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Inspiring media with Touch

ianforrester — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:50:51 +0000

If you’ve not seen Touch your missing out. According to Rachel Clarke its already on Sky and not far behind its American showing either.

“Touch” is a preternatural drama where science and spirituality meet in which we are all interconnected. The show follows a group of unrelated characters. One of these is Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland), a widower and a single father who is haunted by an inability to connect to his mute and severely autistic 10-year-old son, Jake. Martin has tried everything he could do in order to reach his son, but at no success. To spend his time, Jake has cast-off cell phones, disassembling them and manipulating the parts. This allows him to see the world in a different way entirely. Martin is visited by social worker Clea Hopkins. She insists on doing an evaluation of the living situation. Clea sees Martin as a man whose life has become dominated by a child he can no longer control.

Touch is seriously great and really seems to fit with inspiring media which is really coming into focus right now.

Last year the film The Tree of Life was released and caused a little stir. Its one of those films you either love or really hate…

Likewise, Touch will be one of those things you either love or hate. A few people have already said they loved the pilot episode but now its going nowhere fast. I can see what they are saying but I’m usually so wrapped up in the episodes it doesn’t bother me. Tim Kring is also the kind of person who tends to come good with well thought out layered narratives.

Or at least I hope…

Touch does (ironically) touch the current zeitgeist of our hyper connected times.

It all fits with my own thoughts… Slide 48 onwards in the TEDx Manchester talk the story of me and a great tune I’ve been loving for a while, the string which binds us by Arnej

Finally matched: year of making love saga continues…

ianforrester — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:11:24 +0000

I’ve said some bad things about the pretty much dead on arrival year of making love. And my views haven’t changed one single bit, actually with the additional push for more meat to the slaughter, I’m really not liking what going on. But everytime, I keep wondering, what happen to my match? Whats she like, is she even bothered and does the maths/algorithm behind the match actually work in anyway?

So today I got a email from Fevermedia saying they had some good news and they were very sorry for what had happened but… they had details of my match.

Dear Ian,

Despite the disappointment of not meeting your match at our launch event, we’re really excited that we are now able to put you in touch! We hope that you’re still interested in the project as your input is incredibly valuable to us. The experiment has already generated a number of fantastic couples, and we really hope that you will be the latest successful match!

Contact details of your match:

Name: ******** **********

Email: *****************************

This experiment relies on your input so please let us know how you get on!

So once again I’m slightly sucked in… As Josh says this is better than reality TV? Hopefully it won’t be like the car crash of Take me out.

I have emailed her and to be honest did a small google search (hey everyone does it now, trust me!) and discovered she has a twitter account and facebook account. I didn’t look any more deeper… honestly, I was at work and got plenty to do…

Interesting they use the term experiment again

Funny enough I got into a discussion with Matthew (head of BBC R&D) and he mentioned to me how he was following my tweets on the day of the year of making love. And we got talking about my thoughts on matching algorithms in respect to this whole experience and online dating.

What was really interesting was Matthew’s answer to could maths/science match people? He said, “no and hope not.” Which to be honest no ones ever said to me regarding this question yet. There was a unspoken and knowing look that there was so much more to the comment than just that statement. Maybe something for Geeky & Sexy or Social Preston?

So yes the Saga continues… In which direction will be interesting, because I don’t know many of the couples which were matched on the day which are still together.

The year of making love part 2?

ianforrester — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:22:06 +0000

I have no idea what they (Fevermedia) think there up to now…

But they seem to be recruiting for part 2, cover there tracks or trying to rescue the year of making love… A friend (removed details just incase), sent this to me, I first thought it was a old email but when I looked at it again, I noticed the date was way after the epic fail which was the year of making love event.

From: Flanagain, Kerry, Fevermedia [kerry.flanagan@fevermedia.co.uk]
Sent: 14 March 2012
Subject: Exciting new BBC Three show looking for single people to take part!

I am contacting you from Fever Media on behalf of BBC Three.
We’re currently looking for people to take part in one of the UK’s biggest relationship experiments, for a brand new BBC television series.
The show will put the new science of compatibility to the test and in order to do this we are looking for single men and women that would be interested in going on a date with their perfect partner.

I have attached a flyer to this email, it would be great if you can pass this onto your students via the intranet, or display it somewhere? Anyone that is interested can contact the team using the details on the flyer and someone will get back to them ASAP.

Alternatively we’d be really grateful if you can help spread the word via your social media networks to get encourage students to get involved. Can the you retweet the link to our application stage please? Our twitter account is @yearofmakingluv
And to post the following on your facebook page please:

Would you like to be set up with your ideal date in a ground breaking scientific dating experiment? Fever Media and BBC3 are looking to fond you the perfect match! To take part please call 02074285759 or email your details toyearoflove@fevermedia.co.uk

Many Thanks,
Kerry Flanagan – The Year of Making Love
Researcher

And I’m not the only one to spot this… On the Facebook group setup by people who were there the first time, someone posted this Exciting new BBC three show looking for single people to take part!

