Tech IT Easy » Entertainment

The future of online music: not just about access, but about continuous entertainment

Vincent van Wylick — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 13:45:58 +0000

I feel that something like this does not need to be said, but Spotify a relatively new service here in the Netherlands and selected countries, while cool, is missing one key ingredient: suggesting new music to users that feels somehow related to what they want.

Spotify knows what users want. There are few songs that I haven’t been able to find on Spotify, which in itself is awesome. But it ends there. When I look for the “Baby got Back” song, which I tend to do, it plays EVERY song that has those terms in the title (luckily fewer than you might expect). Instead of saying, hey, it’s “Baby got Back,” it’s a 90s song, it’s a hip-hop song, it’s funny (to some), it just plays the list of whoever decided to use those terms in the title (no seriously, there’s only 72 tracks).

Why it doesn’t need to be said that such a feature needs to exist, is because it already has for some time. Starting with Amazon, which suggests products to you based on what other people with similar tastes like, to Pandora Radio, which unfortunately (grrrr!) doesn’t work outside the US anymore, to Last.fm, which also plays some funny regional games since CBS took it over, iTunes Genius, which rocks (though iTunes as a music-player is way too bloated), Netflix, another US-only service (I’m sensing a pattern here…), etc. etc.

It’s called collaborative filtering, it’s not a new thing and I don’t at all get why not all (music-)services have it. It leads to more user-engagement, it allows listeners to navigate a musical world that has become increasingly diverse and fast-moving, and it has drastically improved my music-listening experience.

So my question is: why doesn’t Spotify have collaborative filtering? Is it expensive to implement, does it require more data than Spotify has, is it an up-and-coming feature, or is it a hidden feature that I haven’t discovered yet? In any case, it is the No. One Reason why I don’t open Spotify as often as either of us would like.

The last retail store on earth—a fantasy story

Vincent van Wylick — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:41:46 +0000

The door slid open slowly, all that was visible from inside the store was a wide beam of light that slowly expanded into the shape of a door. The automatic triggers kicked in and the other security-panels in front of the windows slide open also, illuminating the last retail store left in the world 2020.

He entered. The last ever retail-clerk left on earth. A wide smile on his face, from years of practice, a swing in his step from his regular work-outs. All part of the routine.

The camera-system, also the lighting system of the place, followed his every step—one tiny camera in every tiny light-bulb, giving combined resolutions beyond that of any screens in use today and filming whatever was in the store with more dimensions than the holographic output to date would require. As he reached the music-rack, the one closest to the door, the one most geared towards impulse buying, he passed the security threshold and the system was forced to react—was he an intruder or an insider? Always a fun game to play with this flaky system… He passed the test and personalised systems started turning on all around him.

It started with the music-rack, a 50 metre (150 feet) long pathway surrounded by holograms of artists’ heads performing—sometimes in group-form, if it was a band—and tiny beams triggering the sub-dermal speakers behind his ears to play a song, just right for his mood and of course just out in the charts that week. He sometimes felt he was his best customer, because he rarely left that isle without purchasing at least one song. Another credit down from his, well , limitless credits that he could spend on these things. One thing caught his eye, the Beatles hologram was slightly off-colour, the yellows not quite as yellow as they should be. He knew banging the holographic projector would only make it worse, so he made a mental note to call the mechanic, who could probably calibrate it from his home office.

Next up, the movie isle. He loved how movies had evolved over the years to become a hybrid of a blockbuster movie with great effects, a great story-line that was essentially limitless and could be changed by the viewer as he or she consumed the movie. The movie isle was a mini-experience of such a thing, also targeting his past taste, his current mood, as well as plenty of other variables of course. The result was that as he moved onto the platform, he saw Disney-bunnies playing in the grass around him, and walked along a couple of prehistoric hunters in their furry outfits with, in the distance, their attractive female mates waving at them and cheering as they got closer. He could smell the food as he drew closer, another marketing gimmick, and he was happy that after this came the food isle.

