Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2010 > March > 15
Monday, March 15, 2010
Panel review: Pass it Back! Kid Apps On Grown-up Devices
Panelists: Sara DeWitt Senior Director PBS Kids Interactive, Nina Walia, Associate Director PBS Kids Interactive
The gist: Sixty percent of the top paid educational iPhone apps target preschoolers. Parents want apps that engage a child and keep them quiet for a period of time, but feel less guilty if games are educational. In PBS Kids field testing of literacy games in 3-7-year- olds early results show that certain games are actually producing vocabulary acquisition. There are certain usability limitations that have to be taken into account when developing apps for kids, for example, kids don’t understand how to tap and most preschoolers can’t read, so text instructions need to be accompanied by clear icons.
Quotes: “The gaming industry really needs to sit up, a DS game costs $29 while these games cost $.99.” —Nina Walia
Takeaways: In households where children live below the poverty line cell phones, but not necessarily smart phones are more prevalent than computers. PBS is working with several government and corporate and non-profit partners to explore educational initiatives that can be brought into the homes through mobile devices.
—Deborah Sengupta Stith
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SXSW panel: Sound Unbound
Date/Time: 5 p.m. Monday
Panelists: Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), Derek Woodgate
The gist: Miller’s latest book, “Sound Unbound,” deals with music in the digital age. Spooky showed clips from a documentary about music sampling and talked about the history of the idea of sampling. Interesting moments included Millers talking about how Igor Stravinsky was arrested for reworking the national anthem and when he demonstrated his iPhone app, which allows users to sample their iTunes library.
Quotes: “I try to create a tension between content and context.” “People are kind of boring if you are a computer, I imagine” (in reference to artificial intelligence).
Takeaways Miller pushes the boundaries of what we can do with music and other media, and he’s great to hear talk. In regards to sampling, it seems that our legal system isn’t keeping pace with culture.
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SXSW panel: ‘Transmedia Storytelling - Creating Stories That Work Over all Platforms’
Time: 5:20 p.m. Monday
Panelist: James Milward, Secret Location
The gist: Trans-media experiences take a core product, such as a TV show, and expand it to run on a variety of platforms, including other technological platforms (cell phones, the Internet), live events, and all forms of advertising. Successful trans-media campaigns don’t simply take the same content and scale it across all of these platforms, they exploit and adopt the particular strengths of each platform to add value to the core product. The product is enhanced across multiple platforms and places to create a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.
Quotes: “Conversation, debate and feedback is the goal.” “Trans-media is inherently about creating culture.”
Takeaways: If your trans-media campaign is successful, users from the casual participants to hard-core fans will feel ownership of the property and evangelize it for you. Successful campaigns know what they are trying to achieve, have benchmarks for measuring success, know their audience and the genre they’re working in, involve knowledgeable talent and welcome passionate fans and advocates. Loyalty equals success. When you have people involved, they’re willing to support your product by purchasing merchandise, showing up at events, etc. Once you have obtained loyalty, you can imple ment monetization schemes for different platforms.
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SXSW Video: Evan Williams/Twitter keynote
American-Statesman videographer Jenni Jones shot this video of Twitter CEO Evan Williams’ keynote interview:
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SXSW Panel: Sex Education in a Web 3.0 World
Date/Time: 3:30 p.m. on Monday, March 15
Panelists: Shelby Knox of Incite Pictures/Cine Qua Non, Herb Coleman of Austin Community College, Laura Rad
The Gist: Teens are getting online earlier, which gives them access to elicit material as well as information about sexual health. How can teens, parents and sex educators use the Internet to spread awareness about the positive and negative sides of sex.
Takeaways: Information changes fast, so many times, parents need a refresher about the science behind sexual transmitted illnesses. “The information you received in high school about HPV probably didn’t include info about Gardasil, panelist Knox said.
Also, there’s more wrong information online and in schools than right information. Texas Freedom Network found that only 11 school districts out of 1,000 have medically accurate sex education programs. Because there are no federal guidelines, it’s not illegal for teachers or others to share false information.
When searching about sex info, teens are usually looking for every specific information, but searches can also lead them to porn sites instead of verified information. (Teens can text specific sex health questions to 66746 and receive information in 5 minutes.)
