Technology
Where is an App that tell me What to Watch on TV Right Now?
Going through the hundreds of channels available on the on-screen guide of modern cable boxes looking for something to watch right now is a crazy experience.
Sometimes you have just a few minutes to spare and spend most of them scrolling through dozens of cooking shows, reality TVs, old episodes of Seinfeld, and tons of how-to-get-skinny programming. It’s insane, yet we all do this every day. Is it possible that nobody came up with a better way?
What about an App that looks at what I watch/record and shows me a sorted list of what to watch right now?
It could build a list of my favorite shows interfacing with my cable box, my DVR, my Hulu account or Apple TV. Each show on the list could be scored by how many times I watch (or re-watch) episodes and the programming schedule can be based on my zipcode and cable provider.
Whenever I open this App, it should show the list of shows/episodes that I could watch right now, and not just a bunch of channels names. The list could be sorted as: (1) new episodes from shows I like, (2) good episodes that I’ve already seen from shows I like and then (3) good episodes from shows I do not follow.
I can easily foresee this application to be integrated into every cable box. It would be an awesome user experience. So why hasn’t that be done yet? It is not complicated.
In a previous post I forecasted that in a few years the TV will be completely on-demand and perhaps merged with Internet videos. When that happens, the need for this kind of approach to programming selection will still be even more important. Having all the shows of the world ready at the press of a button will make it even harder to pick one to watch.
Forget the Filter Bubble, Personalization done Right will just Hide what you Really Don’t Like
In the last month more and more of my friends are talking about the negative effects of personalization for news websites and search results. Eli Pariser even wrote a book about it and sold lots of copies.
The points made in “The Filter Bubble: What The Internet Is Hiding From You” are correct but certainly not new.
Most of the personalization systems today are based on collaborative filtering, a technique made famous in 2007 thanks to a paper by Google. This approach is based on the assumption that somewhere in the Internet there are some other users similar to you, and what they like may interest you as well.
For example, if John likes A, B and C, and Bob likes B, C and D, it’s very possible that John may find D interesting and that Bob may like A as well. Pretty simple, right?
The central argument made by the book is that these systems are recommending to people more and more of “their kind of stuff”, which makes it hard for them to reach/discover something outside of their comfort zone. Touche. If things are not done correctly, that is exactly what will happen.
Personalization done right, should actually do the opposite: hide things that you will definitely not like
A personalization system designed correctly will hide only the things that is sure the user will not like, and there is really no harm in doing that. What is left, needs to be ranked appropriately. It is ok to rank higher what the system believes the user will be interested in, but it is necessary to keep throwing in a few outliers, to monitor the user response (perhaps she clicking on everything) and avoid to end up in local optimums.
It does not just apply to news or search results, but to every recommendation/personalization system. That house in Seattle on sale for $3 Million? Out of my price range and in a place I don’t like, so, hide it. That book about knitting center pieces? Not likely to interest me right now, so, ditch it. That news about New Zeland election of a new Prime Minister? I can probably wait to hear about it, so, screen it out.
Hiding things that I do not like will help me discover more of the stuff I might like. In addition I am sure to do not miss out on things that I definitively am interested in.
Creating such a system is clearly a bit more complicated than building a vanilla collaborative filtering algorithm, so, make sure you do not go cheap while picking your Artificial Intelligence guy.
Improving Mass Transportation Efficiency using Credit Cards
In these last weeks I have taken multiple subway, trains and busses, all across the US. For each of them, before boarding, I had to purchase some sort of ticket/pass with enough credits to go from my departure point to the destination.
On the California’s BART, for example, one is required to purchase a single-use ticket with enough credit before boarding. The system is a bit cumbersome for everyone. There is a list of destinations reachable from the current station attached to each tickets selling machine. Each station is marked with a price. Once you have figured out your cost of transportation you have to put money in the machine, or swipe your debit card, and then add/remove money until you reach the desired amount. When that is done, click “print the ticket”. NJ Transit has similar vending machines, but at least they ask you first where you want to go, and then require you to insert enough credits.
