New Media Awards 2005 Weblog

The Beijing Film Academy- Asia’s largest film education institution - has unveiled a project to shoot 10 mobile movies for mobile phone users. Together with the New Cinema Magazine they will select 10 short film scripts, 3-5 minutes long. The scripts will then be made into films by Chinese veteran directors.

The films will be shot with digital, high-definition video cameras and Nokia will provide technical support to uploading the films. Besides being screened on mobile phones, the films will also be converted into traditional 35 mm and digital format for web based digital screenings and digital movie theatres. Film director Li Shaohong said:"With technical advancements improving fast for web and mobile media, online viewing and mobile phone screening will boost the box office incomes of Chinese films. ”

One year on, over 30 million EU citizens have opted to carry the European Health Insurance Card, instead of the EU health document, the E111.

The card was launched in June 2004 to simplify access to necessary medical care when travelling in other EU states. Since then over 13 countries have grabbed hold of the idea. In countries such as Sweden, there has been a 600% increase in the number of people holding the card, compared to those who carried the E111.

According to e-Gov monitor the latest figures show that the highest numbers of cards issued were in, the Czech Republic, Germany and Sweden, where a combined total of over 23 million people have opted to use the card. Obtaining the card has been made even easier in the EU states of Ireland, Norway and Sweden where the card can now be ordered online.

The high uptake of the card has prompted the UK to bring their launch date forward from December to September 2005.

On the 30th of June live on the Downing Street website, the Prime Minister will be answering posted questions about the up and coming G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland. Focusing on the top issues at the top to this year’s to do list.

Current topics, such as Africa and climate change, will be the key issues being discussed during the live chat.
For a chance to submit questions in advance simply go to www.direct.go.uk.

Talking bus stops have been erected in Bristol as part of National Deafblind Awareness Week which occurred this month. The blind and the deafblind can use electronic key fobs to trigger spoken information from boxes housed at the stops. An automated voice reports the current time, bus arrival and departure times, route and the stop number. The system is reliant upon Real Time Passenger Information (RTI) which uses satellite tracking of the buses and relays information to the boxes at the talking stops.

Though the technology has been in partial use before, this Bristol scheme marks the first instance of a comprehensive city-wide venture. Executive Member for Transport and Development control, Dennis Brown, said ‘Many people who are blind or visually impaired may be deterred from using buses because they can’t read the timetables at bus stops or see from the real time displays how long they have to wait until the next bus arrives.’ Hopefully this interactive technology may create a precedent to be followed around the country.

Tunbridge Wells Council has taken action to improve their support for voluntary organisation and businesses in the borough.

From this week charities and businesses within the Tunbridge Wells area will be able to search for funding opportunities for free. The council has joined with Grantfinder, producer of Grantnet - a national grant finding facility- to provide detailed information on financial support. The database which previously could only be viewed by paying a fee can now be accessed by all voluntary and business organisations within the borough.

Searching Grantnet will help those seeking grants and funding for projects, to find national, regional and local funders simply by entering their details. Once they have done so a password will be immediately sent to their e-mail, allowing access to the database.

Grantnet is continuously updated, providing information in a range of formats such as, short summaries, overviews and in lenghty and extensive detail to help organsations establish their elegibility at the outset.

Southampton is leading the way in its use of localised SmartCity cards. These combine the many features found on many different cards into a single card. The service was originally launched in 2001, but is currently being updated with new features. Holders will now be able to record their participation in the NHS Organ Donor Register and prove their age. They can already use the card for discounts at leisure centres, to borrow books, CDs and DVDs at libraries and on some university buses. Pupils at Bellemoor School can clock up lunch-money for school dinners on the cards.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister would ideally like every citizen to hold a SmartCity card. Cabinet Member for Resources, David Beckett, said: “Southampton has grasped the government’s smart card agenda with both hands and is now setting the standard for other councils across the country and around the world". The scheme has become highly regarded to the extent of being consulted by other British cities and even foreign countries for advice.

