Our most recent project has taken us to the Middle Eastern nation of Qatar where YDreams partnered with SDI, an innovative Canadian marketing agency to put together an interactive and itinerant roadshow dubbed Koora Time. The roadshow, aimed primarily at engaging youths, kicked off on May 10, 2013 during the quarter finals of the Emir Cup.
The Koora Time Roadshow (Koora means football in Arabic) was commissioned by the Qatar Football Association and sponsored by Shell. Following the Cup, it will be activated some 20 times, throughout the country, over the next two years. The roadshow aims to promote football and physical exercise amongst Qatari youths by engaging them through football related interactive games.
The roadshow’s multiple interactive experiences challenge participants to get plenty of exercise. The applications all revolve around YDreams’ technologies complemented by Kinect consoles. A total of seven challenges, which mimic different phases of the game of football and are all interconnected, make up the Koora roadshow. The activities range from “the Locker Room” where visitors first register to participate via a QR coded bracelet, and the “Sprint”, a game where participants are pitted against two virtual opponents to see who sprints the fastest from one end of the pitch to the other, to “the Goalie”, a goalkeeping game where participants see how many balls they can block in one minute, amongst others. At the end, after an intense workout & good fun, players also get to see how many calories they have actually burned.
The Koora Time Roadshow follows other projects YDreams’ has developed for the gulf-based Canadian marketing agency. The partnership between the two companies plans to deliver future exciting projects that foster innovative marketing campaigns through the mix of YDreams’ interactive technologies and design.
The recently-inaugurated Boulevard Londrina Shopping, a mall managed by Sonae Sierra Brasil located in the southeastern Brazilian city of Londrina, now hosts the country’s first Virtual Aquarium developed by YDreams. The aquarium, conceived to entertain guests to the center and increase customer loyalty, is also present, with the same objective, at shopping centers in Portugal, Turkey and Germany.
Link 237, developed by YDreams in collaboration with Bradesco, is usually hard at work at the Bradesco Next agency of the future at Iguatemi Shopping center in Saõ Paulo, Brazil. But last week it stepped out for a visit to INFO magazine’s newsroom in that city. At Bradesco Next, Link 237 is controlled through a series of micro-localisation antennas but during its foray out into the world, the bot was controlled by a tablet with access to wireless Internet.
YDreams recently implemented high-end digital solutions at the new “Vale Glaciar de Zêzere” interpretation center, which aims to recount the history of “Serra da Estrela”.
The center, located in a valley shaped and molded by a glacier thousands of years ago, was commissioned by Manteigas Municipality. The center, now housed inside a lodge that once belonged to the regional forest ranger, is dedicated to recounting the history of Manteigas Village, the valley and the relationship between the two.
The highlight of the center is an immersive audio-visual experience that takes visitors on a virtual flight over a recreation of the Zêzere Glacier Valley (30.000 years back) complete with narration of the phenomena that led to the formation of the glacier.
YDreams’ has extensive experience with the conception, design and technological development of Interpretation Centers. Aside from this new center in Manteigas, below is a list of similar developments for centers in Portugal and abroad:
Ziphius, all packed and ready to ship to San Fran!
The “Insert Coin: New Challengers” competition takes the most promising crowd funded hardware and takes it to the stage, with live product demos and a competition where your vote and a panel of judges combine forces to pick the best of the best. Our team is heading to San Francisco, on March 16th and 17th, to present Ziphius on stage and convince readers and judges that we deserve to take home the top prize. We’ll handle the stage part but YOU have a major role in it too: as a reader, you can help us get to first place by voting for Ziphius!
Online voting during the event is one of three criteria to win the top prize. The other two are audience voting and the judge´s opinion. We’d like to ask you to take a little time during your weekend, to go to http://myziphius.com and cast your vote for Ziphius!
The whole event will be live streamed during the weekend so you can watch all the action. Tune in here: http://www.engadget.com/event/engadget-expand/about/. If you want to watch Ziphius highlights, you can tune in online on March 16th from 3PM to 3:45PM (Pacific Standard Time) to watch us presenting Ziphius. On the March 17th, from 5:30PM to 6:15PM (Pacific Standard Time) the Insert Coin Award winners will be announced. With your support we can be one of the winners!
WHEN: Final Voting will take place March 16th, 8AM onwards (Pacific Standard Time) & March 17th till NOON (Pacific Standard Time).
We couldn’t be more excited and on March 16th and 17th, as one of the top five final projects, Team Ziphius will be getting time on stage in San Francisco to convince readers and judges alike that they deserve to take home the top prize of $20,000. MAKE Magazine Editor-in-Chief and Boing Boing co-editor Mark Frauenfelder will be at Expand to help present the top five projects. The list of judges includes four of the biggest names from the world of design, DIY, crowdfunding and gadget blogging. Exciting and a little scary!
By the way, you can watch the whole event ONLINE! Tune in to two full days of live-streamed coverage on Engadget, where they’ll have everything that’s happening on stage available online, along with a ton of special footage from backstage interviews and sneak peaks from the exhibit hall floor!
