TV Gets Personal: Social Networking Through Set-Top Boxes

By Ron Callari

In the last year, “social T.V.” has emerged as the new technology that supports communication and interaction in the context of watching television and its content. It’s a general term that was spawned as a result of the popularity of our current fascination with social media and user-generated content on the Internet. Interpreted in a lot of different ways, social television systems can integrate voice communication, text chat, presence and context awareness, TV recommendations, ratings or video-conferencing with the TV set.

Some see social television as the melding of both technologies, i.e. the Internet and TV. It can include television-related social behavioral patterns and data that can be fed to one’s desktop computers as is currently being developed by BackChannelMedia’s Clickable TV.

This year’s BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing series, which can be viewed live on the BBC’s website, elicits direct interaction with the viewing audience. Their ‘Strictly Social‘ website allows fans to predict judges’ scores, post their text comments in a real-time chat box and answer quiz questions pertaining to the Brits’ version of “Dancing with the Stars.”

But to date, according to Gurminder Singh, CTO of the award-winning social networking software-based service MoSoNex, “there’s been no other service currently on the market that offers live streaming of videos, photos and actual programming to TV,” that is user-generated.

The widely popular SNL sketch Wayne’s World of the ’90s comes to mind. In discussing user-generated programming with Singh, he noted that using the MoSoNex software-based service anybody, “can set up one’s own TV broadcast that can go on the air, on a scheduled basis.” However since this is the next dimension in social media, Singh sees a lot of competition entering this space quickly. “We’re probably going to see this on a broad scale  - just as the Internet turned everyone into a content publisher, just as blog networks expanded rapidly, we believe consumers everywhere will build private TV networks,” Singh says.

The Way It Works
MoSoNex, based in Singapore, Honeoye Falls, New York and the Silicon Valley, has developed proprietary, patent-pending technology to deliver photos and video directly from one’s mobile smartphone to the TV via an Internet TV set-top box. The TV set-top box allows MoSoNex’s technology to bypass cable operators, telecom providers and other intermediaries. Since most consumers are already connected to an off-the-shelf Internet TV set-top box, the connectivity channel is already in place.

Singh asserted that where they do have partnership deals with cable companies, the consumer will not need to have access to the TV’s set-top box, and MoSoNex is in the process of presently developing those joint collaborations.

Fees
MoSoNex is a low-cost, subscription-based service. Consumers who subscribe to MoSoNex directly can expect a monthly subscription cost of less than $20, depending on the level of service. The software is free. The only other fees for the consumer are those associated with the set top box and a 3G smartphone service, which many consumers already have.

Social Connections
By incorporating the TV into the social networking mix, MoSoNex is providing a unique service to the consumer. Singh says, “the possibilities are literally endless for individuals and companies alike.” For example, “bloggers can in effect become broadcasters, telcos can gain a major competitive advantage and TV manufacturers can build new interactivity into their offerings,” he adds.

On a personal level, ‘MoSoNex Family Connect‘ allows families to stay connected with this service. Parents and grandparents can receive photo and video transmittals sent by their loved ones directly to their TVs and then access them by simply using their remote control. According to Joy M. Schellentrager, an 86-year old grandmother who resides at Dominican Oaks, a retirement community in California, “MoSoNex Family Connect enables me see photos of my family moments after they are taken.”

However since MoSoNex will not officially launch until 2010, the beta technology hasn’t been out long enough for consumers to build the kind of private networks that will eventually become prevalent next year.

Regarding future user-generated content, in querying Singh on the potential transfer of X-rated photos and videos via MoSoNex, he indicated that “MoSoNex is not a broadcast medium. It simply relies on the existing technology of TV and the Internet and the opt-in option of the consumers.” Consequently MoSoNex “is a technology enabler of private social networking channels that include TV as a device, and [as such] we’re not in the business of regulating the content our customers choose to send,” he says.

In November, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) announced its International Best of Innovations 2010 award honorees and MoSoNex was named the best in ‘Social Networks,’ which distinguishes the company as one of 36 firms that have made significant advancements in design and engineering.

Singh believes MoSoNex is “the next dimension in social media, and just as the Internet turned everyone into content publishers, just as blog networks expanded rapidly, we believe consumers everywhere will build private TV networks.” When that occurs MoSoNex is primed to be the go-to social networking channel that will have pioneered its way in becoming the first service to bridge the gap between user-generated content and television broadcasting.

Ron Callari is a freelance journalist and editorial cartoonist whose work has been published on AlterNet, CounterPunch and the Sacramento News & Review. He is currently a social media blogger for InventorSpot.com and the author of two graphic novels.

