Some interesting posts
recently on the Internet TV trend, which is really ramping up this year. Mark Cuban, who
co-founded Broadcast.com in 1995 and sold it to Yahoo! in 1999, has a great post on his blog
outlining some of the pros and cons of rich media on the Net. He notes:
"The reality of TV viewing is that people watch the same 15 to 20 channels over and
over. They arent going to sit in front of their computers and look for video to replicate
the experience of sitting on the couch or laying in bed. What we did learn at
Broadcast.com, is that people will search, even if it takes some work, to find
things they are passionate about that aren't on TV. [...] We also learned that people
will go to portals to explore."
(emphasis mine)
He goes on to explain how user-generated content from the likes of youtube.com has taken off recently. He also talks about how Internet TV is a new medium, so just re-purposing TV shows for the Web won't work. For one there are no hit tv shows on the Web, at least not on the scale of TV shows like Lost and Desparate Housewives. Cuban sums it up:
"On the net, the value is in the network aggregator. On tv the value is in the show."
It's well worth your time reading the whole post from Mark Cuban - and don't miss the comments for extra key data.
On this topic, PaidContent.org has been covering industry moves in Internet TV. They report on BBC's trial of its Integrated Media Player, noting that:
"...most viewing took place between 10pm and 11pm [UK time], whereas the traditional peak time for viewing of linear TV channels is between 7pm and 10pm."
Interestingly the list of top tv programs downloaded on BBC's iMP are all traditional tv programs: Eastenders, Little Britain, etc. I wonder how the viewer numbers would stack up if the BBC had a breakthrough tv show that was made exclusively for the Web? Perhaps that is a year or two down the track...
Finally, check out Tom Coates' observations on TV distribution. He says that iTunes-like distribution of tv content on the Web is the best strategy. His prediction for the future:
"I think we're approaching a world in which a near-live media distribution environment will be a major partner to broadcast TV within five-ten years. This environment will be focused on show-by-show subscriptions and ultimate personalisation to get stuff down to viewers over normal broadband and mediated by the bog-standard boring old internet - probably even through the web."
(emphasis mine)
As you can see from the above 3 posts, Internet TV is a fast-growing world and a lot of media companies like BBC and Yahoo! are jostling for position. Not to mention the upstarts like youtube, the more established 'new tv' plays like Tivo, plus whatever Mark Cuban will invest in next in this field!
Photo: JumpTV
A lot of people have been seeing new Google Base verticals popping up - and indeed the Google Base homepage has suddenly had a number of new categories added to it. As I noted on ZDNet, the full list is now:
Screenshot of Google Events
While the 'blogs' category seems odd and the 'protein database' too niche for most, some of these new categories are looking very usable for mainstream people. If I was one of the little Web 2.0 events startups, I'd be pretty worried about this. Google Base is basically Google's database of structured content and once they start heavily promoting Google Base to the masses, via the Google search homepage, it'll very easily dwarf the databases of all the little vertical players.
It seems a lot of people took my April Fool's post about me moving into the TechCrunch ranch in Silicon Valley seriously, so I'm compelled to put the record straight. I'm still living in New Zealand. :-) I don't think it's a case of foolish people, rather I think my April Fool's post was a bit too subtle - which is kind of how my sense of humour works. So apologies if you've been mislead into believing I sold my blog to Mike Arrington for $1 and am a fugitive of the US Immigration Dept :-)
Actually today I spent a great day in Wellington NZ, attending the latest think tank meeting for the NZ Government's Digital Content Strategy. It's fantastic to be contributing to the future of New Zealand's digital media landscape! Plus I also caught up with my kiwi blog buddies Phil Pearson (who's also in the think tank) and Ben Nolan.
GoogNZ flag pic by Untitled-1.
This post was written by Ajit Jaokar, who is a R/WW guest blogger on Mobile Web 2.0 and digital convergence.
In my last post, I spoke
of the differences between browser applications on the web and on the mobile device. This
topic is important because the Mobile Web is all about extending the concept of web
applications to mobile devices. However, as I pointed out in my last post, it’s not
a ‘straight convert’ - i.e. any application running on the Web can’t
run on a mobile device as is.
In this post, I am going to explore browser applications further – specifically in respect to accessing device APIs.
To be truly useful, any application running on a mobile device must have access to some features of the device itself. Traditionally, browser applications running on the device did not have access to device APIs (with the exception of some proprietary APIs created by specific vendors). In contrast, non browser applications running on the device have had much better access to device APIs.
