Balloon races for rent in cyber space (From The Bolton News)

Balloon races for rent in cyber space

12:21pm Tuesday 9th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

BALLOON races could be a thing of the past if a small Bolton marketing and software company with big ideas has its way.

Environmentalists have criticised charity balloon races because deflated latex balloons have been known to injure and kill wildlife, especially birds.

So Purepages has taken balloons out of the air and put them in cyberspace where charities can stage virtual races, reacting to real weather reports, without endangering wildlife.

The Bolton-based brand marketing and high level software company has worked for months on the complex programme, using staff in Bolton and programmers around the world.

Now rentaballoonrace.com has gone live after several months of rigorous testing.

Managing director Mike Phillips, aged 60, who lives in Edgworth, is an entrepreneur who used to own Yarns and Co in Bolton.

When the home knitting market died he sold up and moved into brand marketing and software after completing an MBA, following stints writing complex marketing reports for the Financial Times and working in high level marketing posts with major Blue Chip companies in Britain and Europe.

Purepages started out designing software to stop children accessing pornography but lost out when Microsoft launched its similar Vista programme.

The company began working on creating websites for a range of companies and the current work evolved out of designing specific programmes for charities.

Mr Phillips said: “This unique and innovative charity fundraising system is the world’s first totally interactive virtual balloon race and is guaranteed great fun and 100 per cent environmentally friendly.” Backed by many of the UK’s ecological lobby groups such as the Marine Conservation Society the rentaballoonrace.com programme is suitable and affordable for use by the smallest church, school PTA or sports club as well appealing to the largest UK charities or major companies seeking creative ways to help their favoured charities.

Using cutting edge algorithms, or computer equations, all the data produced by the system is real, though the launch sequence is an animated reconstruction of what the mass balloon launch would actually look like.

Charities and companies can buy different packages to suit their activities, while supporters can buy virtual balloons which drift in cyberspace influenced by real BBC weather reports and which can be tracked over real landscapes on a website.

Staff at Purepages, based in Church Bank, have also launched another programme, aimed at time pressed medical personnel.

This programme, medicourse.co.uk, is a “free to doctors” portal with details of medical events, training courses and meetings. It allows medical professionals such as doctors and specialists to be automatically notified of their listed interests, which they only have to input once on the medicourse site.