Android, the mobile phone software platform / operating system being developed by Open Handset Alliance (comprising of Google, Intel, Motorola and others), has recently announced the winners of the Android Developer Challenge.

The contest was launched by Google and provided 10 million dollars in awards for the developers of mobile applications to be used with the Android. (Let’s not forget the raging success of iPhone’s App Store, which adds much appeal to the iPhone and a nice income source for Apple).

Each one of the top ten winners got 275,000 dollars for the work and creativity they put onto their apps. Most of them incorporate location-based information of some sort, with some focusing more on social networking, marketing or gaming.

Among many intersting apps, there’s Compare Everywhere that allows you got to a physical store and enjoy all the price comparison, product review and alternate store locator that you can have online. The ecology minded have Ecorio, which let’s you calculate and assess your carbon footprint on the go; and the avid social networkers who actually do turn off Facebook / Hi5 / Twitter to go out at night, can use Wertago to find recommended locations. Full list here.

Over the summer I spent a few days in Chicago; I knew a little about the windy city by the lake, with the impressive architecture. What I didn’t know was that Chicago has a world-renowned collection of public art, which seems to abound particularly in downtown Millennium Park.

The park pretty much doubles as an outdoor gallery and concert hall with plenty of impressive stuff on display! Day or night the place was always crawling with visitors of all ages who came for concerts at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, to laugh and pose in front of the Cloud Gate sculpture, or gawk at the massive Crown Fountain glass block towers at each end of a shallow pool, while waiting expectantly for a burst of water to spout from the mouth of the Chicagoan up on the massive screen.

Granted, Crown Fountain is pretty fantastic as is, but I couldn’t help wondering how much more immersive it would be if there was a way of displaying the grinning faces of the folks actually looking on, in real-time. Ok, call me narcissistic but yes, I would’ve gotten a kick out of having my “mug” plastered on the giant glass block, and admit it, you probably would have too.

The Digital Signage Today website, part of the established NetWorld Alliance, has published an article titled Gesture-based digital signage: A new marketing future, where YDreams is referred as ‘Portugal’s gesture-based innovator’, alongside other respected global players Reactrix and GestureTek.The article mentions our work with gesture based interfaces for the Coca-Cola, Vodafone, Compal and Dove campaigns, as examples of the rising trends and, especially, the effectiveness of this new kind of marketing tool.

Besides heading one of the company’s most ambitious projects – the development of new interactive surfaces – Inês Henriques is now also a prized author.

Inês was recently distinguished with the notable Rudolfs Medal from the Water Environment Federation (WEF), an international not-for-profit technical and educational water quality organization, for a paper she co-authored focusing on the effects of shock loads of several organic and inorganic industrial chemicals which could disrupt the operation and performance of biological treatment systems if discharged in shock pulse patterns.

The award will be presented at ceremonies during the WEF’s 81st annual technical exhibition and conference – next month in Chicago, Illinois. For more information, visit www.weftec.org.

Kudos to you Inês!

SXSW Interactive 2009 is already gearing up and we’ve got some YDreamers applying for panels. Though not as widely popular as its Music counterpart, SXSW Interactive is one of the most conceited interactive media festivals around. From March 13 to 17, Austin will be buzzing with media entrepreneurs, curious geeks, technology evangelists and any other interactive aficionado variants you’d care to make. We’d really appreciate it if you’d give us a hand by voting for our panels.

Marta Vieira has two submissions for the Mobile / Wireless category. Since her early days at the company, as an Account Manager for our Entertainment division, Marta has amassed a profuse knowledge on location-based systems and gaming, both panels propose to put some perspective into current state-of-the-art and future trends.

Ivan Franco, our Research & Development Director, is set for the New Technology / Next Generation category, where he sets to share his expertise in new interfaces, DIY concepts and his own musicianship (check out Ivan’s blog for more info).

More info and voting links below:

Inches vs Miles – What Makes Location-Based Games Fun? (Marta Vieira)

Is accurate location what makes a location-based game “real”? Or can we broaden the concept of location until it fits our idea of what a fun game design would be? In this panel experts will discuss location-based gaming, its present and possible evolution.