Google, Facebook and other sites could take a more active role in separating educational material from porn. Sex educators have to intercept teens where they are likely to go, which means integrating sex education into games and other sites they already use.
Panelist Coleman created this Web site, which has links to sites to scientific information and how to talk to kids about sex.
Parents have a responsibility to warn kids about sexting — the sharing of sexually explicit text messages and photos — because photos can go public very easily. No matter how uncomfortable it makes them feel, parents should have an ongoing conversation with children from youth through their teenage years about all aspects of sex: the bad, the scary and also the good. “It’s up to parents to step up online and have an awkward conversation and say, ‘I just want to make sure you’re being safe’,” Rad said.
The Internet allows peer-to-peer education, which can bolster the information a parent gives. It’s important to use the Web to teach teens how to not only identify safe sexual practices, but also sexual assault.
Parents can find support and advice online, especially about how to be proactive in talking to kids before they are too old. By using the Internet, we can raise the bar for kids and teach them that they have a responsibility to protect themselves and their sexual partners.
Quotes:
“Parents need as much help as kids as knowing what to say.”
Knox: “Only teaching teens about prevention and not teaching about the beauty of orgasms, consensual sex and masturbation is like teaching music without rhythm or poetry without words.”
“Parents are usually looking for all the information they need for that one big talk. That doesn’t work. Sex education works over a long period of time.”
Rad: “The solution to sexting is not criminalizing children. Putting 18- and 19-year-olds in jail is not the solution. We need to teach them boundaries and that every device is a camera. We’ve had children who have killed themselves over this.”
Rad: “Parents don’t want to know the details of their kids’ sexual desires and needs. No parent wants to hear about their kids’ fetish, but it’s part of your job as a parent to listen to what your kids are going through.”
— Addie Broyles
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SXSW panel: Twitter Indispensable Tools Seminar
Time: 3:30 p.m. Monday
Speakers: Moderator-Guy Kawasaki (Alltop), Nick Halstead (tweetmeme), Laura Fitton (oneforty inc), Amita Paul (ObjectiveMarketer), John Yamasaki (Seesmic), Robert Scoble (Scobleizer)
The gist: With Twitter apparently here to stay, a panel of software developers for the social information service discussed ways to make Twitter more usable and manageable. Basically, Twitter without any filters is a random and intimidating sea of information and folks like Scoble and Halstead want to find ways to make sense of it all. The panelists shared their favorite Twitter tools - Tweetie, Friendorfoe, an array of Yamasaki’s creations with Seesmic - and talked about how developers can work better. Scoble made probably the most relevant call for a way curate conversations on Twitter by tagging, reordering, updating and adding feedback to relevant groups of Tweets, from the Chil earthquake as an example.
Quotes: None really. This was some hardcore nerdy stuff.
Takeaways: Useful as Twitter is (and for the most part unchallenged in the marketplace) it’s still very much in its infancy and creators need to work as openly as possible with developers to create ways to filter Tweets and add context and relevancy to the wild wild west nature of content flowing through at a rapid pace.
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SXSW panel: ‘From Hulu To Yahoo Widgets: Will The Internet Transform The TV?’
Time: 4:10 p.m. Monday
Panelist: Richard Bullwinkle, Rovi Corp.
The gist: The Internet will change television, but not in the ways you might expect. The convergence won’t be about checking your stocks or the traffic on your family room TV (you already have convenient devices better suited to those tasks) but harnessing the power and content of the Internet to enrich your entertainment experience.
Quotes: “You buy a beautiful, 50-inch device, hire a carpenter to hang it on the wall, have it wired by a professional and then it just sits there. To upgrade from MySpace to Facebook you just change the url; upgrading your television requires a carpenter and a guy to drag wires through your walls.”
Takeaways: The challenge of convergence will be to create interfaces that can help entertainment consumers find content that is relevant to them and to be able to inform others about content they create themselves, more similar to a computer search than an “ugly” television program guide. Bullwinkle encouraged individual content creators to get used to writing about their creations and to create social networks around their content
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AI 2010: Wall-e or Rise of the Machines?