At this point, it should be said the last retail store in the world (also the name of the store) was in fact a great big mall. The difference to other stores that came before? It was run by a single man and everything else was automated or remote-controlled. A consumer would enter and would first be entertained through music and movies, and could then choose to fulfil his primal needs: food, hygiene, etc. The second-smallest section in this store that had everything was the electronics section. People basically had electronics implanted into their bodies or they ran everything off a terminal. There was no hardware differentiation, everything had already been invented, and every software could run on the hardware that people owned from the day they became an adult or when their parents gave them permission. The smallest section of this store was the payment area, in that there was none. Why pay when every credit you need is stored on your person and you can just swipe the product you want and get it?

The clerk had said his goodbyes to the women in his personal film and started down the food isle. Again, a moving platform, on which he could sit this time, with choices flicking across the tables next to him, sushi-style, until he identified his favourite, grabbed it, and munched it down. The platform, measuring his progress and seeing that there were no impatient customers trying to get by, basically came to a standstill, allowing him to eat and enjoy.

This was a typical start of the day and arguably he had the best job in the world. The rest of the time would be spent on support, on dealing with customers that “didn’t get it,” take care of the technical issues that arose even in his technology heaven, and, even, doing some sales, though that was highly unlikely with the kind of data computers already had on consumers, making every product suggestion the perfect one.

The clerk didn’t care where his customers came from or where they went, but he suspected that they lived very much like he did, in an overcrowded apartment block with a big postal area designed specifically to receive all the UPS shipments people ordered online or in his store (mail and those inferior small postal boxes were out-innovated years ago).

The first customer came in and he smiled in anticipation of having to do absolutely nothing, while the customer spent at least 20% of his disposable income that month. Typically, people only came in once a month, if ever, just to get that personal, immersive touch that systems at home and elsewhere would never be able to replicate.

Welcome to the last retail store on earth.

This story was inspired by a recent Macworld article on comic stores vs. iTunes, my blogging on food and retail, and thinking about the future of the physical retail store. Pictures courtesy of the movies “Clerks” and “Thomas in Love.”

Prefer to have me blog in fantasy format? Let me know and I’ll continue to do so!

The value of Twitter vs. the value of Facebook vs. the value of having Neither [weekend ramblings]

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:17:31 +0000

I think a value should always be weighed against the value of not having it, particularly when it’s hard to put a numerical value on something. This something is clearly Facebook and even more clearly Twitter, which still doesn’t compute for 100%. Why I love Twitter would be like saying why I love my dog or my Bengalese tiger, it’s hard to place a value on love. Not to say that I love Twitter, but there are few things that bother me about it. I tolerate it and it has nestled in a comfortable (but small) place in my life.

There are again ramblings against the status quo, or rather the status pecunia—the status of wealth. A few years ago, it was Twitter which seemed to show the Fail Whale more often then the “what are you doing now?” page. It lead to Friendfeed and various other me-too services that were dropped as soon as Twitter got its act together. There are again ramblings about evicting Facebook from people’s lives, though I’m here to tell you that if you want to have any kind of social life online, you’re probably better of keeping that account, though perhaps with less naked pictures or whatever you are worried about losing.

The value of Facebook is that it allows for richer connections between people that do not see each other every day. I care for my high-school friends that live in the UK, France, or Brazil, but since I can’t see them everyday, it adds value to my life to know that they are getting a kid or getting married. It does not add value to my life if people choose to leave Facebook, like some of my friends did at first when they were overwhelmed by all this publicity (something blogging prepares you for). And I’m really glad Facebook doesn’t delete accounts permanently as when people change their mind (they usually do), their friends are again there waiting for them (life is too exhausting to be-/de-/re-friend friends like most of the internet forces you to do).

The value of Twitter is like that morning coffee that adds a little (but not everything) to the quality of the moment you’re experiencing. No, NO, let’s not equate the value like that. The biggest value of Twitter to me is actually pretty much the same one as Facebook’s. I met up with a friend in Denmark a few weeks ago, who is also on Twitter, and I was able to finish his sentences because I read about his experiences ON Twitter. To me Twitter is more like a Second Life than Secondlife(tm) is. It allows for quick streams about people you care about or you “follow” because you respect them. If I had intelligent displays running Twitter on my sunglasses, I would wear them all the time while walking through life, that is how second life Twitter has become to (some of) my relationships. My business partner is going to China this week and I would love for him to update his Twitter-account while there to keep me informed of the cool stuff he’s researching for us (mobile operators better start catching up to this dynamic).

