Media Release
For Immediate Release
Total:
6 pages
ETPL AND ASIA NEWS NETWORK TO
COLLABORATE ON DIGITAL SOLUTIONS FOR MEDIA AND ADVERTISING INDUSTRIES
MoU aims to build ecosystem and help grow successes
for local companies such as A*STAR start-up Knorex
1. SINGAPORE, June 14, 2013 – ETPL (Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd), the technology
transfer arm of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), today
signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Asia News Network (ANN) to
collaborate on projects and solutions aimed at the media and advertising
industries. Through this arrangement, ETPL and ANN, a network of national daily
newspapers published in Asian cities, will look to collaborate via joint
development, exchange of technological information, and marketing events. Key
areas will include:
- Human language (speech and text) processing
- Mobile imaging
- Video processing
- Analytics
2. The agreement aims to build a business
and technology ecosystem around the media and advertising sectors and to grow more
successes along the lines of A*STAR start-up Knorex. Knorex developed iSnap, an
augmented reality application that has been implemented across eight major
regional newspapers: Thailand’s The
Nation, Malaysia’s The Star, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Indonesia’s Jakarta
Post and Kompas, Myanmar’s Eleven, Singapore’s The Edge and Hong Kong’s China
Daily.
3. “Media owners and news organisations
have expressed the need to more accurately target and profile users, to develop
and deliver rich content with more speed and efficiency and to optimise
delivery of content – hence our focus on human language processing, mobile
imaging, video processing and analytics.”,” said Lee Han Boon, Senior Vice
President at ETPL. “With new business models comes the need for new
technologies. ETPL has been working with A*STAR Research Institutes and partner
organizations to develop portfolios of enabling technologies to help strengthen
the sector’s competitiveness. As A*STAR’s technology transfer arm, we then work
with licensees on commercializing the most promising research outcomes and
bringing them to the marketplace – much like what we’ve done with Knorex.”
4. Knorex’s iSnap solution has been
helping major regional publications gain reader engagement and tune content.
Its smartphone-driven solution enables newspaper readers to scan editorial and
advertisements in iSnap-enabled newspapers to get extra content, such as 3-D
images, video clips, photo galleries, product catalogues and contest forms, on
their devices.
5. Not only does this help newspapers better
engage their readers, it also allows them to find out real-time what their
readers are interested in and tune their content accordingly. iSnap-enabled newspapers
have
all seen their mobile app downloads and usage jump by over 100 percent in under
three months from their respective launches. These newspapers have also
generated new sources of revenue that amount to over S$3 million in total to
date.
ETPL and ANN Collaboration
to Kick Off at Media Exploits 2013
6. ETPL and ANN’s collaboration will kick
off on October 1 at Media Exploits 2013, ETPL’s annual industry networking
event that showcases patented and patent-pending technology aimed at the media
and advertising industries. For the first time, technology on show will come
from beyond A*STAR and include those from other Institutes of Higher Learning
such as the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological
University.
7. The needs of the regional media
industry will be a key theme at Media Exploits 2013. ANN members will get an
early look at technologies brewing in laboratories and research institutes
while researchers will be able to gain first hand understanding of market
needs. Via this mutual exchange, ANN organisations will be able to influence
the development of key technologies while researchers and start-ups will gain a
deeper understanding of market needs and develop more commercially viable
technologies and solutions.
8. “Industry input is key in helping the
research community decide where to invest their resources, thus bridging the
gap between science and commercial needs,” added Mr Philip Lim, Chief Executive
Officer of ETPL. “We remain committed to driving a consistent pipeline of
technologies for commercialisation through building clusters of industries
around earmarked hotspots, or what we call innovation clusters. This strategic
focus directs resources towards areas with market potential and maximises the
strength and leadership of A*STAR’s research.”
9. Today’s conference, titled “Advancing
the Next Frontier of Asian Media”, also included a technology preview.