Date/Time: 3:30 p.m. Monday
Panelists: Mason Hale (OneSpot), Doug Lenat (Cycorp), Bart Selman (Cornell University), Natasha Vita-More (H+ Lab), Peter Stone (UT Austin)
The gist: As artificial intelligence continues to advance, what are some of the issues we need to be concerned with? It took a while for each of the speakers to explain what they worked on, so the panel didn’t quite get to whether it was going to be a Wall-e scenario or something more sinister, but they did show some very interesting examples of AI, including a project to develop humanoid robots that will eventually be able to compete with a human team (the goalies need a lot of work), and a model of how automated vehicles would negotiate an intersection without the need for traffic lights or signs. Quotes: “Looking ahead ten years, we’ll see mental prostheses that help us think better.” “Overall, while AI will augment human abilities in many different areas, artistic abilities are going to be doable, but they’re not going to replace what humans can do.” - Doug Lenat
“At best we cannot fully predict the behavior of an AI controlled system” -Bart Selman
Takeaways: While we still haven’t gotten to the point where Google can fully understand what we are asking, we have gotten to the point where a humanoid robot playing soccer can make a decision of how to act based on the position of its teammates and the ball. That seems to skew more toward Terminator than Disney, but who knows.
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SXSW Keynote: Evan Williams of Twitter
Panel: Evan Williams keynote (Twitter hashtag: #evwilliams)
Date/time: 2 p.m., Monday
Panelists: Evan Williams (Twitter), Umair Haque (Havas Media Lab)
The gist: After fest director Hugh Forrest reminded the audience that Twitter got its start in 2007 when it began to make its public push at SXSW Interactive, Twitter CEO Evan Williams broke news early. He announced that a new platform, “@Anywhere” was set to debut on several content-heavy sites including The New York Times, Amazon.com and The Huffington Post. He explained that the platform allows sites to integrate Twitter services onto their Web pages. Twitter users would be able to Tweet content from sites and sites can build Twitter communities (or have Twitter users log in with their Twitter IDs). The rest of the keynote focused primarily on Twitter’s business practices and Williams’ vision for the future of the company. The service transmits about 50 million Tweets a day.
Though Williams’ keynote was perhaps the most anticipated event of SXSW Interactive, some attendees left the crowded Exhibit Hall 1 early and posts on Twitter itself criticized the panel for being unfocused, short on details about @Anywhere and, in a word, boring.
Slavin Rubin, one of the founders of start-up IndieGoGo, who drove from Miami to attend the fest, called the keynote, “Borderline terrible.”
“I thought that they were going to talk about either his experiences or advice from an entrepreneur or the guts and glory of Twitter. It felt very superficial, a lot of softballs,” Rubin said. “Twitter is so dynamic and has so much information and is so concise and offers so much stimulation… the things that were covered were the exact opposite of that.”
Matt Trego, an attendee in town from North Carolina, said, “It wasn’t as interesting as I thought. It was hard to follow the (wine blogger Gary Vaynerchuk) talk.”
Twitter’s history is inextricably linked to SXSW Interactive’s recent explosive growth, Forrest said in his introduction. After Twitter put up screens at the festival in 2007 to promote their nascent service, it made headway with early tech adopters. In 2008 and 2009, Twitter became a vital part of the festival. In 2008, SXSW Interactive audience members attending an interview between BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used Twitter posts to help derail the presentation, creating a “Back-channel” effect that is still feared and marveled at within the tech industry.
Since then, hundreds of start-up companies have come to SXSW Interactive in hopes of being crowned the next Twitter.
Quotes: All from Williams: “It’s critical that it’s a two-way system.” Williams says he wants to “Make Twitter a tool for you that helps you get stuff done.” “People have a limited amount of time and a limited amount of attention.”
Takeaways: Williams says it wants users to spend less time on its Twitter.com Web site and more time exploring the online world with Twitter integrated into other Web sites and services. Williams continues to hope that people will use Twitter to get information quickly and to learn about the world around them and to have richer experiences online. “We want to make that easier, better, faster,” he said.