Streaming Content: Disney’s Key Opens Pandora’s Box

By John Greaves

On Oct. 29, Disney let out a teaser to the media about its Keychest Project, which is designed to “shift what it means for a consumer to own a movie or a TV show, by redefining ownership as access rights, not physical possession.” Keychest has been the subject of several articles and blogs about whether it will work and if its success will finally draw the curtain on DVD sales. While it may take a while before DVDs finally breathe their last, digital consumption of movies is on the rise and the Keychest project may be another step toward increasing that consumption.

One important point to remember is we already have the technology to stream movies. “Comcast has IP technology now which is being used for Video on Demand and Fancast,” according to Jenni Moyer of Comcast Communications, a member of Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) - Disney’s competition.

What is new about Keychest and the competing project by DECE is an attempt to go beyond streaming movies to one device and instead make it available to all Internet-capable platforms. Many believe the DECE project is the same as Comcast’s mysterious Excalibur project. Both Excalibur and Keychest have to deal with the issue of Digital Rights Management, the major obstacle to watching content on multiple platforms. Some advocate getting rid of DRM altogether, but that ignores the reality that studios expect a financial return on their product investments. That’s difficult to do when one person buys it then sends it free to all their friends.  Disney sources say they are aware of “a desire to protect intellectual property” and Keychest will work with DRM. “Keychest is a tech solution allowing DRM systems to exist. It allows interoperability because it separates rights from content,” says a Disney spokesman, who asked not be named.

The DECE on the other hand isn’t yet ready to publicly address DRM. Moyer would only say, “We’re looking at how this new technology can create a better experience.”

Disney says its project differs from what the DECE is working on in that “the DECE is creating a closed system that would compete with existing regimes whereas ours is open. They’re trying to build an ecosystem and we’re not.” To demonstrate the inclusive nature of their project, Disney says,”We’ve shown this to everybody including some inside the DECE.”

The question of which product is better will be decided by consumer demand but both Disney and DECE stand to face resistance from those consumers who still want a physical product. Aside from the physical satisfaction of holding a purchased movie, there is also a certain sense of security in knowing that any time you feel like watching it all you have to do is get it off the shelf and put it into the player. With Keychest a consumer would have to rely on an access code to get the movie streamed to the device of choice. “Your content would be stored using single file media storage on an upgradeable server and Keychest would access the digital locker which would keep track of your rights,” the Disney spokesman says.

To hear how Keychest works, makes is seem as though Disney has solved the great problem of streaming digital content. “If you bought a movie off of Amazon for example, and wanted to play it on your iPhone, it would take on the DRM characteristics of iTunes, if you tried to play it on your Xbox, it would adopt the DRM characteristics of Microsoft,” the Disney spokesman says. The insider admits it’s not an automatic process: “Each company with an online platform would have to sign on to the program,” he says. Disney even feels that Keychest might discourage online piracy. “Piracy is a business model we need to compete with,” the Disney source says. “We think if we make it easier to buy than steal, people will buy.”

But thinking about cloud storage brings an image of the recent T-mobile fiasco. Disney says,”Keychest would give permanence of rights, even if the original seller went under you would still own your content rights.” But it might still be a good idea to hang on to the DVD collection just in case.

As for who would step up to pilot Keychest, Disney is likely counting on early adopters among its current customers. According to Gerry Kaufhold, principle analyst for the market research firm In-Stat, “Disney has a dedicated group of fans; they’ll be able to get some percent of the Disney fan base to use it because it provides portability of their content and permanence of their content,” says Kaufhold, who was quoted in an article for Video Business.

Of course DRM isn’t the only obstacle. Disney and the DECE also face the problem of who pays for the additional bandwidth this will take. To run movies in 1080p resolution will mean a lot of bandwidth and a constant streaming Internet connection. So if you want to watch a movie on a road trip you’ll probably still need to grab the DVDs. It’s also problematic that the U.S. doesn’t have the fiber infrastructure to support widespread use of cloud-based VOD. Disney admits, “We haven’t gotten as far as bandwidth or who will manage the server or what the fiber network will have to look like for this to work,” but emphasizes Keychest’s advantage over downloads. “The rights server will be in the cloud and the content will stream to you so it’s not going to eat up a lot of hard drive space.”

The buzz Disney and the DECE have created may be enough to get early adopters. If the products live up to the hype, opinion leaders among those early adopters may sway the masses join in.

John Greaves is a writer living in Dallas, Ga. His work has appeared in newspapers, magazines and websites.