Yes it seems Fevermedia didn’t learn their lesson first time around and want to repeat the mistake once again. But this time it might be that they stacking the deck (as such) this time to be sure? (of course this is all rumors, but if true show how desperate Fevermedia really are and serious lack of any scientific standing in the show)

My mate runs a modelling agency , yesterday he got a phone call from the fever team asking if any of his models would like to be on the tv show ..

Once again, the scientific experiment is just a washed away in the aim of creating TV. I certainly won’t be taking part, although I will be watching and researching to see what they do this time around.

Inspiring the next generation…

ianforrester — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:12:14 +0000

On Wednesday I’ve been invited to Albion High School for their World of Work as part of the BBC’s outreach programme. Its something I’ve always wanted to do more of but till now not really done anything about till now.

I’ll be talking with year 9, considering there options for GCSEs next year. I have roughly a hour with each group and they will shuffle around each hour. It was suggested if I wanted to give a presentation of what I do, that might be good. However I’m unsure what exactly I would present if I did…

This is consistent with the new economy of work and dare I say it rework. How can/do you explain what you do to people outside this new economy? I have this problem all the time when meeting new people or going on dates.

Most of the time saying I work for the BBC tends to throw up many more questions like “which TV show do you work on?” I then explain I work at BBC R&D and ask if they have an idea what R&D means? After a second or so, I chip in with its Research & Development. They usually start saying, “oh you research for which programme?” To which I tend have to try and explain I’m work on technology which underpin what the BBC does and will do into the future.

If I’m feeling a little more playful, I will say something like “I work in the grey area between legal and illegal, seeking out emerging technology/opportunities which hackers, startups, early adopters are working on to scratch their own itches.” Although stretching the truth its not far wrong.

So back to the main question… How best to communicate what I do and the opportunities available to the next generation?

Ultimately I’m really hoping to bring out the geek in each one of them (tall order in less than a hour), convince them they can follow their passion no matter what it may be, because frankly life is too short (oh good video to show).

I’m tempted to show i am i do the all new Google Schemer, and maybe some podcast videos then talk about different aspects of my work life/aspirations. Hopefully it will inspire some questions and if not I can ask the young people about their media/social habits?

If this goes well, hopefully I’ll do some more as the BBC does quite a lot of outreach.

Official apology from Fevermedia for Year of making love

ianforrester — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 20:27:29 +0000

Funny I missed this all together… and it wasn’t till someone left a comment on my personal OKcupid blog where I made reference to the debacle in the light a question about maths in matching people.

To everyone who attended The Year Of Making Love launch event.

First of all, thank you very much for attending. As you know, hundreds of people joined us on Saturday in Bedfordshire. Whilst the vast majority of people enjoyed their day, I am well aware that some people’s experiences were disappointing which is something I deeply regret. I and the entire team are extremely sorry for the difficulties you faced.

By way of explanation I want to say a few things about the day. We invited 1000 people to the event, all of whom had been carefully matched in advance by our experts. You held up your side of the deal by coming along on Saturday. Unfortunately, we were surprised by the high number of people who did not arrive at the venue. This was entirely unexpected, since every single person who was invited had confirmed their attendance with the production team in the days prior to the event. The contributors who did not turn up caused a large number of problems for us throughout the day, and had a serious knock on effect on the smooth running of the event.

When it became clear early on Saturday morning that some contributors had not got onto their coach, our team immediately began to call around those individuals to try to get them to the venue. As the day progressed more and more people were turning up who had not got on their original coach but had instead made their own way to the venue. This meant people’s matches were arriving throughout the day and in some cases we didn’t know for sure whether a match was on their way until rather late in the day. We also decided to delay some coaches to give people more time to get to the venue. This meant people were arriving later and in larger numbers than planned which caused queues and a delay in the registration process.

Later in the afternoon, it did become clear that for a number of you, your match was unfortunately not going to turn up. At this point we could tell by checking each individual’s number that there were many strongly compatible people in the room and we created new couples using the same scientific data from the personality tests that had been used originally. Unfortunately, a number of people who had registered on the day left the venue during the afternoon without first informing anyone on the production team. This meant many of our new matches would not be possible as one of half of the match had actually already left the event – although of course we didn’t yet have that information.

This is the first time an event like this has ever been attempted before and whilst many had a fantastic day I am aware that some people’s day was a big disappointment. If you are one of those people I hope you trust we tried to do what we could in difficult circumstances. From my point of view, having one unhappy contributor is not acceptable, so I am extremely disappointed that some of our contributors feel let down. We could not have made this event happen without our contributors and I do thank you for being there on the day.