So, what, WHAT, could possibly be the value of Neither? Such a leading way to pose that question, as I’m clearly not on that side of the fence. I’m sorry that many of my friends decide against Twitter accounts because they don’t see the value of it. Those are usually the people that I see once every 6 months and our conversations are less deep because, well, we still have to get through the superficiality of “how was your day? What are you up to?” Questions that Twitter & Facebook both ask. And I’m sorry if my friends decide not to use Facebook as it not only allows them to post their thoughts, but pictures of their Bengalese tigers or their latest trip to hell, and even status updates about Farmville, which I previously stated, was an imperfect way of showing of your virtual garden to your friends.

The value of Neither is a type of emptiness that may be good for meditation, but it is no longer how the world works. It’s like seeing my parents struggle with emails or internet banking when no one sends snailmail or goes to a physical bank anymore. The world without Facebook or Twitter no longer exists. I don’t care about privacy issue 1 or 0, because it’s really your business what you put on the internet and what you don’t and you should never put stuff on there that you don’t want people to know about. I care about connections and about the empowerment that they bring to interpersonal relationships.

I have met 80 people on Facebook that I never expected to see again after graduating from high school, from university, or from leaving the coolest job I had as a tween. I am so grateful to the site for that that if Zuck were here, I could kiss him. Facebook isn’t perfect, and we should protest against these imperfections until they are fixed. Whether we should leave social networks and abandon all the possibilities they have brought us, that is like starving yourself in protest against war: Nobody cares!

This post was brought to you by TigersInPoolsHellYES. Donate via the paypal button on the right.

Bit Bang – Rays to the Future now online

Kari Silvennoinen — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:45:27 +0000

A quick note letting you know that the book I was involved with is now available online for free as a downloadable PDF.

If you’re interested in what’s in the pipeline technology-wise in the coming decades be sure to read this report. As previously mentioned, this report is a compilation of articles written by the PhD students of Aalto University (previously Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology and University of Art and Design Helsinki).

The topics include

Future of IT and hardware
Future of Telecommunication and Networks
Printed electronics and nanotechnology
Future of Media
Future of Living
Future of Globalization
Robotics and artificial intelligence

Also, in the appendix is a small diary of our meetings in Silicon Valley.

Normally these kind of reports would cost thousand of euros, but thanks to the Finnish educational system you can get the report right here for free (PDF; 2MB).

Valve’s Steam and Mac gaming

Kari Silvennoinen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:27:10 +0000

I was attending a LAN gaming session (aka. real “social gaming”) with a group of friends a while ago. Last time, we spent a lot of time installing (and updating) games and trying to get computers to find each other and I had to borrow someone else’s computer. This time, we were quickly up and running and I could proudly play on my MacBook Pro.

Sure, I had installed Windows 7 using Bootcamp on my Mac, because while VMware Fusion was okay for Tales of Monkey Island and even Torchlight, it just doesn’t cut it for hardcore gaming. The only game that I had any problems running over Bootcamp was, oddly enough, Postal 2. Otherwise, I was equal among my PC using peers. I had dreamed about this day.

But what really made things easy for all of us was Valve’s Steam, a gaming portal/service.

The iTunes model strikes again.

Steam ...for the rest of us

We have passed a long time the point where new games are automatically better than older just due to technological improvements. We were still playing games we played over 3 years ago, and some of them were “old” even by then, like Unreal Tournament 2004. The reasons for this are Windows XP and DirectX. These two technologies have enabled a decade of games that are still playable almost without any emulation. The biggest change is happening right now with multicore and 64bit CPUs.

What Steam has done is basically something that other forms of entertainment could learn a lot about, if they could get over their stone age business logic and hunting down their customers. PC game piracy has always been a problem and one reason why PC gaming today seems to be an afterthought to console gaming. Steam (and other similar services, like Impulse) mostly eliminates the piracy problem with a central authorization structure, but yet provides added value to the customer. You only need to install Steam on any computer and log in and you have access to all your games (provided that you have the bandwidth to download the over 2 GB that most games today use). This is something that isn’t possible with iTunes and only recently was possible with Spotify.

