dti applications in....

Enourmous thanks to Matthew Addis of ITI and Tim Courtney of Xyratex for their sterling efforts in getting in the proposals for the dti autumn technology programme. Can't really go into a huge amount of detail on the proposals, but suffice to say we're looking at a very interesting range of areas.

The next project framework we're looking at is the EU FP6 call in April for advanced search in audio visual technologies. Not entirely sure what sort of thing we'll get into there, but I can imagine some interesting progress being made on work we've already done in Prestospace. New Media will probably be looking at some projects too.

Of course one possible barrier to this might be that EU projects do tend to work on quite a long cycle; it can be eighteen months after the initial submission before you really get started on the project. New Media are getting used to working in a far faster and more iterative way, through channels like the Innovations Lab. There is a real pressure on to get new and better navigation models developed, and trial and error is no bad way to do this. I'm sure it'll get some good results.

It is difficult though for a process like that to take the best of great efforts going on in the accademic and research domains, and that does bother me a little. There are really brilliant and effective tools being made, but getting traction and turning sometimes startling developments into the 'real world' can be extremely difficult.