Digital media agency celebrates funding win

Substrakt has been awarded £25,000 from the Technology Strategy Board to help develop its Urban Lens API and iPhone app, after the digital media and design agency was successful in its application to the Feasibility Studies for Digital Services funding competition.

The competition, which launched in January 2011, attracted 350 applications and was created to stimulate innovation in digital services by helping smaller companies harness emerging growth opportunities. From the applications submitted, only 80 were granted funding which will go towards developing projects such as the Urban Lens app.

Working in partnership with Junction Media, a digital media company that helped to create the content, Substrakt devised and developed Urban Lens to enable users to explore cultural destinations and events in a new way. The app links together a host of information about a range of topics in one place, helping the user to navigate around a city.

Andy Hartwell, managing director at Substrakt, said: “Access to different content about the same subject is often centred on a specific venue or organisation. For example, information on where a certain band is playing will be located on a different site to information about how to access that band’s back catalogue. This often results in a keen user having to research, source and visit multiple websites to discover what they need and want.

“It’s fantastic that we have been awarded this funding from the Technology Strategy Board. We are really keen to expand on the work we do exploring different datasets and how these relate to each other – it is a subject that we are very interested in”.

Nick Appleyard, Head of Digital at the Technology Strategy Board, said: “The aim of the funding competition was to help smaller companies overcome the initial hurdles to development.  Substrakt's Urban Lens project addresses the core challenge of how to enhance data within both public and private sector organisations.  We are delighted to support this project and look forward to seeing how Urban Lens progresses".

For more information about the services that Substrakt offers, please visit http://substrakt.co.uk.