I should also let you know that we will be contacting everyone who did not turn up on the day to try to find out why. We are also looking in to the possibility of putting people in contact with their original matches but this is entirely dependant on two way consent.

Finally, should you wish to share your thoughts with us, I would genuinely welcome your feedback. Over the next few weeks I’m asking our team to get in touch with everyone and I will ensure that each and every one of you receives a reply to your questions and concerns. We are working through the emails we have received, but if you have anything more to add the best way to reach us is at yoml-update@fevermedia.co.uk.

The Year Of Making Love launch day was an ambitious event and whilst the majority of people successfully met their match, we are fully committed to try and make amends for those that didn’t.
Thank you again for taking part and please accept our apologies.

Fever Media

Finally a better understanding of what was going on in the background. If only this was made clear during the event instead of keeping it a bloody secret. That was the biggest problem, very little very information or communication to us, the participations/contributors.

Frankly its a very poor apology, it still doesn’t address why we were so delayed getting off the coaches and never given a break, food or drink for a good 6-8 hours. Theres also no information to say if the show will go ahead in its current form or greatly changed?

Fevermedia once again blame us and not themselves. Are they really surprised people started leaving when there was no communication?

They must have known the risks, this is why they had researchers calling us up right to the last moment. One of the guys I met on the day from Manchester, received a call on the coach up from one of the researchers asking if he was on the coach or not. I guess it does explain why the coach were 50% capacity on the way up…

I never can explain to people who were not there how frustrating the whole event was… Even now a week later (8pm) its crazy to think at this time last week I had not eaten or drank for close to 8 hours. The intriguing nature of meeting my perfect match kept me at the venue and there should have been a system or solution to keep people informed if they went away, even to the toilet. The idea of matching people in front of the cameras blindsided the whole process till it became very clear it was totally impossible. Not sure when Fevermedia caught on to this fact but it was certainly hours after everyone else.

As I said previously, usually TV is created under a dictatorship. These guys (director/producer/etc) keep things so usually tight, so it was very eyeopening to see public wifi, etc available. However although I enjoyed the openness of this type of thing, they totally dropped the ball for event management. No apology for that anywhere to see…

I’m signed up for who knows what…

ianforrester — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:41:01 +0000

Remember when I asked the question multiple times, if I should sign up for a BBC Three ground breaking dating experiment titled, a year of making love?

Well I can tell you I did sign up and I was selected (yes I did tell them I was a BBC employee of course)

That’s about all I know right now… We’ve been asked to keep a date free (best I don’t reveal which one) and await further instructions.

I’m not sure what to expect but I’m nervously looking forward to it as a total experiment. What ever happens, I’m certainly going to be holding it together and not doing anything stupid, even if everyone else chooses to do so. I’ll be holding on to any dignity I have very tightly. Really hoping this is one of BBC Three’s better shows.

Very early stage thinking around Perceptive Media

ianforrester — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:24:19 +0000

Some people may have heard me mention Perceptive Media in conversation before but it wasn’t till yesterday than most people hasn’t ever heard of it. At Social Media Cafe Manchester (now named #SMC_MCR after the hashtag) it was revealed to the web native audience what Perceptive Media was.

Martin has written up the presentation on the Next Web. But I wanted to clarify a few things.

Perceptive Media isn’t a BBC project (as such), its the result of watching hackers and early adopters during the BBC Backstage days and spotting where trends may be heading. Its a BBC R&D idea which been kicked around quite a bit by me and finally started to grow some legs in BBC R&D as a really interesting body of work, as a result of the questions it raises. So its actually very early days and if you talk to most BBC departments they will have no idea what you mean. Actually lots of people get confused between Perceptive, Personalised and Pervasive. I guess both have the ability to transform our media landscape…

But in this case we’re talking Perceptive media… So what is Perceptive Media?

“It takes narrative back to something more aligned to a storyteller and a audience around a campfire using Internet technologies and sensibility to create something closer to a personal theater experience in your living room…”

Of course this would be of interest to the BBC because we have many storytellers/narrative writers who would love to be able to tell stories like they were around a campfire. But its got to be clear this is my thoughts and not the view of the BBC. And with that I wanted to clarify a few other things…

Here’s how it would work – a TV signal would be sent, as normal, to your set-top box or TV. However, the hardware in your living room would be able to modify that signal with information about you, to create a subtly different version of what you were watching, personalised for you.

