What if all of our brains were linked in the cloud? Think of how we can improve efficiency and help our coworkers. Rochelle walks us through a morning in which her brain is a part of the cloud and shows us how CloudTV™ powered applications, like Blockbuster, can harness the intelligence of the cloud.
Archive for July 2010
Episode 6 – CloudTV™ from ActiveVideo®: Blockbuster
Friday, July 30th, 2010 by Rochelle Thompson - Senior Manager, Global MarketingUsing the iPad to Control Your Cloud TV Experience… and Making Anthropomorphic Gadgets Sad
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 by Rochelle Thompson - Senior Manager, Global MarketingThe first time we laid eyes on the iPad, we immediately thought, “This would make a great CloudTV controller.” (Well, that wasn’t our immediate thought, which was more along the lines of “Holy crap, this thing is AWESOME.” But I digress.)
Adoption of interactive TV has long been held back, we believe, because of the most important part of the user experience: the control device. Traditional remote controls just don’t suit interactive TV as well as we’d like. And who wants to buy yet another keyboard and mouse, this time just to use with the TV? We associate those devices with work, and TV shouldn’t be work (unless you work at ActiveVideo, of course).
Why not instead use some cool, user-friendly devices that we already enjoy in our daily lives to also control an interactive TV experience? When we saw the iPhone and then the iPad, it was love at first sight (twice). We made it our mission to come up with an easy, powerful way for the iPad (or a smart phone like the iPhone) to control a CloudTV experience, and we think we have. In this video, I’ll show you an example: our iMozaic app, which makes TV more personal and interactive than you’ve ever imagined.
As you’ll also see in the video, my pals Remy the Remote and Palmer (guess what he is) aren’t too psyched about all of this, but I’ve given them a new home where they can complain and reminisce to their hearts’ content: a desk drawer.
Remy and Rochelle’s T-Commerce Reunion
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 by Rochelle Thompson - Senior Manager, Global MarketingShopping at home is fun; we all do it on our PCs from time to time. Some of us even order products off of TV channels like HSN. Until now, though, if you saw something you liked on HSN, you had to get the product code and either call via telephone or order on your laptop. But what if you could order products from HSN as you watch, right on your TV? Our HSN Shop by Remote app for CloudTV does exactly that.
My old pal Remy the Remote and I were chillin’ at my crib one day, and while Remy was in more of a passive mood, I convinced him (or her?) to use HSN Shop by Remote to help me buy a nice leaf pendant. A few button presses later, my purchase was done! Later, while I was out, Remy got hold of the video camera and… well, you’ll see. Remy’s a handful in more ways than one.
CableFAX Webinar to Address Interactive Cable TV; Join Edgar and Other Industry Experts!
Monday, July 19th, 2010 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing
What are you doing this Wednesday? I hope you’ll join me and some other bright lights from the cable and interactive TV industries for the CableFAX Webinar, “Capitalizing on iTV.” Personally, I’m looking forward to a spirited discussion about what is, in my view, the single most important issue facing cable operators today.
The webinar will take place Wednesday, July 21, from 1:30-3:00 p.m. ET (10:30-noon for us Pacific time zone folks). Heck, invite the whole team; groups can attend from their desktops or conference rooms for the low price of $329 per location, and included in that price you get access to an archive of the program and the materials for one year, as well as a personalized certificate of completion for attending.
Here’s the webinar description from CableFAX:
“The cable industry has talked up interactivity for years, but now it’s finally happening. And consumers—trained by years of using the Internet on a variety of devices—finally seem ready to take the plunge. But how will interactivity and advanced advertising work in the real world? What’s the role of EBIF? What do advertisers really want? And what’s the status of cable’s efforts to satisfy those needs? And most importantly, how can cable operators and programmers use interactivity to increase revenue from advertisers, subscribers and perhaps even other untapped sources?
“In this Webinar, we’ll tackle the following areas:
• An overview of the EBIF spec and how it can enable interactive widgets and advertising.
• Examples of ways interactivity could work in terms of polling, audience participation in shows and advertising messaging.
• Ways that deep-dive ad telescoping can use Web-based data on TV.
• Projections of how players can leverage online, VOD and mobile platforms through the TV screen.
• Examples of how programmers and advertisers can work together.”
I’ll be joined by James Mumma, executive director, iTV product development with Comcast; Jim Turner, SVP, product management with Canoe Ventures; and Kevin Hurst, director of product management with Ensequence. Mike Grebb, executive editor of CableFAX Daily, will be the moderator.
As usual, I’ll be the X Factor.
Hope you can tune in!
Next technology should be ‘people everywhere’
Thursday, July 15th, 2010 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing
The Internet’s ability to untether people has really changed the whole dynamic around what is entertainment and what is necessary and what is not.
While the TV Everywhere initiative pushes video entertainment out of the living room and into roving devices like laptops, PCs and mobile phones, it expands the video entertainment experience. To take it one step further, with what I’ll call People Everywhere, today’s technology, with slight modifications, can push content out to users everywhere and at the same time pull user information that can be used later.
The idea behind People Everywhere is to place existing technology—or stuff yet to be developed—into a device that is carried everywhere. While that sounds like a smartphone, to paraphrase Brian Roberts, it should be a smartphone on steroids. This always-on device would not only keep track of the user’s location but would store that information in a cloud-based file for later retrieval. If the user went to the local mall, the device would know what store and even what department; a sports store and the tennis department, for instance.
On the surface this whole thing does sound somewhat intrusive and creepy. What makes People Everywhere a winning concept is that the user can take that same device and control how information retrieved during the day is presented in its most useful fashion all accessed from a device that might have its own screen but also might, through the wonders of technology, transform into a remote control or mouse that connects to yet another screen. Turn on the TV at home or in the hotel and get an ad not for Slazenger golf balls but rather for Slazenger tennis equipment because you’d been searching the tennis department. Turn on the PC and find not an annoying ribbon for the local car dealer but a more pleasing visage of the latest line of Izod tennis shorts.
People Everywhere is a concept that’s a ways out—but it’s not science fiction. People like Intel are working feverishly on smart remote controls that recognize and sense consumers; cable operators are TV Everywhere outside the normal home entertainment center; every mobile phone knows where you are; and motion detection is a video game must. Put them all together in one small package, connected, of course, to the cloud and you have People Everywhere; an idea waiting to be born.