www.ydreams.com

Implementing mobility as a style of life. This is YDreams' mission, for which the future holds no fears.
It has been a lucrative company since day one. Its first year yielded a million Euros. All this due to the technological expertise of its personnel, some of whom came from the American companies which worked on the special effects for Hollywood movies such as The Invisible Man, Batman and X-Men. YDreams is the new name of the company previously known as Ideias Interactivas. But, despite the change, the team's objectives remain the same as those that in 2000 led to its creation.

Eduardo Dias and Edmundo Nobre are two of the original members of the team of six that set up Ydreams. The history they tell is, at the very least, inspirational. A research group, innovative experiences in the fields of Virtual Reality and Mixed reality, the development of one of the first Portuguese multimedia centres, a year at M.I.T. (in the States) and an initial investment of 50 thousand euros. These conditions were enough for this group, together since the beginning of the 1990s, to decide to embark on a business adventure. "Because we don't have all the facilities that can be found in other countries, we may be more innovative", says Edmundo Nobre, vice-president of the company.

The truth is that this company has made every effort to be the best in its area. Evidence of this statement can be seen through YDreams' first big task (when still Ideias Interactivas). "We participated in an invitation to tender by Telecel for the development of a map channel (for Oporto and Lisbon), that would be integrated in Netc", explains Eduardo Dias, vice-president of YDreams. The Portuguese company ended up being chosen from among several competitors, some of whom foreign, and developed a product which has already merited international distinctions, namely by the sites Brazil Online and Motorola Mobile Directory. This last one elected the Map Channel as one of the eight solutions for maps and routes, in mobile phones, worldwide.

This solution gave birth to FluidMaps, one of the company's star products, which has already been applied to several platforms, and can today be accessed also from PDAs and mobile phones. "This is due top the fact that we developed an original solution, instead of buying one of the technological engines available on the market. In this way, we assured great flexibility and a high capability for customization, which are important competitive advantages".

However, YDreams has other trump cards up its sleeve, probably of much greater importance. One of them is called FluidTraffic and deals with a problem of global proportions. "We developed a technology that obtains information in real-time from cameras which certain entities (such as City Halls, Brisa or Instituto das Estradas, in Portugal) use to control traffic", says Eduardo Dias. The process is simple: without human intervention, computers process the images captured by cameras and convert them into information, taking into account averages and statistics. This information can then be sent to any device (mobile phone, PDA, computer or TV set). "It is important to note that the information is made available in real-time, customized and adapted to the device that the customer is using at that moment", adds Edmundo Norte.

Besides the areas already mentioned, YDreams has invested much of its time in the field of entertainment, with interesting results. In fact, last year SAPO's users singled out this company for the creation of the best interactive banner. In the meanwhile, the team is already developing a localization-based game for Vodafone. "The objective is to bring about the association of mobile phone users to hunt for a treasure that may be hidden anywhere in the world", they tell us.

The future is, without a doubt, one of the focal points for YDreams, which is at the moment working on the development of state-of-the-art technologies, as is the case with MobileCast. "This is a solution which will allow people to watch sports event videos in their mobile phones". But don't think we are referring merely to UMTS mobile phones. "With the launch of MMS (Multimedia Message System) for 2.5 generation mobile phones, it will become possible to use this solution with a sequence of images", continues Eduardo Dias.

The team formed by António Câmara (professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa and founder of YDreams) has good reason to be confident. Their solutions continue to win over clients and partners, as has happened with Vizzavi, Vodafone, Siemens, Ericsson and even the Centro Cultural de Belém - for which the company is putting together a digital form. The future also involves a strong investment in internationalization. Besides, YDreams has already begun to take important steps towards strengthening its presence abroad. "At this moment, we already have agents or partnerships in Spain, Holland, France, England and China", they confirm. For this reason, the year 2002 is awaited expectantly. "We hope to achieve more than 3.5 million Euros".

Ydreams - Informática, S.A. 
Madan Parque - Quinta da Torre 
2825-114 Caparica
Tel: (+351) 21 2949683
Fax: (+351) 21 2957786
www.ydreams.com