Livings Labs Global Awards, May 2012, Rio de Janeiro: 4 metropolitan cities have selected Connecthings to deploy mobile contactless services within their territory.

Barcelona, World Mobile Capital 2012-2018, will deploy contactless services for improving citizens and worldwide visitors’ global digital experience within the city.
Hamburg, 2nd largest port in Europe, will offer NFC services for encouraging the 270,000 cruise passengers to spend more time in exploring the city.
Rio de Janeiro will set up a service in favour of disadvantaged local communities, in parallel with the implementation of the “Knowledge Square”, where urban, technological and social reforms become one for enhancing digital inclusion.
Last but not least, Derry-Londonderry, City of Culture 2013, will offer NFC services for improving and varying the global experience within the city, and promoting the cultural and touristic heritage to visitors and locals.

21 cities over the 5 continents make up the Living Labs Global Awards, counting more than 110 million citizens and seeking innovative solutions to their current issues, in areas as diverse as healthcare, mobility, security, education, tourism, urban management and the reduction of CO2 emissions. More than 700 innovative worldwide companies had in the first place submitted a solution, but in the end, each city has selected only one project.

Laetitia Gazel Anthoine, CEO of Connecthings, is very pleased about “these prestigious rewards: this demonstrates that the innovative solutions set up by Connecthings provide relevant responses to the cities’ specific challenges, and I’m glad to put our expertise at the service of 4 countries, as it goes in line with our ambitions for international development.”

Damaris Homo of Connecthings receives 4 Living Labs Global Awards in Rio (Photo by Gunnar Knechtel)

• 14 May 2012 — News

Less than one month ago, the Urban Community of Strasbourg (UCS) unveiled the StrasPlus mobile service, considered and achieved in close collaboration with the Connecthings team.

Since the launch of the service and thanks to more than 1,400 signs deployed all around the urban community area, citizens and visitors have had access to several services of three interconnected spaces directly with their mobile phone:

• Transport: real-time bus arrivals at the CTS bus stops, diversion of the bus/tram network, journey planner, location of the bike-sharing stations with display of available bikes, traffic information within Strasbourg and its suburbs.
• News: cultural agenda, social networks, videos.
• Cultural & Touristic heritage: must-see attractions, favourite selection and museums for discovering (again) the city.

This flower-shape signage giving access to the contextual StrasPlus service is easily identifiable in public spaces and is already displayed on all public transport stops, at the Visitor Centre, within several cultural places ( performance halls, multimedia libraries) and should be present in all car parks as well very soon.

After a strong communication about the service and only one month of operation, loyal users to the StrasPlus service have already been emerging; there is no doubt then that the coming improvements of the StrasPlus service will attract an ever-increasing number of users.

• 9 May 2012 — News

*Connecthings’ team is proud to announce that *Connecthings won 4 awards during the International Summit on Service Innovation in Cities in Rio de Janeiro.

The Living Labs Awards 2012  reward the companies who meet the challenges raised by 20 worldwide cities of providing innovative solutions in areas as diverse as transport, culture and tourism. Before the summit in Rio, during a first phase each city has selected 5 companies, out of 700 proposals, that are likely to fulfill its expectations accurately. During a second phase, these 5 pre-selected companies had to handle some specifications about the solution provided.

And finally, *Connecthings’ project had been chosen  in Barcelona (SP), Londonderry (UK), Rio de Janeiro (BR) and Hamburg (GE) and its project will now have to be set up within one year.

See all the awarded companies here.

 

• 3 May 2012 — News

Connecthings implementation of smart mailboxes (“mobulles Paris”) won the “Public Domain” Award yesterday at the 2012 Mobile & Contactless Awards ceremony, following the Contactless Intelligence Spring Conference. This experimentation, has been expanded to 750 additional mailboxes in 2 major French cities

, has been a concrete example of how contactless usages can go far beyond payment.

Connecthings is proud and honoured to have been selected among a range of international and cross-functional projects and experimentations using contactless technologies, and to be considered as a firm who “really makes a difference in getting contactless devices into the hands of users and encouraging consumers to use them”.

To read the press release about the ceremony, please click here

• 27 April 2012 — News

Connecthings is proud to have been shortlisted in two categories for the Contactless & Mobile Awards: this challenge launched by Contactless Intelligence rewards the best mobile contactless and NFC services and uses developed and set up by companies, in ten categories.

Connecthings had submitted two showcases, and both have been selected:

• The smart mailbox implementation (“Mobulles Paris”), consisting in the deployment of NFC tags and QR Codes on 50 smart mailboxes in the centre of Paris giving access to real-time and contextualized  information of different kinds: postal information and services of course, but also transport information and local news and events. This showcase is running for the Public Domain Award.

