Could a global ad company open up streaming web content?

If there was a streaming ad company that offered the ability to target ads by location, could we open up streaming blackout and location restrictions? Would sporting event broadcasters be more open to streaming globally?

Currently the companies that are pushing ads on streaming networks are either the station themselves (Watch Hulu, while watching Hulu) or national brands that have less concerns about location, as long as they ban it for outside national IP addresses. ESPN is just showing you a black, “Be back shortly” clip. Clearly networks are struggling to figure this out, when it should be easier than what their current over-the-air tools offer.

It seems that there would be an opportunity for a ad company to manage and deliver streaming ads based on users location and potentially login info. This gives relevance and targeting to the ads that are on the screen during air time. This provides an even better model than what broadcasters provide to the companies buying air time today. In this option, if a venue wanted to stream the events, only local/relevant content will be displayed - instead of a spot for a  UK cellular company to be shown to a pub full of folks in Los Angeles.

I understand that there is value in holding a US show for a year to keep hype high before rebroadcast in foreign countries, but sports is different… it would be the equivalent of replaying the Weather Channel from last week.

Taking inspiration from this lamp idea (left), by Andreas Müller - the lamp goes from on -> dims -> off according to its orientation to pointing North. I’d love to build a variation (right) that uses a servo motor to automatically point the needle itself at whatever the object of your affection. 

Shot a quick video playing around with more NFC tagging, this time linking our wedding day photo, in Copenhagen, to Google Streetview of the actual corner that it was photographed.

Name Plate 2.0 (for the multi-location worker) Update: It may help to explain - I work in two different campuses and I often asked what campus I’ll be working from. So while I am working on a physical device with the some of the crew at Milwaukee Makerspace. I dropped an NFC tag behind my nameplate and programmed it to link to my Google Latitude account. Tap my nameplate with your NFC enabled phone and you are instantly show where I am at that point in time.

UPDATE: Posted a short YouTube video showing how it works: http://youtu.be/buy-H9ee-Rs

Adding Weather and Traffic to Trip Directions

I am kicking around - draft mock-up above - some feature options for adding two other factors into Google Maps (Directions): Weather and Traffic. By leveraging weather and traffic data throughout the route, a Google Trip feature can refer the optimal travel time to save on time and gasoline.

• Avoiding adverse weather conditions can optimize safest travel times.
• Dots on route represent time increments; time increments change depending on distance.
• Like time-of-day/traffic algorithms, historical data could relate weather effects on traffic through an area.
• Changing departure time alters estimates; peak traffic times, construction hours, etc.
• Weather overlay potentially can offer users to play/ffw/rew stream of moving weather patterns.

A little background - Last week we took a road trip to DC and this weekend we headed on a short trip up to Madison to visit a friend. This got me curious about how often do people take road trips (over 2 hours)? I typically don’t, but realized that there are a lot of college students and people in general that have a car/flight limit - under 3 hours and they drive, over they look to fly. We mapped out most our trip on Google Maps and I do like the new social options of sharing trip data with others in Google+. I got to thinking about the other influences that affect driving times.

Love to hear how often you’ve taken road trips, over two hours and just generally if you have feedback.

A new chrome experiment puts digital books on an infinite bookcase, in your browser. 

Studies in the home were adorned with the inhabitants kills/treasures - for hunters it was the heads of trophy beasts, for the bookie it’s shelves and shelves of books.

Because of that mindset I feel the only way to completely convert a bookie over to digital content is for projectors to beam a digital representation of their kill onto a wall. Using NFC they could then tap the book on their shelf with their digital reader to read it… or till LED paint comes around.

(Source: mmassie)

Trying out FaceOSC [Github link]

Finally got to take some shots of this book.

Congrats, again, to Suzanne Ginsburg on the release of: Designing the iPhone Experience

Pick it up here on Amazon.com

Imagine the cities noise, CO, traffic and temperature data gathered if the Copenhagen Wheel was outfitted on every Alta bike in NYC’s bike share program

Putting these hubs on personal bikes although attractive to people like me, would open the inbound flow of urban data immediately if efforts were to combine with a community bike share program. Slightly modifying their current model by creating a quick pairing feature - from wheel hub to mobile device - allows the user to still retain their data, but also not be tethered to an individual bike. 

