Shelsea D., Author at Prague Morning

Prague will welcome the New Year 2020 with a video-mapping show on the facade of the National Museum.

The screening will start at 6.15 p.m. and it will be repeated three times every hour.

Videomapping will be divided into seven images and will take 10 minutes. The screening will be repeated at 7.15 pm, 8.15 pm.

“The video mapping will last ten minutes and is called My, Praha. The show will be screened at the National Museum building and will be repeated three times every hour; the first screening will start at 6:15 pm,” Vít Hofman, spokesman for Prague City Hall

“It is a helpful step not only for all citizens of the metropolis who are sensitive to excessive noise but also for animals that face unnecessary stress every year,” Prague City Councilor Jan Chabr said.

During the three projections, Prague Police will divert the traffic in the area. Between 17:00 and 21:00, the upper part of Wenceslas Square will be closed (the entrance from Wilsonova Street will be closed, as well).

Stand anywhere in the top half of the square for a good view.

The Central Group developer(s) plans to start construction within two years on five large brownfields in Prague.

What comes into play, however, are the admitted agreements between the boroughs and the municipality (determining who will pay for the construction of the infrastructure) and the length of the authorization process. At the same time, the first outlines of the future residential Ruzyně district are outlines.

The Central Group has been buying land in retired industrial and warehouse premises in the past recent years. “We own about 1.5 million square meters for the construction of 30,000 flats,” stated Dušan Kunovský, owner of the Central group.

According to Kunovský, the reconstruction of the former Tesla Hloubětín, and the Park quarter in the part of Žižkov railway station are in their beginning stages. The question remaining is how the project will evolve on the of Žižkov Telecom, where it promotes residential towers designed by architect Eva Jiřičná.

2,200 apartments, kindergarten, and school

The company wishes to build 2,200 apartments with shops and services on the ground floor of the houses, as well as four smaller kindergartens to be part of the apartment blocks on the premises of Ruzyně and Liboca (Liboca is where the company owns a warehouse facility called Westpoint).

The apartments may have a maximum of eight aboveground floors, as the developer believes. A new elementary school is also planned out and has been negotiated with the municipality.

The urban study of the complex was prepared by architect Jakub Cigler. In cooperation with Prague 6, a regulatory plan was created to serve as an expert basis for further development.

“The assignment should not, therefore, change with every exchange of political representation,” said councilor Eva Smutna (club TOP 09, KDU-CSL).

This residential construction investment will cost 13 billion (CZK). The company is hoping that the construction will be completed by 2023. And, hopefully, the new district can expand even into the west.

Photo: Jakub Cigler Architekti

Photo: Jakub Cigler Architekti

Photo: Jakub Cigler Architekti

Photo: Jakub Cigler Architekti

It is no longer necessary to prove a physical card to a conductor or inspector; a mobile application suffices.

The newest PID Lítačka application has arrived for regular passengers and public transport in Prague, as well as suburban lines in the Central Bohemia Region.

This is another step in the modernization and digitization of urban travel, in where the new transport system started in Prague and the Central Bohemia Region last year. This significantly facilitated the purchase of tickets and coupons as well as their recording on physical carriers. Until now, only physical plastic cards have been used as identifiers with which you could prove yourself during the transport control.

Since the launch of the new transport system, the PID Lítačka application has also worked, but it was only possible to buy short-term fares. However, this is now changing, and it is finally possible to upload long-term coupons (i.e. quarterly, half-yearly or yearly) to a mobile application that works on both Android and iOS. As of December first, the application can serve as an identifier.

Lítačka has been ready for long-term coupons and their uploads for a while, but more than 3,000 check-in devices had to be ready for vehicles to work with in-app vouchers and reviewers. With the vehicles now prepared, they can safely recognize a long-term coupon on both a plastic card and a mobile phone.

Either a card or app

A long-term coupon can still be uploaded to a single identifier, but you can only have it on either a physical card (Lítačka, In ČD Card, Visa, Mastercard) or in the PID Lítačka mobile app. Therefore, it is not possible to prove your card just once, by your mobile phone— you have to choose, or manually change your coupon when you change the carrier.

As the representatives of Prague Integrated Transport have revealed on our inquiry on Twitter, the impossibility of multiple identifiers is mainly due to the possible misuse, which significantly increases the existence of one coupon on two identifiers. Two people could theoretically travel on one document, one showing the card and the other on their mobile application.

The developers do not exclude that the system will be technologically modified in the future for the possibility to use more identifiers, because—even according to them—although it would be a “more friendly and modern” solution, it is not yet possible. However, the Czech Railways In Karta card, for example, works both on the physical card and mobile application.

To verify the long-term coupon, the QR code will be displayed in the PID Lítačka application, which will be scanned by the attendant or reviewer. Contactless NFC chip will also work on selected Android mobile phones. It will be possible to identify in both metro and trams as well as buses or trains, as was the case with single tickets so far.

