The Digital Concierge is a "personal concierge service" which gives users access to information and services anytime and anywhere.

Launched in June 2007, the Digital Concierge Pilot is a joint initiative by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), in partnership with private sector partners Frontline
and CellCity.

During the pilot phase which runs until the end of April 2008, the aim is to enrol 5,000 users to try out the service and give feedback to ensure it meets the needs of the industry and visitors. Through these findings, the developers of Digital Concierge hope to achieve these three objectives:

• understand user behaviour so as to better design the Digital Concierge to meet the needs of industry and visitors,
• evaluate the feasibility of delivering service via mobile phone by studying suitable sustainable business models for Digital Concierge, and
• validate content and technology requirements for Digital Concierge.

Mr James Tan, Director, Resource Development, STB, said, "It was very encouraging for the pilot to even have been considered for the award and we are very gratified it has won."

Mr Tan Eng Pheng, Director of the Finance, Tourism, Trade and Manufacturing Cluster, IDA, added, "We are equally heartened by the award conferred by TravelMole. While the pilot met all the objectives we set out to achieve, it also offers many fruitful lessons and learning curves. In the full implementation of Digital Concierge, we will seek to increase its reach to end-users."

TravelMole, a global online community for the travel and tourism industry, presented a total of 11 category awards at its inaugural TravelMole Web Awards for Asia, which was held at the Suntec Convention Centre recently. Known as the "Moscars", winning entries came from around the region, with entries from Australia showing up strongly in the final count.

Digital Concierge clinched the award from three other finalists shortlisted in its category - Irpedia (www.irpedia.com), Yatra (www.yatra.com) and
AT&T (www.mobile.com).

Since the launch of the pilot service, new features and services have been rolled out progressively, and feedback being actively solicited from users.

Mr James Tan said users were generally excited with the services provided. In particular, many found the online search useful. The search function offers more than 130,000 listings, and can be customised by users to search for, say, food and beverage outlets based on their preferences. It also displays a map of the outlets' location.

"Feedback from consumers has been positive and we look forward to concluding the pilot stage at the end of the month and working towards taking Digital Concierge to the next level," he said.

Riding on the global trend of media convergence, Singapore has successfully leveraged its sophisticated infocomm infrastructure, conducive
business environment and its talent pool to emerge as a centre for the creation, management and distribution of interactive digital media (IDM).

The vibrant and diversified media industry brought in over S$18.2 billion in revenue in 2005, according to the latest available figures. The sector employed more than 53,000 people and contributed $4.9 billion in value-add
to the economy.

The state of the industry was highlighted at the first joint press briefing by the main agencies behind the media hub: Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) and the Media Development Authority (MDA).

Mr Christopher Chia, Chief Executive Officer of MDA, said the key developments that have propelled the media sector forward were the growth of local and international media enterprises, rising global demand for original and multiplatform content developed in Singapore; and increased activity in the creation, management and distribution of digital content and technologies out of Singapore.

Singapore is leveraging new media distribution to underpin its position as a nexus of regional and global content and technologies. "IDA's efforts in the IDM sector are built on our iN2015 masterplan to use infocomm to transform key economic sectors in Singapore. With a robust infrastructure, high-speed connectivity and its strategic geographic location, Singapore is
well-positioned to be a global digital media and entertainment capital by 2015," said Mr Thomas Lim, Director, Education, Learning, Digital Media and Entertainment, IDA.

Mr Lim: IDA's efforts in the IDM sector are built on our iN2015 masterplan to use infocomm to transform key economic sectors in Singapore.

Two recent milestones are the establishment of an Interactive Digital Centre in Temasek Polytechnic for 3D visualisation in 2007; and a Digital Cinema Hub and Network Operations Centre (NOC) through a partnership between IDA and Thomson's Technicolor Digital Cinema business. The Digital Cinema Hub and NOC are expected to begin operations in mid-2008. Both are firsts in Asia.

To support the development of a digital cinema hub, capabilities across the value-chain of services have been developed over the years. More companies are equipped with digital cinematic processing capabilities such as digital subtitling, encoding and watermarking. To date, about 25 cinema screens in Singapore are equipped to screen digital
cinematic content.

Singapore has also witnessed early successes as a regional games hub, where home-grown companies such as Infocomm Asia Holdings has secured rights to manage and distribute top-tier massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) titles like, Granado Espada and Hellgate: London, to the region. Early this year, AsiaSoft, the publisher of popular free-to-play MMOGs such as MapleStory and CABAL Online, managed to clinch the rights to publish the much anticipated MMORPG Mythos in Southeast Asia.

To strengthen Singapore as a games hub, Games Exchange Alliance, comprising a network of more than 30 companies across the games ecosystem in Singapore, signed a Memorandum of Intent with 10 national games associations in the Asia Pacific last year.

The industry has also made efforts towards building Singapore's capability as a global digital marketplace that is in line with the iN2015 masterplan. 1-Net Singapore set up a one-stop service platform NexMedia for managing content distribution across multiple platforms such as Video on Demand over Broadband, IPTV, Mobile and Wireless.