Posts tagged future
The Latest Vision of TV’s Future Comes From… Ikea?
Apr 18th
When people talk about the future of TV and entertainment, brands like Samsung, Apple, Comcast and Boxee tend to come to mind. Apple-watchers in particular expect that company to turn its longtime hobby into a game-changer by releasing their own HDTV set later this year.
Whatever happens, the living room of the future will look very different from what even the most cutting-edge gadgetry offers today. But how will it look? The latest vision comes from a very unlikely source.
Swedish furniture retailer Ikea unveiled the Uppleva, an all-in-one entertainment center that merges consumer electronics with the furniture that has traditionally housed them. It’s an HDTV, Blu-Ray player and 2.1 surround-sound stereo packed seamlessly into a single, visually customizable unit.
At its heart, this product is all about design. Ikea’s early marketing touts the Uppleva’s ability to hide unsightly wires and encase everything in one clean, sleek-looking package. It’s not unlike a certain Cupertino tech giant that often takes its cues from minimalist, European design.
In addition to looking pretty, this initiative may offer clues about how entertainment systems of the future will work. The HDTV itself is, of course, “smart” in the sense that it connects to the Internet. That’s pretty much a given at this point. It’s also integrated directly into the furniture, as is the stereo system and media players. The system uses a single remote for everything, addressing another age-old user experience problem of TVs and entertainment systems.
It’s well-packaged and consolidated, but it’s also fully extensible. USB and HDMI ports on the TV allow for any number of gaming consoles, set top boxes and other devices to be attached, and they can be stowed away in a dedicated compartment under the TV. It’s not clear if it includes a VGA port, the lack of which might inhibit device compatibility.
It’s this customizability, now standard in HDTV sets generally, that will ensure that those who chose to purchase Ikea’s new system can continue to experience TV’s future as it evolves, regardless of platform or provider.
The Uppleva doesn’t leap over any major technical hurdles, but its focus on streamlining the user experience is likely to be something we see more of in the living rooms of the future. Even if this model doesn’t become the standard, it’s a bold try and one that is sure to influence other players in the market, should it catch on with consumers.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
The Future of Connected Cars: What Audi is Driving Towards
Apr 17th
So far in our series on car connectivity, we’ve focused on infotainment systems. It’s early in the evolution of Internet services in vehicles and up till now, it’s been all about information and entertainment. Early in-car apps have been focused on music, navigation and news. The next generation of in-car apps will be about providing “smart” services, such as taking some of the cognitive load off the driver – including making the car autonomous in some ways.
At CES in January, Audi showed off some futuristic in-car technology. At SXSW in March, I sat down with Anupam Malhotra, Manager of Connected Vehicles at Audi of America, to talk more about the future of Audi’s connected services.
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Audi’s infotainment system is called Audi Connect. It basically turns the car into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing the driver to use Google Maps on the dashboard and passengers to connect to apps from their smartphones or tablets.
The Wi-Fi comes from a T-Mobile cellphone modem inside the car. Although Audi’s Internet connection is limited to 3G speeds right now, at CES Malhotra showed a test A7 car that used a significantly faster 4G LTE connection. This will likely be pushed into production sometime in 2013.
Context Relevant Location-based Services
Anupam Malhotra is a veteran of car infotainment systems, having started at GM’s OnStar subsidiary in 2000. Since moving to Audi in July 2010, he has been responsible for the Audi Connect infotainment system in the U.S., together with overseeing the connected-vehicle strategy for that market.
The current stage of car technology is providing what Malhotra calls “context relevant location-based services.” Audi has done research on what drivers want and it’s services such as real-time news and weather, gas station locations, POIs (Points Of Interest), traffic information and travel destinations.
The Future of Audi Connectivity
One area where in-car technology will evolve is navigation; in particular how the car can automate some navigation aspects. Malhotra told me that Audi is currently figuring out “what the vehicle’s role is as the navigator.” Right now this is done via Google voice controls. For example if you’re looking for a spicy chicken lunch, you can tell the system “spicy chicken” and it will inform you of the nearest eatery where spicy chicken is available.
Another area that Audi is targeting is the HMI (Human-machine interface) in the car. The first generation was buttons around the driving wheel and touchscreen controls in the dashboard. Voice controls came next, with Google voice controls being the latest iteration of that for Audi. In the near future we will see gesture controlled systems, which Audi demonstrated at CES in a concept car (see top image). Gesture controls will be used not just by the driver, but passengers in the car.
The software in the vehicle will also evolve, said Malhotra, to take away some of the decision-making from the driver. Not so much in terms of driving, which people want to keep control over. It will be focused on things that augment the driving experience. Features such as lane departure sensing, warning systems if there is a car in your blind spot, technology that protects the car occupants in the event of a collision. “All of this will happen through connectivity,” said Malhotra.
The overall goal of these future-looking developments, Malhotra said, is to take away the “misery” aspects of driving: parking problems, dealing with traffic congestion, fuel management. This will allow the driver to enjoy the actual driving part.
