Jeremiah Alexander and Adam Gatenby of Ideonic receiving their Megas award from Aleks Krotoski Academic, tech journalist on The Guardian, presenter of BBC2's Virtual Revolution at Paramount, Centre Point, London. (Photo: Frantzesco Kangaris)

We’re proud to announce that MirrorMe has won a highly prestigious 2010 MediaGuardian Innovation Award (Mega) in the Applications and Gadgets category for its Facebook application, MirrorMe.

Judges praised MirrorMe by declaring: “It’s new, usable, popular and therefore has social value and empowers kids on making decisions about their future.”

The application beat off very stiff competition including from Nike Football Master Control to win this highly prized award.

Receiving the award at an awards ceremony at Paramount, Centre Point, London on Thursday 25 March 2010, Jeremiah Alexander, Ideas Architect, Ideonic says:

“It was mega to win a Mega. Sorry! Couldn’t resist that one! The MediaGuardian Innovation Awards (Megas) are the pinnacle of media award world.  They are the Oscars for our industry. To beat off competition from the likes of Nike to win a 2010 Mega is amazing.

All the team worked really hard developing the MirrorMe application and took risks to push both the technical and creative boundaries. It is humbling to receive recognition from the key movers and shakers in the digital community for this project.”

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/megas/winner-2010-applications-gadget-mirrorme

The Mega awards are run by the MediaGuardian – a section of the national broadsheet newspaper, The Guardian.

This is MirrorMe’s second award this year.  MirrorMe won the Interactive Media Awards (IMA) Outstanding Achievement Award in January 2010.

We worked really hard developing the MirrorMe application and took risks to push both technical and creative boundaries. This makes it even more rewarding we receive recognition from the digital community.

We launched in Q4 2009 and are excited to announce that MirrorMe has already won its first award! MirrorMe beat competition from across the World to win an outstanding achievement award in the lifestyle category of the 2009 Interactive Media Awards. It’s a great honour to get this award and hopefully the first of many!

http://www.interactivemediaawards.com/winners/certificate.asp?param=70503&cat=1

The MirrorMe app was born out of a Crossover lab that Jeremiah attended earlier in the year. I now had the privilege of attending a similar Lab along with experts from science, film/ TV production and games.

The crossover science lab was a week of daily brain storming and idea generations exercises to come up with creative ideas based on our skills; designing platforms that can bring science closer to people using games or traditional media.

It was a fascinating experience for me to get a glimpse into how the film industry and the science industry work. All the attendees were experts in their field and chatting to them over dinner and during workshops was very exciting; I think there is a great opportunity for us to combine our skills to produce some truly unique ideas.

The first three  days of the lab we were led by Frank Boyd and the team of mentors to try and establish what we were aiming to achieve as well as understanding each other’s perspectives. The main categories were film, TV, Digital media, Games,  science and psychology; because we were all from very different disciplines, it was important for us to establish a common ground and understanding of each other’s language.

We were constantly put into different groups and doing varied actives to come up with some unique (and some truly mad) ideas. Everyone was in good spirits and no ideas were seen as bad ideas. It was a very fun experience for me and I really enjoyed the creativity and energy that was flowing around the room.  We were given challenges over Dinner and Lunch to work on in teams of 3 to 4, and were always doing pitches for the ideas. Frank and the mentors were brilliant and supportive of the group, constantly giving us great feedback on each of the ideas.

On the fourth and fifth days of the lab, we had to narrow down 50 ideas to just 6 which we all wanted to work on. We then split into 6 teams and with just over one day to work on the idea and prepare a full presentation on Friday afternoon.

I was fortunate to be on a team with Peter Dale from RareDay, Peter Bently from UCL, Pete from Tunatech (yes there were a lot of Pete(r)s in our group) and Rob Davis from Playniac. Our idea involved using augmented reality and geographic data from the UK. It was an incredible, exciting idea, and being the only artist in the group, I was responsible for producing the powerpoint presentation.

