LIVEdigitally

Category Archives: Product Announcements

Curved TVs are the new 3DTVs

Posted on by

20140108-162233.jpgApparently the hot, buzzy thing at CES this year is the curved OLED TVs. I saw one – it’s very very pretty. And much like the last 2 attempts by manufacturers to stir up interest in buying new sets, this just isn’t going to cut it.

Firstly, we all need to acknowledge the massive rush to buy new sets last decade occurred because of *multiple* factors that contributed to a zeitgeist-level shift in set ownership:

  • Thinness: sets went from being 2 feet deep to 6 inches or less deep
  • Size: sets went from 27 inches to 50 inches
  • Resolution: shift from below standard definition to high definition
  • Quality: not only the raw resolution, but every aspect of picture quality was obviously visually improved
  • Sex appeal: being early to having a plasma was sexy – then when it became mainstream enough, not having some kind of flatscreen was definitively unsexy
  • Format shifts: simultaneous to new sets, tons of new content was instantly available – and not just new content, but libraries of favorites were accessible
  • Set price: getting a flatscreen (at Costco!) was very very affordable
  • Content price: while VHS libraries were only for the few, building a collection of your favorite DVDs was relatively inexpensive (for younger readers: VHS tapes in the early 90s would sell for $80 or so)

All of the above occurred in an effective blink of an eye. There were so many reasons to to upgrade, it just had to happen.

But now that these beautiful, thin, huge displays got mounted on peoples’ walls, it’s become a lot harder to unmount them. I don’t even want to think about doing it – and I don’t think the manufacturers have yet presented us a reason to follow along.

Smart TV? OK, if I’m buying a new set. Or I just get an Apple TV, Roku, Xbox, Playstation, Chromecast, etc. I gain very little benefit from an actual set upgrade, compared with the cost of an add-on box that I can easily replace. It’s akin in my eyes to paying the extra $3+K for an in-dash GPS unit as opposed to buying a $100 Garmin, or just using my phone.

2nd try: 3dTV? Personally, I actually avoided one the last time I bought a set (63″ Samsung plasma – yes!). Turns out I wasn’t the only one, and 3d was (as I predicted it would be) quite a failure.

Batter up…. CURVED SETS! Huh? Don’t get me wrong – they are pretty in so many ways. Thinner than my iPad – love it, very slick. But would I even consider the hassle of the upgrade for it? Same deal for 4K – just not *enough* to cause another societal shift for “MORE”. Further, I think the curved nature of the device is an ill-fit for most living rooms, where the benefit of super-thin is eliminated by the odd shape in the room. Has anyone checked if these things are Feng Shui?

Sooner or later we’ll likely find the next big reason to upgrade displays, but it’ll have to rank in there in the leagues of when TV was first available to the masses, to when it first went color, to the current state, before it happens.

NextGuide, now with Amazon and more awesomeness

Posted on by

NextGuide, my personal favorite TV Guide app (that I built at the company I run), is now updated to include Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video alongside live TV, Hulu Plus, iTunes, and Netflix.  It’s really a great experience to browse all providers simultaneously and to search for shows and actually know where they are watchable. You can get the update here on the App Store.

That’s the “big” news (yes, adding a streaming provider with tens of thousands of hours of streamable shows and movies is a big deal IMHO), but we also took the time for a lot of across the board improvements to the app.  Here are some of the highlights:

>> New Gestures – two-finger swipe within showcards, pinch to hide, fullscreen media gallery, and more!

One of my favorite things about a great iPad experience is gestures. One of my favorite favorite things about any app is hidden features. While it’d be fun to document them everywhere, we’ve loaded up the NextGuide experience with many new gestures.  Explore around, let us know what you find and think of them!

>> Enhanced Cast & Crew with 1-click saved searches and Wikipedia biography lookups.

File this under “finally!”  When we shipped the 1.0 version, the cast and crew view just wasn’t that useful.  Now, go to the cast and crew tab for any movie or show, and tap on a person you are interested in.  Want to find more stuff from them?  Tap “add to interests.”