Interactivation

Parents may get peeved when their kids talk back, but marketers and advertisers love it when they can get consumers to talk back to them about their products and services. Creating that back-and-forth conversation, though, has been a challenge. Interactivation, (formerly known as Mag Rack), has come up with a solution that should gladden the hearts of these contemporary Mad Men: Dialog Engine - an interactive video tool that transforms traditional one-way brand messaging into an interactive and immersive video experience. Originally conceived as an interactive speech and texting project for MTV Networks, Dialog Engine is a proprietary scripted conversation technology that allows customers to respond to video assets and connects video, text and voice interactions.

Features:

• Improve interaction and response rates
• Respond to consumer input
• Generate “lean forward” interactions with motivated/interested consumers
• Can start SMS texting dialogs

Dialog Engine was tested, proven and leveraged on Interactivation’s two wholly-owned Video-on-Demand cable networks, Mag Rack and CONCERT.TV, which are available in over 30 million homes in major U.S. markets.

Search Takes a Sentimental Journey

By Ned Smith

The latest heavyweight to grab for the brass ring on the search carousel is Microsoft’s revamped, reinvented and rebranded Bing, which boldly bills itself as “the first ever decision machine.” Its claim to a larger hunk of intellectual real estate is one more example that the search business has gone beyond its humble keyword roots.

Today, sentiment analysis is the new frontier in search, extending the whole text analytics discipline into the thorny thicket of the opinions of people to gauge their likes and dislikes. In his article for Communications of the ACM, “Our Sentiments, Exactly,” author Alex Wright (Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages) asked analytics strategist Seth Grimes to describe this discipline extension: “Sentiment Analysis is a set of algorithms and tools for identifying and extracting a) features that express attitudes or opinions, b) attributes that indicate sentiment polarity, intensity and other characteristics, c) the topics those sentiments and attributes apply to, and, optimally, d) the opinion holder,” Grimes says.

This is the highly subjective, unstructured text world of “I feel, I think, I want.” What makes this such dicey territory? “Sentiments are very different from conventional facts,” Grimes tells Wright. “Cultural and contextual factors come into play” who’s ‘speaking,’ where is that person speaking, who is she or he speaking to? There’s lots of slang ― phat, cool, bomb, snap ― and ambiguity ― ‘sinful’ is a good thing when applied to chocolate cake ― as well as sarcasm, irony and idiom.”

It’s something that human beings excel at. But it can eat up huge chunks of time. Computers aren’t the answer. Fast though they may be, computers can be pretty thick when it comes to picking up on emotion and tone. The goal is try to find a way to marry human insight and computational speed.

This is not turf for the faint of heart or those discomfited by nuance and ambiguity. Those pitfalls notwithstanding, though, a growing band of start-up hopefuls and veteran vendors are lighting out for this frontier.

One of the promising new ventures in this space is Jodange. Headquartered in a renovated 1900 trolley barn in Yonkers, N.Y. overlooking the Hudson River a few miles north of New York City, Jodange takes its name from a conflation of the names of CEO and co-founder Larry Levy’s children ― Josh, Daniel and Geena. The other co-founder and Jodange’s chief scientist is Claire Cardie, who is also a professor at Cornell University’s Department of Computer Science, where her primary research is in the area of natural language understanding and intelligent text processing.

The company was founded in 2006 because “we wanted to solve a really specific problem,” Levy says. “We saw information online growing at an exponential rate.” And keyword search ― that “blunt instrument,” as he describes it ― wasn’t hacking it. It’s good at finding things, but woefully inadequate when it comes to extracting meaning.

Jodange uses linguistic analysis to extract opinions from documents and identify the opinion holder and topic each opinion expresses. It ignores any sentence or phrase deemed to be factual, and instead focuses on phrases that are subjective in order to determine the sentiment ― positive, neutral or negative ― of the subjective statement. “We look for well-constructed language,” Levy says. There is a pipeline of up to 30 algorithms, he says, that serves as an information filter to weed out the dross.

“We’re the only company that can do that kind of analysis,” Levy says. Competitors, he adds, “can’t pick up who the real opinion holder is. That nuance is lost on 99 percent of the people doing this.”

“On a daily basis,” he says, “there are 600,000 to 650,000 pieces of information from 435,000 sources that are worth processing.” Jodange’s information sources include its own Web crawlers, Factiva and moreover. “We’re trying to get at the information sources of that content,” Levy says. “Where is the meaningful stuff?”

Sentiment analysis, he says, lives or dies on its degree of accuracy. The key test for accuracy for Jodange is inter-annotation agreement ― a metric based on two people reading the same document and scoring it the same way. Jodange claims a 77-79 percent agreement rate. “You’ll never get a system that is 100-percent accurate,” he says.