On Friday afternoon, the 6 teams had to do presentations in front of a panel from Channel 4, BBC, National Geographic, NHS, Screen Yorkshire and the Wellcome trust (as well as the mentors and the other groups)

Our presentation went really well and the panel gave us some great feedback on how we could improve it and it seemed like a very solid idea that got everyone excited. Hopefully the idea will move forward so I get to work on another exciting project emerging from a Crossover Lab!

The Crossover lab was a truly unique and amazing experience for me, the enthusiasm and energy from everyone was unbelievable. The Ideas coming out of the sessions were extremely creative; it just goes to show that when working with a group of creative people, you can come up with ideas  beyond what an individual could. We were constantly buzzing with excitement due to the creativity and discussions throughout the week.

A huge thank you to all the mentors: Mark Atkin, Heather Croall, John Kent, Margaret Robertson, Patrick Uden ,Emma Cheshire and last but not least, Frank Boyd the lab director.

It was a privilege and honour for me to spend a week with industry experts and share their unique insights; I couldn’t have gained this experience anywhere else.  It was a sad moment when I had to leave the Lab and say goodbye to everyone, but we are all keeping in contact and there seems to be a couple of ideas that are being pursued by the teams. I will keep my fingers crossed for all of them and update you when there is any exciting news!

See more photos from the event.

MirrorMe is a Facebook application that allows you to take any photo of yourself and after entering an overview of your bad habits, morph your face into its degenerated future form. You can then share and compare images with your friends and experiment with the effects of different lifestyle choices.

Although primarily designed to be simple and fun, MirrorMe has some clever technology behind it. It uses advanced Facial Recognition technology to detect over 86 unique points on the human face and uses this information to create an individualised and scarily accurate facial distortion. It also incorporates medical research to create changes specific to the individual user’s sex, age, location, ethnic origin and bad habits.

Have a go yourself, and see what you will look like when your old! http://apps.facebook.com/mirrorme

I took such a long time to right this blog post but it’s taken me a while to follow up with the great contacts I met and also just absorb all the lessons I learned while on the Digital Mission. In both LA and San Francisco we met many of the major players: Lionsgate, Warner Bros, Sony, Facebook, Apple, to name a few. But we also met many of the smaller creative agencies and start-ups breaking new ground.

To recap, on the 11^th Oct I flew out to LA as part of a select group of 14 of UKs most exciting digital companies. The Digital Mission was organised ‘and might I add excellently’ by Chinwag and UK Trade and Investment (UKTI). The other members on the group were amazing and I learnt just as much from them as I did from the companies in the states; a great mix of digital agencies, animation, gaming studios, technology platforms and video producers.

Digital Mission LA & SF 09 Companies: agency2 – Amaze – Audioboo – etv media group – Great Fridays – Littleloud – MoviesThatRespond – NixonMcInnes – Orangepanda Digital Media – Plug-in Media – Twofour – Type3 – Videojuicer

Once in LA we got to met with the Major movie studios Lionsgate, Warner Bros, Sony each of whom has strong digital strategies planned for the year ahead. We also met with the many smaller (by comparison) creative companies, including G-net and Ant Farm both of whom have done some great work with Gaming Clients including many of the online marketing strategies and poster campaigns you have seen for AAA game titles such as Call of Duty.

In both LA and San Francisco receptions were held in our honour at the Consul General’s residence. In LA Dame Barbara Hay hosted an excellent reception with a great delegation of film, interactive and business experts from across LA – and also the most tasty miniature Yorkshire puddingsJ.

When we arrived in San Francisco late and were rushed off our feet, meeting with many of the top tech companies. We met with Facebook whose office’s, from the outside looks like a school but inside gave off an aurora of true creativity. NDAs were signed at the door, so I can’t say much about what was discussed but it focussed on the Facebook Platform, which was great for us and we are doing some interesting projects on Facebook at the moment and it looks like the platform will only being getting better.

We were also privileged to meet with Johnny Ive the lead designer at Apple – it is said that genius is often linked to modesty, and Johnny totally adhered to that rule. It was amazing gaining an insight into how Apple designs their products and including a focus on user observation over user testing.  We also met with the iPhone team and we’re given a crash course in getting the best out of our iPhone Apps.