This summer the meeting of music and sound comes together through the magic of technology. The Culture Online commissioned project - Rosetta Requiem - is set to create a collective voice for palliative care users. The project produced by Rosetta life - the charity that works with people with life-threatening illnesses to give full expression to their creative talents - gives hospice users the opportunity to commemorate and celebrate their lives.

At each of the 15 hospices around England Rosetta Life have installed an Apple based Digital Arts Centre packed full of laptops, desktops, video and still cameras. They have also gained the support of several artist such as Billy Bragg, Michael Nyman and Emily Young who have given up their time to help hospice users and their families produce music, songs and films to be performed throughout the year.

From July the finished pieces of art produced by the patients will be broadcast on the Rosetta Life website through the latest version of MSN messenger. The first of four live web broadcast is due to go out on July 6 2.00-4.00pm. Children from Gt Ormond Street Hospital will link up with children from St Nicholas Hospice in South Africa and children from sudbourne School, Brixton in a performance of their songs.

New methods have been seized upon by Liverpool’s electronic Netherly Valley (eNV) in the quest for increased internet access for the community. They have furnished a van with a satellite wireless connection, allowing remote internet browsing in the heart of the city. An lorry or bus was considered initially, however the cost was found to be prohibitive. eNV aim to make the van a welcoming, non-traditional venue for IT use that will not scare people off with bad memories of the school classroom.

The van will provide people with email access, and has been used by local groups attempting the research of Liverpool history and at fun days to explore issues of health and society. Job-seekers are also a target audience. Samantha McDonough of eNV, said ‘the number of people using the van has more than doubled over the last 6 months alone – we hope to build upon this success and expand our service across the whole of Liverpool’.

Why a council, six months or more after the launch of the project, should now attempt to publicise it is another matter.

Swansea Council are proposing to show their meetings on the internet in an attempt to engage the local population. Discussions would be presented as a web-cast, allowing citizens to watch decision-making from a computer.

The leader of the Council, Chris Holley, said, “We are determined to find ways to modernise council meetings, to make local democracy more open…We want to encourage and make it easier for [locals] to see how we go about making the decisions that affect their lives up close.”

The council is also contemplating, amongst other things, making meetings later in the day to encourage a larger public audience.

Arts Corp. of Tokyo have developed a life-size mannequin with countless faces. Her features are created by internal DVD technology which realistically projects any face onto that of the blank model. A speaker facilitates speech, which is synchronized to lip movements.

Modern film or music stars might be a likely choice for users, though Art Corp. president Jun Ishikawa has cited Cleopatra as one of his goals for creation. The face of the Egyptian queen and other historical figures would be created by computers.

Scientists at Tokyo University have created a video art work that lets viewers interact as never before with film. Whilst for most films a viewers engagement is passive and linear, the Khronos projector allows people to grab an area or object within the film and cast it back or forward in time. Multiple videos have been used with the technology. Notable examples of interaction include a cityscape, part of which has been thrust forward into night whilst the rest is in broad daylight, and a water fountain whose plume had been seized and moved about.

Whilst the grabbing has thus far been done either with a mouse or tablet or a large touch screen, the creators hope ultimately to house the technology behind a ‘organic-feeling…deformable’ screen. Those interacting with it could then use their hands or a tool such as a stick to poke and prod objects through time as they wished. Interestingly, small projectiles such as tiny pebbles could be thrown at the screen, causing water-like time ripples.

Philips has launched a device, ‘The Smart Companion’, that owners can enjoy dialogue with as well as order to perform tasks. Part of their ‘Home Dialogue System’ (HDS), the companion can respond to voice commands to display photos, search the Internet and recognize different faces. Ideally, ‘Dimi’ will be networked to a household’s computer, enabling information gleaned from the Internet to be communicated in a quick and friendly way.

The robot has been given a simplified human-like shape, with a flexible ‘head’ unit that can nod in response to requests. Much of Dimi’s body is covered with light panels, meaning emotional responses can be conveyed by the use of different shades. ‘Because the Smart Companion is so humanlike, users feel they are dealing with a friend - a living assistant. As trust and ease grow, interacting with the Smart Companion becomes an ever more pleasurable experience’.

