A UGC platform at the center of a European project

Submitted by meggs@amaris.com on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 17:22

By Carlos, Amaris Consultant

 

The European Union joins 2.0 technologies by taking part in the financing of the AVANZA plan. AFICUS, a part of this plan, is a picture and video sharing online platform where people will be able to easily generate and share contents while interacting with social networks.

 

  • In a few words, can you tell me what AFICUS is?

AFICUS is a R&D project associated to the plan named AVANZA 2 and promoted by the Spanish Industrial Ministry. The objective is to develop a prototype, which consists of a UGC Platform (User Generated Content). This Platform will have mobile applications with which the user will be able to create, modify and delete contents.

The system is based on a SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) and uses web services like REST (Representational State Transfer) for the communication between the different systems composing the platform.

  • Why Europe is financing this project?

The Spanish government wants to promote ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in the society throughout the following plans: AVANZA and AVANZA 2; The European Union is taking part in the financing of that plans. Parts of the budget devoted to AVANZA 2 can be used in industrial researching projects focusing on innovation and technology. AFICUS is a leading project of AVANZA 2.

  • What are the objectives of the project?

The main objective is to stimulate the user participation as content producer, and not only as a consumer. For this purpose, the platform offers a set of functionalities to generate contents like the automatic creation of tags in connection with an image, content’s geo-localization, etc.

In addition, the platform suggests to the user some targeting contents regarding his profile and his social networks. The Platform also offers new visualization means of contents throughout social networks, IPTV, etc.

  • Who participate in that project?

Telefónica I+D is the project coordinator, whereas the Universities “Rey Juan Carlos” and “Carlos III” are in charge of developing certain tools offered by the platform (respectively, the recommendation system and the tagging system), as well as the project promotion in national and international meetings.

The other project partners are Comolab - in charge of the P2P/CDN audiovisual contents - , and Solaiemes, providing the video calls feature. And finally, Amaris has been selected due to the quality of its work as well as its work experience on new technologies.

  • What is exactly your role, your contribution in that project?

The Amaris main task consists in the administration of the application which manages the interconnection of the different systems composing the platform. For this purpose, we use an ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) which exploits the different platform values and generates a set of workflow when a component is used. Those workflows treat, modify and redirect the messages which come from the Platform.

This task is essential to guarantee the right behavior of the Platform, so that my role within the project is very important. I am in permanent contact with all the project partners. Besides, I collaborate with Telefónica on the analysis and the design of the Platform improvements, and on the Development Plan of the project.

  • What’s your opinion regarding the Internet of the future?

Each day, Internet is getting closer to us in many situations of daily life: using our cell phone, driving our car, watching TV, etc. And during the next years, this trend is going to increase.

We have to update the way we use Internet, because it is going to become an essential tool in our life.

  • What do you get of that experience? What Amaris can get of that project?

As a Software Engineer specialized in R&D, working within the AFICUS project provides me the possibility of improving my skills of researcher, analyst and developer. I’m involved in the main decisions of that project, so I need to have a global vision of it, and that’s why a daily contact with the partners is essential.

Furthermore, in collaboration with Telefónica and the universities, I had the opportunity of publishing a paper, which is going to be presented in many national and international meetings.

Thanks to this project, we have created a Research and Development Department in Amaris Spain, which is currently working on other national and international projects.