World's first MMS Mobile Phone Game

Brisbane-based research group ACID showed some ground breaking new digital entertainment and communication technology at the b'TWEEN Festival of Future Entertainment conference in the United Kingdom today - technology that could have the same impact on digital communication as SMS messaging has on mobile phone usage. MMS Me is an MMS game designed to encourage people in to play and communicate with others via images broadcast on a large screen. The game stimulates both online and physical interaction and can be applied to many existing social gatherings such as networking events, sporting events and rock concerts where a large screen is available to display the interaction.

CEO of ACID, Professor Jeff Jones demonstrated MMS Me - a world-first MMS game designed to allow people to play and communicate with others via images broadcast online.

"MMS Me is the new generation of SMS messaging, allowing unlimited participants to interact simultaneously via images. It's as much based in social as it is technological research and opens up a whole new world of mobile phone communication," said Professor Jones.

"The project has already attracted significant global interest, with possible commercial applications within the advertising and retail industries and major sporting, musical and other large-scale events.

"ACID is currently working with the Museum of Brisbane on developing MMS Me for their upcoming Buddha Exhibition and this is a really exciting public use," he said.

"Everyone had a pretty good idea of what you can do with SMS, but about nine months ago we began looking at what could be done with MMS," said ACID's Sonya Henderson Edbrooke.

"At ACID's company launch in October 2004, we demonstrated MMS Me so people could capture images of what had been happening during the day and what was happening at the party and send them to the MMS Me screen. Within a couple of minutes, people would see their images start appear on the screen, and this stimulated people to take more images, begin using their phones and talking to one another.

"The most important aspect we see is how you use these new technologies to create a social interaction," said Henderson Edbrooke.

Not surprisingly, a multitude of organizations are very interested in what we can be done with ACID's new MMS Me technology according to Henderson Edbrooke. "For example, we have been approached by a hospital that is interested in improving the social interaction and collaboration of their staff. Email on its own won't do that. It needs more. We think technology can be used to achieve what they are seeking. We're looking at multi-user environments people know from the PC and putting it out into physical environments."

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