Hands on with Taglists for iPhone and iPad

I found a review online about an app that lets you tag content from different sources with a hashtag, which then allows users (any user) to view that tagged content as a live stream.

What piqued my interest was the notion that it would be possible for PBS, as a content provider, to tag our video, photo, news content with certain category tags. Then anybody could stream that curated content to their device. Or, if they have an AppleTV, to their big screen television. AKA: A new TV channel is born based around a subject!

For example:

  • Washington Week, Newshour, & Frontline each individually tag their content with #PBSElection2012. Anybody who wanted to see PBS’s election coverage then plays that stream and they get all that content personally curated into one stream and pushed to their device.
  • Masterpiece tags all their different branded shows with #PBSMasterpieceClassic, #PBSMasterpieceContemporary, #PBSMasterpieceMystery and a user gets each one of those genres streamed to them.
  • All our news partners each tag their content about a certain subject, #PBSSOPA. They could tag their news articles, their photos, and video. Then all that content doesn’t have to be searched for in many locations anymore. A person just types in the hashtag and all that content becomes a playlist on their device. The same hashtag could be used on-air and on twitter to create a total experience around one topic.

The beautiful thing is that users, if we wanted, could add that same hashtag to their own content and it would show up in the stream. That means a local station could run a story (AKA: #WETAHurricaneAlberto) and they could push stories about the hurricane with that tag. But then local users could add their own photos & videos with the same tag to the stream creating a robust local news experience that grows all on it’s own.

This would blow search out of the water. You might never have to search for a main subject again from a content provider. Instead of a search box, the main page might just have curated hashtag links. Clicking on a link provides a stream of content about a specific subject from multiple and varied sources - photos, news stories, video, etc.

No more broken searches or pushing users to other sites for different content. It just all reveals itself in one neat coherent stream.

Source: imore.com

Taglists for iPhone & iPad

Working for a television company with content from KIDS, general audience, drama, mystery, & news; I can think of lots of ways to use this type of technology.

Amazon Launches Cloud Locker - But Why?

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced the launch of Amazon Cloud Drive (www.amazon.com/clouddrive), Amazon Cloud Player for Web (www.amazon.com/cloudplayer) and Amazon Cloud Player for Android (www.amazon.com/cloudplayerandroid). Together, these services enable customers to securely store music in the cloudand play it on any Android phone, Android tablet, Mac or PC, wherever they are. Customers can easily upload their music library to Amazon Cloud Drive and can save any new Amazon MP3 purchases directly to their Amazon Cloud Drive for free.

Amazon Press Release

Here’s my simple question:

Why would I want to pay for a limited set of music and then pay again to store it “in the cloud” when I could pay for a streaming service like Rhapsody to have all my music and TONS of other music “in the cloud”?

I haven’t purchased a CD or MP3 since January and only then because I enjoyed a album so much that I wanted to give more money to the artist. The only music I listen too is streaming music already. And it’s only a matter of time before the streaming services are making deals to allow you to access that stream in more places, like your car, without going through a mobile device.

I pay $14/month to have streaming access to TONS of music via Rhapsody, $8/month for streaming movies via Netflix, and $0 to store files “in the cloud” via DropBox - total, $22. On the other hand, Amazon Cloud charges $20 for anything over 5GB and you still have to purchase the content. So, for $2 extra and the inconvenience of having to use multiple services, I can have access to WAY more content - hmmmm…

I still don’t get why streaming music hasn’t caught on more with everyday people. Maybe it’s because most people still don’t have a mobile device that can access “the cloud” for streaming services. Or, maybe Steve was right when he famously said that people want to “own their music” and not rent it. We’ll see.

Where (On the Internet) To Watch Every Comedy This Season

Great list of all the sites (IE: Hulu, ABC, HBO GO) where you can watch content online.