Link-and-Pause – Media Multitasking in the Age of DVRs

Drag-and-drop made the use of PCs simple and powerful enough for the masses. Link-and-pause can do the same for media multitasking (simultaneous TV and Web use).

Growing masses of people now surf the Web while watching TV. This is building on the wide availability of wireless notebooks, and the readiness of heavy media users (especially younger ones) to multitask.

Yet many still question whether couch potatoes really want to multitask. That is reminiscent of an earlier question of whether ordinary consumers would want to use a PC – one that rightly raised much skepticism until the introduction of graphical user interfaces (like the Mac and Windows) radically simplified PC use.

Link-and-pause refers to the ability to initiate a Web interaction related to a TV program (or movie or other video or music) – and, as that is done, to pause the program. This can work like a traffic cop to selectively control multitasking. In this way intervals of interactvity can alternate with intervals of linear viewing, without either one interfering with the other. For example, you might link from a movie to the cast and credits to see who an actor is, and what else you saw him in. Link-and-pause can pause the movie while you do that. This enables the user to control when both media should be active concurrently – and when coactive multitasking should take the simpler path of alternating threads of unitasking activity.

The TV industry does not yet appreciate the simplicity and control that link-and-pause offers. Their concern has been that the TV program will continue on while the viewer interacts with other content, so the viewer misses the remainder of the program – that users will have a less satisfying experience, and that TV producers will lose their audience, along with the audience for their commercial sponsors.

What they forget is that with DVRs, users need not let the TV program run on while they pursue a tangential interactive task. With link-and-pause, this task switch can be automated, so that links are presented to assist in taking such tangents, and the actuation of such links can cause the TV to pause (or not, as the user desires). This enables a new kind of media usage we might call hypertasking.

A more extensive discussion of link-and-pause – and the complementary use of flexible bookmarking to control multitasking activity on the Web side – as well as the broader concepts of "coactive media" – is at the Coactive TV (CoTV) Web site.

Tags: Media New Media TV Web/Tech Internet Entertainment Technology Media Technology Coactive TV Coactive Media Tivo DVRs Link-and-Pause

A New "Blue Ocean Strategy" for TiVo: CoTiVo

To win big TiVo must be more than just a premium feature offered by Comcast and other distributors. TiVo needs a new way to stand out. Being better than Brand X (like Apple) gives them a niche, but to really be a power they must be more than just a better box, or another feature offered by Comcast and other distributors. CoTiVo is a new way to extend Tivo's Tahiti strategy beyond their proprietary set-top/media center boxes, into profitable waters in which the cable and satellite guys will be out of their depth.

TiVo began with a classic "blue ocean strategy" that created a new market space based on a new user value proposition ("TV your way") in which competition was largeley irrelevant. But the competition is now out in force. TiVo needs to change the game again, to find a new blue ocean.

They have a half step to this in their Tahiti strategy, which they say provides "an easy way to find and control content from any broadcast or broadband source." "TiVo's product and service platform will offer consumers broader choice in programming and the convenience to take their favorite shows with them to enjoy anywhere they choose." This could be a brilliant start toward what Joe Uva (President of ad giant OMD, and a TiVo board member) calls "the media concierge."

What is missing is removing this concierge from dependence on the TiVo/set-top box, and making it platform agnostic -- a distributed, Web-centered service, that can serve all users, with any kind of set-top boxes (STBs), and for all of their media. This ties in with the kind of cross-device TV+PC/Web services that I have described as coactive TV -- thus "CoTiVo."

Such a CoTiVo service could reach a mass market far beyond any realistic hope for TiVo boxes, or for TiVo software on other people's STBs -- and could move TiVo into a central and highly profitable role as the media concierge service for all of our boxes. (It could also enhance the market for TiVo boxes or TiVo STB software as a preferred device for all users of CoTiVo services.) By moving beyond the set-top box into a Web-based, cross-platform media concierge business, TiVo could sail away from the battle of the boxes (and a distributor-dominated margin squeeze) into a large blue ocean of services that cable and satellite companies are poorly equipped to compete in or put pressure on.

Tags: Media New Media TV Web/Tech Internet Entertainment Technology Media Technology Coactive TV Coactive Media Media Concierge Tivo DVRs

Media Concierge Services – A New Choke Point in the Media Business

Media concierge services could be good news for users, and bad news for current TV distribution services.

Media concierge services are a new class of tools to help viewers find and manage media content from any broadcast, broadband or local source. This comprehensive user-centered view will become critical as media options expand – and can enable highly profitable ownership of the consumer's media selection processes (if done in a way that serves users and avoids "evil").

