Multimedia specialist Digithurst Ltd, Royston, Hertfordshire is to take the town twinning concept a step further, hooking up two communities via a multimedia link. The firm has secured $2m for the ACLARA project as part of the European Community’s five year-old Research and Development for Advanced Communication for Europe programme. ACLARA will link the German town Ganderkesee with the French Chateau du Loir. The twin towns, which already exchange information by conventional means, will be connected together via an ISDN line providing them with video links, and will use Digithurst’s electronic newspaper system. Front-end software will enable translation of text files sent from one township to another. The project, half-funded by the Community under the RACE programme, will be implemented over the next two years. It is being handled in conjunction with the German research group BIBA, which will provide software tools, the Fraunhofer Institut, which will provide user interface expertise, and France Telecom, which will link the towns up over the border. These organisations, together with the participating communities themselves, will come up with the other half of the funding. The programme will be used to exchange cultural and administrative information and will possibly involve a UK town in the future. Part of the funding will be spent on educating users and preparing them for the project. Digithurst hopes to use the research and development process to bring out some marketable products as the project progresses.