What really sets Steam apart here from other entertainment industry offerings is actual value for users. What Steam has done, is really catch the long tail of ecommerce, even though the concept of long tail has long since gone out of fashion. By being able to sell couple of years old games that are virtually impossible to find anywhere (legally) and for a fraction of the price is just amazing. I was able to buy Psychonauts, the most amazing game ever, for just 2 euros and even at the normal price of 9,99 euros it’s 1/4th of what it did cost on the shelves (and it still costs around 15 euros on Amazon). After the Steam’s holiday sales during Christmas, I found out that I had bought many games, mostly because the price was right.

Other benefits from using Steam is that all your games are automatically updated and even for some games, your progress and settings are saved in the “Steam Cloud” – allowing you to play seamlessly on multiple computers.

But there aren’t any games for Mac

The year 2010 turned to be a pleasant surprise for gamers, especially for those, like me, who have switched to Mac. First, Telltale Games announced that their games would be available for Mac as well. This was excellent news for all Sam & Max and Monkey Island fans who would no longer need to boot up VMware Fusion.

And, sure, there have always been Civilization IV and The Sims 3 for Mac, but having new, native games for Mac was excellent news. Clearly a certain threshold has been breached and the amount of gamers living in self-denial on Mac is now large enough that the market is suddenly viable.

Nothing could have prepared us, the people who still reflexively keep our left fingers on WASD and use multi-button mice, for the announcement from Valve that both Steam and Valve’s game engine Source would be available for Mac.

Now, I don’t see that this will mean that soon Mac OS X would be equal gaming platform with Windows, but it does warm my heart. I know that I still need to boot to Windows to really enjoy gaming. The reason Telltale and Valve have been able to pull this out is based on their choices to use cross-platform frameworks (like OpenGL) instead of Windows-only technologies like DirectX. You also need to keep in mind that both Telltale and Valve seem to have target audiences that use Macs and have both targeted certain niches, the former makes high quality “casual” adventure games and the latter high quality first person shooters for more “hardcore” crowd. It is unlikely that other game developers or publishers will follow suit. For a true revolution, Microsoft would need to not only port DirectX to Mac OS X but also develop it at same pace with Windows. Looking at Microsoft’s track record with Mac software, this is even less likely than playing Left 4 Dead natively on Mac looked a couple of months ago. The more likely scenario is that as hardware gets faster and emulating a graphics card gets more efficient, running even the most recent 3D games in VMware Fusion starts to be feasible. A possible scenario is also that through technologies like OpenCL, PC games aren’t as dependent on GPUs and DirectX as they are today.

On the other hand, this shows how Apple’s decision to invest in cross-platform frameworks like OpenGL, OpenCL and WebKit can really pay off in the long term. It also shows that being nice and having something like Bootcamp can be an advantage. I was really surprised how easily I could install Windows 7 on my Mac and how Apple had provided drivers for everything.

What Steam proves is that to succeed on the internet, you really need to be familiar with your customers and understand their needs and truly deliver superior experience and added value to them. This is nothing new, but somehow the rest of the entertainment industry seems to think that they can still get away with last century tactics.

CeBit 2010: On 3D technology and its commercial potential

Vincent van Wylick — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:21:54 +0000

This year, I had the chance to visit CeBit 2010 for the very first time. It was an anticlimactic experience. Being raised with reports of CESs and Macworlds, you can’t help but hope to stumble on the next big thing, but what I was confronted with what had the air of a dusty town ripped out of a Western movie after all the gold diggers left for fairer grounds. In this case, the gold drought is the recession, and the aftermath (to me) appeared as a number of very empty spaces and the remainder seemingly under-budgeted, not “2010 innovative” but 2007 innovative, and with a big sticker on their back saying: “I’m under-confident, please buy something!”

To me, the most interesting technologies were 3D and a massage chair that took me under for 20 min. The biggest news story, however, was USB 3.0, a sad state of affairs if 2010 is marked by a tiny, soon to be in every computer, plug (no matter how fast that damn thing is).

Ignoring the massage chair, which I can’t recommend enough, 3D was the hot topic, inspired by, of course, Avatar. Everybody, from Nokia to Nvidia, appeared to have something related to 3D. They mostly had excuses for it—Nokia was pimping its high bandwidth infrastructure for 3D content aimed at TV & telephone providers; Nvida was pimping its 3D shutter technology for consumer PCs; Frauenhofer Institut was pimping its glasses-less 3D technology; and more and more and more—but my end-conclusion, also after trying to explore the potential for a revolution that was Avatar, was that 3D is an excellent gimmick that will draw a crowd to your stand or cinema, but will leave you disappointed 2/3 times.