Its not Personalised TV… At SMC, I talked about how a storyteller has a sense of where there going and can make slight changes for the audience (around the campfire remember) not a single individual. I mean who wants to sit around listening to a story written for a friend? TV consumption is usually done in groups not as individuals and Perceptive Media is meant for this. Although later Martin says…

There are many challenges for Perceptive Media right now – for example, if five people with varying backgrounds and tastes were watching together, how would the software know the best way of showing the programme to suit them all? Forrester said that it would take all viewers into consideration and display something that suited them all – but would that really work?

This is exactly why were researching to see if it would be possible. Its a brilliant research question and such a great one for storywriters…

While the BBC’s experiments are at an early stage, it’s easy to see how other parts of the media would be attracted to Perceptive Media. Imagine the fun advertisers could have, tailoring ads to your circumstances and tastes.

At the subject of what others (such as advertisers) would do with such technology if it existed was discussed at great length. I did show a clip from Black Mirror ep2. Mainly to discuss what others (aka non BBC) may be thinking in this area. This caused much outcry as you can see on the #smc_mcr hashtag. Maria said this which sums up the privacy side of perceptive media.

#SMC_MCR: the Black Mirror episode ’15 Million Credits’ hints at the future of perceptive media <– VERY SCARY & UNACCEPTABLE

The questioning was actually very good and I wished I’d recorded some of it as some real valid points were raised but there were a lot of questions which I had raised myself for research questioning already.

Giving the presentation at SMC was maybe badly timed because it would be much better to have a clear demo/prototype to get a feel for whats possible and how it could work. Instead, I got carried away with my own excitement of the early idea, maybe? Almost everyone I’ve explained the concept to date, has been as excited as myself. So its maybe easy to see why I pushed forward with it.

So, what exactly does the BBC have cooking in its labs? Forrester wouldn’t say precisely, except that it was aiming for “low-hanging fruit” at first, while he showed a picture of a radio on a slide. Perceptive Audio? It’s a possibility, but we’ll have to wait to see what emerges. Whatever the case, this is an early-stage research project, so don’t expect a big launch for the technology any time soon.

Indeed you won’t see this technology for many years, at least from the BBC but you may see prototypes and demos. Perceptive Audio would be a very interesting concept (hence perceptive media not perceptive tv).

I am writing a paper about Perceptive Media which I hope to maybe one day make it out into the public realm, but I still believe in places like SMC to exchange knowledge and ideas. Thanks to Martin for writing it up, and I hope to give another presentation once we have a better grasp of some of the answers to some of these questions. Till then, there is a public diigo group where we highlight some examples which we think might be interesting…

Should I apply for a BBC Three dating experiment?

ianforrester — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:27:53 +0000

I’m trying to decide if I should apply for this groundbreaking dating experiment or rather TV dating show

We’re looking for single people to take part in a groundbreaking dating experiment.

Are you looking for Miss or Mr Right?

Would you like to be set up with your ideal date?

Using the science of compatibility testing, our relationship experts will be creating 500 compatible couples who will meet for the first time at an exciting TV dating event.

This is the week that our compatibility test goes live, so make sure that you don’t miss out on the chance of meeting your perfect date by getting in touch now!

I might not be able to apply due to being a BBC member of staff but you never know… Actually the only reason I’m considering it is because its BBC. However its BBC Three, so who knows what it might end up like.

I’ve asked on Twitter and Google Plus and its been a mixed response, but now the deadline is coming up and I need to decide.

Can I remind you about the last time I was on TV, and that was without me even signing up to anything!

Piracy is the future of television

ianforrester — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:09:45 +0000

Nice little paper written by Abigail DeKosnik of the University of California, Berkeley. Its also formed a part of my talk at BarCampMediaCity.

One of the headings is the Advantages of Pirating TV and the subpoints are…

Single Search
Simple Indexing
Uniform Software and Interface
File Portability
Access to Global TV
Freedom from Preempting in the U.S
Personal Archives
Low-Cost and Commercial-Free

Lastly theres a section on Recommendations to Legal Services under which theres…

Standardise
Offer Downloading and Streaming
Strategize for Global Audiences
Offer a Premium Services for Personal Archivists
Eliminate the TV Set
Charge Subscription Fees Based on Volume of Usage

In the Appendix, theres recommended reading

How to Turn Pirates into Loyalists: The Moral Economy and an Alternative Response to File Sharing by Alex Austin
It’s (Not) The End of TV As We Know It: Understanding Online Television and Its Audience by Sheila Seles
If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead: Creating Value in a Spreadable Marketplace by Henry Jenkins, Xiaochang Li and Ana Domb

The paper is a good one and for most of the people reading it, its maybe really good but it spells out quite a few things which you would already know if you were an avid read of torrentfreak, darknet, etc…

Some interesting trends…

ianforrester — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 19:34:45 +0000

The ever lasting effect of the Internet on Television, or as I call it the TV post Internet.

