This is the challenge set forth by EnerFixe to over 300 schools in the north of Portugal and so far more than 2000 students have chosen to participate!

During 2008 Union Fenosa, an integrated energy operator, challenged YDreams to create a fun, innovative and educational game about energy efficiency. The goal was to reach students between the ages of 8 and 14 and teach them basic day-to-day actions that can lower energy consumption and reduce carbon emissions.

Working alongside BlueShark (a Lisbon-based game-design studio), we developed a point and click game concept. With the help of Union Fenosa’s Familia Blue, the gamer leads the avatar through several scenarios to detect appliances, light switches, air-conditioners and other objects and then make energy efficient choices, which will ultimately affect the electricity bill at the end of the month.

The design concept, created by Spanish designer Antonio Coca, was adapted to fit the game giving Enerfixe a really cool and distinguished look. We than added a fun and hip sound design by YDreams’ very own Nuno Pereira to set the right mood.

And that’s it!!! It really was that easy, because everyone pulled together by pitching ideas, choosing scenarios, defining game behaviors and essentially enjoying themselves.

The game was published online a week ago, and the results are awesome: more than 2,000 players have registered from 110 schools and over 5,500 games (and counting) have been played!

So, I dare you to beat the current best score! You can try it out at: www.enerfixe.com.pt

Just register and start playing. And remember you really can help planet Earth by reducing your daily carbon emissions.

EnerFixe on YouTube

This year the European Commission is organizing the first ever European SME (Small and medium enterprises) week from the 6th to the 14th of May in Brussels. The week will promote entrepreneurial spirit and emphasize the contribution of entrepreneurs to the European economy. To mark the occasion, the EC has published a brochure with portraits of entrepreneurs from each of the 33 countries participating in SME week.

The goal of the brochure is to serve as a guideline to aspiring entrepeuneurs and to highlight the challenges and excitement of running one’s own business, and we are thrilled to anounce that our CEO, António Câmara, has been nominated by national and European experts to figure in the brochure for Portugal!

Opening day for the 1st European SME Week will kick off with an exhibition entitled “The SME experience – How it feels to be an entrepreneur” with all 33 successful entrepreneurs on hand to tell their stories, an art installation where visitors can experience a day in the life of an entrepreneur, and a ‘Portraits Hall of Fame’ complete with interactive touch screens for exploring each nominees’ portrait. Visitors to the event will range from journalists to groups of students interested in entrepreneurism.

Text by José Carlos Danado, Afonso Tavares and Paulo Ricca

These wise words recorded by John Lennon, back in the seventies, inspired past and present generations to fight against different barriers and limitations, and still inspire us to tear some digital walls down. As mobile devices became ubiquitous, everyone’s pockets became incredibly rich with processing power but poor on real possibilities.

Mobile world is a promise and YLabs (YDreams’ in-house R&D lab) is following its trends. In the past YDreams has developed well-known ground breaking games for mobile devices such as Undercover, Spooks, or Cristiano Ronaldo Underworld Football,. Recent YLabs projects are improving this incredible legacy by gathering ideas from the folks that matter – the users – to come up with something both useful and unique!

We are all carrying devices more powerful than the computer that took Neil Armstrong to the Moon but the most advanced possibilities available to most of us are taking blurry pictures and sharing our meal menus on twitter. Mobile device communication and processing capabilities make them the preferred tool for engaging users in an interactive experience at home, work or when on the go. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week a YDreams’ team travelled to Cannes, France with one objective – show the TV and Entertainment content industry some of the coolest technology out there.

It all started on Tuesday afternoon – while the Grand Auditorium of the Palais des Congrès in Cannes filled up and waited for Sir Martin Sorrell’s keynote, everybody had the chance to interact with the virtual bubbles that filled the screen.

Later that evening we set up another interactive installation, this time at Digital Creative Party at the Carlton Hotel. The lively party was the perfect setting for our interactive waterfall, where guests could play with the water effect and splash each other.

The last event of the week consisted in the session Experience This! Content 360 Technology Showcase. Among several remarkable panellists and in front of a packed room, YDreams presented 3 real time demos that got the audience going.

The first one was our mind reader application that allowed us to add thought bubbles to our panellists for a few minutes (we found out that they all loved Cannes and thought YDreams rocked!). Our second live demo consisted in a shower of cubes, which the whole audience could play with. Last but not least we showcased SpaceDog, Audience Entertainment’s latest game, which debuted at Cannes. The audience was invited to raise and lower their arms, acting as a human joystick that guided SpaceDog safely to his Bone Planet objective.

The presentation ended with a showing of the Augmented Reality Interactive Playground featuring YDreams’ famous mascot Flapi. The audience was excited to find out that YDreams technology can mean inviting your favourite virtual character into your living room, as well as letting a real character become part of a fictional world, all of it in real time. We call it the future of television. I look forward to us making it happen sooner, rather than later.:)

( The BTEK project is particularly close to the hearts of our fellow YDreamers over in Barcelona, as well as our neighboring country For this reason we’ve decided to include the Spanish version of the text after the English.)

YDreams has been commissioned by Bizkaia Technology Park to conceive and develop interactive solutions for the BTEK Center, a scientific interpretation center set to become a landmark, on the inside as well as the outside.

The BTEK Center’s impressive building is located in Zamudio, inside the Technology Park, which rises like a jagged black crystal withstanding the harsh winters of Biscay Province. The small town of Zamudio, minutes away from downtown Bilbao, is nestled amongst verdant mountains so characteristic of the Basque Country.

The Technology Park, one of the biggest in Spain, was established in 1985 by Basque Country public institutions and designed to promote diversification in industry as well as the transfer and diffusion of technology and innovation. The future BTEK Center aims to help visitors connect with technology and science, thereby stimulating rational thinking and a more critical spirit among audiences. Read the rest of this entry »

YDreams’ CEO, António Câmara, Ivan Franco and Inês Henriques sat down with ‘Falar Global’, a program on SIC Notícias. which looks at the impact information and knowledge technologies have on our daily lives.

The interview covers a range of topics that include YDreams’ take on what we can expect from televisions of the future, as well as the company’s work in the field of augmented reality, and in transforming the objects and surfaces around us into screens people can interact with.

For more see video!