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From KillerApp.Com News Digital Life, the consumer technology show that ran at New York’s Javits Center from October 12 through 15, was jam-packed with cool new high-definition televisions, computers, DVD players, cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and games, games, games. (All that research we've been reporting about grown-ups playing video games? Well, it’s still the teenage boys who turn out in droves for a chance to play unreleased games and compete in gaming tournaments.) On the Killer App front, exhibitors demonstrated progress
toward a connected world mainly with ingenious methods of directing Internet content
to the TV screen or with creative leaps onto the social networking bandwagon. Here's the best of what we saw at Digital Life: Media Management and
Social Networking What's happening to the digital photos and videos and music
that we’re all so busy creating and editing and downloading and sharing? For
the most part, they're clogging up our disk drives, getting lost and
disappearing when the computer crashes – not a great improvement over the old
system of shoeboxes filled with fading Polaroids. But every day, new companies
arrive on the scene to help us create order, and even beauty, out of chaos. The companies we saw at Digital Life (who represent only a
small fraction of this group) are targeting different segments of this market, and
they’ve taken varying approaches to identifying free, ad-supported and premium
services. Blip.tv is a
facility for distributing videos on the Internet that is used by video
bloggers, citizen journalists, issue advocates, online education providers, niche
news and entertainment providers, and many others. Corporate users host
channels to which they invite their own customers to upload videos about the
corporation’s products. All of Blip’s users have the option of inserting
advertising in their videos and splitting the ad revenues with blip.tv.
iMeem is
named for the “meme,” the cultural equivalent of a gene – something that
spreads through repetition. iMeem is all about spreading the memes; it combines
instant messaging and online chat with sharing of videos, music, playlists,
photos and blogs. Users can share with the community at large, among friends or
within meems -- special purpose groups that might be devoted to discussing a
new movie, promoting your band or even chatting about the Digital Life show. Maxtor (now owned by Seagate) is offering a personal Web server – a small hardware device that lets you automatically back up your digital media files from your PC, organize them and share them over the Internet. The company is also introducing an online storage solution. If you're annoyed because your cell phone only lets you stay
in touch with one friend at a time, nowthen
will keep you in touch with all your friends, all the time. With nowthen, you
can keep a photo diary with your cell-phone camera and upload pictures more or
less continually. Your friends and family – and the rest of the world, if
you're so inclined – can share in all the details of your life as it happens. In
case you don’t have a camera on your cell phone, you can send text messages to
all your friends at once. The site doesn’t seem to support cell-phone videos
yet, but that can't be far behind. To keep your computers, Web storage and cell phone in sync,
Sharpcast continuously
and automatically backs up and distributes files – so that, for example, the pictures
you take with your cell phone camera are instantly available on your PC and
your laptop, and the edits you make on your PC are instantly available online. You
can edit, comment on, and even chat in real time about the files. Right now,
Sharpcast only supports photos, but the company expects to add other file types
soon.
Streamload’s
MediaMax service lets users upload and store their files on the Internet (the
first 25 GB are free), access them from any browser, play their digital media
files online, and give download or streaming access to friends on a
file-by-file basis. Streamload brags that it’s “the easiest way to get free
online video hosting,” and we can't argue with that. AMD resells the
service as AMD LIVE! Media Vault. For inveterate shoppers, trendsetters and tastemakers,
ThisNext lets you “shopcast”
your finds to a larger audience and maybe even profit from your knowledge. For the
ordinary person trying to find the right wedding present or the best
hand-dipped chocolates, ThisNext offers expert guidance. It may not be strictly
a Killer App – conceivably, you could participate in the site without broadband
– but it makes shopping into a social experience in a far more sophisticated
way than traditional e-commerce sites have done. Home Networking and Online
Entertainment Movie downloads – at least legal downloads – haven't been
around for long, but they're already a familiar part of the landscape. Two
download services represented at Digital Life were Movielink and Starz
Entertainment’s Vongo.
Movielink has movies available for purchase or rental, while Vongo is a
subscription-based service with no limit on downloads. ATI was
showing its TV Wonder 650 tuner card, which allows you to use your PC as a
television (it picks up both analog and digital signals) or as a DVR. An
amplified antenna lets you pick up “free to air” high-definition television
stations. Intel
showcased its Viiv technology, which powers a new group of PCs that are optimized
for entertainment. Viiv-enabled desktops and laptops may function as
high-definition televisions and DVRs, show Internet and television content together
(serving up statistics about your favorite football players while you watch
them play), play back DVDs or play films, music and games downloaded from the
Internet. ITVN provides
an Internet-based alternative to cable. With a set-top box and a subscription
to the monthly service, you can order live television channels, radio, karaoke,
sports, music videos and movies-on-demand services delivered over the Internet
to your television set. Digeo's Moxi DVR
not only provides a user-friendly interface to digital television but brings photos
and music from your networked PCs to your television screen. The PC content
shows up in the on-screen menu right along with broadcast TV shows and
video-on-demand. The Moxi
Media Center
can be connected to your PCs via wired or wireless Ethernet. If you're tired of pushing buttons, the Media Center
Communicator from One Voice
lets you order up a jazz favorite from the PC or a Star Trek rerun from the TV
just by asking for them. The One Voice folks say you don’t even have to train
the voice recognition engine. You can also record TV shows, dictate e-mail,
make VoIP calls, turn lamps and thermostats on and off, and barbecue hamburgers
by speaking into the remote. (All right, it doesn’t do hamburgers – but you can carry the remote out to the back
yard and continue giving orders while you flip the burgers. The signal carries
a long way.) SimpleCenter
has a good claim to belong in both categories of this list. A PC application,
it manages the music, photos and videos on your hard drive; helps you rate your
collection (to make it easier to find the stuff you really like); serves as a
universal player; lets you create slideshows; downloads and syncs media to
compatible smartphones; and streams media to your television or stereo. It also
lets you view your media files over the Internet from any browser-enabled
device – or give your friends and family the same ability. And last but not least, if you're traveling and want to watch your TV from the road, you need a Slingbox Pro from Sling Media. Slingbox Pro is a place-shifting device that lets you watch and control your home TV, DVR, cable box or satellite receiver from any Internet-connected computer or compatible cell phone. It can accept input from up to three standard-definition and one high-definition video and audio sources. © Copyright Killer App Ventures |