See Eric Schmidt’s Edinburgh Festival Keynote which can be read in full on PaidContent.

The concept and idea of a BBC Micro for the 21st Century, which some are saying could be the Raspberry Pi.

Been thinking about this stuff deeply recently for work and what I’ll be doing in the near future… You might be interested in some of the Top10′s I’ve been creating on top10.co

TV Tracking done correctly

ianforrester — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 20:34:31 +0000

At last the almost perfect TV tracker has been realised by the guys behind Trak.tv.

I say almost perfect because it doesn’t seem to support the social aspect of what tioti was planning. Trak.tv isn’t far off and i’m not totally sure if it doesn’t have it yet. I don’t have any friends on Trak.tv yet, so that might be the thing holding it all back. Time to ping my friends, I think.

The other thing which I think is a little painful is having to select that you watched previous episodes. You could assume that if I watched episode 3 of season 4 of Breakin Bad. It could assume I’d seen the previous ones but then again I guess it would be wrong to assume.

Anyhow, its excellent to see this being developed in the background and xbmc getting really into the quantified self movement…

Dyslexia the advantages…

ianforrester — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:22:13 +0000

People sometimes ask me, why do you put on your blog that your dyslexic?

Well I believe its got a lot of advantages… and of course disadvantages…

One of the strange advantages is the dyslexic-dar (modifying the gay-dar term). You seem to get a sense of when someone might also be even slightly dyslexic. There’s certain things people do and say which triggers the radar in my mind. Usually there’s a strange kind of infinity, and it might be down to familiarity of communication and habits.

Tom Pellereau, is one of the final 5 on this years UK apprentice, and I kind of warmed to him a bit. But I kept thinking theres something different about him, something familiar. It wasn’t till I watched the final 5 apprentice show, that it all clicked (clipped a piece from the show under fair use).

I do personally think I have the ability to think differently from other people

Tom and his mum are right, being dyslexic is an advantage when problem solving for example. You just think very differently about problems and don’t get hung up on the same issues. The way you view the world is very different and in a world where thinking outside the box is valued highly this is a precious way to view and model the world.

I can imagine even 30 years ago, this wouldn’t be an advantage but right now, it certainly is… I refer back to Bill Thompsons talk at Future Everything… Designing the future, this is certainly what I feel I’m doing. A world where my strengths are an advantage. Its somewhat empowering to see others dyslexic people embracing it and using it for there own advantage.

A while ago, after my bleed on the brain, the doctors looked at my dyslexia report from 2000. They said, I had been outpacing my projected overview by a long way and maybe the bleed might have set me back to how I was projected back then. If you know anything about me, you would read the report and say nahhh thats someone totally different, maybe they got the reports mixed up? But I think what the report doesn’t account for is the massive change in technology. Maybe without the technology things for me would be very different.

Thankfully I live in a world which somewhat values logic, abstract/intangible concepts and openness.

TV show and a MMO in one universe

ianforrester — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:21:59 +0000

I like the idea of Defiance…

Defiance is a number of things. It’s a third-person shooter, but it’s also an MMO. It’s a PC game, but it’s also coming to consoles. It’s a video game, but it’s also a television show. A multimedia collaboration between Trion Worlds—the developer behind the MMORPG Rift, launched earlier this year—and the SyFy network, Defiance is nothing if not ambitious; events from the game will have an impact on the show, and vice versa.

Although not a totally new concept, its a good tie up and certainly something which more TV companies and maybe broadcasters will/should follow suit. The worry is that SyFy/Trion won’t get the tone right and it won’t be a success in broadcast terms or even in gaming terms. It needs to be very strong and each one should be great experiences in themselves.

However, Hill was quick to point out that even though the game and show work best in tandem, both Trion and SyFy are working hard to ensure that they also stand on their own as pieces of entertainment. “To get the full experience, though, you’re going to want to do both.”

One of the obvious ones I was thinking about when you think of this concept is The Sims. On the TV show, you could get people who play characters and interact as virtual characters in the game. The best interactions become storylines on the show… But there is the notion of who’s leading who?

How would the BBC be able to pull off such a project? Well with BBC Childrens and BBC Games Grid based in MediaCityUK, I don’t think it will be too long before it starts to naturally happen… You can certainly imagine a Radio Drama based around a live playscape.

Intriguing…

What TV needs now…

ianforrester — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:46:17 +0000

This is the kind of thing I think about a lot in my job at the BBC. I’m very lucky to be stationed with a fantastic group of like minded people and a hierarchy upwards which I do respect. (Not many people can say that).

So when I explain to people what I do, I tend to make some reference to researching trends and watching the hackers scratch there own itches. It doesn’t sound that exciting to the general public or potential dates but you all know how excited I get about it. Anyway the point of this un-scientific test is I’m hoping to do more stuff like this. In actual fact I actually threw this idea around as a project a while ago. Its great to know we’re not the only one thinking about this stuff.