- Omar L. Gallaga
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SXSW session: Gary Vaynerchuk
Time: 12:30 p.m. Monday
Speaker: Wine entrepreneur, author and social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk
The gist: The man who’s arguably the biggest rock star of social media spent the early part of his talk hammering on the importance of listening to and having genuine interactions with customers in the new economy. Vaynerchuk, who peppered the word “passion” into his talk liberally as an outgrowth of his recent book “Crush It,” shared anecdotes about the effort he puts into interacting with customers and fans and called out (in his artfully profane way) companies who outsource their social media services, arguing that “you can’t scale caring and authenticity.”
After that opening, Vaynerchuk spent 45 minutes answering questions from the near-full ballroom. During this time he playfully embraced and groped a male fan, asked an audience member if he could auction her off on eBay and received a dual-microphone shout out from a pair of MCs in the crowd. Clearly, when the man is on stage you can take a match to just about any rulebook.
Quotes: All from Vaynerchuk-
“Companies don’t care about users enough, which is why when Zappos comes along and actually gives half a (care) we go crazy over it.”
“I’m passionate about the ‘thank-you’ economy. People said the book wouldn’t sell because I gave away too much content for free. I knew people would appreciate all the hours I spent sharing with them things I really cared about.”
“People want experience, and that’s going to be incredibly powerful for a long time. People who give that different level of interaction are the ones who are going to win.”
“No matter what you do for a living right now you’re going to be in a number of different industries and one of those is always going to be customer service.”
Takeaways: Care, and act like it, or get out of the way. Vaynerchuk has little patience for those who either don’t get the need for customer interaction, or try to take mercenary shortcuts in doing so.
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SXSW panel: A Brave New Future for Book Publishing
Date/Time: 12:30 p.m. Monday Panelists: Kassia Krozser (Booksquare.com), Kevin Smokler (BookTour.com), Debbie Stier (HarperStudio), Pablo Defendini (Tor.com), Matthew Cavnar (Vook)
The gist: Like the newspaper business, the book publishing business faces a test as the world quickly converts to digital technology. It’s not clear whether the upcoming launch of the iPad will have an impact on books, though some of the panelists think that its reader function will appeal to readers who do not consider a single-function ereader such as Amazon’s Kindle a necessity. The panelists also discussed how the shift to digital will further deconstruct the traditional relationship between editors and writers, leaving writers even more responsible for their own publicity.
Quotes: “I don’t think its possible anymore that the publisher is going to get your books reviewed and get you on the Today Show.” - Debbie Stier “Any device that makes reading easier…is ideal.” -Kassia Kroser, on the iPad.
Takeaways: While it’s still not clear what the future of book publishing will look like, books are still very appealing to a large segment of the population, something will not change anytime soon.
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SXSW Panel: After Magazines: WIRED’s Digital Rebirth
Date/Time: 11 a.m. on Monday, March 15
Panelists: Jeremy Clark of Adobe, Scott Dadich, creative director of Wired
The Gist: The design-heavy magazine Wired will launch the tablet version of its magazine this summer, so what will it look like and what design challenges did the team face?
The panelists gave a preview of what the tablet product will look like, and you could tell the audience was impressed with the new features, which will create an entirely new magazine experience. Wired is at the forefront of this new design, but we can presume that many other magazines will be experimenting with interactive designs for mobile devices such as tablets.
Takeaways: The tablet edition of Wired will combine strong design of the print magazine with the connectivity of a wireless device. The better the design means the easier reading experience, the deeper engagement, the more connected consumer and the stronger brand relationship.
Right now, it takes 24 days for a rough draft of a story to go through 10-15 different people and end up at the printers. With this new tablet product, the editorial side will have to rethink how the magazine is reproduced, Clark said.
Creating two, possibly three layouts (one for print, one for tablet and another for Web) comes at considerable cost to a publication, but the reward is great. In the tablet design, you can build in interactive maps and audio components. Illustrations can come to life. Users can rotate images and look at more images than a designer could fit on a traditional page, and they can scroll either horizontally or vertically. “We can engage in all kinds of new ways,” Dadich said.
Typography is lost in most web design, but designers shouldn’t forget the importance of readability on any screen. A 4,000 word article can be easy to read on a screen is the font is right, Dadich said. The tablet allows a poster-style design instead of just two pieces of paper side by side.
Advertisers can create interactive ads to, for example, schedule a test drive of a new care, talk to a dealer or find a store location. Readers can also rotate photos in ads, just like in features.