(click to vote)

Location-Based Applications – Dead on Arrival? (Marta Vieira)

Location based applications have long been hailed as the wireless industry’s “next killer app”. But will they disappear before they’re ever big? In this panel the experts will discuss if location is likely to emerge as a powerful genre or be used as a feature boost for applications.

(click to vote)


New Interfaces for Performance (Ivan Franco)

Realtime computation allowed new media artists to develop interactive performances but typical computer interfaces don’t offer appropriate interaction models for these contexts. In the DIY generation artists learned new techniques to build their own instruments. Novel interfaces have surfaced and this presentation is a reflection on New Interfaces for Performance.

(click to vote)

The iFest ’08 event, organized by Infonomia, had its fourth edition held in the Forum Building in Barcelona between the 10^th and 12^th of July. After the amount of attention attracted at the 2007 edition, YDreams Med returned as an interactive technology partner, with the yFaces. Participants would write down free comments about the event on nearby post-its, that would then appear almost instantaneously on a giant 103” plasma, gently provided by Panasonic Spain.

iFest aims to accelerate business growth through innovation and creativity. There were over 25 speakers present including: Hiroshi Tasaka, David Weinberger, Alberto Alessi, Peter Watson, Tom Kelley, Antonella Broglia, Ricardo Baeza-Yates among others. Our own Miguel Remédio made a brief presentation about YDreams.

Some interesting bits:

- The Sustainable Dance Club (vid 1) (vid 2), from the Roosegaarde Studio (2). A dance floor geared with sensors and piezo-electric components that can power an entire disco, sic, and make it interactive. Opening next September, at the Watt in Rotterdam.

- Just rub yours against mine and we’re done. It’s “E“, the gadget set to replace business cards.

- A lot of content on fabrics and textiles: the entrepreneurial Sensing Fabrics with stylist Joan Fabregas, the free-minded XS Labs (vids) from Joanna Berzowska and two Dutch girls and their Taeppedyr that keeps babies from crying. Even Philips had something to say on the subject.

- Unlock your cell-phone just by staring at it, with VFacer (download available for the N70), from Visual Engineering.

- Philips’ drive for innovation was put forward by Emile Aarts, founder of Philips Home Lab. See if this sounds familiar in any way.

- And then there was the toy section. ALAVS (Autonomous Light Air Vessels) and their funny Blubber Bots. Goofy looking toy robots that look paradoxically vintage, from Fadisel. Download a bed-time story and stuff it into the storytelling Nabar teddy-bear. The oddly real and sensor filled Pleo dinosaur, 2007 Engadget Robot of the Year, from Ugobe.

- Telefonica I+D showed off a very prototypical Visual Search Engine, where a photo taken by your own cell phone can act as the “key word” for the search: take a photo of a CD cover on a shop-window and immediately buy that CD online…

- The solar powered scooter, from Sun Red.

Freddie Yauner created an animated version of that traditional and lifeless Exit Signs. It was displayed at the Royal College of Art School (UK). (via We Make Money Not Art)

Flapi, our in-house Augmented Reality mascot, is in the spotlight again. After a high-profile stint at Engadget, this time Flapi stars in an Exame Informática (a Portuguese leading IT magazine) article and video.

You can find the video below, where Ivan Franco, our R&D Director, talks about YDreams’ work with Augmented Reality, and showcases Flapi and the Interactive Bubbles (in portuguese):

Exactly 348 days from its initial debut in the North American market, the coveted iPhone is going to be the European accessory for the summer. However, this time was worth the wait. The new iPhone 3G is faster comes with even more applications and other goodies. Best of all, and like one YDreamer mentioned, it can be cheaper than a tank of diesel (at least for those of you who have a 2003 Land Rover Discovery that holds 93 litres of black gold.)

Various questions still remain. Will we be tied to a binding two year contract with our mobile service carrier? How will the iPhone 3G perform compared to its stiff European competition?

A few YDreamers are already carrying it around, but will the rest of the YBuilding adhere to the fad? More importantly will the rest of Portugal, Europe, the World, the Universe join the iPhone cult? We’ll just have to wait and see whilst patiently hold our “uncool” mobile phones. T minus 25 days and counting….

Games Alfresco has just referenced YDreams’ SimVideo as one of the top 10 Augmented Reality engines around (post). The blog is dedicated to the pursuit of the ultimate augmented reality game, and features a lot of information about AR and related developments. Jump to gamesalfresco.com for more.

