Mark Lyn­der­say

The team from AM-In Mo­tion is en­thu­si­as­tic. Start them talk­ing about their video so­lu­tion and it's easy to be­gin see­ing it as a mag­ic-bul­let so­lu­tion for the coun­try's mori­bund in­ter­na­tion­al tourism mar­ket­ing ef­forts.

It's no se­cret that T&T's in­dus­tri­ous ab­sence from the world tourism mar­kets is on­ly de­railed by the cussed­ness of peo­ple who in­sist on com­ing here any­way.

Lis­ten­ing to Ameer Al-Jaleel and Brent Web­ster talk about their new 360-de­gree video tour project is a bit like drink­ing from a fire­hose, the two tread­ing mer­ri­ly over each oth­er's con­ver­sa­tions in a rush to ex­plain what they're up to.

Bet­ter yet, have a look at it first here: http://ow.ly/g2CAE. And don't just look at the video, swipe or click around in it to ex­pe­ri­ence the ver­tig­i­nous sense of glid­ing vi­su­al­ly through a live ac­tion ex­pe­ri­ence.

Back yet? Good. It's a sticky ex­pe­ri­ence isn't it? Al-Jaleel and Web­ster claim peo­ple have been spend­ing five min­utes watch­ing every minute of that video.

AM-In Mo­tion pro­pos­es to use that tech­nol­o­gy to launch two projects, Ex­plore T&T, a se­ries of vi­su­al tour ex­pe­ri­ences of tourist-friend­ly sites and Car­ni­val 360, a live-stream ex­pe­ri­ence of the fes­ti­val that vis­i­tors can in­ter­act with.

Al-Jaleel's ex­cite­ment about the Car­ni­val 360 project, and his ad­ven­tur­ous plans for it make it dis­tress­ing to learn that the lead time for Car­ni­val 2013 is too close to con­sid­er and his team is aim­ing for a de­ploy­ment in 2014. He be­lieves that he can at­tract at least 50 mil­lion view­ers to see the fes­ti­val streamed live on this plat­form.

"Our Car­ni­val is be­ing over­shad­owed," Al-Jaleel said. "I had my first ex­pe­ri­ence in J'Ou­vert last year, and I was amazed by the in­ti­ma­cy of it. I don't think that peo­ple who hear about our fes­ti­val re­al­ly know what it's like, and I think this tech­nol­o­gy can re­al­ly show them that."

So how does this all get done?

AM-In Mo­tion is work­ing with Im­mer­sive Me­dia as its fourth full busi­ness part­ner to im­ple­ment the next gen­er­a­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy that pow­ers Google's Street View.

The de­vice, which looks like a wand de­signed by an As­gar­dian troll, is es­sen­tial­ly a rugged met­al sphere stud­ded with cam­eras on a stout stick.

Each cam­era cap­tures 12 megapix­el im­ages or 1080p video with enough over­lap to cre­ate a seam­less im­age that de­liv­ers a 360-de­gree view save for a tiny spot be­low the de­vice where the mount shaft is.

New­er ver­sions of the de­vice, Brent Web­ster not­ed, re­move even that blind spot.

"Imag­ine click­ing on an ob­ject and find­ing out about its his­to­ry in the live video feed," ex­plains Al-Jaleel with a wide grin. "Imag­ine tag­ging a friend with Face­book tools while the cam­era rolls past them on Car­ni­val Tues­day."

AM-In Mo­tion is talk­ing to the Min­istry of Trade and In­vest­ment, but why are these en­thu­si­as­tic en­tre­pre­neurs wait­ing on gov­ern­ment ap­provals for a project that screams with com­mer­cial po­ten­tial for big-mon­ey brands?

"Peo­ple have asked us that," Al-Jaleel said, "but this is T&T and it's the most im­por­tant brand we have. There's more neg­a­tive than pos­i­tive in­for­ma­tion avail­able on this coun­try on­line and we're fed up of peo­ple not know­ing where we're from..."

"Ex­cept for crick­et fans," Web­ster says. "Crick­et fans al­ways know about Trinidad and they even recog­nise the ac­cent."

"This should be na­tion­al in scope. The goal is to cre­ate a one-stop shop where peo­ple can ex­pe­ri­ence T&T," Al-Jaleel said. "Where a vis­i­tor can ex­plore be­fore they leave home and then bring with them on a phone maps, di­rec­tions, trav­el times and vi­su­al tours that they can use to ori­ent them­selves."

Read an ex­pand­ed ver­sion of this col­umn here (http://ow.ly/adAll).