Non-browser apps on a mobile device
Broadly, you can class non-browser applications running on a mobile device into two categories:
Note that for simplicity we are ignoring messaging applications like SMS and SIM applications, which have a totally different architecture.
So to understand what we are missing with mobile browser applications, we have to understand what features ‘operating system applications’ and ‘downloadable applications’ provide. In other words, what can they do which browser applications traditionally can’t do?
Let’s look at Java applications - i.e. downloaded applications. As you can expect, they run on a JVM (Java virtual machine) and can be downloaded to the device – either ‘over the air’ or synchronised from a PC. Operating system applications (like symbian applications) also have access to similar functionality. In fact because they operate lower down the stack, they have access to more features
Security
Before we discuss APIs, the previous discussion highlights another issue – security. An application running on a device poses a number or risks: privacy risks (access to phone book), financial risks (if the device is being used as a payment mechanism), risks to minors (due to the ability that a device can be tracked) and so on.
Java ME solves this issue by ‘security domains’. There are four security domains: manufacturer domain (i.e. the device manufacturer like Nokia (www.nokia.com), operator domain (the mobile operator like Vodafone (www.vodafone.com), trusted third party domain (i.e. applications which are trusted) and finally the untrusted domains (everyone else!)
Device APIs: Java ME as a model for upcoming mobile browsers
Let’s look at the Java ME model in more detail. The documentation can be downloaded from
http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/final/jsr118/
Most of it pretty much standard but the most interesting bits are found in a section at the very end called ‘The Recommended Security Policy for GSM/UMTS Compliant Devices’. The APIs are listed below in two groups. They are self explanatory (in this context, MIDlet is the actual program running on the device).
Network/cost-related API groups:
User-privacy-related API groups:
This then, gives us an idea of the possible functionality an application running on the phone should implement (such as access to the phone book). At the moment, most of the browser vendors don't offer access to device APIs and the only options possible are proprietary. The exception to that is Opera - which was one of the first to announce this. I expect other vendors will follow.
Ajit Jaokar's blog about mobile web 2.0 is Open Gardens.
-
Yahoo7
Combined 10% More Traffic than Previously (Ben Barren: "...[Y!7 users]
demand is insatiable - they need more product than can be provided by Yahoo7.
And they need more filtering and aggregation tools.")
- What do we do with 'social media'? (Tom Coates: "The age of social media then is probably about a fusing of these two ways of thinking - the communicative and the publishing/creative parts of the internet - into something new and powerful.")
- Harnessing the content flow (Dan Farber: "Traditional media corporations won't roll over and die. The smart ones will apply themselves to facilitating, filtering and compensating the mass of content producers.")
- Big Shifts In Internet Usage (Om Malik digs into the latest comscore data, showing that "MySpace is the fastest growing property on the Internet, perhaps in Internet history and traffic now exceeds all but Yahoo.")
- The State of Web 2.0 (it's interesting for me to see the 'Live Web' competing quite well with the term 'Web 2.0' these days... nevertheless, whatever you call it, Dion's piece is a good overview and I especially liked this prediction: "People will focus much more on using the ideas and ignoring the Web 2.0 hypesters more often.")
- Dan Farber thinks the Google Web Office is over-hyped (he points out that business apps need "more reliable bandwidth and grids, software infrastructure that meets corporate and regulatory requirements and major mindset changes" -- very true, it's why I forsee Web Office as a long-term proposition, not short term)
- Microsoft aims to take the desktop 'Live' ("Microsoft started testing Windows Live Mail Desktop this week." -- it will let people manage their webmail offline without accessing a Web-based server.)
- Ray Ozzie on Live Clipboard (Microsoft CTO updates progress on his blog re his "wiring the Web" initiatives - encouraging words about microformats too)
- A Structured (Blogging) Approach to Knowledge Management (interesting thoughts: "Knowledge artifacts correspond to microcontent definitions.")
- 37Signals PDF book selling well (after 30 days they've sold roughly 5750 copies of Getting Real, reeling in $120k of revenue. Excellent work by 37Signals - now I'm waiting for them to provide an ebook software system for the rest of us!)