Though Jodange is a newcomer, its underlying technology has been gestating for a number of years at Cornell. “Claire has been worrying about this problem for more than 10 years,” Levy says. “It’s fantastic having Cornell as a partner. I know I have the best people on the planet to do what we do. We have the world’s leading experts in this field. The key issue for our next wave of things is scalability and what we call disambiguation.”

Jodange’s offering now comes in two flavors: Opinion Utility for Publishers, which matches and resurfaces opinions extracted from a publisher’s network of sites, including reader comments, and Top of Mind, an application that provides media monitoring across social and traditional media. The latter is targeted at the corporate market with a starting price of $2,000 a month for up to 10 users. The Opinion Utility for Publishers starts at $8,000 a month for top-tier publishers.

Anyone who has spent much time around people in the text mining and sentiment analysis field is familiar with concepts such as “entity extraction” and “tokenization.” Simply put, entity extraction and tokenization describe the processes that translate text into a form that computers can understand.

Data Portability: Where MySpace, Facebook and Twitter connect

Prominent social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn are allowing their data to be accessed by users in a one-stop-shop kind of way.

By Lauren Fritsky

Data portability has become the new Oz. The buzz phrase for the process of sharing and reusing user data across applications on various websites, several providers claim to be taking steps toward it. But with no streamlined process or guidelines, concerns about privacy and the ability to truly share information without remaining locked behind the “walled garden” of each site have emerged.

That’s where the DataPortability Project steps in. Founded in 2007, the group’s mission is to encourage providers to use data portability in a responsible way that allows users to control their personal information.  Members of DataPortability include MySpace and Facebook.

“The complexity lies in the fact it’s a new paradigm of doing business that requires a cross-disciplinary set of people to solve the problem — it’s a cultural change that needs time,” says Elias Bizannes, vice chair of the organization. “As an advocacy group, we balance a fine line and focus more on educating rather than dictating. Ultimately, we can only influence the market, as we cannot necessarily control it.”

So which companies are stumbling down the path of data portability, and how are they doing it? Here’s a sampling. (Note: these providers do not necessarily have the backing of the DataPortability group).

MySpace
Through its Data Availability initiative launched last year, MySpace partnered with Yahoo, eBay, Twitter and its Photobucket subsidiary to allow real-time data sharing. The project then evolved into MySpaceID, which make user information, photos and friends lists available to third-party vendors. These partners can present the data on their sites and allow synchronization of friends lists or recommendations of friends from other sites such as Twitter. MySpace users previously could share their data with widgets.

Facebook
Facebook Connect allows users to connect their Facebook information and friends lists to other sites. It also allows users to show other offsite activity, such as what causes they donated to and what events they’re attending, on their pages. In May, Facebook began allowing users to log in with their OpenID credentials.

Power.com
Power lets users enter their log-in information for MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Hi5 or Orkut to see their social network updates and contacts from each network simultaneously. The site is currently involved in a lawsuit with Facebook, to which it previously allowed access. Facebook sued Power.com in January for copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act.

Google
Google’s Orkut, which is more popular in Brazil and India then in the United States, is Google’s social networking and discussion site. It allows developers to access data from social networks through the OpenSocial tool.

Another Google option that uses the OpenSocial tool is Google Friend Connect, which allows website owners to see, invite and interact with friends from social sites on the Web such as Facebook and Orkut.

AOL
Social networking site Bebo, which was bought by AOL last year, has a Lifestream Platform that allows users to get updates from friends from Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and elsewhere.

Plaxo
Plaxo, which is now a subsidiary of Comcast, has social network site Pulse. Pulse maintains it “is not a ‘walled garden,’” but rather allows users to share what they do everywhere on the Web using OpenID. Pulse members can connect their accounts to more than 30 sites, including Flickr, Twitter and Yelp. Users control who sees their info.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn allows members to gather and share data with several applications. For instance, Blog Link enables users to grab the latest blog posts from their networks, and WordPress bloggers can sync their posts to their profiles. Amazon Reading List lets users see what their peers are reading, and Company Buzz enables them to see what customers are saying about their company and monitor messages on blogs and Twitter.

Microsoft
Microsoft last year announced a partnership with five social networks to allow Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn to add friends using their Windows Live address book.

WordPress
WordPress now has BuddyPress, a third-party plug-in set that lets users create a social network of their blog readers out of a multiple user WordPress installation (WordPress MU). There’s one for Twitter, so you can see people’s latest tweets next to their profiles, another that lets you invite friends from Facebook, Gmail and a link to Facebook Connect, which lets you sign in using your Facebook account.