>> New Category Editor with easy drag & drop category setup

While we made removing/hiding categories really easy in the app, it’s always been a pain to add them. Now, push and hold on anywhere in the “Category Bar” to get a slick interface to add genres, custom genres, and trending topics.

>> Channel Setup now part of Initial Setup Wizard

The customer is always right, and lots of ours told us they didn’t like the fact they couldn’t customize their channel lineups until after launching the app.  Now you can.

>> Improved “Your Picks” algorithms

Let’s face it, recommending content is a very hard thing to get right. Our focus is to get beyond the baseline concept of “if you like this then you’ll like that.”  We’re constantly working to improve it, and I think our users will see a lot of progress in this department.

>> Lots of other little new features for you to explore throughout the app

Thanks again to every one of our users, even the 1-star reviews in the App Store – its the best way to learn, and learning is what we’re doing!

ps – sorry about not blogging much, just been working on, you know, everything you just read about.

Introducing NextGuide

Posted on by

It’s my pleasure to unveil my newest product, NextGuide.  NextGuide is a hyper-personalized TV listings guide designed specifically for the iPad™.  It’s been a six month labor of lots and lots of love, and I’m extremely excited to tell you about it.  In a nutshell?  We went to the drawing board and utterly reinvented the concept of the TV program guide.

If you think about the concept of a “guide” it’s something that’s evolved over 60 years from supporting 3 to 13 to 80 to 500+ channels.  But that’s really all it does, and let’s face it, we no longer live in a 500-channel world.  We live in a 500 channel, plus tens of thousands of hours of streaming content on services like Netflix, huge libraries of video on demand from our cable and satellite companies, as well as iTunes itself.  It’s effectively an infinite content landscape, and having so much content has crippled the formerly easy process of discovering shows to watch.

As an example, in my house at night, we start by browsing our DVR library, don’t see anything we’re in the mood for, then switch over to live TV.  After browsing (painfully) the grid for a while, we give up, turn on the Apple TV, and head to Netflix.  Netflix is great, but I have a tendency to see stuff I already know about – Mad Men, Dexter, Weeds, Breaking Bad, etc – all great shows, but not really anything new that I’m ready to consume.  Part of the problem here is catch-up TV: if I’ve never watched Mad Men before then I’m a good 80+ hours away from catching up to live, and that sounds painful.  Anyhow, after an unsuccessful attempt to find something to stream, I generally end up watching whatever’s on (either Cops, the Shawshank Redemption, or an infomercial), then go to sleep.  Sound familiar at all?

So we invented NextGuide, designed to actually help me discover things I *want* to watch. We do that by tilting the concept of Channels, Times, and Genres on its head a little, and instead focus on Shows, People, and Interests.

Shows – we believe people care more about the show they watch than the channel number or time it airs.  So NextGuide uses beautiful show cover art to make it easy to find things and “escape” the grid view of numbers and times.

People – we believe TV remains a central zeitgeist component to modern society. When was the last time you chatted with any friend about a show you like (or love)?  Probably in the past day or so.  NextGuide makes it ridiculously easy to turn conversations, not to mention Facebook Likes, into easily discoverable shows.

Interests – we believe people care about finding things of interest to them, personally.  We all have interests, from bands to sports, from cities to hobbies, and these interests define so much of our lives. NextGuide connects you to your interests, and finds them all on TV and streaming services, in a seamless, organic way.  Examples of what NextGuide’s found for me over the past few weeks: Bill Murray’s guest appearance on Letterman (seriously, how would I even have known that unless I watch every night??), a live Coldplay concert on Palladium (I didn’t even know the channel was in my lineup), and Bizarre Foods goes to San Francisco (not a show I normally care for, but had to see what Andrew found in my city).

That’s enough writing already, this is one of those apps you just have to experience to get a sense of what we’ve done. It’s a complete paradigm shift for TV viewing, and I’m happy to share it with you.  You can download it from the App Store, or watch our quick intro video below.

Introducing NextGuide from Dijit Media on Vimeo.

