ReadWriteWeb

"This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it." HAL; 2001: A Space Odyssey

Editor's note: this is a longer version of ReadWriteWeb Editor-in-chief Richard MacManus' article for the SAY Media newsletter. The newsletter is delivered weekly and features SAY Media's take on media, culture, venn diagrams and the occasional Kubrick homage. You can sign up for it here.

Over half of all devices at this year's CES, the world's largest consumer electronics trade show, were Internet connected. Nearly 60% of those were non-traditional computing devices such as TVs, cars, refrigerators and washing machines. Connected devices are proliferating throughout our homes and the world around us. Which means consumers are about to become a whole lot more connected to the world.

Convergence. Remember that word from the dot com era? Well, it's back and this time it actually has substance. Convergence in the 90s meant combining old media with new media, a.k.a. the Internet. The 2000 merger of AOL and Time Warner was a failed $200 billion attempt at convergence. But fast forward to 2012 and convergence is happening for real this time, thanks to Internet-connected devices in the house and a rapidly growing app ecosystem. Entertainment now flows freely through home networks, to multiple devices such as PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones and television sets.

According to one research firm, 2012 will be when convergence really hits its stride. A new report by IMS Research states that 2012 will be when the consumer electronics industry "finally realizes the promise of multi-screen content consumption."

Over half of all devices at this year's CES, the world's largest consumer electronics trade show, were Internet connected devices. Nearly 60% of those were non-traditional computing devices such as TVs, car devices, refrigerators and washing machines. In fact 90% of the TVs at CES were Internet-enabled.

As more and more devices in your home get connected to the Internet, the user experience becomes increasingly important. It's hard enough to use your PC sometimes, let alone fiddle with the remote on your Internet connected TV! So over the coming months we'll be exploring the world of User Experience design (a.k.a. UX design). We'll be interviewing UX experts and reviewing products that get it right - and some that get it wrong. We'll start by looking at how the user experience of televisions is becoming more interactive and what this will mean to your TV consumption habits.

Plans by Viewsonic to launch a smart HDTV set powered by Boxee's popular media center software have been canceled, both companies have confirmed.

The project to produce a TV set running Boxee, which was due out before the end of the year, was cut short by Viewsonic. The company cited high costs of production and underwhelming consumer interest in Internet-connected TV's, according to GigaOm's New Tee Vee blog.

Google must really want Hulu. As it fields bids from potential future owners, the premium video content site is reportedly seeing the most generous offer come from Google, reports AllThingsD.

Google joins Yahoo, Amazon and the Dish Network in bidding on the company, but is apparently going above and beyond what those companies are willing to offer. The exact numbers are not known, but Google may well be offering "a couple billion dollars more" than the other bidders, presumably for an acquisition that goes beyond what Hulu was originally offering to sell.

More people are turning to the Internet to watch television shows rather than tuning into the original broadcast, according to a study conducted by Ericsson ConsumerLab. Forty-four percent of respondents said they stream TV shows online more than once per week.

While this is by no means a new development, the trend is continuing unabated as more consumers depend on Web-based, on-demand streaming as their primary means of viewing TV content and broadcast's popularity drops ever-so-slowly.

Netflix learned today that it may lose a significant source of its content when Starz Entertainment announced it would not renew its distribution deal with the popular streaming service for next year.

It's this contract with Starz that gives Netflix the ability to legally stream a trove of movies from the likes of Walt Disney, Touchstone, Columbia and Sony, among others. If talks don't resume, that's a sizable chunk of content that will be missing from the service. In response to the news, Netflix's stock price dropped 9 percent in after-hours trading.

In May, we analyzed usability guru Jakob Nielsen's report on iPad design and concluded that it was a welcome return to form for the web veteran. Nielsen and his company have followed up with another excellent usability report, this time about "transmedia" design. It covers mobile, tablets, TVs and even dips a toe into "extreme screen sizes" (very small or very large screens).

The latest report convincingly argues that although use of mobile devices will dramatically increase, there will still be "much high-value use" on desktop PCs. "One size UI does not fit all screen sizes," the report somewhat obviously points out. The details though are worth looking at, as it shows how user experiences across devices and screen sizes will increasingly differ.

The television industry should embrace technology companies and the open spirit of the Internet, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told a gathering of TV executives in Edinburgh, Scotland today.

"We are not your enemy and we want to help," said Schmidt, who delivered the annual MacTaggart address at the Edinburgh Television Festival. He stressed the need for cooperation between Google and the TV industry and refuted claims that Google works against the interest of content owners.

Flingo is the latest social TV service to hit the market. It has the ambitious goal of merging your television watching with your Web activity, in real-time. This works two ways: Web content is adapted according to what you're watching on TV, and your TV screen gets Web features such as checking in and tweeting.

What's most intriguing about Flingo is the developer platform. Via a public API, the company is positioning itself as "the world's largest enabler of applications for your Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and Set-top boxes." The company says it is already the largest publisher of smart TV apps.