Quotes:
Dadich: “High level of design and engagement is still here. It retains the sense of place and info-density in the print magazine.”
Dadich: “Ads are as important to the magazine as the editorial content, so you have to (force users to) flip through them just the same.)
Dadich: “The web is great at some things and print is great at some things. We’re trying to combine the best of both.”
— Addie Broyles
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SXSW panel: Can the Creative Class Revolutionize the Energy Business?
Time: 11 a.m. Monday
Speakers:Mark Kapner (Austin Energy), Richard Donnelly (GRIDbot), Joel Greenberg (Tech2Energy), Greg Kallenberg (filmmaker, “Haynesville: The Relentless Hunt for Energy Future”)
The gist: As institutions all over the world embrace the idea of cleaner and more efficient energy, there are great opportunities for creative minds in engineering, art and design to deliver ideas that can reinvent or modify how we generate and consume power. The greatest room for innovation will like come in the area of consumer devices and programs to reduce energy usage, along with marketing campaigns to encourage average citizens all over the world to embrace cleaner energy usage. Those efforts can lead to Austin’s gradual move to renewable energy, currently at 12 percent of the portfolio and mandated to increase to 30 percent in the next 10 years.
Quotes: From Donnelly: “It’s only when middle America thinks it’s cool to adopt better practices that we’ll achieve real change and results, so it’s up to the creative class to help make that happen.”
From Kallenberg: “We’re all (activists and energy interests) finally listening to each other sitting at the table trying to figure this out, and all of you can sit at the table, too. You (creatives) need to stick with it because people are listening all over the world.”
Kallenberg again: “Energy companies are looking for solutions to big problems and so creative people are really needed more than ever. The big guys are looking for ideas because finally we all seem to agree on the need for a clean energy future.”
Takeaways: A refreshingly open back and forth on how dire the future could be if our energy creation and utilization processes aren’t transformed. That need creates lots of opportunities for adventurous thinkers willing to look into the energy sector.
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SXSW Panel: Nooks & Grannies: Exploring Older Niches Online
Date/Time: 12:30 p.m. on Monday, March 15
Panelist: Christopher Quigley of Rubber Republic
The Gist: There are 42 million people in U.S. who are over the age of 65, and in the next 20 years, that number will double. About 30 percent of them are online, but if you remove e-mail-only users from that number, it drops dramatically.
Takeaways: What’s beyond forwarding e-mail for older Internet users? Many of them find niche hobby areas, such a knitting or card games, to play, but in general, e-mail is their version of social networking. They stick to areas that are comfortable, not just browsing to see what’s new and interesting.
(Panelist Quigley created a blog called What My Dad Sent Me, which is not to be confused with Shit My Dad Says.)
Older women were one of the fastest growing demographics on Facebook — five percent of the SXSW registrants are over age 50 — and as American boomers age, they’ll take with them their agility online, negating some of the issues that seniors-as-beginners now face.
One thing that won’t change is the need for Web sites, computers and mobile devices to be ergonomically built or designed for seniors to use. Another area that we’ll see grow are games to help keep their minds sharp.
There is a big opportunity now to aggregate and store the personal history, which together creates our collective history, that right now is only in seniors’ memories.
With its large membership base, AARP is a leader in reaching this online demographic, but the conversation about its interesting and innovative engagement with seniors, unfortunately, was held mostly through the Twitter hashtag instead of in the actual core conversation room.
Quotes: “Many of the seniors who are online now are digital immigrants, not digital natives like their children or grandchildren are.”
“E-mail is their Facebook.”
“It’s important to empower the user no matter what they feel comfortable with, rather than trying to force them to feel comfortable with Twitter or another technology.”
— Addie Broyles
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SXSW panel: ‘How Pandora Navigated the Smart Phone Seas’
Time: 12:30 p.m. Monday
Panelists: Pandora CTO and head of product Tom Conrad, with moderator Mark Phillip of Are You Watching This?!
The gist: Conrad gave a history of how Pandora dramatically gained popularity when it began developing for smart phones.
Pandora knew that it wanted to go mobile because most music-listening doesn’t take place when people are sitting in front of a computer.