I can’t wait for your feedback, thanks so much for trying out the app.  Thanks to Apple for inventing the iPad so we could have such a cool platform to bring something like this to life. Extra special thanks to my family, friends, coworkers and investors who have made the process of inventing something disruptive more fun than I think I really deserve.

We are getting some amazing press so far today, here are some great pieces:

Oh, and here’s the actual announcement on our newly revised site!

No, Microsoft, this will not do. Not at all.

Posted on by

Microsoft introduced Windows 8 for developers today, with a specific focus on their take on the tablet.  Now some are fawning over this, but they clearly don’t recall a summer day in 2005 when Microsoft showed off Vista for the first time.  I was there. It was, in a word awesome. The early demos of Vista blew us all away, it was as if we were at the Windows 95 launch all over again.  Then Windows Vista came out, it was *nothing* like the demos, the train blew through the station, and the company’s been in a bit of a quagmire ever since, losing market share as well as credibility and prestige in virtually every category (other than Xbox).

roughly as on target as Vista was...

So today, when they show us a decently cool looking version of a tablet that isn’t going to ship for another year, after series of missteps, I’m sorry if I don’t really get particularly excited.  Particularly when I see it’s got a fan inside.  This entire move, yet again, makes me wonder: who on Earth are they building this for? What is the real market opportunity here?  Even if the Windows 8 tablet *is* as good as the current generation iPad 2, that’s chasing a product that’s already 6 months old, and will be 18 months old by the time they are in the market.  Didn’t these guys watch the movie called “HP and the Wacky Adventures of the TouchPad”?  We’ve seen how it ends!

works like nothing... else...

There really is a great market for non-iPad tablet devices, there are a few in fact.  And Microsoft is perfectly poised to build a really great tablet.  But I don’t think that perfect Microsoft tablet is about consumers, nor is it about Windows.  These markets are, at present and for the foreseeable future, mostly closed to Microsoft, and they’ll have little luck there.  So empty your heads, don’t think of anything – they’ve only got one shot at this. Microsoft needs to focus on the other key product they have, the one software package Apple can’t really touch, the one where they make a boatload of cash.  Yup, it’s Office.

yes, that WAS a Ghostbusters quote, well played!

I can write another 1000 or words on the topic, but I’m going to keep this one short and sweet.  There is unquestionably a great business opportunity in a tablet device with a great Office productivity software suite.  If the iPad is a consumption/entertainment device, then for jebus’ sake, Microsoft, learn how to cross-program, and offer a completely different thing.  And do it really well, with no big committees, and nobody who’s worked for the company for more than say 4 years.  And then go let Dell build it.  Oh, and don’t standardize (read: compromise) – make one product that works one way, no drivers, fragmentation, or anything else.

ah, that's how they get so much done!

And please, don’t tell me about it until it’s ready to ship.

Introducing NudgeMail!

Posted on by

I am so excited to announce Stage Two Labs newest creation: NudgeMail.

NudgeMail is the world’s first fully email-based reminder system. There is nothing to download, nothing to install and no username or password to remember. NudgeMail works on all connected devices and all email clients.  It’s simple, refined, elegant, powerful, and I’m loving it.  Seriously.

We’ve been testing it for a few months now, and in that time NudgeMail has simplified my email and my life. In the past, my inbox would be overflowing with hundreds of emails, the great majority of which I needed to deal with later.  Now?  My inbox sits with an average of 12-25 emails pending, with only 4 of them being more than 2 weeks old.

I can’t prove it, but I can certainly claim anecdotally that seeing an inbox with no scrollbars makes me feel like I’m in much more control over my time than I was before.  It’s a great feeling.

I recognize that some people like things like tasks, calendars, apps, widgets and external reminders. More power to them. I also know that there are many people like me who can’t make these other reminders work, but they can get email to work. My hope is that NudgeMail provides real value and benefits to people who need to organize their inboxes and their work flows.

For more on the story of how/why we launched NudgeMail, read here.  For a bit more on the design philosophy behind the product, read this.  For some third party opinions, you can read more about NudgeMail at the New York Times, Geek.com, Mark Evans Tech, TechVibes (includes a video interview with Adam and myself), and CNET.