This year YDreams partnered up with Intel once again to make an appearance at the annual Lego World event at the Bella Center, Scandinavia’s largest exhibition and conference center, located in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Last year, YDreams’ stint with its Lego-theme based Virtual Aquarium at Intel’s Lego World booth was a hit, so Intel and Lego invited us back for a repeat performance. This year, in addition to the eye-catching aquarium, YDreams also displayed its Boxfall application, where guests are able to interact with virtual Lego building blocks that fall from the top of a screen.
The Lego-adapted Virtual Aquarium on the other hand, invited guests to create and thoroughly customize virtual pet fish based on Lego building bricks. They decided on the shape and color of the Lego brick that will determine the fish’s body and fins, as well as the color of its eyes and stripes. The variables available enabled guests to create a multitude of distinct fish, so the risk that any two fish were identical was minimal! Once guests finished creating their Lego fish, they released it into the Virtual Aquarium, sat back and watched as their new friend explored its new environment.
YDreams’ Virtual Aquariums can now be visited at several shopping centers around the world. The first were developed and deployed for Forum Sintra (Portugal) and Marmara Forum (Turkey) and two more were recently launched at mfi group shopping centers in Leipzig and Munich, Germany.
Leading tech blog Engadget selected ZiphiusTM, the first aquatic drone controlled by a smartphone or tablet, developed by our very own Azorean, as one of the 10 semi-finalists in the Insert Coin Competition
ZiphiusTM is an aquatic drone controlled by a smartphone or tablet that allows a first-person-view (FPV) control. With super intuitive handling and unique design, ZiphiusTM achieves spectacular water rides. Apps and games use image processing allowing Ziphius to have autonomous behaviors and navigate through augmented reality worlds.
The “Insert Coin” Competition is an excellent opportunity for Ziphius. The winner will be crowned at the Expand Event, in San Francisco this March, and will take home a cash prize and a guaranteed Engadget review – not to mention all the exposure that comes with debuting our product in front of some of tech’s top influencers.
The trip to San Francisco in March to the Expand Event is already guaranteed, but the folks behind Ziphius are aiming for the gold, or better, a slot amongst the top five finalists. And for that we need your help, or better, YOUR VOTE!
Soon as we know when & where you can cast your vote for Ziphius, we’ll let you know!
Naves do Conhecimento (Knowledge Vessels) is an ambitious project that has spread across several Rio de Janeiro neighborhoods. The project, headed by Rio de Janeiro Municipality, and coordinated by the city’s Special Secretary for Science and Technology and managed by IDACO, Rio’s Institute for the Development of Community Activities, aims to provide citizens with free access to recreational activities based on education and front-line technology.
There are currently five Naves do Conhecimento up and running but during the inauguration of the most recent center, Eduardo Paes, Rio’s Mayor, stated that the city aims to open another 40 Naves in the city’s northern and western neighborhoods by 2016. YDreams, whose technology powers all the Naves do Conhecimento, is extremely proud to be a part of this incredible project.
Ziphius, the aquatic drone being produced by Azorean, one of our spin out companies, successfully underwent its most recent test-run in friendly waters.
One of our spin out companies, Azorean, has launched a new project called Ziphius, an aquatic drone designed for exploring the underwater world. Ziphius’ movements are controlled using a smartphone or tablet; a built-in camera lets users navigate & capture footage of oceans, lakes and even your swimming pool.
To better understand what Ziphius is about, check out the video below and the following channels:
The Nave do Conhecimento (Knowledge Vessel) network in Rio de Janiero continues to grow. The latest center, opened to the public on December 24th, 2012 in Penha, a Rio de Janeiro neighborhood.
The municipality’s goal in setting up the network, to offer the local population easier access to culture and information technologies via free internet, free workshops and courses in information technology, seems to be on track! All the centers are fueled by YDreams’ creative technologies.
Below, a picture of our most recent virtual aquarium deployed in Leipzig, Germany at the Höfe am Brühl shopping center. Plans to implement a similar aquarium in other network shopping centers in Germany is underway.
The first virtual aquarium was deployed in 2011 at Forum Sintra on the outskirts of Lisbon, and in early 2012, Intel commissioned YDreams to adapt the aquarium to the Lego brand for its stand at Lego World 2012.
Conceived in collaboration with Bradesco Bank, and designed by YDreams, the premise for the bank was entirely based on interactivity and technology, and how these elements would facilitate daily client-bank relations and optimize time.
The space has been opening to the public at Shopping Iguatemi JK in São Paulo, Brazil since late August 2012. Below some pics of visitors and clients exploring the space:
Client Multiplan, one of the largest shopping center management groups in Brazil, is putting in an appearance at the Expo Shopping Abrasce 2012 trade show in São Paulo – one of the largest in its sector in all Latin America.
The Multiplan booth features several YDreams interactive solutions that include a graphically rich video wall for displaying multimedia content and information about the company, an interactive surface table with a plethora of info on each of the group’s shopping centers plus a fun memory quiz, and a very cool app that lets guests explore several shopping center images in 360º using special eye-wear that controls image navigation via head movements, complemented by a virtual menu explored using simple hand movements as well.