Pandora became available for feature phones like the Motorola Razr, but growth was slow. There were lots of incompatibilities, monthly fees hurt growth and customers for the phones weren’t necessarily looking for Web content.
Things changed when Pandora became available for the iPhone. Within hours of the App Store launch, more people were listening than on iPhones than on feature phones. Similar success followed on the Blackberry, Palm and Android (Conrad says his infamous “I need Android like a hole in the head” quote was dead wrong.)
Coming soon: Conrad says we’ll soon be able to control Pandora from our car dashboards.
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Spotted at SXSW Interactive: Dell Mini 5 Android tablet
We got a peek at the Dell Mini 5, a 5-inch-screen tablet device running the Android OS. It plays video, makes phone calls (though Dell hasn’t said which wireless carriers will offer service for it), and has cameras on both sides. The model we saw was red, but other colors will be available. No release date or pricing yet. The video is by Jenni Jones:
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Streaming music site MOG.com demos mobile apps, drives silly blue van
With the buzz around tomorrow’s keynote address by Daniel Ek of the much-hyped European mobile streaming music service Spotify building, Berkeley, CA-based streaming music service MOG.com demo-ed a rival product for iPhone and Android in a low-key press event this morning.For $5 a month MOG.com’s online service currently allows subscribers to search for music by artist, song or album, develop and share playlists and use a “radio” service that operates as a sort of hybrid of the Pandora model to explore an artist’s catalog and discover new music. The site, which includes Music mogul Rick Rubin on its board of directors, boasts over 7 millions songs and licensing deals with all of the major labels and most of the indies to provide a steady stream of new tunes. The MOG mobile application would allow subscribers to access the site’s full music library on the go and download songs, albums and playlists to their mobile devices for use offline.
With subscriptions priced at $10 a month, the company hopes to launch the service for Android and iPhone and iTouch early next quarter. When asked if he was worried about getting the app into the iTunes app store, MOG CEO David Hyman hedged slightly, noting the Apple has given the green light to other music subscription services, including Spotify in Europe. “I do know that Android won’t be a problem,” he said.
—Deborah Sengupta Stith
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SXSW panel preview: ‘From Hulu To Yahoo Widgets: Will The Internet Transform The TV?’
Richard Bullwinkle from Rovi Corp. joins the future of television SXSW Interactive bandwagon with a panel on the future of TV. Rovi contends that now that technology has transformed the computer into a television, the reverse is about ready to happen. Technologies such as Internet-connected televisions and widgets (small applications that will run on these sets) will turn the television into a computing device — but entertainment-focused. Rovi Corp. creates smart “guide” software: imagine the program guide on your television, but able to aggregate not only netwrok and cable television programming, but also photos from your PC, movies from services such as Netflix and any video you’ve got stored on local hard drives or care to pull from the Internet.
I spoke with Bullwinkle prior to his panel this afternoon at SXSW.
What can we expect to hear you talk about at your panel?
Bullwinkle: There’s a lot of new technology that’s sort of happened over the last, let’s say, two to three years — the ability to first download movies and then stream movies. At first we had proprietary boxes. Well, first we could download things and stream them to our computers — that’s the YouTube sort of thing. And also Cinema Now, which really had a PC app and there were very few other devices you could watch Cinema Now content on.
And then we started trying to integrate that content with the TV, but sort of with specialized boxes — I’m talking about the Rokus and the Vudus and the AppleTVs, where you’d go buy yet another set top box to set on top of the stack of set-top boxes and try to get a little more content.
And now we’re sort of in the third generation, which is I think you’ll start seeing connected TVs that can access that great Internet content and they will also access the content you’ve always gotten — your cable, your satellite, and also they’ll access the content in your home. So anything you already did download — your music, your photos or whatever you have on hard drives around the home — they’ll access that.
What about the idea that people don’t really want the Internet on their televisions?
I’m not really talking about e-mail or Facebook or things like that. I don’t think consumers want that on their televisions; there are too many wonderful devices to do that stuff. I love it on the computer, I love it on my iPhone. They’re great devices for interacting with that stuff. On my TV, I prefer to be entertained. I’m not saying that everybody’s that way; there are going to be people who want that stuff on their TVs. But I think putting a browser on a TV is probably the wrong approach. I’d much rather see things that bring more content in on the TV.
