Principal Investigator: Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis
eTourism Researcher: Soultana Symeonidou
Summary of the Project
The Digital Graffiti (DIG) Project will introduce the European SMEs to the new media era, and benefit from The shift from fixed web to mobile web access; The increasingly penetration rate of smarthphones; The development of location based services through the deployment of an integrated mobile new media suite of applications should be explored for SMEs. An integrated mobile commerce platform will provide a new channel for the SMEs, a channel that in the short term horizon will become critical mean of reaching the final consumer. We need to consider that in tourism and retail, the visibility and interaction with the consumer plays a paramount role for the realisation of sales. With the deployment of DIG system and services the adopting SMEs, will gain a significant advantage and a placement at an emerging distribution channel .The DIG platform will be implemented, with open architecture, allowing for the continuous enrichment of the applications to be offered to the end user. The heart of the DIG platform will be VELTIs mGage solution, which covers all elements of the marketing process. The mGage solution is a comprehensive solution, that provides seamless integration across all the mGages Modules. By populating the mGage solution with selected elements like data mining module, Geoinformatics applications, a strong integrated solution will be offered. At the end-user side the feature for cross platforms access will be paramount. With a variety of existing platforms (Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, iOS, Symbian, etc) , and with no format to stand out, the ease of access from different mobile devices and operating system , is essential.
DIGITAL GRAFFITI aims to support location based services for Small and Medium tourism enterprises by enabling content originators to write on the walls and leave messages for others through QR codes and GPS markers. From a technical prespective, the application has three major architectural components, the DIG server (offering Graffiti hosting), the 3rd party development applications (that will provide intelligence to Graffiti placements) and the mobile clients (that will provide input/output functionalities as well as location information via GPS, QR codes, etc). DIG will start operating on city centers by being an operational service that offers tourists all the existing digital content related to the street they are walking in. The emphasis is to offer all the available content (not just that related to an application) in the densest form possible creating the best possible laboratory to test smart applications for a target group of users. Ultimately the project aims to take the Information Services of local SME actors to the next level by sharing best practices and offering a localized multi-language service in crowded city centers with the aim of generating an ecosystem that will make the service grow beyond the city center‘s frontiers. The project includes 10 partners located in Spain, Italy, Lithuania, Greece and UK.
For more information about the project, please visit the
DIGITAL GRAFITI PROJECT WEBSITE: http://dig.velti.com/