Special Reports
Start-ups do Singapore proud at AICTA
A multi-screen cloud social TV, a crowd-funding platform for climate change initiatives, and a video analysis and classification solution were among projects from Singapore that won international recognition at the ASEAN ICT Awards (AICTA) presented on 14 November.
Introduced in 2012 and led by Brunei Darussalam, AICTA is one of the key initiatives of the ASEAN ICT Masterplan 2015 which aims to make ICT a key enabler of social and economic integration in ASEAN and to promote innovation and collaboration among government, businesses, citizens and other institutions.
This year’s Awards Ceremony took place in conjunction with the Gala Dinner for the 13th ASEAN Telecommunications and Information Technology Ministers Meeting (TELMIN) hosted by Singapore, and organised by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and the Ministry of Communications and Information. In all, 18 ICT companies and organisations across ASEAN countries were lauded for innovative products and services across six categories – Public Sector, Private Sector, Digital Content, Corporate Social Responsibility, Start-up, and Research and Development (R&D). Singapore had a strong showing at the Awards with eight finalists, two of whom went on to win gold in their respective categories.
Movue Media picked up the top accolade in the R&D category, which was introduced this year to recognise new knowledge, processes, products or services which are in demand by the market but are not yet commercially available.
A spin-off from Nanyang Technological University, the company won for its Multi-screen Cloud Social TV project – a cloud-based low-cost turn-key smart TV solution which integrates both back-end media cloud technology and front-end advanced human computer interaction (HCI) technologies.
Social TV is an emerging technology that integrates the traditional “laid-back” TV watching experience with the “lean-forward” social networking experience, allowing television viewers to interact with remote friends, invite them to watch a programme, communicate with them via video, audio or text chats and post comments. The television can also be linked up with existing social media networks such as Facebook or Twitter, allowing user generated contents to be shared.
“Social TV is a new paradigm for watching TV, and the cloud and multi-screen are two enabling technologies for this new paradigm,” said Movue Media’s Chief Scientist Dr Wen Yonggang (second from right in picture above).
“Multi-screen” refers to the company’s patent-pending “video teleportation” technology – an intuitive HCI technology that allows contents and/or applications to be migrated from one device (or screen) to another using intuitive human gestures. For example, using Movue Media’s technology, viewers can simply point their smart phone at the TV to migrate content from the TV to their mobile device, and vice versa.
With the media processing, distribution and analytics taking place in the cloud, the Movue Media solution is able to support a large number of simultaneous users in real-time manner. It is also platform- and network- independent, and delivers a uniform user experience regardless of the end device.
The solution opens up opportunities for telcos, television network operators and content providers to transform their traditional offerings with value added services. “Winning the ASEAN ICT Award presents a great opportunity to showcase our government-funded pioneering research in transforming the TV experience in the 21st century via multi-screen cloud social TV,” said Dr Wen.
Other start-ups from Singapore also did well at AICTA. CarbonStory, a crowd-funding platform for climate change projects around the world, picked up the silver award in the Corporate Social Responsibility category. CarbonStory combines gamification and storytelling with carbon offsetting, making carbon offsetting contemporary and relevant to a younger Internet-savvy generation.
Users calculate their individual carbon footprint and support certified climate change mitigation projects by purchasing carbon offset credits. Projects are divided into four categories: renewable energy, reforestation, carbon capture and energy efficiency. Users get a personal account listing the projects they support and the badges they have earned. They can also challenge their friends to go carbon neutral and compete in various leaderboard rankings.
“With a population of 600 million people, mainly in low-lying coastal areas, ASEAN is at great risk from climate change,” said CarbonStory’s Co-founder Mr Andreas Birnik. “The ASEAN ICT Award recognises the work that CarbonStory is doing to create a more sustainable future for us all.”
In the Start-up category, Singapore’s Graymatics picked up the bronze award for its ContextConnect Cloud (G3C), a market-ready, video analysis and classification platform that allows content owners and managers to better monetise their image and video content. The G3C obtains visual metadata that paves the way for highly effective advertising opportunities through interactive and contextual images and videos.
The other gold award winner from Singapore was Singapore Telecommunications, which topped the Digital Content category. It was joined by Express In Music, which won the bronze. Other winners from Singapore included Changi Airport Group which won silver in the Private Sector category; and Immigration & Checkpoints Authority and IDA, which won silver and bronze respectively in the Public Sector category.