We are proud to announce the launch of the Ryerson Digital Media Zone

As Seen in the Toronto Star

By: Louise Brown; Education Reporter

Go ahead — nod off on your train ride home. Your smart phone will sound the alarm as you pull into your station so you don’t sleep to the end of the line … again.

Or so a new mobile application being developed at Ryerson University promises to do, once it gets road-tested on a Go Train line later this spring.

It’s one of dozens of inventions being cooked up at Ryerson’s new digital think-tank lab, an airy loft overlooking Dundas Square where budding inventors brainstorm with marketing minds to help their cyber-ideas take flight.

One grad student is designing interactive software that lets you “stir” the cocktail in a liquor ad with the wave of a hand.

Hossein Rahnama, a postdoctoral researcher at Ryerson University and a member of the Steering Committee of Ryerson’s new Digital Media Zone, in the digital think tank overlooking Dundas Square. His latest project, The Public Transit Travel Assistant, is a mobile application designed to help passengers with disabilities navigate transit systems.

Two business majors have dreamed up a way to send your cellphone photo to a special website the moment you click the shutter, and have it emailed straight to the friend of your choice, complete with map of where it was shot.

“This Digital Media Zone lets you bounce ideas off other people with very different skills — some business, some tech — and then pitch them to industry people who come each week to see what we’re doing,” said Ryerson business grad Dave Senior, who designed the photo-sharing application with student Josh Davey.

The fully wired lounge is open 24/7 to students whose pitches win the nod of a student-led committee. One of the mentors is PhD student Hossein Rahnama. He designed the wake-up transit software, which also includes an “app” that would let a blind passenger send for help to transit officials, who could send a voice message back, explained Rahnama.

“It’s like the emergency help button you see on the subway platform, only on your phone.”

When Ryerson president Sheldon Levy heard last year that Rahnama was pitching his idea to the Paris Metro, he became convinced of the need for a cyber think-tank on campus.

“I said to myself: Why Paris? Why not here? This is crazy that such talent has to go outside the country — we need somewhere where students with phenomenal ideas can bump into each other and have their ideas develop here,” Levy said. He connected Rahnama and Metrolinx, which oversees the Go Transit network, and a partnership developed.

Master’s degree student Jonathan Ingham asked Levy last year for somewhere to work on his interactive ads, which require room for large projections, a rack of overhead infrared lights, and laptops.

His request helped prompt Levy to set up the digital media zone where Ingham has developed his idea.

He has since connected with firms such as L’Oreal, which hired him in January to design an interactive fashion runway in New York.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/791912–ryerson-s-digital-think-tank-sparks-inventions