The Future of Interactive TV Has Arrived

Back in January, I’ve decided to say ‘adios’ to my cable TV provider and “cut the cord”. As I have written about before, being a cord cutter is not that difficult as most of the movie and TV show programming is readily available from alternate sources such as iTunes, Boxee, Hulu, or directly from the TV networks’ sites. Most, except for live sports.

I can live without live sports to a certain degree but that doesn’t stop me from trying to find non-cable solutions. Particularly, I like watching  the Grand Slam tennis tournaments and so I have been pleased to see that the online coverage has been on the rise this year. The current online live streaming coverage from the US Open, however, beats cable hands down.

Internet streaming on the TV screen (photo of my TV set)

The US Open video streaming is offered free of charge, supported by relatively unobtrusive advertising, and delivered by IBM which is not a big surprise since IBM has been sponsoring major sports events this way for years. However, the capabilities of the video stream, which IBM calls the US Open PointStream, go beyond anything we’ve seen in the past.

You chose which match to watch (screenshot)

For example, PointStream streams all matches live and you can interactively select which match you want to watch. Your regular cable TV makes that selection for you and you are not always going to like it since you will inadvertently miss certain matches. On PointStream, you are in charge of deciding which match you want to watch. In fact, if I want to watch two matches at a time, a picture-in-picture feature is available.

Picture-in-picture feature (screenshot)

PointStream goes far beyond that, though. With a mouse click, you can see the score results from all courts where play is under way. You can also see real time statistics and analysis for the match you are watching. IBM is effectively combining the video stream with a business intelligence type of analytics.

Real-time match analysis whenever you want (screenshot)

You can pause the play or rewind it - features we all love from Tivo. You can engage in online chat with other viewers. This particular feature would have been much more useful if it was actually streaming the Twitter conversations related to the #uso11 hashtag, though.

Real-time match statistics a mouse click away (screenshot)

The bad part is that living in Canada, I had to VPN into the US to trick the system into believing that I am a US based viewer. That’s doable and I gladly pay for the VPN service but these artificial borders are infuriating. To watch the action on my big screen TV, I had to connect my iMac with the TV set via a 20 foot-long HDMI cable. That works fine although it is not a very elegant solution. I’d rather had the live TV streaming provided directly via my Apple TV. I hope Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook is already working on it.

Who says you can't watch live sports without cable? (photo)

All in all, I am very impressed by what is possible today. I have an average speed Internet connection at home (8.1 Mbps according to speedtest.net) which gets further degraded by the VPN service (6.72 Mbps) and yet I am able to watch the action just like on TV. And with programming choices and features available, the experience is way better than the traditional TV. Yes, the future of interactive television has started. And I have a message to you, the cable and satellite TV companies - interactive streaming is what I want. Evolve or die!

PS: Rafael Nadal won the match.

Is Device Convergence Happening?

A few days ago, a report by Pew Internet came out that revealed a surprising statistic about e-readers. According to the data Pew presented, e-readers such as Kindle and Nook have reached a 12% penetration among the US adult population. That’s actually not bad even though it is far behind other devices such as mobile phones (83%), laptops (56%), and MP3 players (44%). But this number is way ahead of the tablet penetration which is still relatively low with 8%.

That effectively means that the iPad didn’t at all manage to kill the Kindle. I must admit, that when the iPad first arrived, I thought it would mean the end of the Kindle. You can read books on the iPad and Amazon even provides a very good Kindle reader app for iPad. And after all, how much does Amazon really care about the Kindle? They make money no matter what device I read their books on, right?.

I suppose the e-book readers are doing so well because they are really good at what they have been designed for. They are single-purpose devices optimized for their job. For reading books, some of their advantages include the screen that allows reading in bright sun light, the ease of e-books dowloading and, my favorite, the light weight. All the tablets I have tested so far are too heavy for reading in bed. Kindle is featherlight with its 241 grams (8.5 oz) and it makes reading in bed easier than with a paperback.

This is really begging the question about convergence. Are we going to end up with a single device that can do it all or are we going to keep a multitude of devices? Convergence is definitely appealing, if nothing more than to eliminate the clutter of power chargers and adapters that I complained about while packing for vacation last summer. But having the right tool for the right job is unquestionably not a bad approach either.

Are we going to dump the e-reader and read on an iPad? Maybe, if it becomes lighter and learns how to handle the glare. Or maybe the e-book readers will add the apps and blur the line between tablets and e-readers.

But how about the convergence of other devices? Do I no longer need a watch because I have a smartphone that can tell the time? Well, I am really attached to my mechanical watch. Are we going to throw away the GPS and use the iPhone instead? Yes, it works, but the dedicated GPS is still a little easier to use while driving. How about the laptop that I keep schlepping around together with my iPad? If I had a keyboard and a mouse, I could perhaps get rid of it. Couldn't I?

Well, I don’t know what the answer is but I do know that the key is going to be the user experience. The simplicity and compromise-less user experience - software and hardware - will determine whether or not a particular device will converge. If a device doesn’t give me the right experience, the convergence won’t happen, even if the functionality is there.

Web Experience Management in the Mobile Era

I had the opportunity to participate in an interesting conversation during a customer visit a few days ago that I think deserves a blog post. The customer - a company in the consumer packaged goods market - is facing an interesting challenge. They have today approximately three dozen web properties and each one of them is being translated into dozens of languages. If you do the math, that makes over 400 sites. This is already a pretty complex scenario that requires a web content management solution.

However, that this is only the beginning of the problem. So far, all the web properties have been designed for the desktop browser which is really easy. Desktop browsers are all the same when it comes down to user experience. However, the company is already gearing up for the mobile era. In fact, they told us they expect that the desktop will be relegated to a niche and that the mobile device will take over. They expect that the mobile device will become the primary user experience.

But this is where the problem lies. Mobile devices are by far not as homogeneous as desktops today. In fact, they may need to support at least six mobile operating systems - Apple iOS, Google Android, RIM BlackBerry, RIM PlayBook, Microsoft Windows Phone 7, and HP webOS. Each of the mobile operating systems has its own quirks and limitations - i.e. some support Flash and others don’t.

On top of that, each device has a different form factor and screen resolution. For example, the iPad is bigger than the iPhone, though both use the iOS operating system. The iPhone ‘retina’ display can handle a higher image quality than a similar device using Google Android even though both screens have the same size.

This multitude of operating systems and form factors leads to an explosion of different permutations in user experience - there are literally hundreds of them. And dealing with them is the job of the web content management (WCM) system.

The WCM system is able to identify the device and deliver the right content in the right template. That means that each content asset has to be readily available in a multitude of formats and resolutions. In addition, all images need to be re-sized, re-formatted and adjusted for the target devices. Video has to be converted and re-sized as well.That’s the job of a digital asset management (DAM) solution. These are the cornerstones of proper web experience management in the mobile era.

The key is not to cut any corners. The customer’s goal was the best possible user experience and they understand that the right user experience requires the right content in the right format and form factor. But they also understand that performance is an essential part of user experience and delivering content with the highest possible speed means to deliver it in the optimal resolution.

Mobility is the new frontier for web experience management. Mobility adds a tremendous reach. Just think about all those countries that never had the opportunity to deploy a desktop based infrastructure and that are now going directly to mobile web. But to do mobility right, user experience has to be a priority. And with the multitude of sites, languages and devices, that could be a daunting task without the right tools.