I’m feeling feisty today, and for good reason. This week, Cablevision Systems, one of the largest cable operators in the country, showed what can be done when applications are streamed from the cloud.

Cablevision used—wait for it!—ActiveVideo’s® CloudTV™ app platform to create personalized navigation that’s miles beyond anything else that’s available to cable subscribers. The cool new iO TV Quick Views mosaic is the kind of app that consumers would expect from an Apple or Google—if Apple and Google had relationships with cable. Check out this video to see the app in action.

iO TV Quick Views isn’t just a personalized mosaic—and a killer mosaic at that. With up to 9 tiles of streaming video glory, you’ll be feeling like a Wall Street day trader. It’s also a personalized EPG with DVR integration. Like most of the 25 CloudTV apps already in Cablevision homes, iO Quick Views was built, using our tool kit, by Cablevision and third-party developers to run on any Cablevision digital set-top box.

Cablevision unveiled the app yesterday. And I love the part in its press release when Cablevision talked about how iO TV Quick Views “leverages the unique capabilities of ActiveVideo Networks’ CloudTV platform to combine personalization and live video.”

All kinds of unique features of our platform were involved here—things like multi-tile video, personalization, metadata display, guide functionality and DVR programming capabilities—but I’ll leave that to the technical geeks in the next office. From a marketing standpoint, what’s really cool is that Cablevision showed that it’s as easy to create apps on our platform as it is for the iPhone or the iPad.

For TV app creation to really take off, we’ve got to offer developers the type of critical mass they get in mobile and PC environments. Big companies like Netflix have an army of developers that writes apps for every permutation of every device, but the little guy who’s creating the next “Angry Birds” can’t do that for TV—unless the app development platform is in the cloud.

CloudTV can change television in a way that Apple or Google couldn’t. We can bring developers together with cable and satellite operators AND TV manufacturers to offer cool new apps that don’t require consumers to buy and hook up new boxes. That’s truly game-changing stuff!

So pardon my chest-thumping (ow!), but the momentum is building behind CloudTV. And I can’t wait to talk about more success stories as 2011 progresses.

Before I was a big-time blogger (play along here), I was a cable industry guy, so it always makes me warm and fuzzy when I see good things happening in that industry. So my heart skipped a beat or two when I saw “cable” and “cool” in the same ZDNet headline.

Comcast recently put together a media tour to show how cool cable set-top boxes can be – “cool as Netflix,” according to the ZDNet report – how they can work with Android and iPad, and how they can enable you to control and enjoy a huge amount of content and apps like no other service can.

ZDNet talked about how Comcast CEO Brian Roberts stressed that the user interface – the “guide,” in cable lingo – is the key to the success of the set-top box as the home’s digital entertainment hub. Comcast envisions a world in which any xfinity customer will have access to any content he or she wants, anywhere he or she is, and the experience will be as rich and easy to use as possible.

I know what you’re thinking: Among all of the flashy new devices tech people love to talk about, “cable” and “cool” are poles apart. But let’s also agree on this: Cable gets a ton of abuse but little credit for the awesome services it provides. Roll your eyes if you want, but more people still get their TV and internet through cable than any other service. You might save money by cord cutting, but you won’t get the same level of service, and it won’t be nearly as seamless an experience, either.

Full disclosure: We do business with cable operators, so we’re a little biased in their favor. We also do business with CE manufacturers, so… same deal. We have much love for everyone in this wacky connected TV ecosystem. And we love to spread that love. (Queue up a slow jam if you want to get into the mood with us here, peeps.)

Comcast is clearly thinking what we’re thinking: The smart TV space is all about who’s got the best content from both TV and Web, and how users can best access and enjoy all of it. Mantra: Great content, great user interface, highly accessible.

In our view, the cloud is the key element in the middle that can make this all happen. Our CloudTV™ platform can turn even the most limited set-top box into a smart TV powerhouse. It removes the need to upgrade subscriber equipment, as well as the need to deploy expensive, bulked up set-top boxes going forward.