Technologies showcased included:
MIMAS
MIMAS is an on-device
advanced mobile image recognition and augmented reality technology platform
that does not require an Internet connection. It recognises the content of the
image or scene using patent-pending image recognition methods and returns the
relevant information in an augmented reality view on mobile phones and tablets.
MIMAS is faster and uses less memory in recognising images and provides more
accurate view tracking for image/video overlays when the mobile device is moved
or rotated, compared to what is currently available. Sidestepping latency and
stability issues caused by patchy mobile and Internet connections, MIMAS enables
developers to create apps that can truly be used anytime, anywhere.
ARISE Entity Search Engine
Current search
engines such as Google and Bing organize information in terms of keywords and
documents, rather than via deeper understanding or context. This means users
not only need to formulate queries carefully and manually identify correct
search results, they often need to go through multiple pages of information to
get what they are looking for. ARISE’s Entity search engine aims to take search
beyond mere web pages. It also picks up disparate forms of information from
online media including blogs, social networks, restaurant web sites and more.
It then presents the information in a coherent, easy-to-read format.
Video Cutout
By automatically
segmenting its “foreground layer” from a live VGA or HD video stream in real
time using only a single webcam and a standard desktop or laptop computer,
Video Cutout enables content developers to change backdrops or get rid of
distracting backgrounds quickly when shooting an interview or video for example.
While humans differentiate easily between a subject in the foreground and
“noise” in the background, it is challenging to automate such a task with
computer algorithms – thus making such content-editing a time-consuming
process. With Video Cutout, this process is automated, which means content
developers can now perform these edits speedily and efficiently.
Magic Touch
Magic Touch is a
portfolio of advanced image/video manipulation technologies that enable easy creation
of fun and eye-catching effects from photos and short video clips on smartphones.
Publishers and advertisers can create quick content for eye-catching mobile and
online advertisements without having to invest in expensive content authoring
tools. With Magic Touch, users can perform the following tasks for example:
- Convert a still photo of a lake into an
interesting moving image in which water flows and branches sway;
- Jazz up a short video clip by freezing a central
image into a still image, while other selected parts of the video continue
to be dynamic;
- Select parts of photos taken on mobile phones to
be “cut”, colourised or edited with other filters.
For more information, please
contact:
Ms Geraldine Kan
Storey3 Pte Ltd
DID: (65) 8157 8832
Email: geri@storeythree.com
Ms Tan Hwee Har
Corporate Communications
Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd (ETPL)
DID: (65) 6478 8459
About
ETPL
ETPL is the technology
transfer arm of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR),
Singapore’s lead agency for fostering world-class
scientific research and talent. A*STAR oversees 14 biomedical sciences,
physical sciences and engineering research institutes, and six consortia and
centres. As a one-stop resource, ETPL supports A*STAR in transforming
the economy through driving innovation and commercializing its research
outcomes.
Also known as Exploit
Technologies Pte Ltd, ETPL enhances the research output of A*STAR scientists by
translating their inventions into marketable products or processes. Through
shaping and facilitating licensing deals and spin-offs, ETPL actively engages
industry leaders and players to commercialise A*STAR’s technologies and apply
them to building ecosystems that benefit business, industry and economy.
About A*STAR
The Agency for
Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is Singapore's lead public sector
agency that fosters world-class scientific research and talent to drive
economic growth and transform Singapore into a
vibrant knowledge-based and innovation driven economy.
In line with its
mission-oriented mandate, A*STAR spearheads research and development in fields that are essential to growing
Singapore’s manufacturing sector and catalysing new growth industries.
A*STAR supports these economic clusters by providing intellectual, human and
industrial capital to its partners in industry.
A*STAR oversees 20
biomedical sciences and physical sciences and engineering research entities,
located in Biopolis and Fusionopolis as well as their vicinity. These two
R&D hubs, house a bustling and diverse community of local and international
research scientists and engineers from A*STAR’s research entities as well as a
growing number of corporate laboratories.
Please visit www.a-star.edu.sg
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