seekda
Founded in 2007, the company is headquartered in Innsbruck, Austria and employs 30 people. The company's core domains are Web Services and their commercialization. These have been implemented by the B2C applications seekda connect, seekda conferences and seekda chat. Moreover, the company's research department has developed the first and still biggest search engine specialized on Web Services worldwide seekda web services which is open to any Internet user for free.
seekda connect, the online booking solution from seekda launched in 2009, covers the increasing demand for tools for online marketing and sales of hotels and portals. The particular innovation of the solution from seekda: A one-time input of basis data, images and descriptions suffices for loading any Internet distribution channel from the own website to portals to booking platforms and travel agency systems. Updates of – e. g. – availabilities must be performed only once to make offers bookable online via all channels. A number of useful features, for example for selling packages containing internal and external services, interfaces to Content and Property Management Systems leads to further synergy effects. seekda is one of the first European CRS partners in Google's program for hotel search and booking and provides booking solutions for Facebook and web-enabled mobile telephones. The company is also offering a comprehensive solution for the wraparound bookability of accommodation services on marketing and themed portals.
seekda conferences, launched as a Software as a Service in 2010, serves the processing of conferences via Internet – from online registration to automated issuing and e-mailing of invoices to onsite services like a barcode system for the electronic transfer of visitors' data into Customer Relationship Systems. Conference operators can delegate the best part of their organizational tasks to PC and Internet.
With seekda chat, the company has developed a highly contemporary online communication tool based on the technology of Instant Messaging. B2C service providers from all domains communicate fast and modern with their customers with that: The prospect poses a written question to the support via a chat window on the company website which is processed in real-time. This way, customer and support agent can carry on a written conversation just like in a private chat.
Salzburg Research
Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft is the non-profit research organisation of the State of Salzburg, Austria. It conducts applied research in the areas of information and com-munication technologies with a focus on creating and managing digital content. Salzburg Research presently employs 70 people across the research areas information society re-search, advanced networking centre, mobile- and webbased information systems, and knowledge and media technologies. Salzburg Research has participated in many local, na-tional, and European projects, and a particular strength in interdisciplinary research, investi-gating not only technology, but also its socio-economic impacts. Relevant EU projects coor-dinated or carried out by Salzburg Research are e.g. the DigiCult study, providing guidance for libraries and archives to go digital, the EP2010 study on the future of electronic publishing, STERNA, Salzburg New Media Lab, LIVE (Live Staging of Media Events), CULTOS (Cultural Units of Learning - Tools and Services), KIWI (Knowledge in a Wiki) and IKS (Interactive Knowledge Stack) projects. Salzburg Research cooperates with private companies in pre-competitive research & development projects. Partners include Austrian Television (ORF), Red Bull Media House, Sun Microsystems/Oracle and Salzburger Nachrichten, as well as many institutions from the cultural heritage and media sectors.
The knowledge and media technologies group (KMT) at Salzburg Research consists of 18 researchers and developers working in the areas of social media, semantic technologies and media and content management with a considerable track record in all three areas. The vision of the group is to investigate and develop systems that connect these three areas and thus link people, content, as well as data. The KMT group has been established in 2001 and has since then been involved in a series of FP5, FP6 and FP7 research projects as both, coordinator and partner, as well as in a number of national research programmes. Some of the projects currently coordinated by KMT are the FP7 projects KIWI, and IKS, as well as the national industrial competence centre SNML where we collaborate with several important industrial partners in the media sector.
Psmedia
PSMEDIA was founded in Dezember 2010 with the goal to become a leading business in the Austrian Web and IPTV sector. Foundation for the product and service development is TV-Plus, an in-house developed system for managing media assets, which is based on the TV Anytime Standard. TV-Plus supports common workflows and media production processes found in the TV and media creation branch.
PSMEDIA develops Web and Multimedia applications, offers consulting, planning and implementation of web based projects and communication solutions as well as corporate identities, web and advertisement material.
Yoovis
Yoovis GmbH has the aim, to offer video-producers, media-enterprises and all other enter-prises the technology, network and platform as well as the necessary know-how to distribute video-content efficiently throughout the web. Yoovis does not produce videos by itself, but focuses on technology and know-how concerning video marketing. Thus, Yoovis is not a WebTV provider but a WebTV Network. An important advantage of companies with a stand-alone WebTV solution (on the own website) working with Yoovis is the network behind, which offers a content sharing model. The Networking goes in two directions. On the one side vid-eos can be distributed to other channels on the network and the respective „Channel-Administrator“ decides, if the video plays on his channel - or not.
Former partners
STI International
STI International Consultancy und Research GmbH is a private research centre in Austria which is currently building up its research competencies as part of current project activities and under the leadership of Dr Lyndon Nixon. Its raison d’etre is to complete the STI Interna-tional association through practical application of the latest research work in semantics and services into key future markets of semantic technology adoption. While also supporting as-sociation members to bring their research results to maturity and industry adoption, STI In-ternational Consultancy und Research GmbH plans to create its own research portfolio around the domains of media, mobile and lightweight services. Its current projects provide opportunities to contribute in semantic TV (NoTube, www.notube.tv) and mobile augmented reality (SmartReality, www.smartreality.at ). ConnectME will complement these activities, providing the means to create a more generic services platform for semantic media services, which could be of use to semantic TV, mobile augmented reality as well as broader domains (as explored in this project: Web video portals, IPTV services, mobile multimedia applica-tions).
It will extend the PhD work of Dr Lyndon Nixon on semantic multimedia presentation generation as well as provide a potential new commercial opportunity (either as a service of STI or a spin-off) around providing semantic media services to different customers in the media content value chain. ConnectME will benefit from the contact to the members of the STI International association, who can provide the latest research and technology as well as opportunities for dissemination and exploitation, as well as its project leadership, for which STI contributes its strong experience in EU and Austrian project management, its administration team and Dr Nixon’s personal vision for a future of Connected Media Experiences.
Planet Digital
Planet Digital is a cable network and IPTV operator from Tyrol with customers in Austria, Germany and Italy. The company has been founded in 2004 by several innovative entrepre-neurs and is owned by a group of successful companies mainly from the Ötztal. The com-pany operates in three major business areas such as cable operator, technology and con-sulting vendor and hospitality solution.
Cable operator: Planet Digital owns and runs a fiberglass cable network in Ötztal and delivers many different services to the customer such as high speed Internet connection, digital television, video functions, virtual maps, shop functions, booking and reservation functions, interactive advertising spaces, time shift, video on demand, audio on demand, voice over IP, and many more directly to every television. Most of the services have been developed with a very strong focus of the tourism sector since most of the customers are companies or facili-ties that operate within the tourism sector.
