Category Archives: Digital Entertainment

Advertising, Digital Entertainment, Gadgets

Intel’s Widget Channel

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Intel will debut its widget channel concept at CES 2009.  Unfortunately, since I’m unemployed, I will not be able to go to CES in January (no credentials — bloggers blew it last year — and no extra money) so I won’t get to see this first hand and ask the reps questions.  So… I’ll just have to follow the tech blogs from the media.  Anyhow, I’m not quite sure of what to make of this.  It sounds like it’s a toolkit to put extra advertising content into a TV broadcast, though, I’m not sure whether it’s an additional “frame” around the broasdcast content.

With regards to interactive TV … recently, we’ve noticed our Tivo asking for input and if we would like to view the additional ad content it’s downloaded.  After the third or so time this happened, I became numb to it and I now ignore it.  As for social activities like chatting during a show … well, I suppose that could be fun, though, I imagine it would be a distraction from viewing.   Therefore, it’s probably something to be done during a commercial break.

I think what I would like most of all is a bookmarking feature built into my viewer so I can tag scenes to get more information or to document my thoughts on the matter.  For instance if I like an actor’s outfit, then I would like to bookmark the frame with the actor and save the available metadata so I can query later.  The question is, what sort of information would people want to know about what they are watching and how would they access the additional information.  There’s the standard show documentation that is displayed in the credits.  These can be termed into tags that can searched on the internet.  There information on sponsorship, products in the scene, the location of the scene, time data, and so on and so forth.   I can see the bookmarked frame itself becoming a piece of metadata.  I recall Sling having something like this in which viewers could mark frames or small snippettes of content and microblog or chat about the content.  The last I heard though, is that they ran into copyright issues, which is sad because it goes to show that media companies still don’t understand that loyalty is built when the content becomes their viewer’s possession.   This is the nature of virality silly executives …  Sigh…may the old business models hurry up and die so we can get on with it …

Then there is the matter of viewing the additional content and doing the Internet search.  For many people the TV and the computer have not yet converged.  To be honest, for those people that aren’t hip to this, I don’t know if having the extra content would make a difference.  But to someone who watches most of their entertainment online already, the added functionality would be welcomed.  That said, people who already watch their entertainment online are primed for this type of service.  For those that are not converged, I think the articles author raises a good point about the TV experience.  Your TV doesn’t ask for updates.  This goes along with the thought that you don’t expect your TV to crash to the Windows “Blue Screen of Death.”  So, for those people, TV should look and feel like TV.  Understandably, that is where the set-top or cable box aspect comes in.  Still, I know many older consumers for whom even these devices are over their heads.  They just know how to and want to flip channels and newfangled remotes confuse and scare them.  It’s really sad that nobody has made the converged products drop dead easy to use.  On the other hand, though, is it worth the trouble to try to use new methods to advertise to them?  That would be an interesting study … Are legacy methods more affective for non-tech and technophobes?

Anyhow, I look forward to seeing what Intel has in mind.  Hopefully it’s something that can also be easily configured by consumers too, so they can pull what they want from content rather than having more advertisement pushed at them.

Here’s a link to the article about it.

communication, Digital Entertainment, Gadgets, Stupid

Developers Whining About Apple’s 99-cent Store

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Developers wrote an open letter to Apple complaining that the 99-cent and free price points of the software available through the iPhone Apps Store is prohibiting them from making compelling software.  They claim they cannot recuperate the development costs of a complex program at 99-cents.  While reading this article, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing hysterically as I imagined a bunch of “entrepreneurial” programmers coming to grips with what “open source” truly means.  They got what they asked for and now they are whining!  OMG!!!  Heheheheh!!!  I’m still laughing.

Okay, let me stop and wipe the tears from eyes and say this:  there is a perceived value to iPhone applications.  People associate programs made on an open platform with free ware — programs made out of the goodness of a developers heart and not for profit.  This has nothing to do with ringtone pricing.  So how do the developers make money?  Obvisiously this open letter shows a serious lack of creativity, marketing, and business sense, which is not surprising — these folks are programmers.  I am unwilling to call these folks developers because I think “development” implies the whole ideation, programming, business, marketing package.  Anyhow, here are some ideas:

  • If developers want to sell their wares for more than 99-cents, then they need to convince customers that their products are worth more.   If they can’t put a good demo on the apps store, then link to a website and show a more in-depth demonstration or simulation — it is an iPhone after all ;p .
  • Developers could get together and create a clear tiered structure of applications and agree to pricing based on complexity and man hours.  Of course, the iTunes Apps Store is a very pure form of capitalism, so it’s possible that another developer will undercut the agreed upon pricing structure.  Yes, they are competing toe-to-toe with International developers who can do the software cheaper in their own country.
  • Developers could get together and make up some sort of certification that in essence states that the software is not “crapware”
  • They can also turn to the deplorable world of advertising to subsidize the cost of the program.
  • They could also do the application concept and architecture in the US and outsource the programming to a cheaper country or hire high school and college interns.
  • They could work with the service provider to get a separate marketplace with some form of certification
  • They could tier the applications, such that basic functionality is offered at 99-cents and additional functionality can be obtained with the “full version” — or the usual “basic”, “professional”, and “ultimate” type labels.
  • They could show a comparison table between their product and the competing “crapware” and point out the clear advantage that justifies the increased cost.
  • They could make iPhone applications to bridge existing services, say,  in the model of Pandora.  Or they can make iPhone apps for established companies — in other words, shop the basic concept around before going to the iPhone store.
  • Get the applications in front of some prominent bloggers and tech reviewers who will get your message out for you.  After all, Apple and techy people do whatever tech evangelists say is cool.