During a panel at our TVnext summit yesterday, we showed a video with highlights from a recent experiment. For this experiment, we had invited several families to give up their cable and instead use a “connected TV” device for one week following last Christmas.

The results might sound surprising but to be honest, I could have guessed most of them from the time I’ve spent with the hackers.

Nicely Iiya broke it down the learning into some nice digestible pieces, something I certainly need to learn to do much better.

While our sample was by no means representative, the results of our experiment point us toward some real issues that one should consider when thinking about the future of the “connected TV” technologies.

One finding that is probably obvious in retrospect is that TV is invisible until it’s shut off. It’s a bit like walking: you are aware of the direction in which you are headed but you don’t really focus on the individual steps until you come across an unusual terrain. The exclusively on-demand nature of the devices we tested is just such an unusual terrain that makes you think not only about “where” but also about the specifics of “how”.

The devices demand a lean-forward involvement with what has been traditionally considered a lean-back medium, and this requirement proved disconcerting to many when it lasted longer than the usual bursts of involvement with their DVRs or video-on-demand channels.

The Paradox Of Choice

Constantly having to pick what to watch next was daunting not only because it interrupted the usual flow of TV-time activities in the house or required interacting with unfamiliar interfaces but also because of the cognitive load involved in considering all of the numerous content alternatives. “I don’t want to have to think about it” was one of the strongest sentiments we’ve captured in our interviews. As with “the paradox of choice” phenomenon that describes how broadening the range of options leads to a decrease in overall consumption, we saw how families gave up on watching TV altogether when they couldn’t decide what it is that they wanted to watch. This problem is serious enough for Netflix to award a million-dollar prize for a better way to tell people what they should watch next; it didn’t seem the problem was sufficiently addressed by any of the devices.

The paradox of choice gets stronger and stronger the more options there are. Even in my own behavior, I tend to end up watching films which are on TV although I got the HD version with Dolby Digital or DTS surround sound on my home server within 1 minutes reach.

In actual fact, i’m going to from now on make the choice to move over to my own version when I see a duplicate on TV which has me interested.

Expectations

People have well-formed expectations about how a TV should work, and the devices didn’t seem to confirm well to these mental models. Surfing TV channels is seamless; “tasting” unfamiliar on-demand shows includes picking them from different menu categories and waiting for them to buffer first (and often paying for them up-front). This latency is tolerated in exchange for high-consideration longer-form content but it becomes too much of a friction when all one wants is the “in-n-out” material.

Agreed, the interface on most of the on-demand devices are either hideous or non-intuitive. But there are those which take a risk and try new things. The world of hardware moves very slowly and so we won’t see much change from most of the set top makers. However there has been more development in the space. Some of the forward looking makers are buying or partnering with creative software developers who are creating the rich and intuitive interfaces using just software.

Usability

The lack of search spanning multiple video services on a single box was a usability flaw that stood out among other complaints that could be attributed to our users’ brief experience with unfamiliar technology. From the users’ perspective, there is no reason why they had to search the Netflix, Amazon On Demand and other services individually while looking for a particular piece of content on a single device.

Agreed, its all a bit of a mess at the moment. different guides and different structures. Even if there was a global search it would be one heck of a job trying to communicate the different options available to the audience.

Its a fantastic challenge and to be honest, one of the many reasons why I love my job.

The best advert of 2010: Old Spice vs Thinkbox

ianforrester — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 21:09:08 +0000

Interesting the differences and between the number one voted adverts of 2010 online and offline. For me the Old Spice advert was extremely clever and certainly does something very different while the Thinkbox advert is what you would expect from TV advertising, fun, entertaining but thats it. Of course I’ve also not included the follow up ads for old spice which made the whole thing so much more interesting for us all.

The best of the web advertising, The Old Spice Advert

The best of TV advertising, Every home needs a harvey Advert

The TV tracker

ianforrester — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:44:24 +0000

via Paul Pod at Tapeitofftheinternet

In the last blog post about SharetheTV and Trakt.TV, I mentioned the need for a way to track TV episodes which your social network were on. It got me thinking what ever happened to the promising startups of the time including tape it off the internet (tioti.com) and sharetv.

Back then, all these services relied on you putting all the data in and to be fair it might have been a little early. Now you got serious processing power under the TV from boxes like XBMC, Boxee, GoogleTV, etc. Setting up a TV tracker site would be pretty easy now. Almost all the boxes now talk to the Internet and there’s APIs a plenty now.

It is surprising no ones really pushed the idea yet. Like the prototype above shows, it doesn’t take much to get it right.

