Three days, 48 hours non-stop and 700 participants. Sapo Codebits is back for the fourth consecutive time, promising new adventures for internet programmers, enthusiasts and entrepreneurs, at Tejo Room at Atlântico Hall in Lisbon.
Between 11 and 13 November, the 700 participants selected from a universe of 1,500 registrations, will be able to participate in more than 60 workshops and talks conducted by conceited personalities from different countries, this
 |
| Zeinal Bava, chief executive, PT |
year with special focus on Portuguese speakers. Zeinal Bava, chief executive officer of PT, highlighted the success of the latest editions of Sapo Codebits, emphasizing the role played by Sapo within PT: “Sapo is today within PT’s DNA, forcing us every day to question pre-conceived ideas about business and internet use itself.”For PT’s CEO, the importance of this event lies in the fact of gathering people who enjoy programming and internet and who unleash their creativity to present different, innovative projects.
Abílio Martins, Board Member, PT, stressed the continued growth of Sapo Codebits over these four editions, “this latter being the bigger edition ever”. He also said that over the years Sapo became an added value for PT.
The three days of the event will be marked by moments of entertainment and the launch of new products. The opening session of Sapo Codebits, an event that according to Zeinal Bava “enables to unleash the creativity of participants”, was the centre stage for the presentation of Meo Games, the first gaming-on-demand service in the world. This is a launch that complies with PT’s strategy of offering innovative, converged services.
 |
|
Abílio Martins, Board Member, PT |
“We invest continuously in pay-tv innovation. We assumed that commitment with consumers and set our goals each time higher focusing on four areas of innovation and development within Meo: contents, functionalities, widgets and multi-screen”, explains Pedro Leitão, Board Member, PT. Meo Games is an innovative solution for video-game enthusiasts, providing games and high-quality user experience. Considering the high demands of the service, this will be only available for Meo Fibre and Sapo Fibre customers.
 |
Pedro Leitão,
Board Member, PT |
As the result of a strategic partnership with Playcast Media, a specialist in emerging gaming-on-demand technology, Meo Games marks the access to the best games from editors of reference, namely Activision, Atari, Disney, Capcom, Codemasters, THQ, Strategy First, among others, with no need of a console or a powerful computer, or any kind of download. Guy de Beer, CEO, Playcast, explained how the service works and stressed its cost competitiveness: “The videogame world is expensive as we have to buy expensive consoles and games. The advantage of this service is the access to20 different games updated each month for just €9.99 per month. One year of monthly fees is equivalent to the purchase of just two games. Here lies the difference.”
The commercial model is based on a multi-platform display – PC in the launch phase and TV in the near future – for a fixed monthly fee of €9.99, entitling users with unlimited time to play or use. The game catalogue contains 100% new generation videogame titles, including a few of the best and latest brands, with a lot of genders, namely racing, fighting and action, games for children and families.
Celso Martinho, technological director of Sapo, made a real-time example of how access to games will work and highlighted the concept of community associated with this service. Subscribers will be able to have a profile to share with friends favourite games, games played, rankings, etc. The added value of this service is the fact that this service is hosted at the PT Data Centre, which allows playing at less powerful computers.
That is, Meo Games operates through the access to game servers by streaming, installed at the PT Data Centre, which remotely process the games that customers are using. When entering the game application, the customer accesses a portal with all subscribed titles, the respective description and a small demonstration video. When selecting the game, the customer starts to play at once as if he had loaded a CD with the game onto his PC.
To subscribe Meo Games, you just have to visit a Bluestore store or call 16200. Then, after receiving the certified Meo gamepad, you just need to access http://jogos.meo.pt, download the application and start playing. As the service operates remotely and there are increased demands in terms of internet connection, this service is currently restricted to customers with Fibre (Meo Fibre or Sapo Fibre).
The 4th edition of Sapo Codebits was the centre stage for the launch of the new version of Sapo Photos (http://fotos.sapo.pt), which will have a new interface and a new slideshow, a better integration with social networks and a better organisation of contents and tag management. It will also provide a new batch photo upload feature (allows simultaneous upload of several photos posting information during the process: the # of uploaded photos, the # of photos not yet uploaded, the time still missing until completion of the process, etc.).
Sapo Alerts is another novelty of this edition, enabling its users to subscribe events and consequent notifications of their occurrence via email, SMS or Instant Messaging.
The high moment of Sapo Codebits will take place on 13 November, the last day of the event, the session of presentation of the different works under competition, having each team just 90 seconds to expose their project, which will stand out for its synthesis, capacity for execution and originality. Participants will decide the 10 best projects, like in the previous edition.
Followers of the last trends of computing programming not yet registered with Sapo Codebits may follow every step at Tejo Room, from today until Saturday, live through the Sapo portal at the Sapo Codebits website, at http://codebits.eu, and at Meo through Interactive Meo.