Joe Uva, President of ad giant OMD, recently introduced the term "media concierge." He describes it as "an on-the-premises concierge that oversees media entering and leaving my home ... recommending and selecting media for consumption; scheduling appointments and devices for consumption ... locate and record information of value to me while allowing me to avoid information or content which I have no interest in ... assist me in making transactions with third parties ... act as a janitor or custodian for my files ... allow my behavior and habits to be measured by others while protecting my privacy."

I suggest that centering these services on a PC/Web platform allows them to be powerful and comprehensive – not only to span TV, VOD, IP, DVD, music, home entertainment libraries, and theatrical viewing, but to support any user viewing and content delivery platform, including standard TV, DVRs, other advanced CE/AV devices, and any Internet media – and to do this with powerful selection, navigation and personalization user interface features that are beyond the reach of a TV-based user interface. As these services are used, the user interface may migrate from the PC to the TV, music system, or other devices (drawing on the kind of cross-device services described in my work on coactive TV), but the heavy lifting can draw on the full power, openness, and economy of Web services.

This new locus of power could be very good news for users, and the companies that serve them (much like Web search), and bad news for current TV distribution services that seek to maintain their own media access choke points and walled gardens.

Tags: Media New Media TV Web/Tech Internet Entertainment Technology Media Technology Coactive TV Coactive Media Media Concierge

Do couch potatoes really want to interact with their TVs?

That is the question Phillip Swann asks in his "Unconventional Analysis of TV Technology." But is that the important question? I suggest being a bit more unconventional. Users do not want to interact with their TVs. But sometimes they want to interact with content that relates to what is on their TVs (and sometimes they want to do that interaction using their TVs).

The important question is: Do they want to interact while watching their TVs?

It is increasingly clear that they do. "The number of minutes adults spend simultaneously surfing the Web and watching TV has increased a dramatic 72 percent, from an average of 174 minutes per week in 2001 to 300 minutes per week in 2004, according to the latest 'Media in Mind' survey by Universal McCann." (1/28/05 Clickz article).

What few in the industry are willing to accept is that a TV is a pretty lame device to interact with. But the numbers show users are very happy to interact with their PCs while watching TV.

Most of that interaction is unrelated to what they are watching on TV, but a significant portion is related, even though they have to create that relationship the hard way. I suggest far more interaction would be TV-related if that were made easier.

So the real question is when will services make it easy to interact while watching TV. CoTV, "coactive TV" is a simple application of technology to facilitate that. More and more people are beating around that bush.

The TV industry does not want to think about that. But the Web industry is just one or two steps away.

All that is needed is for one Web service to decide to support that pent up demand. I have been talking to key people at several major Web portals. They are not quite there yet, but they are getting closer...

Tags: Media New Media TV Web/Tech Internet Entertainment Technology Media Technology Coactive TV Coactive Media

Those Who Do Not Remember the History of the Web...

TV companies have missed the lessons of the Web. They prefer to avoid learning them, and so seem doomed to repeat them. Walled gardens and proprietary technologies cannot survive for long in the digital world except in niches. Advanced TV can grow like the Web -- and create a larger pie for everyone, but the TV distributors prefer to protect their comfortable but failing monopoly business models. That will not work for much longer.

What lessons? Before the Web, in the early '90, online services like AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve had been struggling for years, investing many millions, trying to get people online, with only the most gradual success. They used closed, proprietary technology platforms, and they limited services to the "walled gardens" of content they controlled.

When the Web emerged and became easy to use with Mosaic and Netscape, it provided an open platform that encouraged an outpouring of entrepreneurial content and service providers. The old line online services fought that tide for a few years, arguing that most people really wanted the order and simplicity of a walled garden, but soon were overwhelmed by the upstarts. AOL found a half open, half walled niche by providing a high level of customer value for casual dialup users and kids, but the others were assimilated--and now AOL is floundering again.

Cable and satellite may have a couple more years to exploit their monopoly platforms and fight any service innovations they do not see bringing them monopoly rents, before Internet TV becomes a tidal force. However, they would better serve their stockholders by moving quickly to build a relationship with their customers that is based on value rather than exclusivity, one that will position them for the new world of open media. There are huge opportunities for new and profitable services, but their monopoly-minded managers are blind to them. If they do not get ahead of history soon, history will race ahead of them.

This could also be a prime opportunity for Telco TV services, since they have the advantage of starting fresh -- but the Web dynamic is as alien to Telcos as it is to cable operators. Only time will tell if one breed of dinosaur gets nimble, or those funny little companies poking out of the grass take over.

The Tyranny of the Media Boxes

One of the ideals of user-centered media, as I see it, is to free us from a tyranny of the boxes. Users want to have their media content accessible from whatever box suits their current need -- as new home media centers, gateways, and adapters now seek to facilitate. Content publishers also want to maximize the ways consumers can use their content (subject to reasonable payment).