As with other car manufacturers, like GM and Ford, Audi offers an API for approved third party developers. Malhotra expects to see advanced apps in the near future, such as a predictive app that calculates your route on-the-fly based on your daily habits, car requirements (such as needing to fill up with gas or re-charge electricity), real-time traffic and road conditions.
Ultimately car connectivity will enable cars to talk to each other, plus objects in the environment – such as traffic lights. In what Malhotra termed a “super connected world,” cars will essentially mesh with the environment.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
[Infographic] The Future of Social Mobile Communications in the Enterprise
Apr 12th
The nature of work has been changed by the mobile phone. This is an undisputable fact. It’s also a fact that organizations and enterprises have not always coped well with this revolution.
The early stages of mobility in the workplace were fairly simple: A couple top executives had private cellphones with numbers that only the most important people could reach. The wall between the C-suite and the rest of enterprises began to erode with the rise of the BlackBerry, as mobile email became pervasive through the entire corporate structure. But we’re still waiting for the next step.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
SPONSOR MESSAGE: What the Future Holds for Search Agencies
Apr 10th
As social and mobile have gained momentum, the search agency landscape looks radically different than it used to. This webcast featuring Forrester Research’s Senior Analyst Sean Corcoran will tell you: The importance of social media Why technology innovation is now the new creative How to…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
SEO: Preparing for future Google algorithm changes – Crain’s Chicago Business (blog)
Apr 9th
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SEO: Preparing for future Google algorithm changes
Crain’s Chicago Business (blog) Here are five things you can focus on to help your SEO results improve now and in the future. 1. Don't spam: Search engines have never liked spammers, and neither should you. You are better off not using META tags, than to have them cluttered with … Long Island Search Engine Optimization Company, Benjamin Marc Gives Tips why … Over Optimization Penalty Is Coming – Has your SEO strategy changed yet? Link Building Company Announces an Increase in the Search for Keyword … |
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Google Project Glass Sees the Future of Augmented Reality
Apr 5th
Google says that its Project Glass team is aiming to create an augmented reality platform that will bring the benefits of Google’s mapping and social networking platforms into real-world experiences – thanks to a “Star Trek”-like headset system.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
In This Bright SEO Future, Don’t Forget The Basics – Search Engine Land
Apr 5th
 Search Engine Land |
In This Bright SEO Future, Don't Forget The Basics
Search Engine Land And I say this with more joy than usual, since March was a crazy month for SEO. If you made it through March without an email from Google or a penalty from Google or a drop in Google organic search traffic due to Panda updates or paidlink-related … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
In This Bright SEO Future, Don’t Forget The Basics
Apr 5th
We finally made it to April, folks! And I say this with more joy than usual, since March was a crazy month for SEO. If you made it through March without an email from Google or a penalty from Google or a drop in Google organic search traffic due to Panda updates or paidlink-related issues, [...]
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
How the iPad Will Fit Into Your Future Smart Home
Apr 4th
Since jumpstarting the tablet market two years ago, the iPad has found its way into a few distinct niches in our lives. Since its first generation, the device (and those like it) have been used heavily for content consumption: reading, watching video and, to a lesser extent, streaming music.
Tablets have since begun maturing into tools for content creation, including video editing and multitrack music recording. Despite early criticism of their limitations, tablets even help people stay productive at work.
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There’s little doubt that, in the future, these devices will be even more thoroughly integrated into our lives. For clues about how thoroughly, look no further than the emerging smart home market and the products that are already finding their ways into people’s homes.
We’re already seeing the tablet take center stage in “smart” household technology usage in the living room, for example. Your iPad can be used to control an Apple TV, effectively bringing iOS to the big screen. More commonly, tablets are used as second screen devices, on which users not only control the content they’re watching, but seek out supplementary content and interact with others on the social Web. With credible rumors of an Apple HDTV still making the rounds, it’s reasonable to expect the integration between television and tablets to grow even tighter.
Tablet-enhanced home entertainment is only the beginning.
Beyond the “Second Screen:” A Remote Control for the Whole House
As households are increasingly equipped with automation, smart TVs, energy management features and cloud-based security systems, tablets are becoming a sort of command-and-control hub, allowing us to dim the lights, open the curtains, engage the alarm or check in on our kids via video feed. All of this – and considerably more – can be done from inside the home or from halfway across the planet.
Control4 is a Utah-based company that builds the software upon which many home automation systems run. The company also operates a platform by the same name, for which developers can build apps that perform various tasks within smart homes.
In addition to licensing its software to thousands of electronics manufacturers, Control4 makes its own hardware and has an iPad app, which can be used to control security features, lighting, temperature and entertainment media. Want to turn on the dining room lights while you’re out of town to make it look like the house is still occupied? Turn the heat on a few minutes before you get home? That’s precisely the sort of thing that systems such as this enable.
As is often the case, when we say “iPad,” we really mean “tablet,” the market that will likely be dominated by Apple’s beloved device for the foreseeable future. Along with smartphones, they will become the hub of any connected, automated household in the future.