Yahoo
Yahoo allows its users to access multiple websites through OpenID.

Lauren Fritsky is a freelance writer and professional blogger based outside Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in several newspapers and magazines and on sites such as AOL and CNN.

Down To Earth: Google Solidifies Loyalty Among Developers

By David Collins

Standard wisdom – and the gist of Google’s product presentations – tells us that the basic difference between Google Earth and Google Maps is dimensional. Maps is a 2D interface whereas Earth is a 3D environment. Google Earth is a virtual world where you can tilt, pan and fly through 3D terrain. Maps is a flat world where you can find street names and local businesses.

The z-axis truly differentiates Google Earth from hosted mapping solutions that Google, Microsoft and other companies provide. One more dimension, though, doesn’t tell us when to choose Google Earth. There’s another rule of thumb that can guide developers’ choices about what kind of terrain-mapping products of the day might best serve a project’s requirements.

For developers, Google Earth generally offers more depth, while Google Maps offers more reach – more access to more users. For web users, Google Earth can mean access to more data, whereas Google Maps can mean greater accessibility for users.

Originally, Earth implementations were limited because it was first a stand-alone software, downloaded and run from a proprietary browser using an internet connection. Upscale users can access an enhanced commercial version, and pay for offline access to some of Google’s map data, but Google Earth is also an accessible web application. With Google’s Javascript API, developers can embed Google Earth into web pages – so long as visitors can be persuaded to download and install the plugin.

That shuts out some business users who have to consult an IT department and sometimes even persuade a management hierarchy to extend desktop functionality. It turns away the harried web user, and discourages those wary of anything that requires administration of their software environment.

Google Maps, or maps from MSN or Yahoo!, on the other hand, are accessible to anyone who opens a web page in a modern browser. The trouble with Maps is when you start to crunch too much data. Too many markers and overlays can drag a map application to the ground and create download times of more than a minute. Google Earth, on the other hand, imports large data data sets as KML or even zipped KMZ files – an XML format that lets developers easily manage complex arrays of dynamic features, locations and embedded information.

Compared to Google Maps, Google Earth is a nimble fighter jet. Yes, there’s a flight simulator in the offline rendition. Google Maps uses the same flat mapping technology as Magellan and Columbus. Otherwise, the two have grown somewhat identical in their features. Earth not only embeds in web pages, it can be toggled in from a Maps application, so users who don’t take the Earth download get a Maps image.

Earth can access Maps’ robust geolocation tools. Each has satellite ground imagery – though much of it is a few years old. Google Earth goes further, providing real-time weather, but don’t expect to fly through clouds – satellite clouds are rendered as an overlay.

Each is delightfully AJAXy, able to asynchronously leverage a world of information without reloading the page and interrupting the user experience. The persistent difference is how much data Earth can bring on the screen at once, compared to Maps’ more limited capacity. The collection of available Google Earth data sets is growing daily. Cityscapes of once gray 3D buildings are now enhanced with oblique imagery, representing skyscraper facades. Google also hosts a growing collection of user-generated data sets.

Who uses Google Earth? I was surprised recently when a client asked for an e-commerce and affiliate sales system that lets web users purchase products through a Google Earth interface. The client sells terrain data and imagery for locations around the world, so Google Earth provides an ideal interface to present multiple overlays in a global scope.

Google Earth can be a useful e-commerce tool, but those applications are more an exception than the rule. That’s because, even with the Javascript API that embeds the plugin inside a web page, Google Earth’s download requirement is a step away from the all-important buy-button that moves users toward a purchase. In e-commerce that’s often one step too many. The Google Earth installations I found tend to cater toward more cerebral interests than toward commerce.

• Hobbiests use the virtual world to play armchair spy.
• Historians use Google Earth to map places of interest.
• Researchers have used Google Earth to find previously hidden ruins.
• The heavy-metal band Nine-Inch-Nails uses Google Earth to show fans locations of their concerts in three dimensions.
• Cops enforcing California’s drug laws use Google Earth to survey terrain around targeted cannibas farms.

Leszek Pawlowicz, author of the Free Geography Tools site, demonstrated the effect of rising waters in New York City during a storm surge, such as during what many say is a long-overdue hurricane. The New Orlean’s newspaper The Times Picayune opined that Google Earth can help the world understand the problem of erosion along the Gulf Coast.

Google Earth remains somewhat apart from the immediate access mass users expect from a web experience. Growing acceptance of the plugin, however, and an expanding collection of tools for developers to implement the plug-in for unique projects using a reasonably open KML language, have nonetheless established Google’s virtual world as the preferred online immersive 3D environment of our time.

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