Building on Google TV: TV meets Webpad. Webpad meets TV.

As the Google blog says, "these features are just a fraction of what Google TV can do."

One hint, reported in the Wall Street Journal, is that "Linkages between Android phones and Google TV bring some unusual benefits. A Google engineer, for example, demonstrated how a person could use voice recognition in his cellphone to search for a TV program by speaking its name.

I see this as an opening for the kind of rich "Coactive TV" (CoTV) applications that coordinate TV viewing with enhancements and controls on a second screen device, such as an Android phone or tablet or notepad. While putting the Web onto the TV is desirable for some use cases, the real opportunity for convergence is to coordinate a Web device with a TV device. This can provide content and Social Web services on a Web device that knows what you are watching (such as to tweet about a program), and let the Web device control what you are watching) such as to swing a video from your tablet or phone to your TV.

Hopefully Google is well aware of this potential. I spoke to some senior people about these ideas some time ago (and as noted in a prior post, there is some interesting Google research, including a paper by some guy named "Brin, S"). But in any case, independent developers should be able to provide this (as long as the app police don't prevent them).

As noted in my previous post, iPad is beginning to show what a Webpad can do as a second screen. Google TV seems another big step in the right direction.

Comcast, Time Warner on iPad -- an ideal device for Coactive TV

The 5/12 announcement of Comcast's Xfinity iPad app, and comments by Time Warner that all cable operators are going to have similar offerings, looks like a big step toward a platform for Coactive TV on a mainstream basis. Two videos show the current steps.

First, this looks like a major step to position iPad (and presumably future tablets from other sources) as a well-integrated second screen for use with TV viewing. It will offer a rich remote control usable on the sofa for enhanced control of the big-screen TV, with full program guide and DVR control functions having an excellent UI, including its handy soft keyboard.

Second, it looks like a first step toward a simple coactive Social Web app. The Comcast demo shows how it lets you send an invitation to a friend, so he can tune in to the program you are watching with just a single click (if he has equivalent service).

iPad looks like a poster child for the kind of Webpad that would be an ideal second screen for Web services related to what you are watching on TV. With this device, and the level of TV context awareness in Comcast's demo, it would be very easy for the cable operators to add a full suite of coactive services. This could enable the iPad to show arbitrary Web content related to what you are watching on your TV.

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Some related news that is also encouraging in using such mainstream devices as TV adjuncts is from Crestron. This leading high-end whole house entertainment control company is embracing iPad as an alternative to its very expensive custom tablet remote controls.

Coactive viewing of TV and the Web -- the stars are aligning?

MTV, Sony, Verizon, Twitter, Facebook and others are moving into position. Some of the stars seem to be aligning, even if the full impact is still mostly unrecognized (even by many of them).

• A majority of people multitask while watching TV, increasingly using the Web while on TV
• Much of that is driven by the Social Web -- tweeting and IM-ing about the TV shows (or other video) we are watching.
• Some of it is driven by other services, such as looking at IMDB or other Web content related to what you are watching.

Some basic aspects of this are now widely recognized, as noted in a 2/14/10 front page NY Times story: Water-Cooler Effect: Internet Can Be TV's Friend. There has been a drumbeat of announcements by large and small players in support of this. Some are specific to a particular TV program, but some recognize that what we really need is a platform that works for whatever we are watching. Just as with the Web, what we need is not isolated apps for each program or network, but a platform that, like a browser, works for any content. You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!

I have been seeking to develop such "Coactive TV" services since before 2002, and am happy to see more and more steps toward that vision.

• One of the most important milestones is the Verizon FIOS Twitter and Facebook widgets. These are TV widgets that run on your TV (if you have FIOS) and can be triggered to sense what program you are watching and send a tweet or update your Facebook status to inform people that you are watching it. Right now, these are for interaction on the TV, with limited integration with a PC or phone.
  -- That should be easy to add -- all it takes is a widget that talks to a Web server that coordinates other Web services with whatever is on your TV. There is no limit to what the Web services might be. Wouldn't someone like to be in the middle of that dynamic? ...Verizon? ...Anyone else?
• Another interesting step is by a startup called Spot411, that uses audio recognition to figure out what TV program or DVD you are watching, and link you to a Facebook page with others who are also watching that. They got some visibility with a PC and iPhone app done for Fox DVDs that is called FoxPop. Now they are doing the same thing for TV. These guys get the idea that we don't want different apps for each show -- we want one app that works for any show.
• Sony is doing an interesting variation for their Blu-ray discs, building on BD-Live Internet connectivity. It started as movieIQ, announced last June with IMDB-like information from Gracenote (the people who tell your PC what song is on the CD track you are playing). Soon they will be adding an iPhone app called movieIQ sync that will let you get the movieIQ information on your phone. Great for Sony discs, but what about all the rest? Repeat: You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!
• Many media companies have iPhone apps that tie to their specific TV programs, DVDs, or games. Repeat: You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!
• Miso is an app that lets you "check in" to any TV show or movie and send it to Twitter, Facebook, or foursquare. You have to manually enter or find the show (unlike Spot411), but it is an interesting start.
• MTV is one of the first of what may be a wave of companies building similar apps for the iPad, which they suggest "could be the appendage that makes interactive TV a reality." A nice start but...One more time: You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!