Reuters reports on the implementation of a 4th basic element for passive electronic circuits achieved by Hewlett-Packard.

The memristor, till now merely theoretical, opens the possibility for zero-wait-time devices.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN3055349720080430

HP Labs have been at the forefront of electrotechnical/electronic engineering with such milestones as developing the first commercial LEDs in 1968 and launching the first thermal inkjet printer in 1984. Their estimate is that for each good idea that reaches production, there are about a dozen flops. Current research includes utility computing and quantum computing.

I´m very sad this week because the cutest project that I’ve ever worked on in my entire life … just finished. I literally shed a few tears once it was over because I don´t quite know how to explain my feelings about it. Maybe the child inside of me will miss the sensation of Happiness every time I saw the people interacting in front of the screen, taking pictures of the giant Coke bottle (with real coke inside … imagine the smell) or just laughing along with the TV Coke commercial.

The Happiness Factory from Coca-Cola was such a pleasure and a job perfectly done. Everything was perfect. Of course there were endless nights running tests and some nervousness, but from the very start, when we were invited to be a part of the it, we could see that this would be “The Project”, here in Brazil. One month of hard and pleasurable work.

I would like to congratulate every YDreamer involved. Capeta, Renan, Caetano and Daniel Prado, as well as the people at Gringo (our partner ad agency) and Coca-Cola, thank you for making my dream come true.

Recently, Engadget, a web magazine with daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics, picked up on our Flapi YouTube video, which gave viewers a look into what goes on at YLabs, our in-house R&D lab.

There’s more where Flapi came from, so we thought we’d share a clip about an augmented reality experiment involving foamy virtual bubbles. We stumbling upon the technology about a year back and at the time weren’t quite sure what to do with it.

YLabbies try out Virtual Bubbles

Below take a quick peak at how the creative use of an ingenuous lab experiment gave way to a fun interactive experience for movie-goers in São Paulo, Brazil:

Interactive Cinema Experience at São Paulo Movie Theaters

YDreams’ Flapi movie has been recently featured on popular tech blog - Engadget, so I thought I’d give you a little insight into our latest Augmented Reality project.

Following other YDreams’ products with AR, such as the Virtual Sightseeing Scenic Viewer and augmented books, SimVideo extends the possibilities of these technology applications by providing a large set of tracking, simulation and composition functionalities with very low hardware requirements, due to a very powerful proprietary platform.

With this technology we envision applications such as real time competition with F1 drivers during a Grand Prix Tv transmission, the re-enactment of famous movies, performing alongside or replacing ones favourite actors (imagine Woody Allen´s Broadway Danny Rose inverted) and an enormous variety of augmented reality applications.

With SimVideo, video feeds that are either live or pre-recorded can gain new levels of interest through the addition of an individual layer of contextualized interactivity.

SimVideo implements static and dynamic occlusion, static and dynamic shadow casting, collision detection and physics.

Related experiences have demonstrated real characters interacting with virtual objects, new developments already undertaken in SimVideo are leading to virtual characters affecting and controlling real world objects. Soon one will be able to see Flapi turning real lights on and off and other real world objects controlled by virtual characters.

The main idea is merging real and virtual life in a seamless universe that tends to become one.

And if you haven’t seen the video:

July 7th, 2003 - YDreamers celebrate the launch of the Undercover mobile game

For a long time YDreams has been associated with mobile gaming. In recent times we have been slowly moving away from that particular business area, to focus on our core of interactive conceptual environments or experiences. Mobile games, though, played an important role in the company’s success history.

Undercover and Undercover 2: Merc Wars, which expanded the concept further, were mobile Massive Multi-player Online Games that incorporated live location features making them pioneer gaming experiences in that particular genre. This further strengthened YDreams expertise in location-based systems and, above all, as a creator of a different breed of interactive experiences. It took a lot of sleepless nights, hard work and some ingenuity to try to compete in such uncharted territory against the big players of game development.

It has to be said that the commercial success of that specific game was not matched by the critical acclaim it received. Sometimes it doesn’t pay off to be on the forefront. But the hype and exposure the company got for devising such a product, and the lessons we learned from the whole process, have been an important part of making YDreams into the company that it is today.