Since all those tickets contain a magnetic stripe, which is read by a reader at the gates somewhere before boarding and after leaving the train/subway, what about we skip the tickets all together for who wants to pay with credit card?
At boarding time you swipe the credit card at the gate, instead of the ticket. The system remembers time, place and credit card numbers. Once arrived, swipe again the card at the exit gate, and the system calculates the amount due and bills it on the card.
No ticket necessary, lots of time saved, and trees spared.
As an additional benefit, there will be a good amount of data on how people move between stations and at which times. These datapoints will be a goldmine for who organizes the routes and schedules since will allow a great deal of optimizations which will reduce costs, inverse efficency and ultimately also make passengers happier.
And for all of you who are still freaked out by “big brother theories”, there will still be a way to pay cash, but trust me, it’s not going to help you stay “under the radar”.
Future of TV? Everything on-demand with Targeted ADs
At first there was TiVo, then basically all the cable companies followed with their own DVR solution.
Having a DVR is great. No tapes, no timers to set, no rushing home to see your favorite show. You just need to remember to record it and it will be there went you want to watch it.
But there are still some problems for the user: (1) you have to remember to record things, (2) you can record only a limited amount of shows at the same time, (3) space on the device is limited and (4) you have to pay attention on which channel you record the series/show, if it is HD, etc.
Completely On-Demand and Available on every Device
The TV of the future solves all these problems being completely on-demand. You can just turn it on, select your show/episode and start watching it. Not much different by what people do on Hulu.com today.
Shows will start to be available whenever they would normally be aired, but the users will not have to remember to record them. They will just be streamed directly to their boxes. Once the system is in place, and a profile of each user is created, the TV company could also start to pre-seed shows to the DVRs using some sort of Torrent client across their network.
Everything will clearly also be available on your phone, iPad, iPod, laptop, … There will be personalized recommendations, chat groups, and a show that you started watching on a device will be seamlessly available on all the others.
Targeted ADs that can not be Skipped
A big problem for the network introduced by the user of the DVRs is the ability for watchers to skip ADs. Another, which they probably ignore at the moment, is that ADs may not make sense if watched at a different time of the day. For example, a pizza AD in the morning? Not so effective. Coffee at night? No, thank you. A limited time offer for the weekend watched on the next Tuesday? Will not work.
In the TV of the future, customers will not be able to skip the ADs (or maybe just 1 every 3) and the ADs will be picked based on the demographic of the show played, the time of the day, the weather, current event, etc, like Google AdSense. For example, a girl watching Desperate Housewives at 8pm on Tuesday night will see different ADs than a woman who watches the same show on Wednesday morning, who, in turn, will see different ADs than a guy who watches the show on the following Saturday afternoon.
The subscription model may also have to change. Perhaps we will pay per shows watched, rather than by number of channels available. It may also be completely free, since the audience will be captive and ADs more effective. Companies will be willing to pay more for Analytics and Targeting, and Real-Time Bidding will help drive prices.
Get More Effective with Email: use Smart Folders and Tags in Thunderbird
Email overload is common between who works in technology. Launching a new Startup with my co-founders located in other parts of the US exponentially increased the number of messages that I/we receive and send every day.
While our email is maintained on Google Apps servers, I still prefer to use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client. Starting from version 3 they added two functionalities that can become pretty handy if you use email as your main medium of communication: Tags and Smart Folders.
You can define tags following the menu “Edit -> Preferences -> Display -> Tags”.
As you can see, I defined 3 tags:
- End of Day (red)
- Tomorrow Morning (orange)
- End of Week (light blue)
I mark all the emails that I send/receive and should get my attention at the end of this business day with the first tag, the one for tomorrow with the second, and the one to check on by the end of the week with the third tag. It’s easy to keep track of things using these tags: every night, before leaving the office, I check to have handled everything I have to, and I do the same when I come in in the morning, or on Friday evening.
Smart Folders are basically “virtual folders” which show messages matching certain search patterns.
I created one that I called “Important Emails” and set it to monitor my Inbox for
- Unread Emails
- Starred Emails
- Emails with Tags
In this way I can just keep that folder open in my Thunderbird and be able to monitor all the important stuff going on.