And also, by the way, in the third generation it doesn’t just have to be the TV. It can also be things like the Xbox, which do multiple things: it plays games; it accesses Netflix; there are some rumors that it will have access to Hulu and things in a few months. So I’m not just saying it has to be a connected TV. There’s lots of connected devices that do multiple things. But the idea of the one-trick pony — the box that only accesses one service — I think that’s going to die very quickly.
Does this go both ways? There’s also, certainly, television on the Internet.
Yes. So, that’s the interesting thing. With Hulu, a lot of people last year were talking about disconnecting their cable and switching to Hulu only. That didn’t work out, because Hulu has prevented that content from coming back to the TV. Netflix has gotten to the TV on a lot of devices but, for example, YouTube has pulled away from the TV. They announced a lot of products that would do YouTube to the TV, but also pulled back and didn’t offer those people the opportunity to ship. So, there is a lot of great Internet content; I don’t know how quickly it’s going to get back to the TV.
But TV on the INternet is somewhat successful.
Somewhat. I don’t think anybody’s making money hand over fist, but that’s just because this is a new market and the advertisers are not sure how quickly to shift their advertising dollars over to the Internet and the experience is a little rough right now. For exapmle, on Hulu, the night “Lost” airs, you can’t view “Lost.” The next day you can, but then you can only view it for about three days and they pull it off. So you have to be a bit of a wizard at memorizing when are the times to actually go visit things to get them. And that’s confusing to people. So the repeat customers are not as high as they’d like them to be, but that’s just because it’s too hard right now.
From Hulu To Yahoo Widgets: Will The Internet Transform The TV?
Monday, March 15 at 04:10 PM
Austin Convention Center, 12AB
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SXSW panel: ‘BAM! An Entire Statewide University System Goes Virtual’
Time: 11 a.m. Monday
Panelists: Mario Guerra, University of Texas’ Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment; Riley Triggs, Lecturer in Design at the University of Texas; Jessica Mullen, master’s design student at UT
The gist: How the University of Texas System uses Second Life for virtual learning.
Takeaways: Part of Transforming Undergraduate Education grant, the project funded three Second Life islands for every UT campus and health institution, as well as administration. Students and employees can download Second Life for free. What to do with island is up to each campus, although they do get guidance. The project is funded for a year. Campuses had a variety of experience levels with Second Life.
Second Life offers a space for remote teaching. Students participate in projects within Second Life, which helps them take responsibility for their own learning. Possibilities for classroom use include bringing in speakers via Second Life or replacing expensive real-world excursions with virtual ones. It’s not being used as replacement for the traditional classroom, but it can help in situations such as connecting an instructor at one campus with students at another.
Students came to feel very at ease communicating in Second Life. An audience member discussed use of Second Life at his own school and said students who may have felt self-conscious in class became more at ease with sharing online.
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SXSW Web Awards recap
Austin-based Web company Gowalla won its second award of the night Sunday at the 13th annual SXSW Web Awards.
Other winners included financial site Mint.com and travel site Atlas Obscura.
Comedian Doug Benson hosted the ceremony, which took place at the Hilton Austin. Awards, given in 18 categories, included games, mobile, music and activism.
Over 500 people attended the award show, which included a pre-show reception and circus performers.
For a complete list of winners, click here.
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SXSW Panel: Future of Context: Getting the Bigger Picture Online
Date/Time: 9:30 a.m. on Monday, March 15
Panelists: Jay Rosen of New York University, Matt Thompson of National Public Radio, Staci D. Kramer of ContentNext Media, Tristan Harris of Apture
The Gist: Journalists treat context as an afterthought, presuming that readers know the backstory to a news article. Rather that burying context into a single sentence after a nut graph buried in the story, we need to be thinking about ways to give more attention to the bigger picture.
Takeaways: A big part of a media organization’s role to educate its readers. Presenting the news is important, but if you don’t explain how today’s news fits into the bigger picture, readers aren’t going to get much out of it. As journalists, we can presume the readers have read every word we’ve written, but that’s usually not the case. How many of use as consumers have to look up a topic on Google or Wikipedia to get a backstory before we can fully comprehend a story? Newspapers and media outlets should be finding ways to package that information and not just link to it from within a story, but stick it right there at the top of the page.
