4/6/2007

Computer scientists at Swansea University are working on a collaborative project that is using new mobile phone technologies to help villagers in India record and share their stories and experiences.

And it is believed that the technology could be adapted to provide consumers in the UK with new ways of creating and editing videos, music and pictures to share with other users.

The StoryBank project is providing people in the Indian village of Budikote, 100km from Bangalore, with mobile devices that allow them to make videos, record sound and take photographs, and then edit the material into short films or "stories".

Dr Matt Jones, who manages the project at Swansea University, said: "The people of Budikote have a strong tradition of visual and oral history, so we were interested in how we could develop digital technology to enable them to communicate their
stories in new ways."

The team placed a touch screen in a covered public area of the village. The StoryBank digital library presents a collage of pictures representing the stories that villagers have created. Touching the screen and using a radio tuner-style knob
allows users to cycle through the stories and to choose which they want to see and listen to.

Stories created by the villagers can be "gifted" to the StoryBank by using wireless connections from their mobile devices and uploading videos and pictures to the system. In the same way, users can download stories from the StoryBank to their
mobiles.

"The mobile phone digital story authoring application we have developed is giving members of this isolated Indian community a new, lasting record of individual stories, shared experiences and history. The digital library will have a wide reach and should be a useful resource for the whole community," said Dr Jones, who is based in the Future Interaction Technology Laboratory at Swansea University's Department of Computer Science.