I have an iPhone and I’m wary of putting any willy-nilly application on my phone.  For the most part “Free” and “99-cents” don’t catch my attention.  It only took one piece of crapware for me to change my attitude quickly.  My iPhone is precious and I don’t want to litter it with programs I will not use.  I’m very selective about what I put on my phone.  It has to match activity that I’ve tried doing with my phone or be something that I, myself, thought would be neat to have.  As for pricing, it depends on the perceived value to me.  If I wanted a “quote of the day” generator or a lighter simulation, then I feel that should be free or 99-cents.  If its a  multi-level game, then I expect to pay $5- $10 based on complexity and replayability.   If I want location based software to find product and services around me, then I expect to pay no more than 99-cents or for the software to be free because I understand that I will be advertised to in a very micro-targeted fashion.  Anyhow … the whiny programmers that wrote the open letter to Apple need to get their heads out the sand and get creative.

Anime/Manga, Digital Entertainment

Legit Streaming Anime on Crunchyroll

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It’s about time the networks in Japan got a clue and started offering the latest anime series to folks outside of Japan. Beginning January 8th, Japan TV will begin streaming English subtitled episodes of Naruto via the Crunchyroll website. Users will have to subscribe to the show or wait 7-days after the episode airs in Japan to watch it for free. Here’s a blog posting with more information about this and other progress made in the world of on-demand anime.  In general, it looks like Crunchyroll is going legit.  Congratulations Crunchyroll!  I wish them a lot of success and I cheer on people like them who push forward in on-demand digital entertainment in the face of media companies that are slow on the pick-up.

Here’s a link to an earlier posting I did on Crunchyroll.

Digital Entertainment, Gadgets, My Life

Windows Home Server: a Flop?

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That is what this Washington Post blog posting guesses.  I wouldn’t be surprised because like media connect, I imagine that non-tech people don’t understand the point of having a home server and how it would fit into their home network, that is, if they even understand that they have a home network.

I have an HP Home Server and most of the time I love it.  This article says setting-up a home server is daunting.  I don’t recall it being difficult at all, with the exception of setting up the system passwords and updating the system.  What I recall is that the home server pretty much set-up itself.  Getting the rest of the computers to recognize that they were all on the same network was problematic and largely an issue that we’ve attributed to Vista quirks.

However, for non-techy people, an internal or external network drive will take care of most of the necessary functions of a home network.  For the most part that is how we us our home server.  We rarely use the media connect interface.  It only recently became usable with our XBox360 for our music and avi files.  So basically, home server provides a user interface that. as far as I can tell, doesn’t add much to the user experience unless you have the proper equipment — an XBox360 or a media connect box.  In the absence of these, it’s easier to have a beefed up PC to play media files via software like iTunes, Media player, and various other media players software.

So what happened here?  Well … I think that the main problem is an inappropriate target market.  Most people simply don’t need a home server.  However, if they had scaled back the volume expectations and went up market to tech, video and audio enthusiasts, and downloaders, they may have had some success.  I imagine, though, most of these folks home-brewed something anyway like we did before we got the home server.  And like I said, we don’t even use the home server interface and due to security concerns, we don’t serve our files to a website, so in essence we are using our home server as a 2TB network drive.

So what would be useful to me?

  • Integrated BitTorrent client with search and episode organization — Vuze is almost there
  • Some visual analytics around usage for video, audio, and data files.  I would also like to see some organization around age to ease the clean-up of old files
  • For the home server to hold the master table, so all the computers know that there is only one home network.

Still, though, this type of system would not be useful to many people.  The BitTorrent client could be stand alone software along with the analytics I would like to see (I imagine if I searched for them, these tools already exist.)  My final thoughts on this are the common consumer knows how to handle all files on one huge hardrive within one computer and use this computer as a “server” using the file sharing functionality within Windows.  Moving this functionality outside of the main computer doesn’t make sense or seem necessary to them.  As for sharing files on the web, it should be as easy as right clicking on the content and selecting an option that says, “Post on the Web.”  Of course, at set-up, the user already set-up a domain.   The real problem is users have too many files and lose track of what they have.  What the user really needs is an easy way to “see” what they’ve got.  This is a matter of tagging, search, and visualization.  This type of functionality probably should be built into an OS.   So whoever figures out how to do this in a manner that pleases consumers will have a quite breakthrough on their hands.