A simple elastoplast can now be used to transmit important health information. A small ‘digital plaster’, containing a silicon chip, can be incoroporated onto the elastoplast which then processes data relevant to a number of bodily processes. Temperature, blood pressure and glucose levels can be monitored by this super-plaster which transmits its results via a PDA or mobile phone to a computer.

If the levels fall or rise to dangerous levels the patient will be alerted. Patterns and trends can also be tracked by the device, making elderly or vulnerable relatives ideal candidates for affixation. Acting as a remote monitors these seemingly innocuous items may provide reassurance for those with others to keep an eye plastered on.

The government IT centre, The National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) has recently come under organised electronic assault. The NISCC exists to protect the critical national infrastructure that, if harmed, might ‘cause large scale loss of life, have a serious impact on the national economy, have other grave social consequences for the community or be of immediate concern to the national government’. It is being bombarded regularly with a series of Trojan viruses that sought to penetrate any defence and infect as many computers as possible. The NISCC warn in a security briefing that ‘Once installed on a user machine, trojans may be used to obtain passwords, scan networks, exfiltrate information and launch further attacks’.

The attacks have been ongoing but have recently increased in intensity. The viruses are difficult to detect because they ‘use social engineering to appear credible, with subject lines often referring to news articles that would be of interest to the recipient. In fact they are ’spoofed’, making them appear to originate from trusted contacts’.

The Hansard Society will soon have a new website made both for and by young people. ‘Being Heard’ is a result of Web Design Challenge, a competition run for schools by The Hansard Society and The Design Museum. Three pupils from the winners, Whitgift School in Croyden, have designed the website, which is to encourage political involvement in young people.

‘Being Heard’ will contain information on current affairs and provide a forum for young people to discuss their views. What marks the site apart from others attempting to engage politically with youngsters, such as the Hansard’s own HeadsUp, is the nature of its design. No other website of this type can boast members of its intended demographic audience as designers. Perhaps this factor can engender the hoped for engagement.

Avoiding heavy pollution in Croyden is now easier, thanks to Croyden Council, who are providing ratings and maps of pollutants on their website. Levels of individual pollutants are rated on maps by a scale of colours and are updated each day. It is possible to zoom on the maps and ascertain levels on individual streets. This service is of special relevance to those with asthma and other health problems.

The council is also offering a service called AirTEXT that alerts medically vulnerable people via SMS messages. Patients with respiratory and heart problems will be targeted for participation at chest clinics and GP surgeries. They will be notified, before 8 a.m., when pollution levels reach moderate or high levels. The occurrence of this is estimated to be around 45 days per year. Alternatively, users can receive alerts via email. This initiative will prevent residents from having to discover pollution levels first-hand, and enable them to plan their days accordingly.

Following thier criticism of museums today the Museums Association should visit Cornucopia.

Cornucopia is a searchable database that collates the collections and resources of thousands of museums, galleries, libraries and archives. The information may be browsed by cultures, time-frames, place and people.

Another site with similarly laudable aims is 24 Hour Museum. In addition to collection information it boasts listings of events, maps of UK cities and their collections, online object trails and quizzes for children. Perhaps together these sites can demonstrate that access is not simply a physical matter – people must know about the collections in the first place.

MySociety continue to roll out their launch projects, with the launch of Pledgebank today. Pledgebank explains itself with the tagline ‘Tell the world “I’ll do it, but only if you’ll help me do it”‘. Pledgebank hopes to connect people with similar interests at heart, who want to make a change but often “feel powerless” to do so.

A Pledgebank user makes a promise online, and sets a threshold for the number of people who also need to agree to it. The website provides automatically generated promotional flyers for a particular pledge, to help promote the pledge locally. Anyone can then join the pledge either through the website, or by texting their support to a dedicated number that is written on each flyer. The Pledgebank website then tracks the interest in a particular pledge and informs its participants when the target is successfully reached. There’s no guarantee that people will do whatever they promised, but the creators’ faith is placed in the “psychological bet” that a show of support will spurn desire to carry out a task.