Flickr pic by Steve Peterson
In May 2005 the BBC launched a new developer network site initially called BBC Backstage, since re-named
backstage.bbc.co.uk. In doing so they put the call out for people to remix their content,
using their content RSS feeds and in future APIs. It marked a turning point for the BBC’s
already impressive online efforts, because with backstage.bbc.co.uk they effectively loosened their control over some BBC content.
As with the vast majority of feeds or APIs from big companies, the BBC’s come with certain restrictions. For example, backstage.bbc.co.uk is specifically for non-commercial use:
“backstage.bbc.co.uk is for individual developers and designers to build things using BBC content and anyone who has an idea for how to use BBC content in new ways. It is not for big corporates to play around with. backstage.bbc.co.uk is for non-commercial use by the little people.”
It’s also worth noting that the reason BBC was able to release some of their content to external developers is because of their government remit to "build public value".
Nevertheless, backstage.bbc.co.uk is a pointer to how big companies will open up their data in future. So it’s a great case study for what I'm calling Microcontent Design.
The first lesson from backstage.bbc.co.uk is to follow existing standards and make it was easy as possible for developers to use their content. The main method that backstage.bbc.co.uk uses to expose its data is RSS feeds. Here is the selection of RSS feeds available at time of writing:
Note though that all of the RSS feeds have only excerpts, not full text. So this is
another restriction to backstage.bbc.co.uk. Nevertheless it’s a significant body of
content that has been made available, because there are around 500 unique pieces of news
posted each and every day from its network of over 5000 journalists.
One of the more interesting mashups that has been developed so far using backstage data is a BBC News/Wikipedia mashup, which mixes BBC news with links to Wikipedia articles. Its developer Stef Magdalinski described it as “a more open [BBC] News Online”. The two main features are that it “regexes out” capitalised phrases and acronyms, tests them against a database of wikipedia topic titles, and if the phrase is a topic in wikipedia then it’s turned into a hyperlink. It also “uses the technorati API to add a sidebar of links to blogs referencing the story”, enabling users to see who else in the blogosphere is talking about the story.
The BBC knows it's important to release a wide set of APIs that reflect the range of content on bbc.co.uk. At time of writing they have plans for two APIs: Search (BBC Search, best links etc) and Postcoder (Query by geo-location data).
The Postcoder API actually brings to light an interesting fact about the BBC and their content. The geo-location data for the Postcoder API is provided by a third party, the Royal Mail. The problem is if the BBC provides co-ordinates of postcodes, then that would undercut commercial services the Royal Mail has with other parties. This is an issue in Britain, because geo-location is owned by various companies in the UK – whereas in other countries that data is freely available to the public. So the BBC licences the geo-location data and at the time of writing was unable to resyndicate it to third parties via backstage.
Just as mashup developers are ultimately at the whim of API providers, it’s worth noting that sometimes API providers aren’t the ultimate data owner. In the case of backstage.bbc.co.uk, its inability to license geo-location data has meant delays in rolling out their Postcoder API.
And it’s not only APIs that are affected. A lot of the data on backstage, including RSS feeds like Travel data, is actually provided by third parties. The BBC has to license that data, in a way that lets them resyndicate it via backstage. Indeed a lot of public-facing companies like BBC and Google often don't own the data they provide.
So ultimately, a lot of times the data owner needs to be convinced of the value of opening up their data via APIs and web services.
BBC backstage Project Leader Ben Metcalfe explained to me how they’ve been able to get data from third parties by outlining the benefits to them of opening data up to backstage. He tells them it will create innovation around their data. Plus with Intellectual Property rights staying with the data owners, they are free to contact a successful mashup producer directly. For example, Ben said that he’s pretty sure TeleAtlas (which owns some of the data used in Google Maps) is keeping tabs on what people are doing with Google Maps.
Ben also told me this is the reason why almost all backstage data is provided to developers on the condition it is used in a non-commercial manner. It's so the actual data owner does not miss out on commercial contracts directly.
As Ben noted:
“A lot of this stems from the fact we are a media organization and not a technology company. Media, in the 21st centuary is about aggregating and buying in content and that's the case with the BBC. We buy in more and more and do in-house less and less. And that's reflected in our APIs - or feeds at least, for the time being.”
So even though the aim is for BBC to create low barriers for adoption, this isn’t as easy as it sounds! A lot of work has to be done to convince data owners of the value of releasing their data into the Web 2.0 world, outside their control.
Second pic: Ben Metcalfe
To be continued...
