Young businessman’s invention points the way

ORONO – University of Maine graduate and president of Intelligent Spatial Technologies Chris Frank received the Small Business Administration’s prestigious Maine Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for his innovative “iPointer,” a digital tour guide product his company is developing.

The device gives visiting users information about landmarks by simply pointing at them.

To be eligible for consideration, an entrepreneur must be under the age of 30, and the business must be at least three years old. Frank learned of his recognition in late January. He was nominated for the SBA award by Debbie Neuman, director of UM’s Target Technology incubator located in the Target Technology Center in Orono, which houses iST.

Frank founded the small technology company in April 2003, hoping to realize the commercial potential of providing location-based information for people on the go, he said. He based the company on research conducted at the university’s Spatial Information Science and Engineering department.

Since the company was launched in the Target Technology Center, it has grown to five employees. Funding for continued development of the iPointer has included several seed grants and a development award from the Maine Technology Institute in Gardiner.

The iPointer is in its final stages of commercialization, and will be the first product to come out of iST. Its target clients are historical sites and museums, where visitors on site would use the iPointer.

The company has potential customers in Maine and Virginia, Frank said, and he expects the product to be available to the public by the end of the year.

The iPointer system consists of a hand-held, multimedia computing device, a wireless network and a powerful geospatial database. The device consists of a Microsoft Mobile OS-based computer integrating a digital magnetic compass that records the device’s pointing direction;, a GPS receiver that records the user’s current location; and a wireless connection to iST’s database via the Internet.

The database contains geo-spatial data, descriptive and multimedia data, and runs iST’s advanced pointing landmark selection algorithms to accurately identify landmarks selected by users.

The iPointer system allows users to explore a defined area, pointing and learning at will. Users select landmarks or items of interest and the iPointer delivers multimedia information based on the user’s geographic location and orientation.

Unlike proximity-dependent self-guided tour technology, the iPointer system uses global positioning system and digital compass technology integrated into a pocket PC, a wireless network and iST’s geospatial database.

Target Technology Center provides a nurturing environment for information technology development and commercialization activities for start-up businesses. In addition to the incubator, the facility houses University of Maine researchers and private sector technology firms.

The incubator provides developing firms with space, support services and resources necessary to get started. The facility was developed by the Bangor Target Area Development Corp. in partnership with the University of Maine. It is one of seven centers in Maine designed to assist firms engaged in technology-related activities.