Alta Bike Share Program

MIT: Copenhagen Wheel

Beyond Facebook & Twitter, will Google+ impact Tumblr/Posterous?

I’ve heard a lot of input about how Google+ may, or may not, disrupt the likes of Facebook and Twitter. From my viewpoint, and looking at what I open more lately, what about Tumblr and Posterous?

Tumblr is sometimes referred to as the more than 140 character Twitter with a rich user base as its strength. Alternatively Posterous has been referred to as a simplified Wordpress. I love Tumblr myself and as pics of “Hipster Puppies” enters my G+ timeline, I can’t help but get the feeling of deja-vous.

Great post on the OSX moving “Traffic Lights” and minimizing cognitive load

In a system where e.g. a window close button has a fixed position in a window (area) your brain is very good at translating your spatial memory of where that close button is from a sort of “relative” memory into absolute coordinates on the screen. Our brains are very good at these kinds of things, so they are a versatile tool in the field of interaction design. So by moving around the “traffic lights” you force the user to employ visual aid when about to use the “traffic lights”, which in turn drastically increases cognitive load.

(Source: mmassie)

Been kicking this idea around for a little while now and I would love for someone to make something like this, but maybe I am the only one. 

Calling it Oatmeal, as in “the the only thing you need in the morning”… could have called it bacon too I guess. The idea is a stream of all the content that you want in the morning. Mainly that teeth brushing, shaving, morning routine that everyone goes thru of wasted time staring at a mirror. I’d love to have an app that is widget based linking to all the stuff of interest, that you can pick and choose, in the morning:  Its gotta have a delayed autoscroll so you can keep on your morning routing and the page shuffles thru the widgets. I know the option/setting screen would be a bear to set up, but throwing this app open on the iPad and then docking on the bathroom sink would be fantastic! IMO. Of course this will have to do until we have content programmable mirrors in the bathroom.

The New York Times R&D Labs had a great skunkworks on a TV interface very similar

foursquare + Location Lab's Mayor Maker = The magic of airrand geofencing! →

airrand:

One thing that we’ve had to rely on with airrand is leveraging a check-in service in order to know where you are at. In a perfect world the app is most beneficial when it alerts you regardless if you have checked in or not. For about 2 weeks now I have been testing out the concept of…

Making every check-in count!

airrand:

Why we chose foursquare for location awareness
We are very happy to release our beta to the foursquare-using-public and hope that airrand provides even more value to your check-ins.

We considered all of our options when deciding which check-in services airrand should tie into; facebook places, gowalla, google places, SCVNGR, and foursquare. But it became clear that our friends overwhelmingly use foursquare. And the incentives foursquare provides at places like Whole Foods encourage people to check-in actively and often, which is perfect for a reminder service like airrand.

A special thanks to the crew at foursquare for allowing us into the early beta for their new push API service which has been extremely helpful for scaling airrand.

airrand Blog: Release the Kraken (aka Press Release) →

I am mildly obsessed with allowing inanimate objects the ability to tell a story, or inform users of things. Thinking about the potential in not only every object - ex: snap the QR code on your furnace to see its maintenance schedule, last repair, user manual, etc - but also every location to provide you data that you are interested in - ex: walking into an art museum, and that location pinging your smartphone with a map, as well as maybe some relevant information about featured artists, bio, etc.

This was at the heart of what we call “what @ where” engine and ultimately what drove us to creating an app that told you want you wanted to-do while you’re at the exact place you’re at. And on that note, I am extremely proud to see airrand.com open for beta!

airrand:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
airrand.com launches today, delivering your to-do list at the place you need it most
 
Milwaukee, WI - 04/20/2011 - airrand, LLC is pleased to announce that airrand.com has launched its open beta. airrand is a web-based service for use on any web browser and smartphone…