XBMC dharma goes online

ianforrester — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:23:58 +0000

In a surprise (surprising to me at least) move to XBMC there is now a couple of services which allow you to show off your collection to the awaiting public. Something a little like Boxee does but much more like Last.FM (or rather Audioscrobbler) does.

Trakt.TV

The first one is Trakt.TV which simply tracks what you watch, just like last.FM/Audioscrobbler but for TV and Film. Of course its still early days, so theres not a lot of data right now but the database is powered by other open source projects the movie database and the TV database. Of course the scobbler plugin is built directly into the new Dharma XBMC, but you can force it into Camelot too if you don’t want to upgrade quite yet. One of the nice settings in the plugin is the ability to only send a update when you watch a certain percentage of the film/TV show. And of course you can blacklist certain directorys if you want to protect your p0rn for example. You can imagine the Lol’s when someone finds your secret stash of p0rn on the site. Credit is certainly due to trakt.tv for the global stats and chart pages, alas OKtrends.

Oh by the way my profile is here but its quite empty right now because I’ve not been watching anything from my xbmc library today.

Share the TV

Share the TV is the next one which aims to be less like Trakt.TV and more like a place to just dump your whole movie collection. Like Trakt.TV theres a plugin directly in the new XBMC and its just a matter of enabling it. Also like Trakt theres a load of options you can configure so its only uploading you collection every once in a while. Unlike Trakt, share the TV uploads the whole of your current movie and TV database to the site. So ideally you can show your friends what you got. Its also powered by the movie database which is a nice touch.

My profie is here again.

The crux of the issue

I like both of them but its very handy being able to see the whole collection with sharetheTV. I do worry somewhat that someone will look at my collection and decide that a film which isn’t out yet is obviously pirated (Grow up people!) (I tend to download a lot of trailers of course and XBMC picks up the metadata for them). I would really like to see trakt.tv and sharethetv come together to form a much stronger single site really.

Nothings perfect but theres room for change in both. Being able to change the update perious is useful in sharethetv because for example, Notorious auto scans as the 1946 film with the same name. So I need to change it before it syncs up the cloud.

Its great they both use the open movie/tv sites but it would be great if in turn they would also provide a export option for your own data collected. I’m sure there both working on it but sooner rather that later. I’d also like to see the ability to embed your collection elsewhere (actually trakt does support basic embeding). I’ve been burned on this front before with myfilmz.net.

Finally it would be great if either site could solve the problem which was highlighted by tape it off the internet (or tioti.com which is now findmetv.com) When your watching a TV series such as for example The Event. Some friends are following the UK Channel4 series, some are downloading it and some are waiting for the boxset. It would be fantastic to be able to track all that in a simple web/gui.

Broadcasters Block Google TV…

ianforrester — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 22:31:48 +0000

…but they can’t block the future.

It was no big surprise that broadcasters like ABC, CBS and NBC would block Google TV devices from accessing their content online — or at least, it shouldn’t have been. What’s at stake, of course, is the $80 billion TV advertising business that fuels the creation and distribution of prime time TV.

Just like Boxee earlier in the year, there starting to block the networked TV devices. Boxee CEO says it all.

“We think that it makes much more sense for the business model to be based on the content and not on the device or the screen size. If someone paid for a video (or is watching the video with ads) it should not matter which device (or) browser he is using.”

Exactly…

Google tv redefining TV? Not quite…

ianforrester — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:56:06 +0000

I totally missed Google TV and Google IO while I was in Hospital. It was one of the first things I asked for when I woke up, sad but true.

So my manager gave me a cut out about the Google IO event, which seemed to focus on Google TV and the next Android (still exploring). So generally if I was boxee I would be alarmed but not too concerned. They could really take advantage of the standards google’s using to power the remote for example. But lets not forget Google have a massive influence and moving into there area has to be worrysome. Now lets get this all in perspective.

This isn’t about Apple vs Google, its about the open internet vs the closed world of the TV. TV has been tightly controlled for years by the TV producers, etc. Now that wall is falling down.

Other people have written about the hardware and software so I won’t do that, instead I’ll look at the concept.

For a while now the BBC and its content producer partners have been working on spec for the next generation of Television viewing aka Project Canvas. When I first saw this I was surprised because it really lacked the internet and openness. I walked away thinking this is what a broadcast company would put out thinking about the notion of convergence of the web and tv. However this really did my head in because all the clever internet ideas of what Canvas could have been have been picked up Google and the google TV. Which is a shame for the BBC.

However, the weird thing is that although Canvas is what a broadcast company would do. GoogleTV is what a internet company would do if they wanted to converge the TV with the internet. However just thinking about the UK market for now, freeview has a major following and I can’t really see Google TV make much of a dent in that right now. I might be wrong but Google TV is very much a American thing and google haven’t really thought about the other markets as of yet.

