The video powered by YDreams’ technology:

Ynvisible (YDreams’ first spinout company) in collaboration with Enfucell and IDTechEx, produced close to 1600 interactive badges to distribute to participants and attendees at the upcoming Printed Electronics USA 2011 tradeshow.

Ynvisible's Interactive Badge for the Printed Electronics Tradeshow

The badges contain three interactive graphic layers, activated by the push of a button. Each layer, designed specifically for the event, conveys IDTechEx’s marketing messages. Technologically, the interactive badges are a hybrid solution, based on a combination of printed electronics  ̶  Ynvisible’s electrochromics-based interactive graphics and Enfucell’s SoftBattery®  ̶  and traditional electronics, namely the printed circuit boards, buttons and wiring. Designers from Ynvisible and IDTechEx jointly designed the interactive badges, with the final assembly of badges carried out by Ynvisible.

“The combination of established color printing and printed interactive graphics brings new levels of interaction and communication power to everyday items. Consumers who enjoy the interactivity of on-line content and services will now increasingly start to find such features also in printed products”, said Jani-Mikael Kuusisto, Chief Business Development Officer for Ynvisible.

IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA 2011 conference and tradeshow is the biggest event in the world on the topic. This year’s tradeshow will be the largest Printed Electronics exhibition to date, with 105 exhibiting companies already confirmed. The tradeshow is on from November 30th to December 1st, 2011 at the Santa Clara Convention Centre.

The following video gives us a comprehensive overview of printed electronics spin-out Ynvisible and its relationship to parent-company YDreams:

Appshaker came up with this very cool way for people to interact with the amazing world of National Geographic Channel’s content from around the globe!

Take a look:

Live Augmented Reality for National Geographic Channel / UPC from Appshaker Ltd on Vimeo.

The exhibition Viagens Italianas (Italian Voyages), sponsored by UNESCO, recently inaugurated at the Brazilian National Archive in Rio de Janeiro, and YDreams Brasil was responsible for conceiving and implementing interactive solutions for the exhibit that include a Magic Book, an interactive walkway, multimedia projections and directional sound columns geared at presenting contents and helping visitors explore the intricate and complex relationship between Brazil and Italy, largely due to the huge influx of Italian immigration to Brazil between 1887 and 1930, as well as Brazil’s strong Italo-Brazilian heritage.

The exhibition, which opened November 3rd, 2011 will run through till February 10th, 2012 at Rio’s National Archive.

For more information: http://www.arquivonacional.gov.br/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?infoid=882&sid=40

In the video below, Audience Entertainment, co-owned and fueled by YDreams’ technology, brings interactive fun to Bon Jovi’s Open Air Tour 2011 in Greece:

Antão Almada, YDreams’ Strategic Software Development Director, will be hosting a workshop dubbed “YVision, an Interactive application for Learning” at the Creative Learning Conference at Centro Congressos de Lisboa on Monday, October 26th, 2011.
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Antão presently heads the company’s YVision team that has been working on the development of a platform for applications based on Natural User Interfaces (NUI) and Augmented Reality (AR).

For more information go to: http://www.creativelearning-conference.com/2011/

Interact 2011, the 13th Conference on Human - Computer Interaction kicks off today, September 5th in Lisbon and will run till September 9th, 2011.

The theme of this year’s INTERACT 2011 conference, Building Bridges, recognizes the interdisciplinary and intercultural spirit of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. The conference welcomes research that bridges disciplines, cultures and societies. Within the broad umbrella of HCI, Interact is looking for high quality contributions that will open new and emerging HCI disciplines, bridge cultural differences, and tackle important social problems. INTERACT 2011 provides a forum for practitioners and researchers to discuss all aspects of HCI, including these challenges.

YDreams is one of the event sponsors and the company CEO, António Câmara will be delivering a Keynote on Natural User Interfaces on Thursday, September 8th.

For more info on Interact 2011: http://interact2011.org/

A few posts ago I mentioned that the YDreams Group was expanding; turns out our family across the Atlantic has also been growing. Both YDreams Brasil affiliates (Rio de Janeiro & São Paulo) have taken on new members over the past months and in part because of it, they’ve decided to implement the Close Encounter (CE) sessions originally launched here at Lisbon HQs a few years back.

