The Hindu Business Line : Seraja offers new app for citizen journalists

A citizen journalist's role is set to become faster and easier. Thanks to a Bangalore-based tech firm, your mobile will allow you to photograph an event and upload it on the Internet. Your news is online in minutes, along with relevant details. Consider you are a spectator at the scene of an accident. You flip out your camera phone, snap a shot and, using Seraja's application on your mobile, instantly upload it to the Internet. Instead of just a photo, you could also take a video or save an audio commentary.

Seraja's application would kick in once the photo is taken, or in the case of audio, with speech recognition catalysing the task. It would seize the time and location using the cellular operator's circle and tower information.

How it works

"Later on, we could upgrade to GPS to get as detailed information as which street the accident occurred," said Mr Gerd Utz Westermann, Head of Event-Based Multimedia Systems Management, Seraja Technologies. He is designing the application, its functions, user interface and look.

Once the picture, time and location are noted, the application checks your list of events as on yourWeb site. If the time of the new event matches one with the same timeframe, it would offer you an option to select that event and combine the information already known about the event.

Finally, it uploads the event along with the photograph to www.seraja.com.

Other uses

Seraja is a Web site that lets you keep track of events happening in the city - such as concerts and art shows, or say a party or gathering with friends. Currently, the Web site has one lakh registered events.

"The event is at the heart of any report or a story. It is this that we try to capture, relate to other events and offer to the users," said Mr Ramesh Jain, Chairman, Seraja Technologies and Professor, University of California, Irvine.

Seraja had earlier announced mobile alerts of events happening in the city, which will be available shortly to users at m.seraja.com. The new application is a step ahead and is expected to offer the mobile user power in sharing information. This tool could be made available in November, the company said.

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