Example application areas for inovani's products:

Here are some example application areas for inovani animation products. As the examples and experience show, inovani’s technology is easily integrated into various content production and delivery tools and infrastructures.

Cell phones
inovani’s animation technology gives the ability to produce videos for cell phones very efficiently. A content provider can easily create talking heads delivering news, weather forecasts, horoscopes, jokes etc. Such services can be based on the texts they already deliver through e.g. SMS and web pages. By including one or more of inovani’s products in the production line, new types of content are created without much extra work.

A content provider can also deliver video creation services to their customers, e.g. let their customers compose talking head messages to other cell phone users.

inovani’s technology is easy to integrate with content providers infrastructure. It can e.g. be accessed via the internet from web-pages or directly over HTTP. inovani's servers can also link to external servers and receive talking head jobs from content providers in this way.

By using the inovani Face Player instead of the standard video formats, an mobile video of a given size can contain longer messages. This is because the data needed to represent an animation is considerably less for the Face Player than for any video format. This gives more value for money, as mobile video delivery are priced according to download  size. At present inovani is working to make a FacePlayer running on J2ME that can be used to deliver talking heads to phones that only support Java and not video.

Television
There are many application areas for inovani talking heads on TV. In general, inovani’s animation technology makes it easy to create virtual personalities that can appear on the screen in different contexts. 

To utilize inovani’s product in this context it is necessary to integrate it with TV-production software and hardware. Since inovani’s player does not depend on particular hardware or software and inovani thereby has complete control of the rendering process, such integration should be simple. It can also produce the quality output needed for the TV screen.

Web
The animation engine can be utilized in various ways through a web-browser interface. Either videos can be produced with one of the video production tools or a plugin version of the player can be used. Talking heads can be used as site hosts, in e-learning, in greeting cards, to deliver messages such as news, weather, jokes and many other things.

When creating web-content, the content providers usually use advanced tools for editing, storing and delivering web pages. inovani’s viewpoint is to not compete with the vendors of such tools, but rather provide technology that can be integrated into such tools and enhance the functionality.

E-mail
Animated messages can be delivered by using email. At present such functionality is provided as a web-service (see www.facems-com). It is also possible to make local PC applications for the same purpose. Through the use of such tool an end user can create his or her own animations and send them by email to other people. 

It is also possible to create a tool that reads emails directly from the email product. To make such a tool it is necessary with close integration with the email system. inovani’s approach is not to create a new email system, but instead to collaborate with the deliverers of email software.

Chat
Chatting is a popular pastime among many of the younger generation. Chatting is done either through the use of special chat software such as Microsoft Instant Messenger or by using web-based chat sites. Chatting is also provided by TV-stations during the periods when there are no TV-programs. In all these cases inovani animation technology can be used to let “talking heads” present the messages. The talking heads can be popular (licensed) cartoon figures and celebrities. It ca also be the chatters themselves by utilizing software creating 3D models from photos.

In all cases, it is necessary to communicate with the chat-software platform and these platforms vary from case to case. For inovani, the goal is not to make a complete chat platform, but rather to deliver products that enable the chat platform builders to expand their platform with new functionality. 

PDAs and cell phones
PDAs and newer cell phones (hereafter called PDAs) can play videos, including videos produced using inovani products. One problem with PDAs is their limited storage capacity. This is particularly a problem when using video, which is made up of large amounts of data. inovani’s player can run on PDAs. The advantage with the player is that considerably less data is needed to store and/or send an animation of a talking head.

There are many ways to deliver content to PDAs, e.g. using traditional Internet email and web, phone connections, docking stations and tailored solutions. In each case there are various platforms to use for delivery of content. In all cases it is simple to integrate inovani’s products to expand the types of contents that can be delivered.

Synergy
inovani’s software run on multiple platforms. This allows content providers to deliver the same talking heads in all the above-mentioned ways: on web pages, on TV, as chat mates, through email, on phones etc.