So back to Google TV, there partners include Intel, logitech, Sony, bestbuy, dish network, Adobe, plus others. Note none of these are actually Content creaters/producers except of course Sony. The Sony side there talking to seem to be the engineering side rather than the content producing side. There was no deals or even talk about the content side of Sony. There will be a massive push in the states from Best Buy but details about the rest of the world is almost non exist.

Generally GoogleTV is once again interesting (and comes up open trumps here) because it can browse any website instead of the Canvas/XBMC/AppleTV model which is apps or scripts which allow you to access certain sites. There is a real opportunity to make TV aware sites like Youtube TV which was also announced at Google IO 2010. I’m actually very surprised no one has yet wrote a XBMC or Boxee script to take advantage of the new Youtube TV format. Generally this means your site can be viewed by millions and millions of people on there TV while they watch something else. But I wonder with no content producers on board will the likes of Hulu block GoogleTV or provide a crippled experience? In a ideal world I guess Google would suggest that everyone should use YouTube to deliver there content to the world, like channel 4 now do. And thats the killer thing, for everyone who uses youtube and other video sharing sites to distribute there media. Google are tackling the TV problem from both directions. Hardware, software and altering the code of the web.

Its opens the door to all the user generated media out there. TV producers must be somewhat rocking in there seats with a little bit of fear. Google have opened the door to the open web and have the might to keep it open. The problem is the price.

No one knows the price yet but the hardware is going to cost at least £50 or $50 which means its not going to get the penetration it requires. Its mainly going to be a glorified Tivo unless they can get the price down. Those who can afford the box have already got something like a Apple TV, XBMC or Boxee running. It won’t take much for them to adopt the open standards and emulate exactly what a google tv box does.

Theres also a problem when it comes to the social aspect of (or identity of the people watching) TV. Google TV already picks up the bluetooth of the phones of the people watching the TV (in the same room) but is that what you really want? Interestingly in the Google TV primer theres some hints of the problem.

Here are a few tips for those who haven’t designed for TV before. In a television environment, you must:

Understand that content is king.

Get users to the content as quickly and easily as possible.

Don’t interrupt when users are watching TV. Instead, make the viewing experience better.

Respect the living room context.

Think about what users will and won’t want to do when viewing TV with their family and friends.

Remember that TV is social.

Consider how groups might use your website or application.

Offer ways for individuals to use your site or apps in social settings.

Learn the pros and cons of TV screens and audio.

TV screens are wider and colors look different.

Text must be readable from a distance.

Sound is now a viable interface element.

Make it easy.

Offer simple choices and make actions obvious and easy to select.

Provide navigation that is simple enough for a remote control.

Thats only the start of the problem. Its great what Google has done but I can’t imagine what developed applications made for a phone will be like on a TV. Its goes back a little bit to what I said about the Apple TV.

The Living room is a funny place filled with different people and different exceptions. Google really needs to reach out to the content creation community and listen to what they say. Right now Google TV looks like something a Internet company who don’t fully get the dynamics of the TV/living room would build. Fantastic they have taken the standards route and pushed openness as far as it can go into the living room but now its time to consider the content and the experience. Or at least get some partners who do understand the content and experience. If they don’t I can see the Hulu problem growing and it may cause even more paywalls like the current newspaper situation.

Apple's threat on screen based home entertainment

ianforrester — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 23:00:46 +0000

Everyone is talking about the ipad but isn’t it time the Apple TV was due an upgrade? Rather than leave the apple tv out to dry, I’m certain Apple will want to tie it into there already closed ecosystem (I mean rainforrest). That will mean developer written applications for your Television, something which other platforms like Boxee have been use to for some time.

I personally can’t see the attraction of writing applications for your TV but I’m sure with decent content some will be on to a winner. Rather than the widget like systems being thrown around now, content producers could build content and systems which work hand in hand. So a real simple example would be a Diggnation or Diggreel would give you the real time digg amounts with the option to further digg a story or add a comment.

Another reason why I think Apple will go down this route is because this will be Apple’s entry into the home console market. They have already announced there going to be creating there own gaming network (like Xbox Live or XLink Kai) so why not extend that out to your TV too? So not only will have your music, videos and books all within the Apple Universe but also your game playing too. Is there going to be anything which Apple won’t hold in their Rainforrest?

To be fair if Apple do launch a new AppleTV by the 3rd quarter, they may catch Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo napping. But the real forward thinking is being done by the likes of Boxee who have adopted the open wide model with a revenue model. If Boxee can get on to other platforms and spread quickly, who knows what might happen. I got to hope the most open will finally attract the talented developers, everything else is in place.

So where does this leave things like GoogleTV, Android and Canvas? Who knows…