future in ICT? In three more Innovation sessions, experts like Financial Advisor and Blogger David Shelters, Rita O'Sullivan, Country Director of the Asian Development Bank, and Tiit Paananen, Entrepeneur and former head of Skype speak about topics that really matter in this year and beyond 2013.

 

Saturday, October 26: Saving the best for the end
 

After mobile content conferences, a fishbowl session with young social entrepreneurs and a visit to Infotel Sri Lanka, it's time for the highlight of the Global Congress and the WSA-year 2013: the Winners Ceremony and Gala Dinner. After entering the special Gala Train, the guests will arrive at the Mount Lavinia Beach, celebrating on a stage built into the ocean. In the presence of national and international VIPs, the WSA and the WSYA winners will receive their awards, handed to them by high-level dignities. Also, the WSA will announce the 8 Global Champions of 2013 - the best of the best.

We surely are. Only a few days to go until the big harvest starts. Find out more about the event here!

Or download the full program here.

 

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