Close Encounters are small internal weekly conferences whose format varies; it can be a round table discussion, a talk about a specific topic or an artistic presentation. Speakers may be volunteer YDreamers or invested guests. Nuno Artur Silva (Produções Fícticias), Artur Arsénio (Robotics), Manuel Lima (Data Visualization) or Prof. Rui Aço (Oficina do Desenho), are some of the wonderful speakers we have had the privilege of having at our CEs. Internally we’ve also had folks talk about ‘Interactive Narratives in Cinema’, the ‘Power of Collaborative Tools’, ‘Digital Art’, and ‘Managing Your Personal Finances for the Financially Challenged’, among others. As you can see the idea is as much to discuss themes related to our core business as to inspire and inform!

Brazil’s first Close Encounter is underway in São Paulo as I write. It’s actually been a day and a half affair, and from looking at the program it sounds much like Orientation meets Team-building Seminar! The session includes an inspirational interview from co-founder and CEO. António Câmara, presentations of the company’s more emblematic cases and talks about, amongst others, “how we as a society have moved away from a ‘heavy’ and ’solid’, hardware-focused modernity to a ‘light’ and ‘liquid’, software-based modernity” (from Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘Liquid Modernity’).

Sounds like interesting stuff! Here’s to the first of many CEs in Brazil!

O Concurso «Realize o Seu Sonho» é uma iniciativa que apoia a estruturação de ideias e projectos em planos de negócio viáveis. Temos como Júri o Dr. Francisco Pinto Balsemão, Prof. António Câmara (CEO da YDreams), Prof. António Gomes Mota, Dr. Manuel Forjaz, Dr.ª Vera Pires Coelho, Prof. Tomaz Morais, Dr.ª Isabel Jonet, Dr. José Miguel Queimado e Dr. Paulo Taylor.

Candidate já o seu projecto! Inscrições grátis até 15 de Maio em www.sonho.org. Demora só 30 segundos! Prémios até 60.000€. Pode ver aqui o vídeo promocional do Concurso. Os parceiros deste projecto são IBM, Ericsson, Grupo José de Mello, SIC Notícias, Metro Porto, Metro Lisboa, Carris, NYSE Euronext, entre outros.

A Acredita Portugal é uma organização sem fins lucrativos que tem como objectivo estimular o empreendedorismo e apoiar na realização de projectos. Mais informações em www.acreditaportugal.pt ou realizeoseusonho@acreditaportugal.pt.

Tem um projecto ou ideia por implementar?

PARTICIPE NO CONCURSO REALIZE O SEU SONHO!

Pode candidatar até 3 Projectos!

Inscreva-se hoje (em 30 secs) em www.sonho.org!

May 17th & 18th the Augmented Reality Event (ARE) is back for a second consecutive year to show off a new round of innovation to the technology, media, and marketing communities, and YDreams will be there with its very own booth, so make sure to stop on by!

About a year ago (in June 2010) YDreams headed out to Santa Clara, California, to compete for the coolest Augmented Reality (AR) demo at ARE 2010, the first Augmented Reality Event. After braving a legendary, American Idol-style judging panel comprised of Bruce Sterling, Jesse Schell, and Mark Billinghurst, plus a live audience - who by the way, actually determined the winning demo – YDreams picked up the first ever Auggies Award for their 3D AR tech demo!

Below, raw footage of the first annual Augmented Reality Event (2-3 June, 2010 in Santa Clara, California). YDreams presents their demo at minute 01:00:01

“The Auggies Unplugged” - Best Augmented Reality Demo Competition at ARE 2010 from Ori Inbar on Vimeo.

Non-profit association, Associação Salvador, is promoting the Ser Capaz Research & Technology Award to further research work in psychomotor rehabilitation. Project collaborators include YDreams, faculty from Universidade do Algarve, and sponsors Semapa and BES.

The public awards ceremony will take place at 18h30 on the 21st of February, at Espaço BES Arte & Finança, in Lisbon’s Marquês de Pombal Square.

Associação Salvador defends and fights for the rights and interests of disabled people, with special emphasis on fostering integration into society, promoting handicap accessibility, road safety awareness, and research and technology.