Right now it is still a zero billion dollar industry, but we have come a long way from the days when people asked why anyone would want to use the Internet while watching TV. I have been seeing movement in the right direction for a long time, but it seems things are heating up rapidly all around this space, and flashover may not be far off. iPad may be a very nice base for some of this, but there are many ways to skin this cat. ...What is the missing link? Hmmm...

Sent BMW into the shop -- but it was a server problem

Thinking about The Internet of Things, as IBM is promoting it, it struck me that my recent automotive service experience was a telling landmark in the coming of the new order.

My new 3-series has a BMW Assist feature with its navigation system that lets you find a destination on Google Maps in your home or office, and then send it to the car, so the guidance system can take you there.

I tried it several times, but could find no messages in the car from Google Maps (which said they were successfully sent to my car). BMW Customer Service remotely fixed some errors they had in my account email address, but it still did not work days later, so they said I had to take it to the shop. Seemed like a server-side problem to me, but that is what they wanted...

After a couple phone calls while working on my car (over the course of 3 days), the dealer service rep finally called to say the messages were there, but that it was hard to find them (he had never worked with the feature before). We assumed I must have been looking in the wrong place. He suggested I come in for instructions, but I suggested I call from the car when I could. BMW needs to hire some people from Apple to work on UI, but wait, there is more..

After getting the car back and sending it a new destination to look for, I got in and looked around, starting with the same menu selection I had looked into before ("BMW Assist/Messages"). Lo and behold: there were my previous message, a couple dealer test messages (opened), and my new message (unopened) -- right where it kept saying "No messages" before.

I can only conclude that the car had been fine, I had been using it properly, and something changed on BMW's end (either in some server, or in the setup entered into some server by BMW Assist staff.

Imagine the cost of sending thousands (eventually millions) of cars into the shop for problems that could be diagnosed and fixed remotely! BMW does not yet realize they are in the network services business (and selling network node devices). I hope they realize it soon.

Internet of things, Internet of computers, Internet of people. ...Convergence every which way ...I can't wait for the next release.

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Debunking the 'Patent Troll' Myth

The bad rap on so-called "patent trolls" is nicely countered in this 2/1/10 Business Week article by Ron Epstein.

My exerience in this area supports Ron's arguments, as was summarized in my 2008 post "'The Six Phases of a Technology Flop' ...Patents, and Plan B".

Bringing advertising back to the future

There is a growing sense that advertising will soon be dead as a major way to fund news and many other content services. I suggest that reflects not the true direction of media technology, but just a temporary gap in such technology.

Today's conference on "Creating a New Model for News and Information" had a very interesting discussion by luminaries in the news business addressing the apparent reality that advertising could no longer support their media, and how new models are needed.

That is a major issue in the short term, but advertising will be reborn as a key source of funding as technology improves.

The problem is that current "new" media do not present ads in a way that effectively serves the reader. Screen real estate is limited, and there is no place to include ads that are rich and informative without seriously detracting from the content. But what is forgotten is that that will change, as technology improves.

Unlike Web pages, newspapers and magazines were able to present very compelling ads adjacent to content, without detracting from the content.

• Their weakness (as Wanamaker is famed to have noted) is lack of targeting. Targeting is still reasonably good in special interest sections and trade magazines, but such special interest content has heavily migrated to the Web.
• I have always been struck by how in trade magazines and special interest magazines, the ads can often be as valuable as the content. Even on TV, ads can be better than the content. In visual media, advertising is not necessarily a negative -- it can be a positive to the viewer.
• Internet media have greatly improved targeting (look at Google), but have lost richness, at least on the surface (look at Google). They match (and even add) richness only when you bother to drill deeper by clicking a link (or doing a mouse-over).

