Singapore showcases early-stage digital tech

SINGAPORE--Media Exploits 2012, organized by Exploit Technologies, the technology transfer agency of Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), features homegrown technologies and commercial offerings in areas including mobile advertising, games and video streaming.

ZDNet Asia visited the exhibition Thursday, and highlights some of the latest innovations on offer.

VDancer Revolution is a 3-D dance game built for mobile devices. Players get to choose their avatars and control their dance moves by tapping on the screen.

According to Lau Kin Wai, managing partner of game developer Fatfish, music and dance games such as Guitar Hero are "big" among mobile users. But there has not been much innovation in this space for some time, so Fatfish hopes to seize this opportunity.

The game is set to market by the first quarter of 2013.

As part of its game development, Fatfish captured the moves of a real dancer before splicing and resequencing them according to song beats. These moves are then incorporate into the avatars, Lau explained.

Moving forward, Lau hopes to follow in the footsteps of popular games such as Draw Something and Scramble With Friends by enabling users to play and interact with each other online.

The application also works on text-based content to give users a different experience when reading, Choo said. 

Asked how the imaging technology is different from QR codes, the CEO said Snap2Tell is able to recognizes images in different formats and on various platforms including billboards and notice boards. It is also not limited by distance to detect an image, which is not the case with QR codes, he added.

Net Video Cloud is a patented cloud service that enables digital video streaming based on a single MP4 source file.

Reachfield IT Solutions, creator of the service, also developed an accompanying platform which controls, manages and disseminates digital content to users.

Winson Wee, the company's vice president of client engagement and projects, said National University of Singapore (NUS) High School has designed educational videos based on its service for its students to access the content anywhere, on any device.

Beyond education, the video streaming service can also be used by companies in the transportation, government surveillance and digital entertainment sectors, Wee noted.

The startup hopes to extend this solution to television broadcasting and mobile devices, and develop a search function so people can find the videos they want through image, text and audio recognition, he added.

Travel application Activfy was developed by SocioScale, and it provides users of Apple's iPad device information such as hotel availability and places of interest to visit according to their destination of choice.

Besides dispensing travel advice, SocioScale also developed the Concierge analytics platform and embedded it into the app.

Hotels and restaurants, for example, can use Concierge to analyze guest activity and spending habits based on real-time data collected by the Activfy app, a company spokesperson explained.

Magic Mirror leverages augmented reality for consumers to try on the latest fashion apparel even before the physical products hit the local market.

According to Chong Chieh Tseng, CTO of The Interaction Company, Magic Mirror automatically recommends a range of outfits to the customer the moment he or she stands in front of the screen. They can then "swipe" through the choices to pick the right outfit, using similar motion detection technology as Microsoft's Kinect, he added.

The startup is currently working with Parco departmental store on a pilot project, which should help shoppers skip the long changing room queues and cut down on the time for them to make their purchases, Chong said.

Shoppers can also take a snapshot of the clothes they tried on, and e-mail the images to a friend or post it on Facebook for a second opinion.

The Interactive Company hopes its application can be extended to desktops for online shopping whereby users can try on the clothes virtually using Web cameras in the future.

HexaLotus's LiverSuite program enables medical practitioners to perform tasks such as segment liver objects, compare liver transplant donors and recipients, and conduct liver surgery risk analysis more effectively.

Coupled with the company's other offering, LiverServ, hospitals can then upload images on HexaLotus' server for processing and subsequent downloads by other parties. 

Liu Jimin, founder of HexaLotus Technologies, said the app aims to help surgeons conduct surgery with less risk and understand livers better for future research and surgery planning.