Revellers can use a smartphone app to send messages for beaming on a Sydney Harbour Bridge pylon on New Years' Eve. Source: Supplied
REVELLERS are being invited to download an app and take part in smartphone-generated light shows coordinated with fireworks during Sydney New Years' Eve celebrations.
They can use the app to compose and send celebratory messages that will be beamed onto Sydney Harbour Bridge pylons during the evening.
Details of Sydney's New Year celebrations were revealed today. They include the participation of singer Kylie Minogue as "creative ambassador" and an innovative smartphone app that lets a city crowd help drive an interactive colour light show.
The high-tech event and the app are the brainchild of media company Imagination. The app was launched today by sponsors Telstra and the City of Sydney aboard the cruise ship Carnival Spirit, which is docked in Sydney Harbour near the iconic bridge and the centre of celebrations on December 31.
Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said more than one billion people watched the Sydney New Years’ Eve celebration in Australia and around the world. It contributed $156 million to the local economy, she said.
"The app lets you take part in the biggest interactive light show on Sydney Harbour - we hope it might even set a new Australian record for audience participation," she said.
The app was developed by media company Imagination which has a three-year contract to plan New Years' Eve celebrations in Sydney.
Telstra is offering full functionality of the app not only to its own customers but those of rival networks Optus and Vodafone. But BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Phone users will miss out as the app is available only for use on iPhones and Android devices.
Digital creative director at Imagination Sydney, David Clarke, said the new app offered five main pieces of functionality for those celebrating New Years’ Eve.
There was a timeline which listed all events taking place around Sydney Harbour. Users can see current events and scroll forwards and backwards to view the full evening program.
"What you have is a constant feed more like a Twitter stream so you can see what’s happening right at this moment and you can scrub back and forth. What’s happening now will be right at the top," Mr Clarke said.
The feed also will include information about venues that are filling, messages from celebrities and where necessary, public service announcements.
The most novel piece of functionality is “four colour moments” at 10.15pm, 11:00pm, 11:30pm and 11:45pm when the app will automatically sync smartphones with lights and fireworks around the harbour.
Smartphone screens will light up with colours and fireworks in synchronisation with the show and users are being encouraged to hold up their smartphones to the sky to display what could be a sea of magenta or a sea of blue when that happens.
Another piece of app functionality will allow users to send messages of goodwill which will be projected on the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Organisers plan to display around 1600 messages in this way. Messages however will be “thoroughly curated” to avoid inappropriate ones, but “all messages of good intent have a chance of going up,” he said.
Users can submit message for display at any time with their handset or in the lead-up on the evening,” Mr Clarke said.
In an initiative designed to alleviate a possible cellular network overloading at midnight, users anywhere in Australia can pre-write and upload 50 free SMS messages to friends and family using the app – from now until 6pm on the night. Telstra will then distribute those messages at midnight.
Telstra has promised to send out the messages even if they originate from users connected to other cellular networks.
The move aims to drastically reduce uploading of SMS messages to the network at midnight, with most of the traffic being the beaming of messages back to users.
“It allows really smart management of networks,” Mr Clarke said.
Telstra estimates around 61 million text messages will be sent on New Years Eve, and has upgraded 12 mobile boosters.
Telstra chief marketing officer Mark Buckman said the Telco also would install 3 cellular networks on wheels to increase network capability.
The app includes a live maps feature that shows all venues throughout the city and their capacity at that time, and offers directions to them. It will include details on whether people can bring alcohol and food to them.
An Imagination spokeswoman said the app had taken three months to design but the concept has been the works at Imagination for 12 months. She said the partnership between Imagination and Telstra had begun around February-March this year with Telstra coming on board as official sponsor of the New Years’ Eve celebrations in June.
Imagination won a tender process to design the creative for Sydney New Year's Eve in February 2011, and 2012 was their second year at the helm, she said.
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