How will technology change that?

• Think back to newspapers and magazines: They have enough real estate to let content and rich ads have effective adjacency, while still conveying a substantial message.
• Think about emerging screen technologies: ever larger screens, ever lighter and more flexible -- literally more flexible, as OLEDs enable large screens that fold up -- that will mimic newspapers and magazines within a few years.
• (My suggestions for "Coactive TV" also provide expanded real estate in the form of a second screen that can be coordinated to show ads related to the first screen.)

Once we have such screens, we can revive rich ads, plus add a new layer of personalized targeting that print media never had. When that happens, ads can be immediate, relevant, interesting, and informative -- more than ever. We will have targeting, immediate surface richness, and hyperlinked depth. With that, ad-funded distribution will again be a powerful engine for revenue -- and a desirable experience for users.

Of course the media need to survive in the short term with less (or no) advertising, but don't be blindsided when ads are reborn!

Tags: Media New Media Web/Tech Internet Media Technology Journalism

Full Frontal Reality: how to combat the growing lunatic fringe

There is a growing problem of polarization of the public into lunatic fringe groups that are losing touch with reality. This is fueled by new forms of media, and I suggest a need for media to enable a new kind of direct frontal attack on this problem.

Today's conference on "Creating a New Model for News and Information" had a very interesting discussion by luminaries in the news business that touched on the problems of the Internet and "The Daily Me" in which people increasingly filter their news sources to support their viewpoints. This is a technology-enhanced form of "confirmation bias."

Perhaps this can be countered using the same technology to find ways to create, direct, and select materials coming from contrary viewpoints that are tailored to directly counter such bias in constructive ways.

The angle here is that confirmation bias is very easy and comforting, but reality usually offers more survival value.

• Systems that can find complementary information and demonstrate that it offers survival value could be very influential, at least to the subset of holders of extreme views that have not totally severed contact with reality.
• The idea is to encourage them to reality-test -- to seek serendipitous exposure to balanced and well-reasoned antidotes to the biased material they usually see, and to demonstrate the practical value of more balanced viewpoints.

One thing this needs is content creators willing to speak to the heretics, and not just preach to the choir, or even to the middle. Extremists on both sides of any issue generally seek to reinforce their base and to convert wavering middle of the roaders to the extreme. An underexploited counter strategy is to speak directly to those who are moving toward the extreme, but not fully committed to an extreme mind-set, to demonstrate in a non-threatening or off-putting way that reality is not so extreme (or so black and white). This method is underused because it lacks a way to reach the audience that needs to see it.

So the other thing needed is a smarter delivery service, a new media filtering tool that specifically aids in bringing such materials to those who need to hear them.

• Filters that give you food for thought, in a way that is constructive, interesting, and not threatening
• Services that demonstrate the folly of extreme views

With such tools, when you personalize your "Daily Me" to know what you want, it will also give you some of what you need, stuff you don't know you want. Some people will have no interest in that, but some will find it valuable and stimulating to get a breath of fresh air that does not reek of the biases of the opposite side.

...If there are already delivery services developing with this aim, I would be very interested to hear about them.

Tags: Media New Media Web/Tech Internet Media Technology Journalism

User-centered to the limit

While arguably off the topic of user-centered media, I had to publish this incident observed by a friend:

In the early 1970's when the Jaguar XK-E was still in production (the quintessentially sexy sports car that Enzo Ferrari called "the most beautiful car ever made"), my friend told me of the time he passed one parked on the street as two small boys marvelled at it.

He overheard one say, "Boy, wouldn't you love to have a car like that?"

To which the other replied. "Have a car like that? I'd like to be a car like that!"

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I offer this as too classic to remain unpublished. The incident was reported by my late friend Walter Ensdorf, who was always a very keen observer of the world.

The Smart Money of Crowds, April 7, 2009, NYC, MIT Enterprise Forum Symposium

Collaborative Investing Startups

Can we exploit the Wisdom of Crowds on Wall Street? -- especially now that the "smart money" no longer looks very smart?

Historically individual investors have been a good indicator for what not to do -- Can the Social Web make them smarter?

I am assisting David Teten organize this event, and we have a very interesting panel. Come on April 7 to learn from a group of innovative startups that are leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds to provide investment counsel you can believe in - or so they claim.