This *isn't* an April Fool's joke ;-) I've joined up with John Battelle's Federated Media Publishing network, which is a great collection of blogs and sites - such as Boing Boing, TechCrunch, digg and others. I'm really honoured to have been chosen, because of the criteria for being invited:
"FM looks for passion, integrity, authority, and strong community support in all the sites we invite into our network. An FM site has influence not because its author is well known, but because the author has earned the trust of an influential community."
A passion for my topic has always been what keeps me going with Read/WriteWeb, even in very busy work times like right now.
Of course niche advertising is one of FM Publishing's attractions - and I'll admit I'm keen to earn a bit more than pocket money on my blog. Which is basically what I get from it now... not that I mind, being passionate about my writing and all... :-)
So to that end, FM Publishing asks all its bloggers to post a survey to help match advertisers to my site. It will also tell me more about who my readers are, which I'd personally love to know. OK I know most people don't like to fill out surveys (me included), but if you have a couple of minutes I'd much appreciate if you completed the survey. No pressure though :-)
Filtering is one of my hot topics in
2006. It's the next step from aggregation, because many of us now have too much
information coming at us. Let's face it, even with your favourite blogs or websites, you
don't want to read every single post or article that is published. You ideally want to
filter every piece of information that comes at you, based on your niches and personal
topics of interest. This is why I've been tracking the development of RSS filter products
- and indeed trying (unsuccessfully) to develop one of my own.
FeedRinse is an interesting attempt, enabling you to "rinse" your feeds by keyword, author, tag. It also has a profanity filter. To get started, you sign up and import your OPML - or filter individual feeds. Where FeedRinse's model comes slightly unstuck is that you're required to export your filtered feeds, so you can add them into your RSS Reader. This seems like a step too much for me, as I'd prefer to do my filtering and reading from the same service.
I asked Aaron Mentele from FeedRinse about this. He replied:
"The current readers on the market are pretty early in development, and there are definitely some specific ways to improve them (we're addressing that). But, we're focusing on the big item first: allowing the end-user to determine what they want to receive. We see the core product as a pass-through service that will help regardless of device, reader, etc.
What we're focusing on right now is improving the filter options as well as allowing the user to create relevant content channels. These features will integrate directly with the filtering options (that's what the mysterious "Smart aRSS" feature is all about)."
OK, so I see the value in focusing on getting the filtering technology right first - before doing an integrated filter/reader product. I'll be keeping an eye on FeedRinse's progress. Also check out TDavid's review.
NB: there's a similar product just released called ZapTXT - which seems more like a search subscription service a la PubSub. ZapTXT "allows you to define search criteria for your RSS feeds and then notifies you via email, SMS or IM when a new entry contains your search keywords."
[Update: This is an April Fool's Joke - and yes some people fell for it. I'm still in NZ :-)] I can't take the isolation of running a successful web tech blog from New
Zealand any longer. As of today, I'm writing my blog exclusively from Mike
Arrington's ranch house in Atherton. I flew in yesterday (hence the 3-4 day lack
of posting) and I will be based in Atherton from now on... or at least till the Web 2.0 bubble bursts. So yay, I can now proudly proclaim that Read/WriteWeb is 100% American! OK, I have to
admit that the US Immigration Dept has no knowledge of this. Basically I'm
an alien, so please nobody tell on me.
Needless to say, Mike is pleased to have me around - to do the dishes, cook
every second night and write the occasional post for TechCrunch. Meanwhile the advantages
for me are obvious: I can eavesdrop on all the 'scoop' calls Mike gets and
hurriedly post them onto Read/WriteWeb before Mike gets off the phone; I can
attend all the TechCrunch parties; I can meet Bill Gates and Jim Clark of
Netscape fame (who I hear lives in Atherton and so must
be next on the list, surely); and I can finally start developing my Web 2.0 product idea
Great American Novel VC fund blog into a professional publication.
So please join me as a new era of Read/WriteWeb begins! Now I'm no longer just writing as if I'm from Silicon Valley, I'm actually living the American Dream (while mooching off Mike Arrington and avoiding the US Immigration Dept).
Note: as a consequence of this move, I have sold Read/WriteWeb to Mike for $1 and promised to link to TechCrunch in every post. So he now pretty much owns me. Oh well, it's a small price to pay.
Photo: Mike Arrington
UPDATE: yes, this is a (possibly lame) April Fool's joke.
