Wimbledon - Augmented Reality App

With England's Britain's hopes still alive at Wimbledon I thought we would take a look at an Augment Reality application specifically built for the tennis. But first what is Augmented Reality? AR is the enhancement of a view of the 'real' world by overlaying digital information. Think of the the cyborgs view from Terminator, where the computer overlays information on the live images it is seeing. In the movie this allows contextual information to augment the reality being seen - AR. Clearer? Well lets look at the tennis application.

IBM Seer, which is available for android and iPhone, is an AR application specifically developed for the Wimbledon Tournament. The application was first launched last year, and this year has been enhanced and made available on the iPhone.

The application gives you the ability to point your phone at Centre, Court One or Court Two and literally see through the wall, as live play from inside  appears on your phone. In addition, you’ll be able to see the length of the taxi queues, or what’s happening on ‘Henman Hill’ even when you may be on the other side of the grounds! I think its pretty cool.

For a video demo click below:

World TeleMedia 2010

World Telemedia is the only European event looking at making money from premium content and services – linking the power of the media and marketing with network billing collection & delivery. This year WIN where a Silver Sponsor at the event in Malta, with Matt Winters and Paul Swaddle attending from the UK, and Lily Xenou and Eliza Patsalide from the Greek office. The event was also attended by many of our competitors, Operators, AIME and PP+, but more importantly a number of our key and prospective customers.

Matt Winters kicked off the conference by representing WIN on the first panel of the event. The panel discussed issues around billing and marketing of a variety of SMS billed services, including the emerging market of Psychic TV channels. Matt was complimented by a number of delegates on his thoughtful contribution and knowledge of the PSMS market - well done Matt.

WIN's sponsorship centred around a sponsored drinks event on the first full evening of the conference. The bar staff wore Quins RL shirts which looked great, and helped increase our brand presence beyond that provided as part of our sponsorship package.

We ran a prize draw for all visitors to our drinks reception. Everyone was asked to put their business card into the draw, these were collected by Eliza, who made sure that everyone was in the draw and more importantly we had everyone's contact details.

The winner of the draw is being notified today, as well as email going to the unlucky participants - a great opportunity to remind them of WIN's services.

Matt is following up on the UK leads while Lily and Eliza are now busy following up on the Greek leads from the event. Watch out for updates in WIN Bytes over the coming weeks.

More photos here.

Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology

WIN were a sponsor of the recent Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology Seminar in London run by AIME (Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment) . The event was attended by a large variety of charities from the biggest and best known to small local charities.

I gave a presentation on WIN's approach to charities, and how we are enabling this emerging donation mechanic. From our leading the industry with the Tsunami Appeal in 2004, through the first electronic Poppy in 2005, and more recently our involvement with the Mobile Data Association to improve payouts from all Operators in the UK. The full presentation can by found on Slideshare.

Other speakers included a keynote presentation from Caroline Lien of Comic Relief, who spoke about their experiences, highlighting that 10% of all their donations were now being raised by SMS, a total of nearly £10M accross Comic and Sports relief. Caroline's and other presentation from the day can be found here.

Byte Night... Will you sleep out for Charity?

Slightly off topic today, but all for a good cause. WIN plc are supporting Byte Night 2010 and I need your help.

Byte Night is the Technology industry’s annual sleep out in support of Action for Children. Each year hundreds of individuals and teams from across the Technology and business community spend a night exposed to the elements in a bid to raise sponsorship and awareness of Action for Children’s work.

It all began 12 years ago when 30 individuals from the Technology industry slept out and raised £35,000. Since then the event has grown to over 700 sleepers raising almost £550,000 in 2009 alone. Patrons, sponsors and sleepers include celebrities and leading figures, CIOs, systems developers, business managers, marketers and more.

So what are WIN doing? Well Graham Rivers and myself are forming a team - and we need three volunteers to join us. We are ideally looking for three WINners from different departments within WIN so that we can have some competition between departments on our fundraising goal - to raise over £3000.

Interested? Well here are a few more details; the event takes place on 8 Oct at Thames Valley Park, and the Team will sleep out from 11pm until 6am along with hundreds of other people. If you would like to get involved email me or pop over for a chat.

Once we have the Team together we will let everyone know how they can help support the WIN team in our fund raising efforts.