Cullmann Design Blog

Among the popular trends in the HDTV market is the inclusion of internet connections. The ability for high-end televisions to connect to the internet is not new this year, it is becoming increasingly popular. Previously, the utility of these connections has been limited to receiving operating system and firmware updates.

The autumn of 2008 brought added functionality with partnership arrangements between content providers and television manufacturers. Sony, providing customers with on-demand access to their library of films directly from their televisions, followed by agreements between Hitachi, Pioneer, Samsung and the like making deals with Netflix and online streaming media providers.

The convergence of broadcast media and network-enabled on-demand media is evident.

During CES, Yahoo! Unveiled it’s partnership with several television manufacturers support of the Yahoo! Konfabulator Widget Framework directly from the primary television interface. This will allow users to add “widgets” to their television interface as a constant resource and source of reference for them.

Those who are familiar with widgets are aware that they span from the critically useful to the completely obtuse. The opportunity that the “TV Widget” represents is a market outside of the early-adoption, computer-centric set that has been it’s core audience to-date. Even with a relatively small market that is limited to televisions shipped this year, the TV Widget represents a new paradigm of marketing. Think “American Idol Voting Widget”, the “I Want to be a Millionaire – Audience Lifeline Widget” or the “NBA Contest That Referee Call Widget”.

The audience participation widget is what will drive the adoption of the widget and the sale of televisions featuring this capability, What marketers will be attracted to is the presence of the widget in conjunction with or supplementing programming.

Currently Yahoo! and television manufacturers are shy to reveal the marketing partnerships that will drive this relationship, but I am sure that packaged solutions for users in conjunction with media plans are what is driving this new innovation.

Outside of the more advertising-centric utility of TV Widgets, the idea just makes sense: It’s an obvious medium to add user-customized information and a-la-carte content to. Who wouldn’t love to take the Bloomfield Television ideology and customize it according to your needs, or mood or time of day? Allergy statistics, medication reminders, soccer practice schedules, PTA meetings and nightly specials from your local bistros. With the ease that widgets can be created and updated, every business, large or small will be able to participate with a “custom channel” for users to download and install.

Many of the specifics of the plan are yet to be determined, but it’s likely, that before years’ end, you will be able to vote for America’s Top Model from a small little application running right in your television screen.

This week, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Palm unveiled it’s Phoenix: the Pre. A new OS available on new, very beautiful hardware, and is intended to compete in the marketplace against the industry champion: iPhone and the deeply entrenched RIM BlackBerry. Although this is the story of an underdog, Palm ruled the handheld market for almost 10 years. The Palm Pro, the Palm III, Palm V-these handhelds created the PDA market. MicroSoft challenged them, but they had stayed competitive for a very long run. Even after faltering during a few years ago, Palm released the Treo — their bullet-proof smart phone platform that was THE device for 2 years.

Recently, Palm had lost it’s luster. The Treo was not updated for far too long, and faded. The iPhone was the nail in the coffin for Palm. Even with a tremendous investment in R&D and a very strong product (the Palm Foleo which was pre-cursor to the NetBook thin-client model) Palm was swinging and missing in the portable market.

When rumors of Palm’s new products leaked, there were few pundits left to wait expectantly. The market had changed and is heavily favoring the media-savvy iPhone and new, BlackBerry based smartphones. What adds more to the complex formula of wireless devices is the bell-curve of adoption. Young people and students are quickly adapting to mobile devices and using them as “thin-clients” to run their lives, communicate with one another, play media, surf the web and, of course, make calls. Parents are using their phones to co-ordinate schedules, plan events and as photo-albums. Business people are using these mobile do-it-alls as remote offices, sales platforms and road-warrior grade entertainment devices.

The announcement of Pre is a rally cry to all of Palm’s fans who may have wandered. The CES demonstration shows a product, if it is delivering on the promise made, that can bring Palm back into the marketplace. With Apple-style aesthetics and the capabilities of the new “Web OS”, I think Palm has a home-run product. From my experience with the treo, MicroSoft Exchange support would have to be greatly improved over previous implementations for inclusion in corporate tech fleets. The included GPS and ability to have multiple applications running in conjunction with one another make it a hands-down winner over the iPhone (pricing estimates have the Palm Pre at $200 with a Sprint Wireless Plan).

At this price-point, Palm will also be competing with the newly announced Android OS based G1. The G1 has the advantage of being open-source and has the advantage of a head-start. If Palm can capitalize on it’s now-dormant development community, they have a shot at robbing the G1 of their place behind the iPhone in the mobile computing market. The Palm development community was previously very strong and responsible for Palm’s longevity (and success of the Treo). It will be interesting to see if Palm can attract the same commitment to their new OS and provide the same support to the new development community that will be required to make the Pre the come-back story of 2009.

As a Palm fan, I’m excited to see them back in the mix.

As mentioned in my Predictions post, I think Twitter is going to break into the mainstream this year. I also think that Twitter’s appeal will grow with a boon in popularity. This growth is going to require a change in Twitter itself. To me, the attraction to Twitter is the community that you create by who you choose to follow. Although you may follow many, you can control the stream and it’s contents with a variety of choices. Unfortunately, methods to control and organize your stream require using third-party solutions. All of this aside, I think that Twitter represents an embrace of a new communication paradigm.

The biggest challenge Twitter has to face (and it’s faced scaling and adaptation difficulties since it’s launch) a lack of a business model. This effects users in two ways: An insurance that the community that the users are investing their time into will last and that those posters who generate traffic and users have some method to convert their effort into compensation. The second point is not a large issue as most users post for their own pleasure. The first point is an issue, one that I think will be answered this year.

Twitter reinvented as a commercial entity will come in one of 2 forms:

1. A subscription based model:
   Whether this is based on frequency of usage or the number of users you follow, a subscription model will arise. I think this is a possible option despite Twitter being rooted in a “free” model of subscription. I believe that a pro-level account option will arise, similar to the Flickr model. This will result in two-tiers of user with the pro-level user being able to have unlimited posts, followers and perhaps the metrics on click-throughs directly through the Twitter API.
2. An advertising based model:
   Much more likely, Twitter will offer their stream, or a portion of their stream to advertising to subsidize growth. This can be positioned as a non-intrusive targeted advertising campaign with messages inserted into the stream based on context or user profile. I am not sure how Twitter users will respond to this, currently the user group is very media savvy and sensitive to intrusions, no matter how well handled, into their community.

As a Twitter user who consumes much more than contributes, I find Twitter’s most useful features is in immediate, from-the-gut responses to news and current events. Whether those events are changes in browser compatibility, sports scores or breaking world news. It’s a consumable for me and I think that many people will use it in the same way. I don’t think that it’s limited to a Read-Write model.

If Twitter is to really flourish, it will require the ability to both thread conversations and also create a time-line for categories and events. Threading conversations will allow a real dialogue between users (regardless of timing). Time lines (for subjects) will have users easily communicating concepts and themes relative to one another. The combination of the two will equal the power of a good e-mail client. You will be able to parse the trivial from the important, the old and the. Combine this with sorting tweets by user and you have a multi-media sorting tool that is unrivaled.

Until Twitter adds new features, man ambitious developers have created or contributed to some of the great Twitter API projects below:

TWITTER CLIENTS

TwitterDeck Twitter Client
Twirl Twitter Client
Twitterific Twitter Client (OS X Only)
WittyTwitter Twitter Client (Windows Only)