Bokardo » Javascript

Potential Game-Changer: TV Recommendations on Live.com

Josh — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:06:22 +0000

In what can be described as a potential game-changing piece of software, the Live.com team at Microsoft has demoed a new ~~widget~~ gadget that allows users to get personalized TV show recommendations and then record them remotely with the click of a button…on their home PC Media Center. The demo occurred at the annual Search Champs Conference held in Redmond.

Here’s a screenshot:

From the short demo given by Sanaz Ahari at Search Champs, the initial functionality appears to be a recommendation tool, whereby people can rate TV shows on a 1-5 star scale. After users rate a show, their recommendations are updated appropriately to a new, more personalized set. This is not unlike the powerful recommendation system for movies on sites such as Netflix.com, which I wrote about extensively here: Which Movie to Watch? An Overview of Recommendation Systems. In addition, Sanaz showed another feature whereby you can with a few clicks of the mouse actually remotely schedule the recording of a TV show on your media center box at home.

There are three reasons why this feature could be a game-changer:

A Showcase Application for the Platform
This feature is a great example of the possible value of the platform that Microsoft is creating. