Startup Diaries

Age Of The Sensors

I really don't understand much in this, but it seems that one of the really cool things that happens these days in the gadgets world is that the price of all kinds of sensors really dropped to the floor.
In the past year I suddenly started to see more and more products with cool sensors capabilities.

For example: I just bought the new Microsoft Wireless keyboard for my living room. Besides the fact that it is designed really beautifully, the really cool feature of it is in the sensors built in into the keyboard.

Whenever you get close to it, the keyboard "sense" it and lights up with backlit so you will be able to use it in the dark. It's even getting better. This actually happens just if the room is actually dark, so in broad day light the keyboard won't light up and save up on the batteries.

You can see similar behavior in other products like the iPhone or many of the new tech toys out there... It's a brave new and cool world our there...

The Future of TV Part 2

People who know me here know that I'm very interested in how the world of TV and media s we know it change around us.
As part of my exploration of this change, I got a new Media Center PC to my living room. Although there is still a lot of work to do on it, the experience of using it is the closest I've seen to how the future of TV consumption should look like.
I can talk a lot about the DVR capabilities or the great user interface, but the two things that really surprised me were actually different things:

The first is actually a small add name MyNetFlix in written by a private programmer. In essence it gives you a great way to explore NetFlix and watch all the streaming movies there straight from the Media Center UI.
I got to say that the experience of MyNetFlix is even better than the NetFlix site itself.
My only question now, is why I don't see the same thing from Amazon and Apple for their rental movie service.

The second feature is an option called InternetTV.
Basically it allows you to get immediate access to great web video from the Media Center interface (and use the remote control to control it).
For example, while writing this I'm watching a great Riahna concert directly on my 50 inch TV. No, it's still not HD quality, but it's not far from it.
The monetization model is also very clear. Before the show I actually watched some ads that were loaded dynamically.

Now I have to ask again - how come I can't get access to all the studios TV series in the same way?

One thing that the new media center does is to completely eliminate the line between TV broadcasting and web streaming. You get both from the same menus on the same machine. In the end, you really don't care where it comes from, and this is the future of TV.

The Future Of TV

The anticipated fourth season of the TV series Lost went to the air, and ABC started to stream it on their web site in full HD quality. A week after Fox came with the answer and started to stream Prison Break also in HD.
MY guess is that in just a couple of months we will probably be able to watch almost every TV series in HD quality straight from the web.

So in this new world of web HD video, the question that arises of course is, will signal the real start of the end of TV as we know it?
If you can watch the episodes whenever you want it with one click and for free, why watch TV?
As more and more people has devices that connected to their TV sets and are able to browse the web, there is no need at all to go for the traditional TV channels.

TV is not dead. It's just that the meaning of the word completely changed. Today the word TV does not mean anymore the box that seat in our living room. Today more than anytime, TV meant the studios. The high quality production series. TV is content not a hardware anymore. And this content can be watched on a box in the living room, on demand on the web and in the near future probably also on our mobile devices.

Now the only question of course is how advertising should be used in this new world... but that's a questions for a different post.

The Future of Flight is Virgin

I'm writing this post on board a Virgin America flight to NY. This is my first time on a Virgin flight and I got to say - I love it. Its is as cool as they say.
Why am do I love it so much? Here are just some of the reasons:

• The lights in the flight are changing according to the time of day. I took an early flight, so I got the chance to see this really cool purple atmosphere
• Every seat in the plane has an electricity plug. No special cords are needed.
• Every seat has a personal TV and the entertainment system is really good. Like many others you have a choice of many movies, live TV and music, but the really cool addition is a chat application where you can chat directly with other passengers on the flight.
  To make it easier to use, every seat has a full keyboard attached.
• Virgin purchased the rights to put all Revision3 videos in the entertainment system, bringing web video into mainstream
• You even have Google maps application that lets you track the flight progress

Now just add the option to browse the web (which they plan to do) and you'll get the perfect flight experience.