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.
From DSC:
Well…how about using one of these devices in order to do so!
New video collaboration robot: TelePresence gets moving — from cisco.com by Dave Evans
Excerpt:
That is why Cisco’s new joint effort with iRobot—demonstrated publicly this week for the first time—is so exciting: We’ve created a mobile Cisco TelePresence unit that brings collaboration to you—or, conversely, brings you to wherever you need to collaborate. Called iRobot Ava 500, this high-definition video collaboration robot combines Cisco TelePresence with iRobot’s mobility and self-navigation capabilities, enabling freedom of movement and spontaneous interactions with people thousands of miles away.
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iRobot Ava™ 500 Video Collaboration Robot — published on Jun 10, 2013
iRobot and Cisco have teamed to bring the Ava 500 video collaboration robot to market. The robot blends iRobot’s autonomous navigation with Cisco’s TelePresence to enable people working off-site to participate in meetings and presentations where movement and location spontaneity are important. The new robot is also designed to enable mobile visual access to manufacturing facilities, laboratories, customer experience centers and other remote facilities.
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From Attack of the Telepresence Robots! — from BYTE by Rick Lehrbaum
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| MantaroBot “TeleMe” | VGo Communications “VGo” | Anybots “QB” | Suitable Technologies “Beam” |
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Also see:
Microsoft unveils Xbox One: the ultimate all-in-one home entertainment system — from microsoft.com
Excerpt:
REDMOND, Wash. — May 21, 2013 — A new vision for the future comes to life today as Microsoft Corp. unveils Xbox One , the all-in-one gaming and entertainment system created for today and the next generation. At Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash., the company showcased how Xbox One puts you at the center of all your games, TV, movies, music, sports and Skype.
“Xbox One is designed to deliver a whole new generation of blockbuster games, television and entertainment in a powerful, all-in-one device,” said Don Mattrick, president, Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “Our unique, modern architecture brings simplicity to the living room and, for the first time ever, the ability to instantly switch across your games and entertainment.”
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With Xbox One, games push the boundaries of realism, and TV obeys your commands. Say “Xbox On” to launch your personalized Xbox One Home screen, discover what is popular on TV or see friends’ latest gaming achievements all using the most natural interface — your voice. The more you interact with Xbox One, the more it gets to know you and learns what you like.
From DSC:
Here’s the item I find particularly interesting (emphasis DSC):
Digization, sole growth engine for Europe’s creative industries? — from inaglobal.fr/en/… by Nicolas Vaquier
[NEWS] According to a recently published study entitled The Digital Future of Creative U.K., digitization is the sole growth engine for Europe’s creative industries.
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Excerpt from Conclusion:
The study announces the transformation of the value creation chain. The horizontal integration of production, distribution and marketing intermediaries that prevailed in the traditional system will be dissolved by more profitable digital alternatives, diminishing the importance of these intermediaries. The study predicts that the concept of “chain” will furthermore be replaced by that of a “network” of relations, with consumption and participation at its heart. The rise in the number of players and the lowering of entry barriers will thus allow for greater quantity as well as relevance of content on offer.
The connected TVs are here… interactive programming & native apps will follow— from venturebeat.com by Habib Kairouz
Excerpt:
Innovative devices have always fueled new application ecosystems. The software industry was enabled by the WinTel PC platform; and hundreds of thousands of websites were built once the PCs became “connected.” In the last few years, we have witnessed the same trend in mobile; more than 700,000 apps have been created for Web-enabled phones. We’ll soon see connected TVs fueling a similar ecosystem of interactive programming and native apps. With nearly a quarter of all U.S. households currently using connected TVs (according to eMarketer), we have reached the tipping point of mass adoption.
As opposed to the disastrous impact the Internet had on the print industry, I see the innovation of the connected TV market as a tremendous, yet accretive, evolution as opposed to a threat. Here’s why:
Also see:
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.
From DSC:
The other day, I mentioned how important it will be for institutions of higher education to increase the priority of experimentation. Clicking on the graphic below will give you an example of the kind of vision/experiment that I’m talking about.
(Though, more practically speaking, to operationalize this type of vision would actually require a series of much smaller experiments; I just wanted to present the overall vision of how these pieces might fit together).
NOTE:
This 11″x17″ image is a 10MB PDF file, so it may take some time to appear.
Feel free to right-click on the graphic in order to download/save/print the file as well.
Also relevant is this upcoming event from educause:
1/8/13 addendum resulting from a Tweet from a great colleague, Mr. Travis LaFleur (@travislafleur), UX Designer at BiggsGilmore
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From DSC:
Entertainment-related ecosystems now…but educationally-related ecosystems could be coming up next…
Apple TV and the transformation of web apps into tablet and TV dual screen apps — from brightcove.com by Jeremy Allaire
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Excerpts:
Importantly, designers and developers need to shed the concept that “TVs” are for rendering video, and instead think about “TVs” as large monitors on which they can render applications, content and interactivity that is supported by a touch-based tablet application.
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The key concept here is that this pervasive adoption of TV monitors is the tip of the spear in creating a social computing surface in the real world.
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Specifically, Apple has provided the backbone for dual screen apps, enabling:
- Any iOS device (and OSX Mountain Lion-enabled PCs) to broadcast its screen onto a TV. Think of this as essentially a wireless HDMI output to a TV. If you haven’t played with AirPlay mirroring features in iOS and Apple TV, give it a spin, it’s a really exciting development.
- A set of APIs and an event model for enabling applications to become “dual screen aware” (e.g. to know when a device has a TV screen it can connect to, and to handle rendering information, data and content onto both the touch screen and the TV screen).
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[Jeremy listed several applications for these concepts: Buying a house, buying a car, doctor’s office, kids edutainment, the classroom, retail electronics store, consuming news, consuming video, sales reporting, board games.]
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From DSC:
Graphically speaking — and approaching this from an educational/learning ecosystems standpoint — I call this, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.
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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 "The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian---July-2012")
Related item:
The future of Microsoft’s Xbox appears to be moving briskly toward interactive TV,
based on a high-profile hire of CBS Entertainment’s former television chief and the
launch of two interactive TV “programs” that tap into Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral.
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1.5 million homes cut the cord in Q1 2012 — from videomind.ooyala.com by Greg Franzese
Excerpt:
Americans continue to gobble up online video, watching almost 35 hours a week across all connected screens.
Vidmind launches cloud TV platform to let anyone create a white labeled Netflix — from betakit.com by Erin Bury
Excerpt:
Tel Aviv-based startup Vidmind came out of stealth today and debuted its cloud-based TV solution, which lets operators, broadcasters and retailers essentially create a white labeled version of Netflix. The company provides an Android-based set top box that can be branded for any company, cloud infrastructure to build a streaming TV service, back-end management for operators, clients for multiple platforms including mobile tablet and PC, and built-in second screen and social features so viewers can interact around content.
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