This weekend in Paris, Netexplorateur announced its ten top picks for
the most influential digital media programs. The winners, chosen by a
global committee of pioneers in business and media, will be promoted
during the next year in an effort to obtain global understanding of new
ways to conduct digital activities and business.
The 10 Netexplorateur winners were chosen from 100 finalists that the Netexplorateur committee reviewed over the past year and include Google’s flu surveillance system, the Sekai application for iPhones, and Wizzit, a mobile banking system for "unbanked" customers! Come in and learn what you can!
1. Netexplorateur: Aka Aki, Roman Haensler, Germany
Category: Information & Communication
Called the "extendable umbilical cord," Aka Aki extends global networking to a face-to-face opportunity, by indicating, through your cell phone when you are physically near people in one of your online networks. You can connect through business networks, hobbies, politics… however you set your preferences.
2. Netexplorateur: Auditude, Adam Cahan, USA
Category: Management & Business
This ingenious program enables advertising and media agencies to track their pirated content and turn it into a source of revenue… the theory being that content thieves don’t always want to steal; they just don’t want to pay a lot to license another company’s material, so they steal it.
But the logic of Auditude is that if you approach the theft with a low fee schedule, instead of a threatening letter or law suit, you will discourage theft and turn it into profit. Underlying Auditutde’s ultimate objective is the notion that the web culture, like the light bulb, really wants to change its MO.
3. Netexplorateur: Carrotmob, Brent Schulkin, USA
Category: Environment & Sustainable Development
Carrotmob is (or will be) a network of consumers that communicate through various social networks to form a block of purchasers. They "conspire," if you like, to reward through their purchases only the companies that rise above ecological challenges and produce sustainable products.
4. Netexplorateur: Edison Smart Connect, Richard Schomberg, USA
Category: Environment & Sustainable Development
ImageThe Edison SmartConnect™,
by Southern California Edison® provides customers with real time
meter-reader ability for home appliances that can be networked to a
central thermostat in their homes. It will enable the consumer to
control costs, to use energy during non-peak times, and to save
approximately 365,000 metric tons per year in Southern California alone.
5. Netexplorateur: Google Flu Trends, Mats Carduner, USA
Category: Health, Solidarity, & Citizenship
The Google Flu Trends
analyses come from data gathered from individual web searches for
flu-related topics, such as "flu medicine" or "symptoms of flu." The
data is broken up by region or state or locality and published on the
Google Flu Trends site. The advantage? The data, which has been tested
in retrospect, seems to appear two weeks before the Center for Disease
Control knows about it.
6. Netexplorateur: New Songdo City IBD, Heekyung Jo Min, South Korea
Category: Environment & Sustainable Development
A master-planned city to open in 2014, developed on 1,500 acres of land
along waterfront about 40 miles south of Seoul. A joint venture between
Gale International
and Posco Steel, this city will showcase an all-digital lifestyle,
becoming a mecca of interconnected, interactive objects. And though
technology will replace gambling as its feature, New Songdo will
nevertheless have replicas of known landmarks like Venetian canals,
Central Park, and the 1st World Towers. New Songdo City nicknames: Synergy City, Utopia.
Convention Center, New Songdo City, completed October, 2008
7. Netexplorateur: Sekai, Takahito Iguchi, Japan
Category: Management & Business
Sekai
is being produced as an application for iPhones with built-in cameras
and GPS systems. When you focus your camera on an object, Sekai will
tag it with its geographical location and facts about it and its
neighboring sites or shops. This information is, of course, picked up
over the Internet, and is overlaid on the screen. Sekai, which is still
in development, will also add self-tagging features that you can share
with others, if desired.
8. Netexplorateur: ShopSavvvy, Alexander Muse, USA
Category: Management & Business
Already in use by The Big in Japan and just getting started in Europe, ShopSavvy
is a consumer service for mobile phones that enables price comparisons
after reading a bar code. So if you are in a store and scan a bar code
with your phone, ShopSavvy will come back with prices of online stores
for the same object, or it can give you the pricing of that object in
stores nearby.
9. Netexplorateur: Ushahidi, Henry Addo, Kenya
Category: Information & Communication
A
crisis response system that enables anyone with a cell phone to text a
central data base that records and maps where the crises is taking
place. "Ushahidi"
is Swahili for "testimony," and indeed the platform enables anyone
experiencing or witnessing injustices to report and record them. The
open source platform is used for crisis response on a local, national,
and international level, as anyone can gather the data via SMS, email,
or online.
10. Netexplorateur: Wizzit, Brian Richardson,South Africa
Category: Environment & Sustainable Development
Reaching out to the "unbanked" population of rural South Africa, Wizzit
is a simple banking system that enables those with little resources to
save what they have, as well as purchase with their bank cards, with
assurance and security had by people of more means. Training rural
workers, called Wizz’ kids, Wizzit provides jobs to poorer communities,
and education about modern methods of doing business.
Sources: Nexplorateur.org and the websites linked above.