• The large-scale deployment of contactless/NFC mobile services, through the implementation of more than 25,000 NFC tags and QR Codes powered by Connecthings in the UK, France and Spain, and durably deployed in the cities, in the functional and diverse areas of Transport and Mobility, Cultural and Touristic heritage, and Street life. Connecthings has been recognized for its expertise in creating NFC eco-systems that make cities smarter and improve people’s mobility. These citywide projects are shortlisted for the Contactless / NFC Eco-System Award.

The ceremony will take place in London in April, 26th, after one day of conferences and working groups organized by Contactless Intelligence, where a lot of companies concerned about the NFC technology will be present. Connecthings will be the chairman of one of the working groups dedicated to DIY tagging systems. The winner of each category will be announced by a jury composed of professionals of different areas (Transport, bank, retail…), with specific expectations of the NFC and contactless services developed by the companies.
 
Connecthings is pleased to see that the NFC and contactless mobile technologies embrace more than ever all the areas, and is strongly motivated for carrying on implementing contactless/NFC  mobile services that  improve people’s experiences in the cities.
 

• 29 March 2012 — News

Votes for allowing Connecthings to participate in the Digital Shoreditch Festival 2012 are still open, until the 5th of April.

As a reminder, this festival celebrates the latest innovative and creative companies in London.

To give Connecthings a chance of presenting its session about contactless technologies, simply have a look to its proposal page, and…vote for it!

Go there => http://crowd.digitalshoreditch.com/bridging-the-physical-and-virtual-worlds-thanks-to-the-mobile-contactless-technologies

Those who vote will get priority access to limited free tickets, irrespective of the outcome.

Hope to see you at the Digital Shoreditch Festival!
 

• 29 March 2012 — News

The Living Labs Awards 2012  reward the companies who meet the challenges raised by 20 worldwide cities of providing innovative solutions in areas as diverse as transport, culture and tourism.

Following this first phase, each city has selected 5 companies, out of 700 proposals, that are likely to fulfill its expectations accurately.

*Connecthings is honored to be selected by 4 of them: Barcelona, Londonderry, Rio de Janeiro and Hamburg. The second phase lasts until the 15th of April, meanwhile the pre-selected companies have to handle some specifications about the solution provided.

The winning company for each city will be announced in May, at the International Summit on Service Innovation in Cities in Rio de Janeiro, and its project will be set up within one year.

• 6 March 2012 — News

*Connecthings has submitted a proposal for taking part in the Digital Shoreditch Festival, which celebrates the latest innovative and creative companies in London.

First, companies have to sum up on the dedicated website the topic they’d like to talk about. Then visitors to the website vote for projects of their interest. In March will be selected the companies that will be able to make their presentation, depending on visitors’ votes and on a jury’s decision (committee members for the festival).

Check out our summary at

http://digitalshoreditch.com/crowd/bridging-the-physical-and-virtual-worlds-thanks-to-the-mobile-contactless-technologies/

and while you are there… vote for us !


 

• 29 February 2012 — News

After Paris, Aix-en-Provence and Madrid, Connecthings is now present in London:

CONNECTHINGS UK
Total Gas & Power Limited,
13th Floor, 10 Upper Bank Street
Canary Wharf, London,E14 5BF

dho@connecthings.com
 

• 8 February 2012 — News

More than 24,000 NFC/contactless tags powered by *Connecthings are durably deployed on street furniture and in public spaces in European cities, in addition to hundreds of thousands of tags provided for commercial operations and through the www.nfctagstore.com website.

Multimodal contactless mobile services for Smart cities

*Connecthings mainly works with local authorities, MNO, banks, transport companies, retails and cultural institutions to implement encoded NFC tags giving access to a large range of contextual mobile services in functional areas, while respecting multimodality and interoperability. *Connecthings has references in seven out of the ten largest French cities and in three European countries.

• More than 17,000 bus/tram stops, car/bike-sharing terminals and car park entrances are equipped with contactless tags providing real time information and up-to-date services in the cities of Poole, Caen, Tours, Toulouse, Marseille, Nice, Strasbourg, and Malaga.

• Hundreds of tags have been deployed by Connecthings for creating interactive exhibitions at the Quai Branly museum and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and digital walking tours in Nice and around the “Châteaux de la Loire”.
• Thousands of day-to-day life tags are powered by *Connecthings to transform emblematic and traditional objects and places into something communicating and interactive.

An innovative platform for meeting all expectations: 8% of the connections made by NFC-enabled devices

The AdTag™ platform, engineered by Connecthings, allows to record and organize access, manage and publish content, and consolidate data collected thanks to reporting tools and statistics. Thanks to this innovative platform, contextual services are adapted to the end user’s profile, to the tag location and the support, to the type of device, and to time, date and period.

“According to our reporting tools, even if there is less than 1% NFC-enabled devices, it already represents about 8% of the connections. As the number of NFC Smart Phones is reported to double in 2012, there tends to be higher user appropriation of contactless mobile services”, says Laetitia Gazel Anthoine, CEO and founder of *Connecthings.
 

• 2 February 2012 — News