Putting context first would change how news sites look. An article is valuable today, but not tomorrow, unless you’re building upon a solid contextual base.
Matt Thompson of NPR gave an example of the financial crisis. In 2008, that was such a huge story, that the daily updates were meaningless if you didn’t go deeper. He took two days and created a site, Money Meltdown, of links to stories that gave background information to this crisis. Instead of just automatically pulling links that mentioned the crisis, each day he hand-pulled one story that he thought incorporated the day’s news into the bigger picture.
For more information and to chime in on the conversation, check out the Future of Context site that the panelists put together.
Quotes:
Thompson: “We need to flip the model. The context should be the foundation. The systemic stuff should be what you should be able to access first. The episodic stuff should be the more info link you click.”
Thompson: “We currently present context as more information, but I don’t think that the consumer desires more information. (They have) a desire for less information. We’re overloaded. We (should be thinking about how) to present the minimum you need to understand the subject.”
Harris: How do journalists find time to create more information to build context: “We need to figure out how to reuse words we’ve already written. If we can create that great infograph that explains a subject, we should be using that every time a story comes up on that topic.”
— Addie Broyles
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SXSW Video: Statesman Texas Social Media Awards
A video from Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon about the Statesman Texas Social Media Awards presented by Clear which were presented Sunday night at Cedar Door:
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SXSW Video: Arc Attack at Dorkbot
A video from Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon about the Tesla coils at the Dorkbot party:
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SXSW Video: Rooftop Party at Fogo de Chao
A video from Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon about the nightlife at SXSW Interactive, including the nightly Entrepreneur’s Lounge rooftop party at Fogo de Chao:
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SXSW Video: Ustream Party hosted by Pete Wentz
A video from Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon on the big Ustream party:
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SXSW Interactive Monday picks: too many panels!
The South By Southwest Interactive festival continues today with a big keynote speech, lots of parties and even a karaoke event. Follow our fest updates on Twitter at @360sxswi and right here on Digital Savant.
Some of today’s highlights, at the Austin Convention Center unless otherwise noted, include:
- Twitter CEO Evan Williams delivers his keynote, 2 p.m. in Exhibit Hall 1. Will he roll out Twitter’s new ad platform? We’ll be there to find out.
- “Future of Context: Getting the Bigger Picture Online” is at 9:30 a.m. in Hilton H and features Jay Rosen of NYU.
- “Open Science: Create, Collaborate, Communicate,” 9:30 a.m. in 10AB includes panelists from NASA, “This Week in Science” and Google.
- “What Coworking Tells Us About the Future of Work” is at 11 a.m. in Hilton H.
- “FCC Broadband Plan: Apps, Innovation and inclusion” includes members of the FCC talking about the future of Internet service in the U.S., 11 a.m. at the Radisson.
- I’ll be interviewing Rooster Teeth’s Burnie Burns at Studio SX in the exhibit hall at 11:30 a.m. Come say hi!
- “A Brave New Future for Book Publishing” is at 12:30 p.m. in Hilton H.
- “The Life Graph: You Are Your Location” includes staffers from Twitter, Google and Loopt. It’s 12:30 p.m. in Hilton K.
- Wine blogger Gary Vaynerchuk speaks at 12:30 p.m. in Ballroom D.
- “Haiti CrisisCamp: Techies Unite for Earthquake Relief” is at 3:30 p.m. at Radisson Austin.
- “Twitter Indispensible Tools Seminar” is at 3:30 p.m. in Ballroom D and features folks from TweetDeck, Seesmic and Guy Kawasaki of Alltop.
- “From Hulu To Yahoo Widgets: Will The Internet Transform The TV?”, 4:10 p.m., 12AB. We like TV!
- “Customer Support in a 140 Character World,” which we previewed, is at 5 p.m. in Hilton AB, sponsored by HP.
- Parties: Plutopia at the Mexican-American Cultural Center, GDGT.com’s party and TechKaraoke at Six Lounge from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. I will be singing “Pretty Woman” at 11:55 p.m. Be there at your peril.
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