After the success of winning an Interactive Media Award in January for MirrorMe, Ideonic are extremely pleased to announce they have now been short-listed for a Media Guardian Innovation Award.

MirrorMe is the Facebook and iPhone app that shows how your current day bad habits affect your future face, and was commissioned by me in my time as 4iP Commissioner. Ideonic continue to be a client company through NoTosh's work with Northern Film & Media.

Jeremiah, Ideonic's CEO, writes:

"We increased both our technical and creative boundaries during developing MirrorMe, and with an iPhone version of MirrorMe in development, we continue to do so.

"MirrorMe features in the ‘Application and Gadgets’ category along side iPhone apps Bunny Munro by Enhanced Editions,  and the Nike Football Control application. It’s a great honour to be up against such great applications, and shows what great work we’re doing at Ideonic."

The winners will be announced at the awards night in late March. For more information about the MediaGuardian Innovation Awards visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/megas.

Ewan McIntosh, NoTosh Director, is cited in Edd McCracken's Sunday Herald piece on the coming-to-you-soon-as-seen-on-tv potential offered by Video On Demand (VoD), Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) and social television:

Ewan McIntosh is a digital media consultant who specialises in new technology start-ups. He is working with companies already preparing for the new integrated world. Television programmes on tap will be standard, but what else can the potent cocktail of televisual entertainment and internet connectivity bring?

One obvious area, according to Mr McIntosh, is that of fandom. Imagine mixing Twitter feeds with Facebook fan groups and hit shows such as Glee and Britain’s Got Talent in real time on your TV.

“Fans will be able to congregate much more freely at the time of broadcast,” said Mr McIntosh. “Right now, if I was a fan of The X Factor I would wait until a show is over before I would go on the forums to talk about it. It is clunky and you have to go to a different room. But if I was able to take part in live chat during the show, or look at fan sites, that helps create a TV phenomenon.”

This has been dubbed Social TV, a mixture of social networking sites and TV shows. It is one of the big predictions being made for the medium’s future.

Over the years we've curated some of the more salient pointers to what IPTV has in store for us.

Everything we like, everything we use for research, ends up for all to use online. If you want help navigating the 1000s of reports, videos and free resources for which we've spent the time scouring then get in touch and we could produce some research summaries for your organisation.

It's often better value for our clients to let us navigate, curate and summarise the subjects we know inside out. Get in touch with Ewan if you think we can help.

Last week, as the world was working out whether the iPad was good, bad, ugly (or indifferent), NoTosh was busy building a lightning quick strategy with partners Northern Film & Media (NFM) to create, overnight, a £40k ($60k) iPad fund. The reasoning?

1. iPad apps will be featured in a new store come the iPad launch in March: getting North East companies in there first helps ensure that North East companies have a better chance of appearing on early adopter's iPads before the marketplace gets too crowded, like its iPhone cousin's store.
2. No-one knows if the iPad will be a game-changer or just another iPod Touch - but bigger. The fact is, we have to make apps that push it to its limits to find that out. You also have to think about how neglected the iPod Touch has been in developers' eyes, despite sales apparently being on the verge of outstripping the iPhone. Development for this non-GPS, lo-tech device is underexploited.
3. Great companies building great apps speculatively is actually quite rare: when there are more secure income streams from government tenders and corporate clients, most developers prioritise and R&D gets the shove. A fund is essential and a superb use of investment to create commercially viable but risky products.
4. Companies always work better with some focus and a prize at the end. The fact is, this money exists already for exciting digital media products, but we needed to make sure that NFM was seen as both a viable, speedy and light-touch organisation who could help startups get their idea to market quickly.
5. There was a unique opportunity to reposition Northern Film & Media as one of the most forward-looking, technology focused 'screen' agencies around; not just set up to help fund the snails-pace-production of film and television series, but to turn around investments quickly for nimble startups.

Our strategy worked. Within an hour there were hundreds of Twitter mentions of this exciting new fund throughout the world (maybe stretching to thousands now), helped by our friends at Techcrunch, PaidContent, the readwriteweb and the Wall Street Journal.

Now, we're just waiting for some brilliant ideas to come in - a few have started to trickle and look promising. But as strategies go for engaging a digital community locally on a globally exciting story, we're quite proud of what we've achieved so far.

