Product Description

Umajin is an innovative rich media platform that delivers text, images, video, audio, 3D and interactivity. Umajin has been developed from the ground up in C++ and supports Windows, Macintosh and Linux. The Umajin platform supports three key products.

1. Umajin Student edition. This allows users to easily combine sight, sound and motion into one document within one very easy to use application. This product is currently being used and enjoyed by New Zealand Schools and was launched at CeBit in Germany in 2006.

2. Umajin Professional edition. This is an extension of the student edition providing features required by the demanding design and creative community. Current beta clients include Amway Japan.

3. Umajin Developer edition. This allows developers to create their own amazing applications using the open standards language and file formats. Current beta clients are producing full 3D Virtual Surgery training, sports simulations, and GIS visualisations.

Innovation

Design Philosophy:

The UMAJIN vision was to allow the average person to create rich interactive documents on a normal home computer. This has been made possible through our design goals of simplicity and consistency.

Making exciting documents or developing rich internet enabled applications has traditionally required a large number of technologies and products. The Umajin platform seeks to address this by providing all the tools in one place. By making these tools consistent, users can quickly leverage the experience gained into new areas. There is a patent pending on our unique user interface which makes it possible to manipulate different object types directly. Because the icons are attached to the object, context sensitive, and visually recognisable this system has proved very easy to use.

The Umajin student version demonstrates these goals extremely well, making it possible for 5 and 6 year olds to create interactive documents with little or no training.

Innovative Technologies

Easy sharing over the internet : Advanced image, video and audio compression is provided to make sharing files very quick. The Umajin engine is also tiny at only 1 Mb in size.

Real Time editing: Umjain is 3D accelerated with all objects rendered in real time making the editor unique in its ability to mix text, video, 3D and animation.

Sort and filter large amounts of web data : Umajin has a high speed SQL database providing more responsive applications than are possible in a web browser.

Easy capture of user content : Umajin supports direct input from many unique peripheral devices including microphones, webcams, scanners, digital cameras, up to 16 mice, video, touch screens, RFID readers to name a few.

Performance

Umajin is a proven performer in the New Zealand education market. After its launch at CeBit in March 2006 UR has worked with leading IT schools in New Zealand to fine tune the product and features for the school market (including a Maori translation). 

"Our children at Kaitoke School are using UMAJIN in every class at every level. It's so user friendly and has become the multi-environment answer to everything our school needs. We finally have a tool without the need for teacher intervention or puzzled dives into confusing instruction manuals. " Chris Gullery, Principal Kaitoke School.

The UMAJIN school edition is being prepared for international release with Japanese, German, and Mandarin versions. The Umajin developer edition is in beta, but already showing great promise with 3 large projects in development. Examples include;

Virtual Surgery Training Simulation

Virtual Medical in Auckland have commissioned a series of interactive training modules which allow junior surgeons to read operation procedures, examine highly detailed virtual anatomy, view video of procedures and perform virtual surgery using our real time 3D engine.

Here you can see the wireframes and a sense of the complexity of the geometry of the scene. As time progresses (at 30 frames per second) streaming vertex information is used to alter and subtly morph the models of the human organs. 

Database driven publishing

DigitalDM in Australia are licensing the new UMAJIN technology from UR. The first significant application is for Amway Japan. This application dynamically updates the products from a central database which is then cached in the local client side database. The application tracks the Amway user choices and their purchasing plans while providing statistics for the sales for their downstream partners.

There is enormous scope for collaborative work with major global companies designing and building unique UMAJIN solutions. There are potential product/solution synergies with many hardware and software content providers – those that exist today such as mobile phones or PDAs and those that haven’t reached the market place yet.

Potential

UR sees the global market offering the full potential for Umajin. Without any real addressable competition in the education marketplace (NZ, Australia and abroad), UR feel that as a product, Umajin is unique enough, simple enough and inexpensive enough to make real gains in creating its own global market segment. This factor has been recognised with multiple grants from New Zealand Government agencies. NZ Trade and Enterprise has given funding to UR to develop the product further and paved the way for our CeBIT launch in 2006. 

UR has consistently identified the education sector as the key sector for business growth and platform development. UR has spent many hours researching and demonstrating the product to educational conferences, school events, teacher development events, regional education forums and many more. With each event attended, we gain greater insight and better and better feedback about the product which is more often than not, praised for its unique features and close alignment to the needs for school children’s learning.

UR has also consistently attracted grants and funding from various agencies allowing UR to continue development without seeking outside equity. Grants have included Technology Business Growth, TIF (x 2), GSF and a Market Development Grant. These grants have allowed UR to devote considerable resource to the continued commercialisation of Umajin Student Edition for our home markets of Australia and New Zealand and expanded development of our initial export markets of Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore

Other information the judges should know

Short videos showing students using the software and some examples of applications created using the developers SDK.

http://www.urhost.co.nz/umajin/

The main educational website includes a free download and lots of information about the product.

http://www.umajin.com

Some examples of the great technology built into the platform which allows Umajin to render very realistic 3D scenes in real time.

http://www.umajin.com/shadows/