ABC Innovation is inviting the residents of Newcastle and Launceston to trial a ground breaking pilot project, Spoke. 

Spoke brings a personalised mix of news and local information from a variety of sources in one free, easy to use mobile site. Users need to simply enter their location, select the topics they want, and Spoke does the rest.

Spoke has been developed by ABC Innovation - an incubator for digital ideas, strategy, and research and development within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.  Newcastle is one of only two locations in Australia that have been chosen to trial this pilot project that channels news and information from a variety of sources to an individual's mobile phone.

Newcastle residents can test the product by logging on to the mobile site spoke.abc.net.au and entering their location. The m-site can then be personalised to give viewers only the news and information that they want to see. Sport, for example, can be made a priority or turned off completely for those not interested.

One of the questions being addressed in this research project is how location impacts relevance for news information. Director of ABC Innovation, Angela Clark, has said that further Spoke trials would be based on community reaction and engagement. The project was launched on August 27th after research in Launceston, Geelong, Canberra and Newcastle. 

ABC Innovation Spoke will be exhibiting at theDiG Festival being held in Newcastle from 3-4 October.

For more information about the project, visit the Spoke pilot website.