Well aware of the importance of research and how it impacts their cause, the Association is striving to stimulate research in the field of psycho-motor rehabilitation by promoting the “Ser Capaz – Research & Technology” award.

The prize, awarded annually, finances projects for the development of products, instruments, technologies, methodologies, equipment or technical systems that prevent, compensate for, or serve the special needs of people with motor deficiencies.

António Câmara, YDreams CEO, Salvador Mendes de Almeida, Associação Salvador’s Founder and President and Fernando Lobo, a professor at Universidade do Algarve, comprised the jury, which elected the following winners from amongst the various entries submitted in the awards first edition in 2010.

A first prize of 7.000€ went to João Pedro Silva Leite and João Pedro Ferreira for their “Walk HD” Project. The project consists of a prosthetic device that ‘grows’ at the same rate as child amputees, thereby cutting back on the number of times these children need to change prostheses during their childhood years.

Two Honorable Mentions of 1.500€ each were also attributed to Luis Alexandre and Diogo Correia for their “Aid for Reaching Objects” device, and to Flávio Rosa Soares for his “Simon Project”, a wheelchair activated system that automatically turns lights off and on as the person leaves or enters a room.

According to Robert Rice “Augmented Reality is going to be bigger than the web, and it is going to affect nearly every industry and aspect of life”.

Karina Israel is going to explain why in a course she is giving on Augmented Reality at ESPM - Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing’s (Superior Institute for Marketing & Advertising) São Paulo Campus in February 2011. Enjoy!

For more details go to: http://www.espm.br/inovacao/curso.asp?cursoID=44

Integrada na sua estratégia de responsabilidade social, a YDreams vem promovendo o conceito de Fab Labs em Portugal, tendo já participado na organização de um evento promovido pelo IAPMEI em Janeiro último: http://www.iapmei.pt/iapmei-evt-02.php?eventoID=1313.

Os FAB LABS são laboratórios de fabricação digital, que pretendem oferecer aos cidadãos e empresas locais a possibilidade de experimentar as suas ideias e materializar as suas invenções, fomentando a criatividade e educando para a inovação e o empreendedorismo.

Os seguintes links para vídeos ilustram o que é um Fab Lab e as suas potencialidades:

O que é um Fab Lab?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOPGJ2VBCPo&feature=player_embedded

Neil Gershenfeld, criador dos Fab Labs
http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_gershenfeld_on_fab_labs.html

Lorain County Community College’s Fab Lab
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j4vOdPXJWY

Convidámos um conjunto de entidades publicas e privadas para um evento de lançamento da Rede Fab Labs Portugal, evento este que irá decorrer na próxima terça-feira, dia 23 de Novembro pelas 14:00 na sede da YDreams (no Monte da Caparica) e para a qual contamos com a participação dos órgãos de comunicação social portuguesa.

Acima de tudo trata-se de uma acção de interesse social e económico que acreditamos irá contribuir para capacitação tecnológica de Portugal uma vez que num Fab Lab qualquer cidadão terá acesso a uma rede de conhecimento e tecnologia mundial sobre uma lógica de open source.

No sentido de sustentar esta actuação foi criada no passado dia 14 de Outubro uma Associação Privada Sem Fins Lucrativos, APLFD. Estamos agora perante a realidade da existência de uma entidade que irá continuar esta acção da YDreams, a APLFD.

Karina Israel and Daniel Prado, YDreams Brasil’s Executive Director and CTO, respectively, are part of the line up for the 7th edition of this year’s iMasters InterCon Debate under way November 19th and 20th at São Paulo’s WTC Hotel. Promoted by iMasterPRO, the event is the largest IT and Internet Forum Debate in Latin America.

Keeping in line with this year’s slogan, “After the end of the web, reality lies elsewhere!” (depois do fim da web, a realidade é outra!), the 2010 event will revolve around themes like Massive Applications, Social Interfaces, Local, Data Visualization, Cloud Computing and Game Development.

Karina and Daniel will be basing their presentation on YDreams’ experience in Interactive Design and Ambient Intelligence. For a closer look at the program lined up go to: http://intercon.imasters.com.br/2010/programacao/.