But the distributors of media (especially TV) are wedded to platforms that deliver content only to specific viewing boxes (TVs with closed set-top boxes). Cable and satellite operators exploit their closed boxes to build walled gardens that limit what and how we view. They like the idea of interactivity, but only when they have full control over it.

Coactive media technology is oriented to the idea that users should be able to use whatever box they like, at any time. Sometimes we want to lean back to view a TV from across the room (the "ten foot interface"), but sometimes we want to lean forward at a PC (the "two foot interface"). Similarly, when we interact with content related to what is on TV, we may want to lean back with the TV or lean forward with the PC. Even the people building PC-based media centers seem to think we want all media-related tasks to be done via the "ten foot interface."

I want a second screen to use with my TV, with the full power of a PC -- for program listings and information, to schedule my DVR, etc. Not all of the time, but some of the time. I already have the screen (a wireless laptop)--why can't I decide when to use it? Advanced versions of CoTV will enable me to decide what box to use when for TV-related tasks. ...Do you want your CoTV?

The Idea Adoption Agency

Collaborative intelligence is one of the most powerful aspects of user-centered media. One example that is near to my heart as an inventor, and as a fan of electronic communities, is The Idea Adoption Agency.

This is designed to be an open marketplace and large-scale collaboration medium for disclosure and development of very early-stage inventions.

• It applies collaborative rating processes within a large online community of innovators to bubble-up and refine good ideas from any contributor.
• It also exploits the 1-year grace-period for US patent filing, as a way for this process to capture value that is commonly lost -- for original inventors and value-adding participants/developers/commercializers -- and for society. (Inventors can expose ideas openly, then file within 1 year.)

This draws on the same powerful energies as the open source software movement and Creative Commons. Some may oppose patents completely, but I suggest that this opens up the patent system to much wider participation and fairness -- and can appeal to advocates of free speech, if not of free beer.

While a direct ROI case for funding such a business is challenging, I believe it could provide huge social value (with only modest investment) --by enabling the productive adoption and development of the large numbers of good ideas that are now lost because they do not find the support they deserve. I see it primarily as a pro-bono project, one that might attract some kind of sponsorship funding. A summary is at http://www.teleshuttle.com/IdeaAdopt/IdeaAdopt.htm.

Tags: Invention Patent Patents Innovation Creative Commons Collaboration Internet

Life is Random -- Not!

Many have remarked on Apple's chutzpah in the classic art of redefining a bug to be a feature. Since the new iPod shuffle is too dumb to be much more than random, make lemonade of it.

A deeper media lesson can be seen here as well. Take the shuffle's direction toward dumbness, and look in the other direction. The classic example of this was given by Doug Engelbart, one of the fathers of hypertext (and inventor of the mouse). He proposed a research project for "The Augmentation of Human Intellect" using computer-based media tools that set the stage for the Web.

To illustrate the concept of augmented intelligence, Engelbart suggested it would be easier to get the idea of augmenting a tool, if we first considered de-augmenting a tool. He presented a picture of a pencil lashed to a brick. Imagine writing with this as our only writing tool. Now imagine how much better we can write with the pencil alone. That is augmentation. Now imagine what augmentation beyond the pencil would allow.

So now, we have life as random, which we can see as de-augmentation, compared to the playlist tools that are now common. Imagine what might come when we augment those tools further. Playlist services that know your tastes and use sensors to gauge your mood... that know who is with you and what they like... that understand which pieces of music flow together well... that draw on highly informed serendipity, not blind randomness...

CoTV: Coactive TV+Web Use, in Context

Growing masses of viewers surf the Web while watching TV. So far, the only connector between what they see on the Web and what they watch on TV is their brain and their fingers. I have been working on coactive media, particularly CoTV, as a way to link these two media in a far more powerful way.

Coactive TV (CoTV) software automatically harnesses the context of whatever a viewer is watching on TV to push related Web links and content to their PC screen. That provides a power-assist to TV-Web multitasking that directly links use of TV and the Web, to enhance both content and advertising.

CoTV enables a wide variety of applications. These include

• Co-viewing: program-related information of all kinds (commentary, news reports, sports statistics, movie casts, etc.), including ad-related interaction and shopping (which like search ads, can actually be useful to the user).
• Pre-viewing: richly intelligent and interactive program guides, VOD/IPTV catalogs, and DVR scheduler services that help users navigate their exploding world of media content.

This creates a variety of new revenue streams -- and one of the most significant is online contextual advertising driven by TV ads. CoTV is adaptable to a wide variety of deployed and emerging platforms -- wireless PC laptops, PDAs, phones, set-top-boxes, media gateways, DVRs, DVDs, WiFi, and more.

More background is at www.teleshuttle.com/cotv/