Passengers still have to go to the PID Lítačka e-shop when they want to buy a long-term coupon. Momentarily, the ICT operator is working to move this feature into the mobile app. We should expect further updates next year.

Food quality is an increasingly discussed topic in Czech society because Czechs are becoming more interested in and aware about what they eat.

They could have been skeptical about certain foods entering their bodies, but they never knew for sure. And that was the biggest problem: there was no such database in which to find detailed information about most foods. Then came along Petr Václavek and his latest, innovative application— Foodgroot.

Foodgroot has become the gateway in helping customers figure out from a wide range of products what is exactly in them. The app is able to learn your habits and help you choose according to what foods you just want or needs to eat, and while shopping at a store it then immediately recommends which foods are suitable for you.

Moreover, it determines the overall quality, origin(s) of the food, and their impact on the environment or effect on your health. In the app, you scan the bar code of the selected food which then runs the information about its quality, origin, or environmental impact. All in maximum detail. The app rates products on over 70 parameters.

Photo: Foodgroot

“What Google did to the internet, we’re doing for the food market,” Václavek said about Foodgroot in an interview with Brian Kenety in November 2018. “Food is a basic, essential part of our lives, and we should know [what’s in it].”

Václavek and his team worked on the platform for months, testing it with several hundred users this year and is now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel from launching Foodgroot among the users. Tomáš Čupr and his biggest Czech online supermarket, Rohlik.cz, has become partner with future development.

“From the outset, our goal was to find a strong strategic partner, because integrating our solution into online platforms is an essential tool for the rapid growth of our platform. In parallel, of course, we are also preparing a stand-alone application covering the whole market,” said the Foodgroot founder.

Tomáš Čupr and his online grocery store will use the Czech application for comparison of food quality in his shop. The integration of Foodgroot into Rohlík will take place in the coming weeks or months.

Power of smart purchasing

Foodgroot is a free app and knowing this brings in the question of how Václavek will make a profit. Václavek stated he is not too worried, for he plans to install in-app purchases on the app, where users and customers alike can buy their (healthy) goods and needs right from there. He also wishes to extend this new food app to the EU nations. This is a smart way to bring in profit and benefit from his own business, as well as the app be beneficial to Czech society. For the time being, however, Václavek will let Foodgroot flourish into the large platform it is soon yet to become.

Velvet Revolution 2019 is, historically, the largest celebration yet. In Prague, the program of the Freedom Festival was attended by 200,000 people. Concerts, discussions, and screenings were also held in 50 other cities throughout the country.

One of Prague’s exceptional events this year was the Velvet Procession, in which 11,000 people followed the memories of witnesses. Albertov, Wenceslas Square and Národní třída were visited by the most people in the history of the Freedom Festival, organized by citizens’ initiatives in Prague and 50 other cities around the country for the sixth time this year.

“Thanks to the participants it was a very dignified and sophisticated reminder of this important historical event,” says Jakub Vedral, one of the parade organizers. The official part of the parade program ended at the Vltava River, where thousands of visitors continued to the all-day Korzo Národní program on Národní třída, and in the evening attended the Concert for the Future on Wenceslas Square.

A total of 200,770 people passed through all Prague events. The data was provided by the mobile operator O2. “We measure anonymous data on the number of registered SIM cards on mobile transmitters in the given location – in this case, Albertov, Narodni trida, and Wenceslas Square. We then recalculate the results to the whole population. One spent at least thirty minutes in the measured location – people who even just passed the trams [don’t] counted,” adds Lucie Jungmannová, a spokeswoman for the company.

Albertov had seen an unprecedented weekend. On Saturday the streets of Chinaski sounded with Tomáš Klus, Voxel and the band ONLY. The visitors enjoyed a truly relaxed atmosphere and the whole program was peaceful. On Sundays, singing was performed early in the morning, student clubs and civic initiatives filled the street, presenting their activities there. Almost two dozen speakers performed on the stage,” Michal Zima commented on the course of the event.

Concert for the future

Filled with Wenceslas Square right from the beginning of the program was a video mapping at the National Theater building and special lighting effects of Tata Bojs. There were fourteen musical performances. “The greatest success of this year’s Concert for the Future is, besides the attendance, mainly the feeling that all citizens are taking home with them. Positive atmosphere, many strong ideas, and great bands. Grumpy fest Jan Gregar.

Korzo Národní

At Národní třída, there were more than 125,000 people. In the afternoon, the organizers had to shorten or cancel some of the 120 program points for safety reasons. Nevertheless, the program of celebrations was a great success, especially the screenings of Memory of the Nation prepared in cooperation with Post Bellum, Prayer for Marta by Aneta Langerová, or the traditional meeting with personalities in the Václav Havel Living Room.