Have you ever heard or read about technological districts? If not, here are some we would like to introduce to you: Silicon Valley (in the USA, the biggest in the world), Distrito 22@ (in Barcelona, Spain), Software Technology Parks (India), ZGC Software Park (in Beijing, China). There are many more, also in Latin America where an ambitious and interesting project is being developed in the capital city of Argentina, Buenos Aires. It is called “Distrito Tecnológico” (Technological District - TD). The TD is located in Parque Patricios (south of the city center) and will act as the main point for the promotion and development in key fields such as technology, innovation and knowledge.  It was largely inspired by the experience of “Distrito 22@” in Barcelona (Spain) and launched in 2008 as a result of a cooperation between the city government, the community, ICT companies, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Contact Centers and the best universities and research centers of Argentina.

This initiative, which involves the private sector, government, educational institutions and NGOs, aims to develop the south area of the city, promoting decentralization of productive activities.  Furthermore, the development of TD will facilitate the funding of future projects of enterprises developing high technology, thus providing the city of Buenos Aires with the capacity of being competitive  in innovative products and high quality services with a high added value.

Each year, around the world, many ideas are being developed in order to break the future universal epidemic: The Digital Divide. And in South America, these ideas are more and more pushed by local governments, which know the real situation of their citizens and are in a constant search of the best choices to fight with this problem. In January 2010, in Quito (official name: Metropolitan District of Quito), capital of Ecuador, the Municipality have begun an interesting project in order to build a standard technological platform into the Educative Units, making a better administration of services, administrative processes and educative activities. This project is called”Quito Educanet” and until today, it has worked with many institutions around the Metropolitan District of Quito, but in this year, the strategy will change and now is focused in using these resources to create and deliver new other services. This idea have begun with Municipal Schools and Municipal Educative Units, which were selected because of their strong impact at the end of the project and in order to generate an important material support for the project’s deployment at the rest of Municipal Educative Institutions.

Issy-les-Moulineaux and Orange jointly launch IssySpots: an augmented reality application for iPhone

The result of the collaboration between the city of Issy-les-Moulineaux (France) and the Orange research team, the new iPhone application has been available on AppStore since June 26th. Totally free, IssySpots enables inhabitants as well as short stay visitors equipped with an iPhone to find their way around in the city easily thanks to augmented reality. This technology allows the inlay or juxtaposition of virtual objects or information in sequence of images. With IssySpots, the city’s main POI (points of interest) - transportation, businesses, administrations - are displayed on the user’s iPhone in real time according to his location, allowing him to move freely towards the main places of interest of the city.

500 POIs in Issy-les-Moulineaux are directly accessible in 3D

IssySpots is the first augmented reality application for the iPhone developed by a local authority. It is a real practical guide composed of over 500 POIs of Issy-les-Moulineaux (companies, administrations, transportation, cultural or sports organizations, schools, nurseries, parks…). The application gives particular importance to innovative companies and city services.

Thanks to augmented reality it is possible to switch from the 2D plan to a 3D visualization that shows the points of interest nearby. Search filters (companies, transportation nodes, gardens and parks, administrations, etc…) enable users to define search criteria and choose the elements to be displayed.

André Santini, Mayor of Issy-les-Moulineaux and Member of the French Parliament, is glad that the City is the first one to put in place such a service. "We are all the more proud of this achievement as this application was developed with two partners settled in Issy-les-Moulineaux: Orange and Niji. Moreover, the application extension for Windows Mobile 7 will be realized in cooperation with Microsoft, another key actor in Issy. This proves well that innovation is here is Issy and nowhere else!"

Orange service integration system allows also to enrich online navigation with personalized data (My Contacts, My Favourites). The information displayed on the screen can be saved on the phone’s adress book. 

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