Ironically, Nokia had the most impressive display of 3D, showing it off on a 15,000 euro JVC flatscreen. When asked for details, however, all they could tell me was the price of the TV and that their bandwidth technology was not for sale to the “likes of me.” Very arrogant, those Nokia folk and it wasn’t just the 3D guy either… Nvidia’s shutter glasses also worked well and I see a real potential for 3D gaming. Frauenhofer’s glasses-less 3D-TV… pah! The problem with 3D is that it’s so easy to do it badly and 3D without glasses is far from ready. 3D with glasses is far from ready!

I don’t get the obsession with not wearing glasses either. First of all, they’re roomy, which means that you can wear them over existing glasses, they won’t make the claustrophobic more claustrophobic, and they’re disposable. Putting on glasses in the living room is kind of like turning off the light when watching TV.

Last, but not least, I liked lcReflex, which developed an interesting, if not very portable contraption, that makes applications on a computer screen three-dimensional. It involves something they call a Stereomonitor, two screens joined together at a 90 degree angle (one front-facing, one on top facing down) and a semi-transparent mirror in the middle. Put on glasses and you can manipulate an image of brain in 3 dimensions, which should be very interesting for, eh, brain-scientists and playing 3D Tetris.

What’s fairly clear is that we are very close to having 3D in our living rooms, whether it’s for playing games or for watching (selected) TV-shows and movies. But 3D has the same problem that HD-DVDs and -TVs have, which is that it’s insanely niche. You can’t play everything on it and you need some pretty expensive equipment to play it. That combination doesn’t justify much of an investment in it.

The best chances for success belong to companies like Nvidia, which produce consumer-priced solutions for consuming content. Add to this that it is (relatively speaking) fairly easy to convert digital content from 2D to 3D. I very much see the next stage of gaming to becoming 3D.

I’m much more bearish on video-media. Great that cinemas have found a new revenue stream to subsidise their troubled existence. Great that 7 out of 10 filmmakers are considering to make their next film in 3D. I don’t think cinemas have to worry about living rooms competing with them on that level anytime soon. While the need for a big screen to enjoy 3D is a myth well-worth breaking (and it soon will be in gaming), it is still a powerful way to experience a movie and something you can sell at €/$ 15 a pop. Home-entertainment still has the expensive technology problem and the fact that BluRay DVDs simply aren’t selling to anyone except Playstation 3 owners.

As mentioned, 3D’s gimmick power is strong, but that will wear off after having 3D technology in your living room and hardly any media to consume on it. It’s much better off in cinemas where the growing few pay a few bucks more to see space debris floating above their heads, or on consoles where the price of a 3D add-on is hardly more than buying a Guitar Hero guitar.

Tech IT Easy » Entertainment

The future of online music: not just about access, but about continuous entertainment

The last retail store on earth—a fantasy story

The value of Twitter vs. the value of Facebook vs. the value of having Neither [weekend ramblings]

Bit Bang – Rays to the Future now online

Valve’s Steam and Mac gaming

CeBit 2010: On 3D technology and its commercial potential

Thoughts on the (iTablet) iPad – connectivity, apps, multitasking, integrating with Macs

FarmVille is a role playing game

My computing context and what I think about the iPad

Thoughts on Farmville, an addictive but flawed Facebook game

Pomplamoose : social networks, video-songs and disintermediation

Christmas Address

Entrepreneurial Brainstorming Session: Augmented Museum Experience iPhone App

Well what do you know, Snow Leopard did come up with a feature I like

The lowest common denominator online: the written word

What I’d love: A laptop with a built-in projector!

The Retro Problem

Teenies are not us

Guerrilla Babies

How Technology has pushed us into a Zone that is neither Real nor Unreal

Theory: Why No One Cares about Video on the Internet

Brainstorm with me: Looking for a collaborative video and/or audio recording software

The Future of Television, Facebook it isn’t.

Blogging’s not dead, but it’s pretty damn unrewarding

Is it time for a more responsible internet?