We also had a great tour and meeting at IDEO, probably the world’s top design firm and also a company with a name very close to our own – we both love ideas. From the original computer mouse, to bicycles without breaks and the rules of brainstorming, IDEO was a place of great ideas and truly creative approaches. I’m currently reading ‘The Ten Faces of Innovation’ by Tom Kelley, a key member of the IDEO team.

The reception in San Francisco was hosted by Julian Evan. A lively event where I was fortunate to met some great people at the reception including Peter Moore of EA and Xochi Birch of Zuno and co-founder of Bebo. Julian also had a great collection of Welsh Beers, which made the end of the night less memorable than the start J

It was an awesome trip and I loved visiting both Cities and plan to venture back out there in the New Year.  A huge thank you goes out to the people who made this possible:  Sam, Emily, Juliet, Carlo, Sat Darshan, Dame Barbara, Jaclyn, Meagan, Arthine, Julian, everybody we visited and anybody I missed of the list. Thank you very much!

Chinwag’s Photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/chinwagcom/4013972480/in/set-72157622449349491/

What Next? Well just over a week after being back I’m off again, this time to India (subject to my Visa getting issued in time) to take part in the UK Young Interactive Entrepreneur trade mission. Looking forward to meeting all the great business in the Games and Animation sector in India, expect an update soon.

We recently found out that we had been selected as one of only two companies in the North East of England to take part in the Digital Mission to LA and San Francisco. I will be going to represent Ideonic and along with the other 13 candidates will be flying the flag for Britain’s creative digital sector. As well as receptions in our honour at the British Consule General we will also be taking part in a number of high profile meetings, including: Sony, Facebook, Warner Bros and IDEO just to name a few.

This is an excellent break for us and a real opportunity to demonstrate the great work we’re doing at Ideonic, in the North East and in the UK. I will attempt (no promises though) to write a blog post everyday detailing the activities while I am on the trip, I will also try to increase the frequency of my twitter posts (subject to internet connectivity of course). The mission is organised by Chinwag and UKTI.

Read more about Digital Mission LASF ( http://chinwag.com/digitalmission/lasf09-companies )

Our quest for international success doesn’t end there, I am also proud to announce that I have made it to the finals of the UK Young Interactive Entrepreneur awards J As part of the finals, me and the 5 other finalists will be travelling to India from the 27 October to 6 November 2009, where we will find out more about the interactive sector in India’s and meet many of the great companies responsible for cultivating it’s rapidly growing creative economy.

The final interviews will take place in early December and the winner will be announced in late February 2010 at a UKYCE awards ceremony.  Again I will keep regular blog posts while in India and about the rest of the activities I get to take part in over the next few months as a British Council UK Interactive Entrepreneur representative.

Read more about UKYIE ( http://www.creativeconomy.org.uk/ukyce/Finalists.asp?ID=42 )

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In March we launched a ten-week episodic adventure game – Battle for Planet Science. The online game was designed to engage young people and develop their interest in the different aspects of Science. The game delivers over half an hour of science driven fun, combining clever panoramic visual and problem solving gameplay to create an enjoyable educational experience.

Released alongside a ‘Design a Superhero and Villians’ Schools competition, all characters were designed by Pupils and the winners redrawn by a professional comic book artist. The game was designed to match the comic book theme and if you complete the game and you’ll even be able to print your own comic book based on your in game choices.

We developed Battle for Planet Science using Adobe Flash. We believed it to be an excellent game and it appears Adobe agree. Battle for Planet Super Powers made it to the semi-finals of the Adobe Max 2009 awards. Though it’s a shame we didn’t make it to the final, recognition in such a high profile award shows we are making massive leaps in the quality of our development.

Try the game out on Planet-Science (www.planet-science.com/psp/battleforps/psp.html) and let us know your opinion.

It was great working with the students when we were brain storming and throwing ideas around – it amazed me how much they knew about digital technologies! They had no problem coming up with feasible (and also ambitious) features to add to the project. We took the finished product to the school and I got to see what the students thought of it, it was great to see our product being used in the classroom, and the students were definitely good game testers! I’ve never seen anyone clicking the same icon so many times in one go.