After attending a recent Figaro Digital seminar with Francesca I came away feeling inspired and intrigued, in particular after a presentation made by Mark Challinor, Director of Mobile Platforms at The Telegraph. He gave a really engaging speech and an insight into The Telegraph’s digital mobile journey.
As part of the speech he spoke of an ‘interactive room’ at the telegraph, the projected image of which reminded me of something from the film Minority Report. He extended an open invite to anyone who wished to visit so we of course took him up on that.
The Telegraph always seems to be ahead of the game when it comes to mobile and web development. They were the first newspaper in Europe to launch a website, the first UK newspaper to allow its readers to blog, the first newspaper to launch a news app on the Google Android platform, (you get the idea…).
It was therefore with great delight that I headed over to visit Mark at The Telegraph’s offices in Victoria to check out their latest efforts to remain at the forefront of digital mobile development. In the middle of the room is what looks to be a fairly standard coffee table until you step closer and touch it. It’s like a huge I-pad, only much, much better. Picture a family of the future, they come down for breakfast and sit around the table. Instead of the dad sat wrestling with the papers of a traditional, tactile newspaper, they all share the news of the day over this ‘tablet-table’, selecting and swiping anything of interest, which then beams that information up onto the wall in one seamless motion. It’s much more responsive than an I-pad, and when you press your finger down on the home screen it recognises this and a little label pops up pointing to it, entitled ‘finger’. Lovely. Picture yourself, coming home from work, grabbing a bottle of wine, putting it down on the table (it’s waterproof, by the way), and this thing recognises not only that it’s a bottle, but that it’s filled with wine, the exact type of wine and wait for it – suggests a recipe that would complement perfectly your bottle of choice. Unfortunately it won’t cook the food for you (not yet anyway), but it’s an incredible machine, really wonderful.
I said ‘picture a family of the future’, when really, the future is already here. The technology is there… no one can be sure of exactly what form the next big thing is going to take, but I think what the Telegraph have done here shows fantastic initiative and insight into the way things are going and it was a pleasure to see what they have been doing.
We really appreciated Mark giving up his time to explain the technology they have at their fingertips, including a fascinating timeline journey, projected from the table, showing how they reported the London riots over mobile and web platforms. Some of the stats are astounding and it gives a real insight into the importance of the digital platform in the news industry.
Mark has a great enthusiasm and it was a real pleasure spending a bit of time with him and getting to experience ‘the interactive room’.
Now I need to get myself one of those coffee tables for Christmas…
15 years recruiting creatives. 