What do the United Arab Emirates, FriendFeed and EveryZing have in common? All three are current examples of the explosion of new media technology and applications that we need to be aware of.Here is an interesting breakthrough in the use of new media applications.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Dubai Naturalization and Residency Department (DNRD) has launched new mobile M-Visa facilities to offer its customers instant notifications via email and text messages upon issuance of their entry visa permits. This service is available at www.ednrd.ae.
When a visa is issued, customers will be notified through an email and SMS message. The email includes an original visa document (PDF format) bearing DNRD logo and the signature of the Director. The PDF will be secure to avoid any tampering with the details of the visitor.
The SMS notification encloses the same bar code printed on the original visa document in a 2D format, as well as key indicators about the visitor and the designated sponsor. The SMS can be sent to any destination around the world and the UAE-based sponsor will also receive the same notifications.
Upon arrival at to any of UAE entry points, the bar code scanner set up at the DNRD check points will read the details of the entry permit directly off the mobile devices of the visitors to make their entry into the country easy and quick. This innovative service starting January 2009 at Dubai entry points.
On a different point, EveryZing, a media indexing company, is launching its own media player that will let people search for spoken words within videos. The player's secret power is that it also indexes YouTube videos, giving a publisher who embeds YouTube content more functionality than YouTube itself provides.
The new video player, called MetaPlayer, uses technology the company already has in the market in its ezSearch and ezSEO products.
MetaPlayer is provided to its customers alongside other back-end tools. On sites that support it people will be able to type in a query in the video player and see where on that video (and other videos on the site), the term entered comes up; they can then jump to that spot.
A new kid on the block is to be found at www.newmediabytes.com FriendFeed is a social aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites such as blog entries, social book-marking websites, and micro-blogging updates. Users can then use this consolidated stream of information to create customized feeds to share with friends.
FriendFeed recently released the Real-Time Updates feature that allows you to watch live updating aggregation streams on the site. You can also take these streams and embed then on your own blog if you like.
This feature opens the door to many possibilities for live streaming conversations about a particular topic, among a specific group of people and around certain events.
FriendFeed provides the facility to track these activities (such as posting on blogs, Twitter and Flickr across a broad range of different social networks. FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, California.
Photo by Christian Horcel. Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic
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