CampusIntel

3D television isn’t the only next step in evolution for TV technology. At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week, there was also a buzz going on about Web TV. Watching content from the web from your living room television.

Students are busy enough as it is with classes, papers and exams. Most of them don’t have the luxury of setting aside hours a night every week to watch television. And the ones that do find it increasingly difficult to stay caught up with their favourite TV shows. So most of them have resorted to watching their favourite shows on the internet, either by downloading a torrent or streaming the video. But they end up sacrificing the luxury of watching from a large screen television for the sake of convenience.

Enter Boxee

Boxee Beta from boxee on Vimeo.

As the video above demonstrates, Boxee allows you to do more tha just watch streaming video of your favourite shows from the internet. You can also watch viral videos from sites like Digg, view photos from Flickr and Picasa, and listen to music from sites like Pandora (though Canadians will probably need some kind of hack). Moreover, you can also connect with your friends on Facebook and Twitter, and see what they are watching, and recommend stuff to them as well.

There are a couple of limitations to Boxee however: a content issue, and a hardware issue.

First, Boxee is an U.S. product, and thus its default settings only have support for U.S. content. This is a problem because Canadians are barred from viewing internet content from sites like Hulu, ABC, and Netflix due to geographic IP filtering. However, several independent third-party developers are working on apps to provide support for Canadian content, such as GlobalTV, Comedy Network, YTV, Much Music, and the National Film Board of Canada.

Secondly, as of now, the only way to use Boxee is to download it for free, install it onto your computer (compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux), and connect your machine to your television. The problem with that is that you would have to dedicate your computer entirely to playing Boxee on your television. But fortunately, Boxee is coming out with their own hardware, the Boxee Box, which connects directly to your television via HDMI, SPDIF and RCA Audio. It is scheduled to come out sometime between April and June. By that time, developers should have completed support for at least some Canadian content.

DivX TV on deck

Boxee isn’t the only one trying to revolutionize your TV experience. DivX is parterning with LG Electronics to bring DivX TV to the living room. But unlike Boxee, DivX TV will not require any additional hardware. DivX will be installed directly into LG’s existing Blu-Ray players and home theater systems with NetCast Entertainment Access via a firmware update that will be available later this year. The service should also be available on mobile devices, allowing you to remotely stream content from your computer’s media library onto your phone.

The DivX TV content lineup includes more than 70 channels from a variety of genres, including short web videos, as well as premium Hollywood content. Content providers include the Associated Press, CNET, Dailymotion, Picasa, Revision 3, Rhapsody, TED, and Twitter. More content parters are expected to sign on once the service becomes more popular.

TV Widgets and Apps

In a different move to take advantage of this web TV trend, Yahoo! is planning on launching a service that allows people to use “internet widgets” from their television set. With this, people can can communicate with friends via Facebook and Twitter, check the news, weather, sports scores, and stocks, as well as view pictures from Flickr and Picasa. See the video below. Yahoo! formed parternships with Samsung, LG Electronics, Sony and Vizio last year in order to push this service on their HD TVs and Blu-Ray players, and have released Widget Development Kit to engage more content providers.

Similarly, Samsung will also be launching an app store for their HD TVs in July 2010. Actually, it’s reported to be a multi-device app store, meaning you can use the same app on your PC, mobile device, or television. This sets up the potential for synchronizing between devices.

TV of the Future?

The next ten years of TV watching are going to be very different from what we were used to when we were growing up. From 3D television to web TV, these are only the beginning of what our living room liesure time is going to be like in the future. But the question is, are people ready to adapt to all this new technology? I, for one, am looking forward more to web TV than I am to 3D TV, just because the relative quantity of content makes it seem more feasible for the developers and manufacturers, and also more economic for the consumer. But what about you? Are you looking forward to purchasing web connected technology for your television?

[photo credit: DivX.com]

I would love to get to the point where companies like Apple, Sony, Tom Tom, and RIM send me their products for review.  CampusIntel.com will hopefully become the hub we dream it to be for the 18-24 demographic in Canada…and if we realize this dream, then I’m sure we can start reviewing all sorts of cool technologies for you. Hey…we can build killer websites, killer web apps, and deliver over 1,000,000 sample products to university and college students across Canada, there is no reason why we can’t dominate the digital sphere as well.

