The News

CONNECTHINGS, INSIDE Contactless and Sagem Wireless Receive Grant from French Government for First Wave-Me Services

01/10/2009

Aix en Provence, PARIS, France, October 1st, 2009 – CONNECTHINGS, INSIDE Contactless and Sagem Wireless today announced they have formed a consortium to develop the Smart Muse Mobile NFC Tour guide and deploy two pilot demonstrations in the old center of the City of Nice and at the Teen Gallery at Centre Pompidou in Paris. Smart Muse will allow visitors to easily access location- and time-specific multimedia information on NFC Wave-Me™-enabled mobile phones by simply “waving” the device over NFC tags.

The team has been awarded a grant for this project from France’s Ministry of Economy, Industry and Employment, one of 13 such IPER initiatives selected by the Ministry to develop and deploy new services and applications based on NFC technology. The two Smart Muse demonstration projects will be the first deployments of the recently announced Wave-Me NFC Service Platform, and the consortium expects to have them ready in early 2010.

“Through our Smart Muse deployments, we plan to revitalize the concept of the guided tour by letting visitors receive through a mobile phone personalized multimedia content appropriate for their specific place and time,” said Laetitia Gazel Anthoine, founder and chief executive officer of CONNECTHINGS.  “We believe these Wave-Me solutions will improve the quality of life through easy access to new types of services, make it easier for tourists and others to enjoy richer, more engaging visits and demonstrate the ability of NFC to go beyond just payments and transit applications.”

The multilingual content has been developed in conjunction with the City of Nice and Centre Pompidou to be both informative and anecdotal in nature, as well as tailored to the individual’s demographics. It has been designed to provide users with a more intimate sense of place, and will be written to encourage participation through postings of comments and stories about their visit. Smart Muse will also provide information on nearby tourist services – shops, restaurants, hotels, city services, events, and others – and the content will be updated constantly.

“As the first city where NFC technology will be widely deployed in France, the old city center of Nice is the ideal location for our initial Wave-Me deployment through this Smart Muse project,” said Rémy de Tonnac, chief executive officer of INSIDE Contactless.  “The teen gallery at Centre Pompidou is geared to younger consumers who are enthusiastic adopters of new mobile technologies, and we are sure they will provide valuable feedback and give the Smart Muse system a real test.”

The consortium members will each apply their specific expertise in developing the Smart Muse project.  INSIDE will provide its NFC technology know-how, NFC hardware, and software for the handset, NFC tags and other patented technology.  CONNECTHINGS brings knowledge from its AdTag™ server-side contextualized content management, as well as its experience with NFC tag and mobile application life cycle management and other technologies.  Sagem Wireless is providing the NFC-enabled mobile phones that will be used in conjunction with the Centre Pompidou demonstration project, and which will be provided to visitors at no cost for use while inside the museum.

“We are very excited to be a part of the Smart Muse project and to help demonstrate how the Wave-Me Service Platform’s innovative use of NFC technology can simplify access to information,” said Thierry Buffenoir, chief executive officer of Sagem Wireless.  “We look forward to working with our consortium partners and contributing our expertise and technology to create successful demonstrations that will ignite this emerging market.”

The consortium received the grant based on the originality of the Smart Muse project, openness of the application and compliance with existing standards, quality of the partnership, viability of the project, project management and anticipated economic benefits. The grant covers approximately 30 percent of the development and deployment of a total project cost above 1.5M€, and the remainder will be self-funded by the consortium partners.