Predictions for Apple event, Sept 1 2010

Posted on by


Watch live video from Jeremy Toeman on Justin.tv

In a nutshell:
– iPad iOS 4.0
– refreshed iPods, with wifi
– no 3x3cm iPod touch
– adding “touch” to iPod classic
– iTunes with internet streaming & sync
– no iTV announcement today
– iBeatles

Twitter in action: Live coverage of the Apple event

Posted on by

Per yesterday’s post on Twitter needing better demos, here’s a very (IMHO) useful way to follow live coverage, from multiple perspectives, using Twitter. I’ve created a “list” of people who are either live at the event, or following it closely. These people are more likely to tweet only about the Apple event during it. I’ve now taken the list, and embedded it here in the blog as a widget, to show the content. This means you, if the you in question is not a Twitterer, are now actually using the service. Enjoy.


As an aside, one of the “gotchas” about lists will be watching what happens to this same group of people’s content tomorrow. While there was a moment in time where they are united in function and content, within minutes it will become disparate conversations having virtually nothing to do with each other. Which is, unfortunately, another problem with trying to find common ground in Twitter. If you’d like to experiment more with lists, you can visit Listorious, a web site devoted to nothing but Twitter lists…

From My Mouth to Lenovo's Ears

Posted on by

July 27, 2008.  I write a blog post outlining the details of how to properly design a laptop with two screens. The main concept:

Start by thinking of a thin-screened laptop like the (now former) Sony Vaio SZ series. Imagine on the side (left or right – you pick) a hinge, and on the other side a clasp. You release the clasp, then a second screen swivels out (via hinge) to appear next to your original screen. Attentive readers will realize at this moment that the screen is facing away from the user, which means the hinge needs a swivel as well (just like on a tablet PC). That’s the basics, but read on for it to all make a bit more sense. Also, I’m not stating that this configuration is for everyone, but, like a mini-notebook, it should appeal to… some?

December 18, 2008.  I read on Engadget and the Technologizer that Lenovo is planning a dual-screen laptop.  The main concept:

it looks like the dual-screen W700 is for real. Reportedly, the machine will feature a 17-inch WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200) primary display along with a 10.6-inch WXGA (1,280 x 768) secondary panel. Think SideShow, just jacked up on whatever Clemens and McGwire were using. The rest of the specifications are swell but expected, but the tidbits we’re really reaching for (price and availability, naturally) are nowhere to be found. Can you say “want.”?

I don’t suppose they’ll be sending me a royalty check any time soon, eh?

LIVEdigitally Alum Launches Site for Crowdfunded Journalism

Posted on by

When I first met David Cohn he was a wee lad, writing for Wired magazine and looking to expand his opportunities. He wrote many wonderful (and some not-so-wonderful) blog posts here, such as Internet Radio To-Go, Rsstroom for the Restroom, Writing in Pajamas, Wine Tech, Digital Art, Very Small DJs and of course, as nobody will forget, Digital Hugs.

Dave’s gone on great journeys since his days at LD, got himself a degree, worked with various citizen journalism projects, and let his hair go way out. And today he launched Spot.us, a “crowdfunded journalism” site (disclosure: I’m an advisor to the site, but it’s a non-profit, so it’s cool).

Basically, if you have a cause/concern/issue you think is worthy of some investigative journalism, and are willing to put a bit of money toward it (think $10 or $25, not $1000), spot.us is the place for you. I’ve submitted 4 tips so far (Why are San Francisco city streets in such poor condition?, How effective are the homeless shelter resources?, Why Aren’t There More MUNI Express Buses? and Is swimming in the Bay actually safe?), and one of them has already been “picked up” by a journalist!

This is the 2nd half to spot.us – journalists can either read through “tips” (written by concerned folks like myself) or simply “pitch” stories they are interested in writing about. So the pitch “How safe are San Francisco Bay beaches and water a year after the Cosco Busan oil spill?” is now up for crowdfunding. As I write this, it’s received pledges for $360, and the reporter is asking for a total of $800 to do the work.