Control4 offers its own tablet-like hardware, in addition to its iPad app. Comcast’s Xfinity Home Security product, which is similar to what Control4 offers, can be controlled from an iOS app or from Comcast’s own custom hardware. That device comes equipped with a cellular data backup connection in case weather or an intruder knocks one’s broadband connection offline. Similarly, 3G and 4G iPads and Android tablets can be used to ensure that connectivity isn’t an issue in an emergency situation.
Another central component to systems like this is their use of Web-connected video cameras for security. Home surveillance systems used to be prohibitively expensive, but advances (and price drops) in Web cam technology, coupled with the reliance on cloud storage for footage, have helped drive those costs down considerably.
Live feeds from cameras installed in and around the home can be viewed from proprietary touchscreen tablets such as those sold by vendors including Control4 and Comcast, or they can be watched remotely via apps for iOS and, in some cases, Android. This offers a sense of security to homeowners, and for teenagers, probably something more like terror.
Regardless of how you feel about it, the homes of the future will be more connected and automated. If you think your tablet or other mobile device feels like the center of your universe now, just wait until it can dim the lights, queue up the DVR and communicate with the WiFi-enabled refrigerator.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Why The Future of Shazam Is TV, Not Music
Apr 3rd
Shazam is one of the most popular smartphone apps of all time. Most people know it as that clever app that “listens” to a song and identifies the name of it. Today Shazam released the fifth major version of its iPhone app. But what’s more interesting is Shazam’s increasing focus not on music… but television.
Shazam is in the midst of a major pivot. Currently it earns most of its revenue off advertising from the music app. But within two years, the company told ReadWriteWeb, TV will provide the majority of Shazam’s revenue. Just how big an opportunity is TV for Shazam? According to statistics from the company, it is already outpacing both Facebook and Twitter in second screen user engagement.
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Since early 2010, Shazam has been gradually implementing and trialling TV-focused content in its app. The company is aiming squarely at the lucrative second screen app market. These are smartphone or tablet apps that interact with your television, as a kind of “second screen” for content. Shazam Executive VP of Marketing David Jones told ReadWriteWeb that Shazam for TV is “like the mouse for TV.” Meaning you can use Shazam to navigate extra content for TV shows.
How Shazam For TV Works
How does Shazam for TV work? If you see the Shazam logo pop up in a TV program (see screenshot to the left), you can open the Shazam app on your smartphone and access extra content. The first TV show that Shazam “enabled” for this extra content was Covert Affairs, on the USA network. The content available through the Shazam app included episode information and video, character details and a Florence & The Machine song that featured in one episode.
Much of the TV functionality in Shazam relies on “calls to action” from within the media itself – in the form of the Shazam logo popping up on your TV screen. That’s a little different to how you use Shazam for music, where you explicitly launch the app to discover song titles. However, in both music and TV, Shazam is leading you to discover extra content. Or, in the company’s parlance, leading you to “tag” content.
With music, it can be as simple as tagging the song title. Often I simply close the app after I’ve discovered who’s singing a song. But if I wanted to, I could browse extra content based on that tag – such as YouTube videos by the same artist, a list of similar artists and other related content.
Show Shazam The Money!
The problem Shazam has faced over the years is that it’s been difficult to generate revenue off the extra content it offers around music. TV offers a potentially much greater revenue platform for Shazam, because they can partner with TV networks and – more significantly – TV advertisers.
Shazam’s evolution into TV programming since 2010
Live TV events are a prime market for the new Shazam. It partnered with a number of brands who advertised on TV coverage of the 2012 Super Bowl and the 2012 Grammy Awards Show. Indeed, more than a third of Super Bowl ads were Shazam enabled.
Shazam has shown impressive growth since its launch in 2008. The company told ReadWriteWeb that its app has over 200 million users now (the image above, which states 180m, is slightly out-of-date) and is adding 1.5 million new users every week. From this increasingly large user base, Shazam is getting 6 million tags a day.
Comparison with Facebook & Twitter
According to statistics Shazam compiled, tagging a TV show with Shazam compares favorably with activity on Twitter and Facebook during the day the show airs. In the chart below, Shazam compares its tags with tweets and Facebook likes.
I suspect that the Shazam calls to action had a lot to do with the high engagement. Even so, any positive comparison to Twitter and Facebook is a great sign for a social app.
Shazam’s David Jones told us that tweets and check-ins (from apps like GetGlue and Miso) are not compelling enough for users. The bonus content a user gets on Shazam, he suggested, is more compelling. Twitter and the check-in apps would argue that the social activity they provide around TV programming is more than enough value-add. Shazam is betting that the media content it provides has even more value. Time will tell – right now there seems plenty of room for both approaches to second screen apps.
Second Screen Future
Shifting to the lucrative world of second screen apps is a great move by Shazam. It also has an opportunity to extend its music presence as a second screen experience, as music becomes a more interactive experience too.
The opportunity is there for Shazam, because there isn’t a clear market leader currently with second screen apps. GetGlue, Miso and similar apps are also targeting this market (albeit focusing on social) and doing well, but nobody has become a player with the market recognition that, for example, Spotify has in music.
Let us know if you’ve used Shazam for TV and if so, what you think of it.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