We need your support, so make comments, and if you have fun with words and enjoy writing them…then what are you waiting for? Join our blogging army today!

Originally posted on December 17th, 2009

Last week Facebook implemented some privacy changes that caused quite a bit of a stir. They said it was supposed to make things easier for users, but honestly, there wasn’t much of a difference from what they had it before. They were even recommending that users adjust their privacy settings—particularly, their status updates—to be publically available on the internet.

This is in stark contrast to their origins as an exclusive social network. When Facebook first started in 2004, you had to be a registered user to see content on Facebook, and you had to be a university student in order to register. The appeal of Facebook was that it helped you foster your already existing personal relationships. And even now, for the majority of Facebook users, that continues to be its primary appeal. But now with all these privacy changes, people can publically share their information to the entire internet, from status updates to entire public profiles. In fact, until recently, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg made his profile public to prove a point about privacy issues (but then shortly changed it back to private… ironic, non?) So what motivated this drastic departure from their original vision?

THE TWITTER PROBLEM

In the past few years, it became increasingly apparent that social media tools like Twitter could be used to access urgent and unfiltered information on a second-by-second basis. Twitter and Twitter-like services played an important role in proliferating status updates of otherwise unnoticed political crises like the Sichuan earthquake or the Iranian election protests. People began to recognize the power of millions of average laypersons tweeting and SMSing the status of important events as they unfolded in real-time. Many people began to see this as a force for good, which could break past the boundaries of political censorship and the publication lag. But at the same time, however, many people also saw this as an opportunity for untapped profit. And thus began the war for real-time search.

REAL-TIME SEARCH WARS

In the past few months, Google and Microsoft have been fighting a heated battle for the crown of real-time search. Both had signed deals with Twitter to integrate Twitter search into their own search engine services. Microsoft was the first to release their own Twitter-integrated real-time search in Bing, albeit in beta. But Google ultimately responded with its own release of real-time search that included indexing of both MySpace and Facebook data. With a wider variety of content to fill real-time search results, many people declared Google the winner.

But how does Facebook fit into this picture exactly? What does this mean for Facebook users? Have we lost our privacy to Google’s search engine?

Fortunately, Facebook has limited the information that Google can pull from the site to that from public Facebook Pages. Pages are different from profiles in that pages belong to businesses and public figures that use Facebook as an advertising platform. Information from profiles, on the other hand, which belong to average laypersons like you and I, will be spared from the reach of Google’s search engine.

So did Facebook decide to act in favour of their users by honouring their privacy and limiting Google? Possibly. But one also has to consider other self-interested factors that weighed in to Facebook’s decision.

FACEBOOK ON DECK?

Back in August, Facebook acquired FriendFeed. One of the reasons for this acquisition was that FriendFeed had been developing their own real-time search engine, which rivalled that of Twitter search. Consequently, Facebook was able to get their hands on this coveted real-time search technology. This posed a serious threat to Twitter and Google.

Imagine having the ability to search through your friends’ videos and photos as well as their status updates? How much more of a force would Facebook be compared to Twitter with real-time access to multimedia enriched information? Imagine searching Facebook for a current election or natural disaster, and finding user uploaded photos and videos of the event as it’s happening?

Another reason that Facebook’s real-time search engine poses a threat to Twitter and Google is that Facebook has >200 million more users than Twitter does. If the power of real-time search comes from the number of users that tweet and SMS, then how much more powerful would Facebook be compared to Twitter if it could utilize all of its 300+ million users?

So if Facebook were to officially step in as an opponent to Google in the real-time search wars, it would truly be a power to be reckoned with. Thus, it couldn’t allow Google to have search access to the public information on their users’ profile pages. Facebook was probably acting in its own self-interest after all.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR USER PRIVACY?

Although users are safe from the reach of public search engines for now, we have to keep in mind Facebook’s motives to steal Google’s crown of real-time search. A major obstacle to this end is the privacy settings of users’ profiles. That’s why Facebook keeps trying to recommend that its users make public as much information as possible.

