60 beautiful examples of websites with full-blown video backgrounds — from hongkiat.com by Nancy Young
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From DSC:
Yes, you read that right. Video-based backgrounds — motion pictures. Another great example of the convergence that’s been happening with the TV, the telephone, and the computer.
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TV apps: A dive into fragmentation — from appmarket.tv by
Excerpt:
Suppose you wanted to build an app for TV, where would you start? Admittedly, there is an enormous number of variables to consider for an app developer on where they might start the journey, even before that journey starts. These include areas like skill sets, funding, previous development, and relationships. This article is the first in a series that aims to shed some light on the current state of TV app development, as well as the exciting ecosystem that is forming around the connected TV. If you’ve identified an opportunity where developing a TV app makes sense, read on!
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At this point, suppose you want to cover the market and develop for all devices and middleware platforms. That’s at least 72 middleware/OS, 122 devices, and 3 screen resolutions, which equates to managing over 26,352 experiences. A little overwhelming, right? Luckily, the picture isn’t quite this grim and in practice, no developer has gone to these lengths (we hope!). The next article in this series will go into how some of this fragmentation is being dealt with and some best practices that we’ve discovered along the way.
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![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg)
PayWizard launches first dedicated payment and subscriber management solution for TV and media industry — from PayWizard
Excerpt:
London, 21 February 2013 – PayWizard, specialists in payment and subscription management, has launched the TV and media industry’s first dedicated, end to end payment and subscription solution. The integrated solution brings together a strong heritage in the Pay-TV market with a deep understanding of the challenges TV operators and media companies face in monetising the multiplatform world.
Using its award-winning modular Payment and Subscription platform, PayWizard combines payment processing, intelligent subscriber management technology and real-time customer service operations to tailor-make solutions that enhance the consumer experience across all screens.
With 16.8 billion video-enabled devices set to be in the global marketplace by 2015, content owners are facing the challenge of enhancing existing services while creating compelling experiences that embrace new routes to market. PayWizard’s comprehensive set of products and services has enabled clients, such as the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, ITV, to address these commercial challenges by enabling new monetisation strategies to drive revenue and profitability.
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From DSC:
See the categories listed above for the items/topics/disciplines/trends that are relevant here.
Addendum:
Check this out!
Massive Open Online Course offered by UMass Boston to feature the first adaptive MOOC technology
Enables students to be taught according to individual learning strategies
Excerpt from email:
(Boston, MA) – February 27, 2013 – If you’ve ever been in a course and struggled because you just aren’t “getting it,” the reason might be less your ability than the way in which the material is being presented.
New technology is now allowing online course environments to analyze how individual students learn, customizing instruction to individualized learning strategies. The College of Advancing and Professional Studies (CAPS) at the University of Massachusetts Boston has teamed up with USDLA 21st Century Sponsor, Synaptic Global Learning (SGL), to use the new learning management system, Adaptive Mobile Online Learning (AMOL), to deliver the first adaptive Massive Online Open Course (a-MOOC) ever offered. The course launches March 25.
Understanding transmedia: How story world’s are changing the art of communication [John Hartman] — with thanks to siobhan-o-flynn for scooping this at Tracking Transmedia
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A tale of two television strategies — from IEEE.org by Steven Cherry
Excerpt:
At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, back-to-back visits to LG and Panasonic reveal two very different approaches to selling, and maybe making, televisions. At LG the focus was on display technologies, picture quality, size, and form factors. Panasonic put its Smart TV features front and center.
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I saw a voice-commanded Google search.
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At yet another station, Panasonic showed a proof-of-concept of some friends all chatting by text message (like an old-style AOL chatroom), with the messages showing up on at the bottom portion of a television screen showing the program that everyone is watching.
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LG had a few user scenarios—collaborative picture drawing between users of 5-inch tablets, for example—but they mostly weren’t very well developed, nor very smart.
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2nd Screen Society announces definitive Second Screen market research study — frpom digitalvideospace.blogspot.com
Excerpt:
From DSC:
This relates to my earlier posting/suggested experiment.
