DIRECTV is about to get really, really interesting (I think)

A handful of related thoughts, leading to a larger one:

Last week, my new favorite television show, Hung, ended its initial season run on HBO. On a lark, I posted to Facebook and Twitter for recommendations for a new series into which to sink my teeth. 24 hours and a few hundred suggestions later, a handful of key titles had bubbled to the surface as clear favorites (The Wire, Dexter if you’re curious).

The process was profoundly simple, near-instant, and fully qualifiable: I was able to aggregate all of the suggestions, and weigh them against my perception of the individual who had made the suggestion; qualified crowdsourcing.

*****

My wife tripped across the Active channel this morning on DirecTV, and I found it intriguing enough to grab a quick photo:

Active Channel on DirecTV

Active Channel on DirecTV

Access to weather and horoscope information are not all that interesting. Focus, though, on the bottom right hand corner: A list of the top programs currently being watched, segmented by region and program type.

I sent this to Dave (@extraface), who replied with the following: “It’s a start. I can’t believe all of that user data they’re sitting on that could be useful, that just sits there.”

My sentiments exactly.

*****

This got me thinking, oddly enough, about the New York Times – funny that the Grey Lady comes so squarely into play in discussions of this nature, although I would suggest that five years from now TimesPeople might well be one of the dominant case studies of the age.

TimesPeople, for those of you not familiar with the application, is described at NYTimes.com thusly:

TimesPeople is a new way to discover what other readers find interesting on NYTimes.com — and to make recommendations of your own. With TimesPeople, you can share articles, videos, slideshows, blog posts, reader comments, and ratings and reviews of movies, restaurants and hotels.

TimesPeople

TimesPeople

The magic of TimesPeople comes as your network of users expands, and adds an entirely new, real-time dimension to reading the paper.

Curious what I’m reading? Take a look.

*****

All of which brings me back to DirecTV. The natural, obvious extension of their Active channel is something very akin to TimesPeople – a real-time feed that lets us know what our friends are watching, what are friends are recommending, how the crowd is rating programming right now.

Combine this with our Twitter/Facebook/Gmail contacts, and this begins to get even more interesting. Quickly.

Are they working on it? Is Comcast developing this? I have to imagine that they are. My receiver is internet-enabled. My account is managed online, with an easy ability to reconcile my contacts with existing accounts. What, exactly, are the obstacles to deployment?

What is Bruce Mau watching right now, I wonder?

Related posts:

  1. Upping the Ante on Interesting
  2. Measuring Happiness through Facebook
  3. Ask and Thou Shalt Receive
  4. Macrotrends 2010-2012: Social Behaviors in Retail Environments
  5. Mobbed-Up and Out

Published on September 20, 2009 1:39 pm.
Filed under: People and Information, Things I Have Written Tags: , , , , ,

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Wharton Grads, Olympic Uniformity, Eigenvalues, Heatmaps and the RGB of Cornflower Blue

Yesterday was a sick day – nasal congestion on par with the iPad-induced streaming lockdown of a week ago. Today, I’m clearing both my inbox and my head to the backdrop of Múm’s Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy…

*****

Brands eager to gain a foothold in the online recruiting space ought to consider eschewing a strong Facebook presence – or so say a handful of Wharton seniors in this fascinating roundtable from Human Resource Executive Online. Says one:

It really takes away from the credibility of the firm, especially because we know Facebook so well — just the connotation that comes with it; it’s not necessarily this professional, reliable tool that you want to use.

Another key point made repeatedly within the article: Young, skilled employees have an innate desire to understand the role that their work plays in the larger objectives of their employer. A point which is, in my own experience, frequently overlooked.

Published on February 5, 2010 11:44 am.
Filed under: Ephemera, Notes on Things Seen Tags: , , , , ,

ClothesSourcing, Going Boxless, Windfarms, Design Schools and Your Own Adventure Decoded

Some thoughtful reading from this morning – time spent trying to wash from my mouth the bitter taste of ABC’s two-hour homage to Milton by way of Coppola-in-the-jungle ((I am referring, of course, to last evening’s LOST season premiere))…all to Aloe Blacc’s terrific Shine Through:

Published on February 3, 2010 3:45 pm.
Filed under: Ephemera, Notes on Things Seen Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tangible Data, Blank Signage, Garlic Presses and Rare Books on Architecture

Heavyset favorite Helge Tenno posits that we ought to re-examine the notion that more screens bearing more information represents progress, and instead look to methods that allow us to integrate our assembled data into physical objects. As I posted yesterday, there’s a bit of a theme going on here, notably from Ed Cotton and Faris Yakob (whose own conviction to this end is considerably longer-held). Helge posts some interesting examples – the Copenhagen Wheel demo ((As an aside, fans of Copenhagen Wheel project will want to check out this article from the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, suggesting a commercial future for electric bicycles.)) was new to me – and integrates some good thinking from Tim Brown of IDEO, as well.

