Launch Venue: Le Centre des Arts, Enghien-les-Bains

OpenBrolly has launched its iPad brochure and magazine service to strong interest at the spa resort of Enghien-les-Bains, Paris.

OpenBrolly’s service enables its clients to create their own compelling, quality, interactive magazines and brochures to their specifications. These can be one-off or periodical.

No technical knowledge is required as this is a fully managed service. We help prepare the content for the iPad, iPhone or other devices as required, build interactive functionality and liaise with Apple’s team to make the brochure available on the App Store. Our creative team is on hand to help with design and come up with ideas to get the message across.

Content can be updated regularly from the Internet or fixed for fast download, including video. Information can be pulled from existing sources of information such as web sites or image libraries – or in real time from Twitter or Facebook.

While the service is not limited to film commissions, OpenBrolly has strong links with the film industry through its MovieSite service and chose the international meeting of film commissioners for the first showing of what its service can offer. The iPad magazine is completely compatible with MovieSite and can pull content directly from its database for inclusion in the magazine.

For more details contact david.sim@openbrolly.com +44 7711 926 271.

OpenBrolly will launch its iPad and iPhone Magazine creation service at Cineposium in Paris next week.

The service will enable textual, visual and interactive content to be in a magazine format, including video, database listings and forms. Example uses include beautiful brochures, stunning location guides, up-to-date manuals, compelling, interactive training materials and industry periodicals.

Bing Map Integration

OpenBrolly offers a full-service design and app creation service. Created magazines will be made available on the Apple App Store either for free or for a fee.

Where the magazine is intended for iPhone use the content will be refactored to suit the smaller screen. For Android tablets, phones and other similar devices, a special HTML5 mobile web site will be created bringing the content to a wide range of platforms.

A video demonstration of the app will be available soon.

News Page with Image

Benefits:

• Low cost of distribution
• Easily include multimedia – video, audio, images
• Easily construct magazine editions using skills within the organisation
• Pull content from existing websites to avoid rekeying
• Immediate updates and correction of content
• Most magazine content available offline
• Works across most tablet devices, including iPad and Android, as well as on modern mobile phones.

ExpressBOX will enable organisations to easily manage and create compelling magazines delivered over the web to the iPad and most other tablet devices and suitable mobile phones. It offers an opportunity for organisations to reach millions of tablet owners with attractive and compelling content, updated as often as required. Magazines can include text, images, audio and video.

As well as allowing magazine editions and pages to be readily managed through an easy to use text editor, expressBOX can source content from existing websites or databases. It can also offer interactive content – such as a directory search facility – within the magazine.

The magazine is distributed using a high speed network, maximising speed and reliability of delivery.

For more details and a demonstration, please contact David Sim: david.sim@openbrolly.com +44 (0) 1309 638077.

The industry days on film tourism were agreed to be successful, sharing best practice and demonstrating the emerging technologies.

A number of conclusions were drawn, not least that solutions must reflect the visitors’ needs and that engagement of the tourist, through social media, was the next step in developing a film tourism product. The importance of film goers understanding where a film was shot was illustrated – perhaps a condition of local funding and assistance could be prominence of the location in the credits.

OpenBrolly provided a review of the changes in technology: we are in the middle of a major transition to mobile devices, geographic and context described information. In addition, social media, has to be considered in any tourism product design and marketing strategy. New technologies, such as video delivery, QR codes and augmented reality offer exciting ways of delivering content but are not without their real-world constraints – such as mobile operator data caps and slow speeds in some areas.

OpenBrolly will continue to develop examples of film tourism solutions and David Sim is speaking again at Screentourism 11 – Friday 18th March 2011, The Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, London W1

They write:  “A quick trial run … suggests it’s really rather good, expecially for a free app, with comprehensive contact details for hotels, bunkhouses, caffs and the like plus web, e-mail and phone links.”

A new release of the app will be released shortly with a number of new and improved features, including access to special offers. This will also be free and will be an update to the existing app.

You can download the app directly from the app store: http://itunes.apple.com/uk/app/visit-cairngorms/id392262651?mt=8

This particular contract had an interesting set of technical challenges to overcome. There is no 3G mobile phone coverage and limited 2G coverage (i.e. no coverage in some places). The client wanted to be able to guide visitors to accommodation, attractions and restaurants across a huge geographic area and therefore location-relevant results were required. Up to date information is essential, particularly for special offers and events.

We addressed these challenges through load balancing data. Pre-loading all the data was not an option – it would rapidly become out of date and, in any case, the volume of data would have meant that the app would have to have been downloaded over WiFi (an Apple restriction) rather than anywhere with a mobile signal. Instead the app gradually populates with information, always looking for the latest information if it can get it.

You can download the application from the app store for free. Search for “Cairngorms”.

The device, launched this week by Apple and due for European release in March, offers similar facilities to an iPhone but in a larger form factor. This makes more visual applications, such as those involving images and larger quantities of text, more accessible for a wide range of uses.

Our mobile application framework is being tested on the iPad with a view to taking advantage of the technology from the earliest opportunity. This is in addition to compatibility with the iPhone 3G, 3GS and the iPod Touch.

For more about the iPad, see http://www.apple.com/ipad/.

Open Brolly specialises in the development of data-driven mobile applications, displaying or collecting information.

This opens the door for a range of new iPhone applications to be created for our clients, including MovieMaps, production guide / directory access on the move and applications for tourism destinations.

The application seamlessly integrates with MovieSite and TouristSite, but can display information from any database.

It is location aware – for example showing locations within a few kilometers of the phone user.

For further information, please contact david.sim@openbrolly.com.

Open Brolly will use its core expertise to take clients’ database information and make it available through attractive and functional applications on the iPhone. We’re also introducing feedback and collaborative mechanisms – for example, allowing application users to contribute to the information displayed in future versions of an application.

Our new system, for translating information to and from the iPhone and existing databases, is called BusinessBox. Applications are expected to include provision of visitor information in a tourism destination, crew and facilities for the film and television sector and specialist databases in other niche sectors. For more information, contact david.sim@openbrolly.com.