Register at http://www.mitef-nyc.org/mc/community/eventdetails.do?eventId=211129&orgId=mefny

The Web of Location -- This Wednesday -- MIT Enterprise Forum Symposium

Location-Based Services, Geotagging, and Map Mashups

As noted before, I will be moderating this exciting panel this Wednesday, with prominent speakers from IAC (Ask.com, Match.com, etc.), Smarter Agent, MeetMoi, and uLocate.

A nice perspective on major trends that are fueling rapid growth in this area is provided in “Location–Based Services: Back to the Future” in the April-June 2008 IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine. Key strategic changes outlined there are:

• Reactive to proactive (queries vs. tracking and event driven)
• Self-referencing to cross-referencing (users only vs. other targets)
• Single-target to multi-target (many moving objects)
• Content-oriented to application-oriented (dynamic location, context, and function)
• Operator-centric to user centric (based on open, standard middleware and user-owned location data)

As noted in my earlier post, this Web of Location relates to a variety of new dimensions in Web services (The Future of the Web -- in Many Dimensions), including many Web 2.0 aspects, such as the Social Web. We expect to explore this in an interesting session, and hope you can join us.

Tags: Media New Media Technology Media Technology Location Location based Services LBS Geotagging GPS Mobile Web/Tech RRR

"The Six Phases of a Technology Flop" ...Patents, and Plan B

A nice piece [The Six Phases of a Technology Flop*] by Jim Rapoza of eWeek shows how technologies often go from bubble to bust ...and on to rebirth.

Rapoza's use of "push" technology for his example came particularly close to home for me, since I lived through all six phases of that cycle with my original Teleshuttle "push" technology. My personal experience shows how the long cycles of the patent business can serve as a counterbalance to the fast cycles of technology.

1. "Useful Invention:" I developed some ideas relating to what came to be known as "push" distribution and filed for a patent and started Teleshuttle in 1994 (well before PointCast launched in 1996).
2. "Growth and Competition:" Teleshuttle gained lots of interest from '94-96, and got its software distributed on several million computers -- but PointCast, Marimba, and BackWeb made a much bigger splash.
3. "Hype:" For a few years, "push" was very hot, and even though the Teleshuttle product failed to build a profitable market, I was able to leverage that hype to partner with a company called BTG to work on commercializing my patent.
4. "Bust:" PointCast went under, and the other guys retrenched. Teleshuttle and BTG tended to the development of a portfolio of patents, and did other things (I was CTO for a dot-com).
5. "Death:" By the early 2000's push was written off as a classic failure, but we still saw value there -- one minor example being Windows Update (and its Apple counterpart).
6. "Rebirth:" Push returned in a big way as RSS feeds. We persevered in commercializing my patent portfolio and sold it in 2006 for $35MM.

So it was a very long and often discouraging ride, but all's well that ends well.

Some might say this is exploitation by a "patent troll." But that misses the whole point of the patent system. It is reasonable to recognize a patent as the innovator's well-deserved incentive. Some people excel as entrepreneurs, others excel as innovators -- even if their business does not succeed. The Constitution provided for patents as a way to encourage the innovating part, not the succeeding in business part. The Framers understood that succeeding in business generates ample reward of its own -- it is innovation that needs the added incentive of a patent. Viewing the patent as Plan B provided the hedge that made it easier to justify the risks inherent in developing my ideas and starting the Teleshuttle business. In my case that hedge paid off -- after 12 years!

Tags: Media New Media Web/Tech Internet Technology Media Technology Patents Patent Trolls Flop Hype Innovation Invention RRR

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[*The Rapoza link has broken -- the content is reproduced below:]
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"The Six Phases of a Technology Flop"

Posted on [eWeek] April 25, 2008 by jrapoza:

http://etech.eweek.com/slideshow/index.php?directory=6flopphases&kc=EWKNLBOE050308FEA1

(Images Copyright ©1996-2012 Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.)       

The Web of Location -- NYC 6/18/08 -- MIT Enterprise Forum Symposium

Location-Based Services, Geotagging, and Map Mashups

I will be moderating an exciting panel, with prominent speakers from IAC (Ask.com, Match.com, etc.), Smarter Agent, MeetMoi, and uLocate on June 18 in NYC.

Location-based services are not just for driving directions anymore. The Web is now richly linked to locations in the real world and visualized on maps. This creates whole new dimensions to navigating the Web and a new class of Web-based services. Links from Web pages appear on maps which show proximity to other pages that can be clicked on. Other Web 2.0 aspects such as social networks can also be viewed through the lens of location.