From DSC:
In this series of periodic postings re: experimentation (see here and here), this week’s Consumers Electronics Show prompts me to think about different types of experiments, prompting such questions as:
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Some relevant items on this include:
Flingo reveals Samba, a first of its kind dual interactive TV and second screen platform — from pandodaily.com byasdf
Excerpt:
This week at CES in Las Vegas (the Consumer Electronics Show), San Francisco-based Flingo will release the latest version of its platform, dubbed Samba, aimed at changing this. Samba will make four-year-old Flingo one of the first to offer a combined Interactive TV and Second Screen experience.
“We saw a surge of Smart TV and tablet adoption in 2012, but realized that a seamless TV experience across all screens was missing,” says Flingo co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin, formerly of BitTorrent. “Samba will blur the lines between linear television and the Web.”
Flingo is unique in that it uses video, not audio to identify what content is being viewed…
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Samba offers viewers the ability to actively engage with programming in real-time through their primary screen. This can take the form of polls, social conversations, recommendations, or consumption of related media. In the case of Second Screens, aka internet-connected laptops, tablets, and smartphones used simultaneously while watching TV, the company can offer an even wider array of complementary content and engagement, such as aggregated social feeds relating to live programming or an ability to watch past episodes of a live show. This can all be delivered across multiple screens, in concert.
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Kevin Smith/Business Insider
More tangentially, but still relevant:
5 ways TV will evolve in 2013 — from readwriteweb.com by John Paul Titlow
Excerpt:
If you were expecting the Internet to upend TV like it mangled the print media business, you may have noticed by now that things aren’t so simple.
The Web is very good at delivering text and static images, but when it comes to TV-quality video content, it turns out that cable providers are still much better at that. Internet TV has two serious handicaps: content and the user interface. In 2012, the status quo crept forward in both areas, albeit slowly. Next year, TV will continue its gradual evolution toward something completely different from what we grew up with.
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Courtesy Company
More Americans are watching TV shows minus the television set. Thanks to Hulu, Netflix, and other sites, there’s plenty to watch online. But there’s one thing missing, says Chet Kanojia: live television.
2013 media technology trends — from weezergroup.com by Richard McLeland Wieser
Excerpt:
Since the turn of the Millemium we’ve been hearing about the AV/IT convergence. It started slowly, gaining speed. Now it is roaring down the track like a 110 car freight train. In 2013 most of the equipment that audiovisual and video production professionals use is digital, networkable and software controlled. If your Boss is not the CIO, he may be by January 1, 2014.
Media Manager, Videographer, AV Technician, whatever your title, I believe you will find this information helpful.
From DSC:
As Richard mentions in his blog, the convergence of AV and IT continues to occur. In fact, just recently, our AV Department joined our IT Department. I look forward to even closer collaboration with the experts from that group.
![Understanding dual screen content apps: A market overview [Costa]](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/UnderstandingDualScreenApps-Costa-12-2012.jpg)
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Living room wars — from tnl.net by Tristan Louis
Excerpt:
Control of the TV screen is seen as a major step in the next iteration of computing. The field can be divided between hardware manufacturers, content providers and end-to-end players who are looking to provide a complete solution. The net result is that while everyone is trying to get into every other player’s field, the emerging winners may not be the ones who grab most of the headlines.
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Addendums/see:
From DSC:
What might H2O-like functionality look like on a Smart TV?
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From DSC:
What educationally-related apps could something like ScreenBee address?
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From DSC:
Eventually, this will lay a solid foundation for what I’m calling “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.”
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From DSC:
I understand that Mr. George Lucas is going to express his generosity in donating the $4.05 billion from the sale of Lucasfilm to education.
Here’s a question/idea that I’d like to put forth to Mr. Lucas (or to the United States Department of Education, or to another interested/committed party):
Would you consider using the $4+ billion gift to build an “Online Learning Dream Team?”
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Original image credit (before purchased/edited by DSC)
yobro10 / 123RF Stock Photo
From DSC:
What do you think? What other “players” — technologies, vendors, skillsets, etc. — should be on this team?