Published on February 2, 2010 2:53 pm.
Filed under: Ephemera, Notes on Things Seen Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The End of Days, Anti-Anti-Socialism, Polarizing Filters and Splitting Heirs

Tuesday morning thoughts and readings collected against the backdrop of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s fantastic new album, IRM…I’m feeling rather progressive about my choice, given the relatively mundane musical selections made in Boston ((Seriously, the Beatles??)) these days, in comparison with those in, say, Barcelona.

Published on February 2, 2010 10:44 am.
Filed under: Ephemera, Notes on Things Seen Tags: , , , , , , ,

Physical intersections, FourSquare ettiquette, John Pareles, Go-Karts and Suitcase Art

Ed Cotton posits over on Influx Insights that a key theme of 2010 will be the intersection of digital and physical devices, a point I quite intended to make on last week’s BIMA panel on The Digital State ((but, in my glee, forgot)). The crux of his post is a recently announced partnership between personal platform of choice FourSquare and the Bravo Network, aimed at providing real-world promotions for viewers of the network’s programming. I can only imagine that check-ins from Kiehls are about to skyrocket.

Published on February 1, 2010 12:57 pm.
Filed under: Ephemera, Notes on Things Seen Tags: , , , , ,

Weekend Reading: Christgau on the Decline, Spoon Holding Steady and Kismet on the Rise

Some found materials and reading collected while spending the weekend pondering the mind-numbing decline of Robert Christgau, Dean of American Rock Critics ((Truly a confounding title, no?)), who placed American Saturday Night by Brad Paisley atop his 2009 ballot for the Pazz and Jop poll. While I’ve little remaining appetite for further infographics, there’s likely an intrepid soul willing to take on the charting of Christgau’s decline in a format as easily-consumed as Paisley’s quasi-country-with-a-slice-of-the-21st-century pop. Until that day when The Village Voice takes a cue from Etsy and opens up its API, the Dean himself has made the data available.

Published on February 1, 2010 7:00 am.
Filed under: Ephemera, Notes on Things Seen Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Werner Herzog & Pura Vida

In my Rogue Film School, which I just founded, I say–and not even as a provocation–that I prefer people who have worked as bouncers in a sex club, or have been wardens in the lunatic asylum. You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn’t mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life.

Published on January 6, 2010 7:30 am.
Filed under: Ephemera, Quotations Tags: , ,

Bruce Mau on Interdisciplinary Conceptualization

The way it works now is that an engineer often does structure, an architect does skin, a space planner does interiors, and an industrial designer does product. It’s a nasty mess. The quality of life that it produces is also a nasty mess, and we all suffer. The problems are where those things rub up against one another.

Published on January 5, 2010 7:30 am.
Filed under: People and Other People, Quotations Tags: , , ,

Jane Jacobs on Specialization

I think it is fatal to specialize. And all kinds of things show us that and that the more diverse we are in what we can do the better. But I don’t think that you can dispose of the constructive and inventive things that America is doing—and say oh we aren’t doing anything anymore and we are living off of what the poor Chinese do. It is more complicated than that.

Published on January 4, 2010 8:11 am.
Filed under: People and Spaces, Quotations Tags: , , ,

Lovely Geographies

Ed Cotton posits that geography is becoming cool again, and I’m not certain that I disagree.

We can now tell where a plane is mid flight, we know how many miles we ran and if we are clever, we can map those miles, we can see exactly where photographs were taken and our cars can be effortlessly guided to our destination by satellites.

A great point. As we immerse ourselves in both maps of our creation (think Flickr), maps we need (think GoogleMaps), and an overwhelming volume of data that can be plotted in near-real-time about just about everything, a greater understanding of both where it is that we operate, and where we are in context of the world around us seems equally inevitable and appealing.

Published on December 16, 2009 12:57 pm.
Filed under: Notes on Things Seen, People and Information Tags: , , , , ,

Neoteny and Playfulness and Pretend

Joi Ito posted this week his contribution on neoteny to Seth Godin’s free new e-book What Matters Now:

The future of the planet is becoming less about being efficient, producing more stuff and protecting our turf and more about working together, embracing change and being creative. [...] It’s time we listen to children and allow neoteny to guide us beyond the rigid frameworks and dogma created by adults.