So even if you’re not in love with cable, admit it: If these kinds of apps and functionality were coming from some CE manufacturer — let’s say one with a fruity logo — they would be all the rage. After all, Comcast delivers twice as much non-linear digital video than that aforementioned CE darling.

If social TV is really going to take off, it’s all about adding to the core TV experience, and not just putting social websites on TV. This is one of those deals where the parts are greater than the sum. By stripping social TV apart, integrating it with an excellent navigation system, and pairing it with the cloud as an intelligence source, we can create new social experiences that we haven’t yet seen on a PC or other device.

What kinds of experiences? Well, I’m glad you asked. You’re a good egg. Here are a couple:

Impulse recommendations: On a PC, you often put a recommendation in your video queue for watching later on your TV. Even interactions with friends are usually not in real time because the nature of PC—and even mobile—usage is entirely different for everyone. But even with the advent of DVRs, people tend to watch TV at around the same time. It’s inherently social, which makes it kinda weird that it’s the last medium to join the “social” revolution.

This means significant changes to how recommendation engines work. What are you watching right now, and how might that affect what you want to watch next? What are your friends watching and chatting about right now (assuming all interested parties have opted in, of course)? Throw in Smart TV apps, and all of a sudden, it’s not just “what are your friends watching”, but “what are they doing”…browsing an ad showcase and taking advantage of a limited time offer, playing a game of poker that you may want to join, etc.

Your TV viewing habits can influence your PC and mobile viewing: This one is really cool. Your “big” TV experience can influence your “small” (PC) TV experience. When your viewing history is plugged into the cloud, you begin to develop a portable profile that learns from your behavior. Ever wonder why Netflix’s recommendations aren’t always for stuff you’d like to watch? Imagine if Netflix knew what your actual viewing behavior was, instead of trying to predict it based on some algorithm. Netflix would love that, and you probably would too.

Imagine your YouTube queue automatically delivering you content based on what you were channel-surfing the day earlier. Imagine playing a game that’s embedded in an ad showcase and winning a killer coupon, and when you go to shop online, it’s already been applied to your shopping cart.

Notice how all of this stuff is way more “lean back” than “lean forward”? Notice how little if any on-screen typing you’d be doing? Marry the cloud to social TV, deliver an awesome and easy-to-use interface (let’s call it “iVOD”), and this whole category gets way more interesting.

Give consumers what they want. Like Veruca Salt says, “I want the works. I want the whole works…Don’t care how. I want it now.”

Want to search for a specific piece of content? Make it quick and easy.

Prefer to have HAL recommend something to you? Make sure he doesn’t say, “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Want to just mindlessly surf through an endless stream of entertainment? It should be no more than a click away.

Everyone wants apps everywhere these days, and we’re definitely in agreement there. But let’s remember that delivering apps on a smartphone comes with a far different set of requirements than delivering apps on a living room TV. Apps on mobile devices—even mobile devices as attractive as tablets—are very active lean-forward experiences (‘cause you can’t see ‘em if you lean back).

We’ve yet to experience the full value of TV apps, though. By that I mean that we haven’t experienced them to their full lean-back potential.

Users clearly want to maintain an element of “vegging out” when it comes to TV viewing on the couch. They don’t want to be tied to a keyboard; for many, that’s what they did all day at work. Cord-cutting is a hot issue right now, but a recent study suggested that most of the participants saw “TV as a random, no-thought experience, and unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, online video offerings are unsatisfying experiences.”

The challenge for most viewers is combining active search for apps and content with more passive discovery that can help them wind down from a busy day. As GigaOM recently wrote, “What might be more important in the long term is not the availability of alternative content over-the-top, but the placement of that content, via apps on the TV, alongside cable apps.”

We’ve been working on a user interface that delivers just that kind of experience. Check it out here.

Now, GigaOM also seems to think that because the new TV experience will incorporate apps from many different sources, that CE manufacturers will usurp cable’s place as media kingpin. Well, I think that’s quite a leap. Both managed network operators (cable/satellite/telco) and CE manufacturers are mindful of their core competencies, and the operators—as providers of premium content—will hold a prominent place in any fully-realized TV platform.