Only time will tell how successful Pledgebank will be, but it deserves credit if only for its attempt to foster local communities, and in its excellent explanation of how important offline engagement is for local pledges to succeed.

All social services files will now be kept electronically. To meet government requirments, all councils must switch over from paper to digital file systems by October this year.

The new system, Dudley Council, the first in the country to implement the new system, hosted 80 visitors from 37 local authorities over the weekend to learn about the ESCR and how it’s been working for them. According to local councillors, the feedback has been mostly positive.

Only authorised staff will be able to access records, however, it does offer immediate access to information, an improvement over the current paper system. Health Minister Lord Warner set out 12 commitments to ensure patients have control over their records and who will be allowed access. For example, patients will be able to close sections of their file from anyone—including NHS staff—except in emergency. While the government is promising data security and patient confidentiality, it is not yet known exactly how this will be achieved, or how patients will be able to control access.

UK students can now take their studies back in time to the 18th century, as the Joint Information Systems Committe has purchased a digital library of 135,000 titles dating from 1701 to 1800 from Thomson Gale. The Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) features full-texts of 26 million pages, allowing readers to look at the actual scanned page of 300-year-old texts from the British Library, Oxford and Cambridge libraries and many others.

Univerities pay an annual fee of pay an annual fee between £2,250 and £3,500 to access the material.

With materials from the UK and across the world, across a range of topics, the collection means researchers and students can view books that previously would have been difficult or impossible to access.

You may be spending the day hiking in a Scottish National Park, but that now doesn’t mean you can’t check your email. Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park has installed a broadband network of information kiosks and wireless hotspots to provide free web access for visitors, so they can check weather, tourist information and send email. As park information centres are closed during the evenings and all winter, the kiosks will provide visitors with event and activity details at anytime. It’s unknown how useful the kiosks will be for safety, as there are only 18 installed in the 1,865 sq km park.

Though several of the kiosks are located at shops near entranceways, the rest are situated through the park. Designed to avoid impact on the surrounding landscape, the effect their presence has on people trying to escape technology remains to be seen. If this pilot scheme succeeds, expect to see touch-screen web access in National Parks across Scotland, England and Wales.

Are there burnt-out street-lights and abandoned cars you want to tell your council about, but can’t be bothered to drop-in or call? Just send them a text.

Following the lead of councils such as Kingston upon Thames and Castle Morpeth, Ashford Council in Kent is the latest borough to use the technology to increase public access by adding SMS messaging to their contact methods. Currently, their program is only in use with their social housing division, where people can use SMS to register interest in available properties.

The council will be phasing-in SMS for other services, including reporting street lighting faults and abandoned vehicles, booking council facilities and courses and requesting more general information. Citizens who have registered with the council will be able to send a text to pay parking fines and other council fees.

Text messages are not processed by a computer, but by an actual person. The council also claim the SMS solution allows them to extend opening hours and increase public access for less money than if they simply offered extended call centre hours. Unlike call centres, it also means no sitting on hold—something most people will be happy to tire out their thumbs to avoid.

This savvy use of technology not only encourages residents to make better use of existing services, but more importantly increases public participation, by making it easier for residents to contact councils in whatever manner they are most comfortable. This bodes well for increasing the level of feedback councils receive, and it’s a positive sign that local government really do want to hear what you have to say—so long as it’s in a few, short, texted words.

Directgov, the government’s services portal, relaunched today, promising a new-look, simpler navigation and improved range and quality of information.

The new site is better organised and the search function returns more relevant results—a big improvement from the last edition—based on a few searches I ran. The red-on-white links are difficult to read, but overall, the main government portal seems to be finally making some progress online.

Directgov is only the beginning, however, as many indivdual government sites are still inadequate. The UK Parliament’s site, called “dry and unengaging” and “impenetrable to most people” last weekin a report by the Hansard Society, even admits their information is dated, directing Scottish users to look up their MPs on the BBC election site.

According to a BBC news story, the Parliament site does not have its own webmaster. I’m not suggesting they’re hiring, but click here for their careers page—in case you can’t find it on the site yourself.