We still get asked if we are “that mobile games company”. We aren’t, and the truth is we never quite were. Mobile games were a part of YDreams’ interactive experiences portfolio, but never the whole of the company. We are immensely proud of Undercover 2, Cristiano Ronaldo Underworld Football’s success or the launch of Wall Street Fighter in a few months time, but now we have moved on to a whole bigger realm of more encompassing projects.

The first video illustrating our interactive work for Coca-Cola’s Brazillian Happiness Factory campaign has hit YouTube, this one featuring an Interactive Floor Projection where Kissy Puppies are drawn to people. (Expect more Coca-Cola videos and info soon)

The Sea Monsters Interactive Exhibition for Lisbon’s Oceanarium movie has also been made available recently:

Watch out also for Filipe Freitas (a Portuguese Computer Science student at University of Aveiro), who wrote a detailed description of Microsoft’s TechDays event, complete with some videos of the installations we had at the show, like this one:

Chance had it that I’d pick up Nassim Taleb’s book, Black Swan*, and read this paragraph regarding causality, randomness and technological discoveries (Taleb was recalling a visit he had made to a biotech company):

This was my first encounter with a firm that lived off Black Swans of the positive kind. I was told that a scientist managed the company and that he had the instinct, as a scientist, to just let scientists look wherever their instinct took them. Commercialization came later. My hosts, scientists at heart, understood that research involves a large element of serendipity†, which can pay off big as long as one knows how serendipitous the business can be and structures it around that fact. Viagra, which changed the mental outlook and social mores of retired men, was meant to be a hypertension drug. Another hypertension drug led to a hair-growth medication. My friend Bruce Goldberg, who understands randomness, calls these unintended side applications “corners”. While many worry about unintended consequences, technology adventurers thrive on them.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable

When I started working at YDreams I was excited to discover that YLabs, our Research and Development unit, also functions with a considerable degree of autonomy and our researchers are encouraged to pursue things that at first sight would not be related to the company’s portfolio. At one point, though, a flag would rise in my non-scientist mind, thinking ‘but shouldn’t they be narrowing down to the company’s commercial needs?’. I guess sometimes some of us might confuse narrowness with focus. Because when you come to realize that the Internet, the personal computer or penicillin (and many others), were all inventions that we now associate with something their original creators weren’t looking for in the first place, it becomes easy to understand why it is important that YLabs functions as it does. After all, YDreams was founded by five scientists and who knows what kind of (positive) Black Swans we will be generating next?

More on Taleb.

*”a black swan is a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. Taleb regards many scientific discoveries as black swans—”undirected” and unpredicted.” (wikipedia)

† Serendipity: “an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.” (dictionary.com) Also, a movie starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale:

In one of the movie’s most poignant moments, Jonathan tells Sara about
his inability to predict Black Swans.

Microsoft Techdays, one of the biggest tech-events in Portugal, is underway at the Lisbon Congress Center from the 11th to the 14th of March. The four-day event is aimed at “IT professionals, programmers and students” in related fields and is expected to draw over 2000 visitors.

YDreams will be on hand with their ubiquitous Magic Book, a yWalk (interactive floor projection) and one of their latest developments yFaces, an augmented reality-based app that manages to positively surprise users everywhere.

YDreamer Pedro Matos will be participating in a key-note speech about Virtual Coast, a prototype developed by the creative technology provider that runs on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform, and will be used by IGP (the Portuguese Geographic Institute) to develop a series of next-generation geographical applications. Antão Almada, from YLabs, the company’s R&D unit, will also give a talk about “building support infra-structures and applications for events such as Techdays” tomorrow at 17:15 in Room A7.

Techdays 2008, March 11th - 14th
Venue: Lisbon Congress Center (Centro de Congressos de Lisboa) Portugal

More information: www.techdays.pt

Games Alfresco, a blogger’s opinion about the future of Augmented Reality games and how the technology will revolutionize gaming.

Click to read more: Top 10 augmented reality demos that will revolutionize video games

A bit old (2004) but interesting Ted Talk by Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief and author of the “Long Tail” book and concept – “How endless choice is creating unlimited demand”.

In this particular video, Chris presents the idea that each technology goes through four different key stages – “setting the right price, gaining market share, displacing an established technology and, finally, becoming ubiquitous” - and supports this with the analysis of a bunch of different technologies.