Published on December 16, 2009 12:20 pm.
Filed under: Notes on Things Seen, People and Information Tags: , , , , ,

Data Talks, Data Walks

Mitchell Whitelaw has a really intriguing post this week on the notion of combining data visualization with actual visceral exploration.

In the wake of the announcement from the UK Met Office that they will be making available data from more than 1000 globally-dispersed weather stations, Manuel Lima made something of a call to arms for the data and information visualization set:

Published on December 15, 2009 3:05 pm.
Filed under: Notes on Things Seen, People and Information Tags: , , ,

Public (Water) Squares

via Pruned, a Dutch endeavor called Waterpleinen – a now-commissioned set of public spaces that serve both as locales for community gathering/play and stormwater repositories. From the Waterpleinen site:
Most of the year the Watersquare will be dry. It is only during heavy rainfall that the square will be filled with water. Streams, brooklets and ponds [...]

Published on December 15, 2009 1:02 pm.
Filed under: Links, People and Spaces Tags: , , ,

Liberation from Clusters of Sameness

via Johnnie Moore, Jack Ricchiuto on potential new models for change in social network behavior:
The possibility space for change opens up when we connect different people who can begin resonating together around shared stories, opportunities, and dreams. It’s a process of liberating people from the confines of clusters of sameness and ideological colonialism so they [...]

Published on December 15, 2009 11:09 am.
Filed under: Links, People and Other People Tags: , ,

A Brief (Comprehensive) view of (Faux) Friendship

via PSFK comes this astounding telling of the history of friendship by William Deresiewicz of The Chronicle of Higher Education, through the lens of contemporary social networks. There’s a lot to digest (and like) here, but this nugget rang true for me:
And so we return to Facebook. With the social-networking sites of the new century—Friendster [...]

Published on December 15, 2009 10:49 am.
Filed under: Links, People and Other People Tags: , , ,

Fallow Field Farming

An interesting post last week over at Idea Sandbox on the concept of fallow field farming, and whether brands ought to explore a methodology that halts short-term growth to allow operations/markets to replenish:
What about the notion of letting the business rest for a season to allow it to rejuvenate? Instead of aggressively building new stores [...]

Published on December 15, 2009 10:28 am.
Filed under: Links, People and Brands Tags: , , ,

Pondering Smarter Parking

GOOD has a blurb today on a pilot program in San Francisco that is utilizing wireless parking meters equipped with sensors that can identify vacant and occupied spaces. Here’s the demo:

I wonder what Donald Shoup would have to say about this. Could these sensors drive the kind of elastic-pricing parking policy that Dr. Shoup espouses? [...]

Published on December 15, 2009 12:00 am.
Filed under: Links, People and Spaces Tags: , ,

Point and Shoot Translation

via CScout, another great utility designed to enable, among other things, urban exploration.
PicTranslator is a point & shoot app for the iPhone that promises to translate signage and other text content from 20+ foreign languages into English. Check out the demo below:

While I can imagine all manner of applications for the app, the ability to [...]

Published on December 14, 2009 11:41 pm.
Filed under: Links, People and Spaces Tags: , ,

Unidentifiable Transformation

We’re suckers for rapid, identifiable transformation. It drives investment. It drives news cycles. It drives Twitter.

Calculated, unidentifiable transformation is a much murkier proposition (which is, perhaps, why the changes in China scare the hell out of so many Westerners). It’s also a big part of the reason for the collective impatience with President Obama – who promised change (but did not promise that it would be instantly recognizable).

I’ve noted frequently here, and in a particularly robust conversation with Gareth Kay, that there exists tremendous inherent value for brands in mundane, incremental change that reveals itself only through the larger transformations it enables. Consider the massively incremental transformations at HP as outlined by Carly Fiorina some years ago or the slow evolution of IBM into a services provider.

Published on December 14, 2009 6:24 pm.
Filed under: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Tags: , , , ,

Enter PLAYLIST

Greg Smith over at Vague Terrain has a terrific writeup on a new installation at the Mediateca Expandida de LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, entitled PLAYLIST:
The core of PLAYLIST will be the exploration of the “8bit movement”, spread out from the manipulation of obsolete game technologies in order to create new instruments to [...]

Published on December 14, 2009 1:26 pm.
Filed under: Ephemera, Links Tags: , , ,