Think of it as Steinberg's classic "New Yorker's Map of the World" but dynamic -- as your location changes, your location-based view of the world changes. But here it is your view of the virtual world, your view of the Web.

This fits in to the broad trend I wrote of some time back, The Future of the Web -- in Many Dimensions -- one of which is the dimension of the physical world.

Location-based services are at an inflection point:

• Global Positioning Systems are proliferating and gaining new exciting features
• Flickr users are geotagging their pictures
• Nikon, Sony, and Nokia are building geotagging into cameras
• Google Map mashups (and the like) are creating a plethora of new services

New businesses are forming to take advantage of this dynamic Web of Location. Established businesses must understand the potential of this growth sector. Financial players, such as venture capitalists and investment bankers, need to know the very latest on this growth sector to stay ahead of the game.

We expect an interesting session!

Tags: Media New Media Technology Media Technology Location Location based Services LBS Geotagging GPS Mobile Web/Tech RRR

Google, Interactive TV, and CoTV

There is recent buzz about Google getting into ITV (Interactive TV). In addition to some recruiting (with a senior hire of Vincent Dureau from Open TV), Google researchers recently attracted some attention from a report on an experimental TV+PC service.

That service was said to supplement the mass-media experience of television with a personalized Web-based experience: "Our goal is to combine the best of both worlds: integrating the relaxing and effortless experience of mass-media content with the interactive and personalized potential of the Web, providing mass personalization." The paper won "best paper" award at the Euro Interactive Television Conference. A note from the authors and link to the paper is on the Google Research blog.

How and when Google will go there seems unclear. When I asked Chris Sacca of Google about it at a recent conference, he suggested it was research at this stage, and not in any current product plan. Interestingly, one of the references cited in that paper was paper from 2003 which happened to have as a coauthor some guy named "Brin, S." So it is reasonable to think Google has some real interest there. Obviously, the ability to link Web ads to TV programs and ads would be a killer.

Especially interesting to me is the fact that what these papers describe is essentially an applicaton of CoTV, coactive TV, which I have been working on and promoting for some time.

Some of the key points of similarity:

• CoTV addresses two screen PC+TV applications
• It includes a variety of technical methods to link the PC and TV without need for cooperation of the TV programmers or distributors. This includes audio sensising as described by the Google Euro ITV paper, but I think the most appealing solution is just to put a little software in a network connected TV (such as a media center or DVR or advanced TV) that tells the PC/Web service what channel or program is on).
• Among many other applications, it addresses the kind of "Query-Free...Search" described in the 2003 Google paper that basically uses the TV program to drive related searches, thus "automatically selecting web pages that a user might want to see while watching a TV program."

For more on CoTV, check out the Web site.

The two Google papers are:

• Social- and Interactive-Television Applications Based on Real-Time Ambient-Audio Identification, by Fink, Covell and Baluja (2006)
• Query-Free News Search, by Henzinger, Chang, Milch, & Brin (2003).

Tags: Media New Media TV Web/Tech Internet Entertainment Technology Media Technology Coactive TV Coactive Media Google Search ITV Interactive TV Interactive Television Media Multitasking Simultaneous Media Use Concurrent Media Use

Multitasking Marches On -- But the Link is Still Missing

The growing opportunity in media multitasking is nicely summarized in the recent N Y Times article, At an Industry Media Lab, Close Views of Multitasking. It reports on the Emerging Media Lab at Interpublic, and notes that "market researchers are still struggling to understand the realities of what has been called "concurrent media usage."

But a point yet to be widely recognized is how support for coactivity is a key to increasing engagement. Researchers now recognize that "engagement" is a critical factor in media and advertising effectiveness. What is still missed is that our media can easily provide built in services to support coactivity -- what I call "coactive media" (notably"coactive TV" or "CoTV") -- that can aid in getting users more engaged.

This missing link makes the concurrent media relate to one another automatically, and thus make for a more engaged experience. This can be done at a platform level (much like a search engine) without adding any new burden to media producers.

Instead of the concurrent media distracting attention from one another, they can increase engagement -- by facilitating the reinforcement of one medium with another.

It is certainly important for researchers to learn how media multitasking occurs organically (as it does now), but it will be far more valuable (to users, producers, and advertisers) to create a platform that facilitates and focuses more purposeful coactivity!

(See the CoTV site for details on how easily this can be done.)

Tags: Media New Media TV Web/Tech Internet Entertainment Technology Media Technology Coactive TV Coactive Media Media Multitasking Simultaneous Media Use Concurrent Media Use