But before we cringe at the idea and begin feeling that we might be potentially violated, we have to remember the value of urgent and unfiltered information. Remember, it was these very tools that proliferated information of the Sichuan earthquake and the Iranian election protests. So while Facebook has placed itself in a rather awkward position in terms of its business values (i.e., retaining loyal users vs. profiting from real-time search), its users are placed in a rather awkward position themselves.

What are your attitudes and opinions to this issue? Do you choose personal privacy? Or do you choose your obligation to participate in the global conversation?

Originally posted on December 15th, 2009

Excerpt: Why is Twitter the hottest social media tool right now? Why should people care? And how much do teenagers really care about Twitter, and why (or why not)? How do you think people can/should use Twitter?

Two weeks ago, CampusIntel blogged about how to use Twitter. There was an emphasis on being useful by engaging oneself in the online community and contributing to it. However, for most university students, the question isn’t so much “How?” as much as it is, “Why should I use Twitter?” Or why they should even care.

DO TEENAGERS CARE ABOUT TWITTER?

Back in July, a 15 year old in the UK caused quite the stir by making the controversial claim that “Teens don’t use Twitter”. Indeed, this was confirmed by statistics: youth aged 12 to 24 only make up 16% of all Twitter users. In fact, the majority of Twitter users are actually between 45 and 54 years old (36%).

What?… So that means my professors are more likely to use Twitter than my classmates? And yet there’s this stereotype of typical tweet characterized as inane babble or oversharing (see also: Twaxed.com). So where’s the discrepancy?

When Twitter first started, it was marketed as a social network, officially described as “a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” But with the notoriety of teenagers being more concerned about themselves than they are about the world, most adults who had heard about Twitter thought that it was just for young people and was just a passing fad. But in reality, if anyone wanted to connect to their friends on the internet, then they were more likely to use Facebook or MySpace. At least there they could share pictures and videos more easily.

So what’s the real value of Twitter? It didn’t stand out as a platform for staying connected to family and friends on the internet. And yet Twitter is the hottest social media tool right now. Why?… I think the best way I can explain this is with an anecdote.

THE URGENCY OF UNFILTERED INFORMATION

In May of 2008, there was a deadly earthquake in the Sichuan province of China. Chinese citizens started SMSing about it and posting up pictures from their mobile devices. The world found out about the earthquake, via these Twitter and Twitter-like services, before the Chinese government even heard about it themselves. But more importantly, these Twitter-like services also allowed Chinese citizens to discover a political scandal in their own government that jeopardized the lives of hundreds of school children during the earthquake. Apparently, corrupt officials had taken bribes to allow school buildings to be built with poor structural integrity. Consequently, because the earthquake happened on a school day, hundreds of children were injured or died following the collapse of the school buildings.

The value of Twitter is in the tweets of millions of average laypersons that are constantly being updated every second. The Chinese government is notorious for censorship but they could not censor the millions of SMS’s from their own citizens. The Twitter and Twitter-like services were just way too fast, and the tweets were just way too many for the Chinese government to possibly censor. In response, after the event, the Chinese government blocked all forms of Twitter and Twitter-like services from their citizens.

Similarly, Twitter proved to be a critically important tool during the events of the Iranian election protests earlier this year in June. It allowed the Iranian citizens to communicate with each other and with the outside world by spreading pictures and videos of the events as they occurred. Indeed, Twitter and other social media covered the story more closely than did traditional news sources like CNN (see hashtag #cnnfail). Even right now, CNN is caught up with the Tiger Woods story while ignoring the election in Chile. *rolls eyes*

WHAT THIS MEANT FOR TWITTER

So there was a discrepancy between what people had originally expected from Twitter when it started (i.e., inane babble and oversharing), and what it actually turned out to be (i.e., a platform for the immediate access of unfiltered information). That is, it wasn’t about what you tweeted, but about what everyone else was tweeting—i.e., trending topics. Turns out, the value of Twitter isn’t so much in what you have to say, as much as it is what there is for you to hear. And Twitter realized this…

…So Twitter began to change. Most recently, they changed their official question from “What are you doing?” to “What’s happening?”. And more significantly, they changed their homepage back in July to include search and trending topics, so users can be tuned in to the global conversation. Twitter even changed their official description to “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.” There was a shift in focus from the personal to the global.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR STUDENTS

So now that you understand why Twitter is so important, hopefully it can better help you understand how to use Twitter more effectively. As in our previous post, the emphasis should be on engaging oneself in the online community by following a wide variety of people, and contributing to that community by sharing interesting links and facts. You can even engage in public conversations with @mentions, replies, and retweeting.