Will this replace journalism as we know it today?  That’s a big TBD, but in an industry with massive flux and consternation (love that word), it’s exciting to watch new options emerge.  Good luck, Dave!

Thoughts on the Netflix box

Posted on by

Bringing you up to speed: Netflix announced a $99 device that hooks up to your TV and streams movies (free to Netflix subscribers) from your queue straight to your set. This is not the first “Internet set-top box” to come out, nor will it be the last. But it’s definitely one of the more interesting ones to discuss. Here are my thoughts on it, in a semi-organized manner:

What I like about it:

  • Price point: under $100 is great (under $50 is perfection), especially in conjunction with free movies.
  • Netflix brand extension: the company’s followers tend to be fairly loyal (I’ve heard an estimated 5-10% churn before, which isn’t too bad considering the space they are in), and have the financial resources to make a $100 box a near-no-brainer purchase.
  • K.I.S.S.: the pictured remote only has a few buttons, and they aren’t making an “all in one killer box” (which would be much harder to market than a specific, focused product)
  • HDMI: absolutely essential.

What I don’t like about it:

  • Price point: seems like they could’ve found a way to make it free with a committed subscription. I personally pay $17.95/mo for my Netflix subscription, I have to think there’s a point ($25.95?) where I’d upgrade my service for the box. This is how the cable companies “get ya” and I think should be considered by the company.
  • Roku’s brand: it’s effectively nonexistent with the masses, which is who this product is targeting. I don’t feel Netflix gains much (other than possibly having complete control over the product, a la Apple)
  • It’s a box: like Thomas Hawk said, people don’t want more boxes in their living rooms.
  • Competing with cable companies: Comcast offers me dozens of free HD movies per month (hundreds of SD ones), and lots of PPV content to boot. I’m concerned that for $100 I don’t really feel I get much extra, and as I state above, I now have to deal with an extra box in the mix.

Other misc thoughts:

  • Initial reviews seem positive, I’m hoping to try it myself soon. I think for the box to succeed it has to be better than “easy to use”, it has to be “compelling to use”. A slam dunk would be my wife not just using it, but loving it enough to tell her friends (which was not true of VuDu, and only partially true of Moviebeam). The process of selecting movies to watch and the actual playback have to work great (think TiVo). Ditto for setup.
  • According to CNET, HD content is coming soon, and I think this is a questionable move. I believe launching with HD would make a huge difference in the marketability of the box. Also, it seems that it doesn’t offer upscaling on the SD video, which means I’ll be watching content that looks less good than a standard DVD.
  • I wish they had taken a page from the Apple playbook and made a more interesting/attractive product. Either that or follow the Slingbox “purple cow” approach. I totally understand the reasons for the generic gray consumer electronics product, but I feel it’s a tactical error in this case. Netflix has always stood out from the crowd, and I think their box should do the same.
  • Their biggest competitive threats are, in order: nothing, a digital cable box, a DVR, a computer (media center or not), an Xbox 360, and maybe an Apple TV. I don’t really see anything else currently on the market as actually competitive.

Back in January I voiced my concerns over this exact product. I like where they’ve gotten so far, but still have a lot of concerns over market viability. I believe with some polish and evolution, combined with paying a lot of attention to early adopters’ feedback (different from beta testers!), and great marketing, they might be able to turn this into a big hit. I’ll definitely be watching!

Is Sezmi a "cable killer"?

Posted on by

As I write this, Comcast is worth 67 billion dollars.  Their stock has split 4 times in 20 years, and has grown massively over that time.  They have over 24 million subscribers.  They are one of several US cable companies, who take on the 2 satellite service providers as the main players in the TV space for the US.  And startup Sezmi was labeled today as a cable killer, with TV 2.0, whose advanced set-top box apparently blows away the TV.  Wow.  That’s quite a strong billing, don’t you think. The last device I recall with this type of hype was supposed to transform the way we build cities.