Our brood across the Atlantic have been pretty busy spreading YDreams’ interactive breed of technology & design across Brazil. The latest project involves an events booth for Bradesco Seguros (the Brazilian bank’s insurance component) at Conec, an Insurance Brokers Congress that recently took place in the bustling city of São Paulo.

Bradesco wanted to turn out the most innovative and fun booth at the event. Seems like they did just that thanks to a mix of YDreams solutions that involved Augmented Reality and gesture-based games and activities.

Take a peek at the video below:

Every year, Paraty, a charming coastal town in Rio de Janeiro state hosts South America’s most important literary event. FLIP, the Portuguese acronym used to designate the event, which stands for International Literary Festival, was underway from August 4 – 6, 2010.

Itaú Bank, one of the event sponsors, commissioned YDreams’ technological creativity, via Tudo Agency to reach out to audiences and facilitate information access at the event. Interactive apps on hand included touch screen totems for checking out the program schedule for the event, guest authors’ biographies as well as detailed info about Flipinha and Flipzona, two projects designed to simultaneously promote digital inclusion and work as an incentive to encourage reading amongst young people. The solutions also featured digital maps of the event, helped locate electronic machines and provided weather info in real time.

Miguel Remédio, YDreams Co-Founder and International Operations Executive interviewed (minute 2:36) by RTP International TV show at AICEP sponsored event at the Portuguese Consulate in San Francisco that brought together Portuguese companies and individuals doing business and R&D in the USA.

Watch the video:

Karina Israel, Ydreams Brasil’s Executive Director’s live presentation on Augmented Reality (AR) at TEDxSudeste in Rio de Janeiro this past May has opened up many doors in Brazil and the requests for presentations on the exciting field of AR abound.

Today, Karina will be giving a talk on AR for an audience of 200 at Jornal Golobo, and tomorrow, the 17th of July, she will be a guest speaker at Interact 2010, an international conference on Digital Creativity. Both events will take place in Rio de Janeiro and the theme will focus on how to apply Augmented Reality creatively.

Since 2000 Augmented Reality (AR) has been one of YDreams’ technological focuses. We believe that this technology can be very useful to design groundbreaking interactive experiences and become a real game-changer in the way we use technology everyday.

Although we’ve been working in the field for some years, most recently AR has been extremely hyped as the next big thing and is finally a target of public attention. VCs are eager to invest, brands perceive a real market value and better technology platforms are being announced everyday.

The proof to all of this is that this year a group of companies decided to organize the first commercial Augmented Reality Event: ARE 2010. The conference gathered the most important players to exchange ideas, promote their products and showcase their latest tech breakthroughs. YDreams was invited to participate and we setup a showcase booth, did two public talks and participated in the Auggie demo awards.

Bruce Sterling interacting with YDreams' demo

The feedback from people was excellent. It was good to observe that all of the companies understand the importance of talking instead of turning our backs on each other. We all want the technology to grow in a sustainable way and more then selling and promoting ideas at an event like this, everyone wanted to discuss issues like potential markets, standards, user-experience or any other multiple good practices. It’s great to observe diversity and how everybody is thinking about AR from different perspectives.

We’ve come a long way since the days when we interacted with computers Using solely Command Line Interfaces (CLI) and later Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). There is real hope that the new wave of Natural User Interfaces (NUI) will provide a much more natural way for interacting with computers that will draw upon paradigms of the surrounding world. The users will have lower adaptation thresholds to computers and these will evolute to become more and more efficient for daily tasks. AR will definitely play an important role in this revolution, because ultimately it is trying to merge the real and the virtual in a seam less manner.

As for the event, we received very good feedback for our work at YDreams. People understand that we are not only concerned about technology, but also on how to develop good interaction design, where “content is king” and “clever is better than wow”.

We are also very proud to announce that we won the Auggie demo competition, where we showed our latest demo using Canesta’s technology. We clearly stated that it was not a product demo but a conceptual tech demo. One that shows how we’d like to think about the future of this technology: a perfect combination of NUI and AR, that will help democratize the future of computing by providing intuitive and engaging forms of interaction.

Ori Inbar hands Ivan Franco YDreams Auggie Award

Finally we’d like to thank the ARE 2010 sponsors and organizers and all of the people we met in the last days. It was a real joy to see us all come together with one common purpose.

Cheers
Ivan