There are a thousand different ways that students can use Twitter. As the anecdotes described above demonstrate, Twitter can be used for some pretty profound purposes. And everyone, including students, should be encouraged to participate in current events by engaging themselves in the conversations of their local, provincial, or international communities. But Twitter can also have some more practical, though a bit more mundane uses as well. For example, if one of your classmates tweets a question for a class you’re studying, you can reply to their question with an @mention. Or, if you don’t know the answer to the question, you can retweet the question so that another classmate can answer it.

Can you think of any other ways that you could use Twitter? If you can, then you should go ahead and try it. Or let us know by leaving a comment. You might just inspire other students to try out your ideas too.

Originally posted December 9th, 2009.

Imagine viewing the real world with virtual objects overlaid on top of it. These virtual objects don’t actually exist in the physical world, but you can see them, and you can interact with them. If you were in Toronto and walked by Old City Hall, you might see a Wikipedia icon hovering over the building. Touch the icon, and you can access all the Wikipedia information about Old City Hall, presented overlaid right on top of Old City Hall. It’s almost like having a virtual tour guide. This is Augmented Reality (AR) . This might be difficult to visualize just by reading, so please see the video below.

What Is Augmented Reality?



The video above exhibits Bionic Eye, which is just one of the many AR applications available for iPhone. Bionic Eye, in particular, focuses on helping you find Points-of-Interests (POI) in your nearby environment, including fast food, restaurants, coffee shops, wi-fi hot spots, hotels, and even subway stations. These services are available for all U.S. and Canadian cities, as well as U.K., France, Germany, and Tokyo.

Another popular AR application available on the iPhone is Wikitude, which markets itself as an AR Travel Guide. It overlays Wikipedia information over real world scenes, as well as crowdsourced information gathered from wikitude.me. Probably most impressive, is its combination with GPS-like real-time navigation, which produces point-to-point directions virtually overlaid on top of the real world, with no need for maps (see video below).

AR Navigation System

Another popular application available for the iPhone is Layar, which, on top of POI and Wikipedia information, also allows you to find nearby Twitter users. A more Twitter-specific app isTwittARound,which allows you to point your iPhone in any direction, and it will show you the avatars of nearby Twitter users. You can then click on the avatars to see their most recent tweets. Although this could potentially lead to some privacy issues (not to mention bordering the line of creepy), this could have some amazing consequences.

With AR, social media can be taken out of the web, and placed right into the real world. The video below features an iPhone app being developed by The Astonishing Tribe. You point your iPhone to a person in the real world, and then the app uses facial recognition technology to pull up that person’s information on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

AR Social Identity

Augmented reality is not just limited to smartphones. Just this year, it has already been used by Esquire magazine to bring Robert Downey Jr. into your computer screen. This demonstrates its potential for other non-commercial uses, such as AR enhanced textbooks at school. Augmented reality has also been used in video games, such as in an Nintendo DSi video game, where you can interact with virtual ghosts lurking in your immediate environment. However, by far my favourite uses of augmented reality are in museums and tourism: Imagine going to New York and being able to see the Twin Towers as if they were still there. See the video below to see how AR can be used to bring history back to life.



Time Travel Tourism

Of course, the equipment worn in the video is much too bulky, and you end up looking like one of the Ghostbusters hunting Slimer. Scientists are trying to find different ways for people to use augmented reality, including contact lenses and eye-glasses that project images directly into your retina. See the video below for another concept, which Nokia is working on, using eye-tracking technology to display an image on bifocal eye-glasses. The idea is that instead of interacting with the virtual objects using your hands, you can just focus your eye-gaze directly onto a virtual object.

Augmented Reality Glasses

You can expect to see more AR in the near future. It has been a fast-growing trend in 2009, and 2010 is promised to see even more growth in the field. In the future, AR might be so ubiquitous that it might become difficult to distinguish reality from virtual reality. It would have been hard to imagine something like this a few years ago. For most people, it is still a very foreign concept that seems like science fiction. Imagine what the next ten years might be like. *head explodes*