Pic from GraphicSpirit

It's great to hear that the Facebook health app MirrorMe, produced by Middlesbrough-based Ideonic, has won an Outstanding Achievement Award at the IMAs. It's the second highest accolade of these highly competitive awards.

MirrorMe was commissioned and taken to market by me in my time as Commissioner at 4iP and Ideonic, as a North East company, continues to be a client company with whom NoTosh and Northern Film & Media continue to work to expand their business in serious and educational gaming. For example, Ideonic will be amongst the selected companies attending the MIT Product Marketing Workshops this week at the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics.

Middlesbrough has been in the news frequently over the years as, amongst other things, "the worst place to live in Britain". But the Guardian featured some of the Ideonic staff in a recent video doc about how the town's gaming industry, through companies like Ideonic, is the saviour amidst soaring unemployment in the area.

The MirrorMe app has just been updated with yet more bad habits to test your future mucked up face. Why not install it on your Facebook profile and add yourself to the 22,000+ faces already aged, abused and shared?

Edge 2010 is a major new conference devoted to 21st Century public service delivery, February 25-26th. How can schools, libraries, cities and entire countries innovate for digital inclusion, learning and e-government? What are the latest successful approaches to the regeneration of cities and how are virtual libraries, along with information services, revolutionise local authorities?

I will be presenting an opening talk at the event, in Edinburgh Castle. It's a building that not one army was ever able to conquer, steeped in history and a physical monument that marks Edinburgh out as much as the pyramids of Egypt, the Manhattan skyline or Rio's Sugarloaf.

However, often we are sold a utopia made up of glowing rectangles wherever we learn, work and walk: there are, apparently, people who get everything they need virtually with no need for the traditional library, coffee shop or marketplace.

But I think we're at a technological T-junction. In the same way that Edinburgh Castle does, in one fell swoop, prevent the city from ever becoming just another set of anonymous glass and steel towers, cities and the individuals in them have to make a call on the balance of technology world and physical world, understanding when it's really transformative and when we're best to leave it for face-to-face interaction.

The most digitally literate know where that balance lies and reap the economic, intellectual and social benefits. Unfortunately, there are too many who remain excluded from an increased depth and breadth of communication, connections, opportunity either through a lack of access, money or understanding.

Edge 2010 is for elected members, Chief Executives, Directors, Heads of Service, trustees, E-government and community professionals, library vendors: I'm going to try to provoke them all to question how we best go about engaging our citizens in meaningful online and offline activity, using some successful "digi-analogue" examples I've had a hand in such as Edinburgh Coffee Morning, eduBuzz, TeachMeet and BarCamp Scotland.

Now, I'm not a librarian and will probably be missing some gems of offline-online community learning. So, if you're a Jude, Doug, Cathy or Joyce and have other examples from your corner of the world that I can relay, shining some light on your interesting practice and educating me, then please feel free to drop them into the comments section here or send me an email.

If you want to come along to EDGE2010 you can book online.

Take a look at other keynotes and spotlights I've delivered and maybe I could speak at your next event.

Since the beginning of January I've been working on building up a new venture: NoTosh Limited. And in just our first week of operation we've signed off with our first major client, Northern Film and Media.

NoTosh Ltd will consult on the digital strategy for the Newcastle-based film, television and digital media agency, as well as investing in and providing development opportunities to North East companies on their behalf.

NoTosh founder, Ewan McIntosh, said: "Northern Film and Media is one of the foremost companies making timely investment and real, hands-on practical support available to the people that need it, at the time they need it. NoTosh is dedicated to helping young startups and more established talent develop their ideas in an ever-evolving digital space. I couldn’t ask for a more enthusiastic and vibrant company to work with as NoTosh launches into this space.”

Northern Film and Media chief executive Tom Harvey said: “We are absolutely delighted to have attracted someone of Ewan’s calibre to the team.

“The digital media agenda remains key for us and Ewan’s experience in delivering one of the biggest and most exciting calls-to-action for new and emergent digital media companies in the UK at 4iP will be a fantastic addition to the agency.”

McIntosh is also the founder of 38minutes.co.uk, the creative industries platform for the North of the UK. His understanding and application of the latest web, mobile and games technology also continues to influence policy and practice in the world of education, an area in which his new company will continue to grow as the worlds of media and learning converge.