This isn’t just David vs Goliath by the way, this is David the little tiny ant versus Goliath the elephant.  Not only does Sezmi have to compete against huge players, they are doing it in a massively entrenched industry that spends ridiculous amounts of money advertising their own services.  And let’s think about that advertising for a second – where exactly is Sezmi going to run their ads?  Are they going to pay the very networks they need to compete with?

Now I do need to make a very clear disclaimer here: I have not used their product, nor even seen a demo.  I will go on the leap of faith that they have built the very best darn box ever built (even better than the ones I’ve built!).  I’m going to assume it’s utterly amazing, and the content quality is stellar, it’s really usable, etc.  I’ve only seen one such demo in recent months, but that’s another story for another time.  Let’s assume that in the world of “terrible Internet set-top boxes” they’ve built the iPhone of the batch.   I still think they have a huge challenge ahead.

First, they need to market the heck out of this thing.  I’ve watched MovieBeam try and fail, ReplayTV is gone, Akimbo is a service now, and even everybody’s favorite TiVo isn’t exactly a commonly owned product (somewhere around 5ish million homes is the latest I’ve heard).  Each of these companies have spent millions of dollars trying.  And I can name a dozen others who’ve tried.  Even Apple can’t really move the AppleTV in massive quantities.  And massive quantities is the only way to be successful as a startup in this space.

Beyond just “extremely good” marketing,  it’s a big uphill battle for Sezmi.  Both PaidContent and Engadget refer to the company as confusing.  In the articles I’ve read the company’s advantages seem to lie in (1) price, and (2) Internet services.  I don’t believe these to be true competitive differentiators in the “taking on the cable industry” space.  The players that be have effectively infinite dollars to throw at the problem, and we know they are all working on introducing Internet-enabled devices themselves.

Having spent most of the past 10 years of my career attempting to introduce products just like these, with variations here and there, I do wish the founders the best of luck with the effort.  I would love to try the box out, see if it’s exceeding expectations and get a sense of how they plan to accomplish their arduous task.  I think the visions of wanting to “change television” are noble, but unrealistics.  Just because we have deregulation and things like OpenCable doesn’t mean the window of opportunity is open.

I do believe we’ll see additional interesting new media concepts for digital devices and platforms, but I don’t believe going after the big guys is the way to be successful.   It isn’t about a “better than your cablebox” or a “more channels than you have now” or even a “get the Internets on the teevees” kind of play.  It’s about counterprogramming against the TV itself.  It’s about innovating on other, existing platforms.  It’s about moving around the concept of the cablebox and cable company completely.  Is Sezmi here with that new Innovator’s solution?  We’ll find out soon enough.

The Casio EX-F1. It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

Posted on by

For years I’ve envisioned a future of digital cameras that would be smart enough to take more than one picture at a time, but instead would simply take a stream of pictures that you’d select from a little later.  I didn’t have all the details worked out, but it seemed like the logical evolution.  When I read David Pogue’s column a few minutes ago, it looks like the guys at Casio have in fact worked it out:

It takes 60 pictures per second (not 60 frames of a compressed movie file, which is different), all are 6MP.

After taking, you can keep em, delete em, or pick manually.

Per Pogue: “In pre-record mode, you half-press the shutter button when you’re awaiting an event that’s unpredictable: a breaching whale, a geyser’s eruption or a 5-year-old batter connecting with the ball. The camera silently, repeatedly records 60 shots a second, immediately discarding the old to make room for the new.

When you finally press the shutter button fully, the camera simply preserves the most recent shots, thus effectively photographing an event that, technically speaking, you missed.” – WOW!

It also has a motion detector.

For a full review, go back to David’s article, it’s very balanced and thorough.

Will I really buy one?  I don’t know, I still don’t like the idea of a big bulky camera to lug around.  I’m also not sure if this is exactly up the alley of a “prosumer” such as Thomas Hawk, as Pogue laments about the quality of the actual picture-taking-thingamajig inside the camera.

But this definitely marks the future of the entire category.  In fact it’ll always be features and functions like these that keep the digital camera sector enough steps ahead of cell phones to remain extremely relevant.  Me likey.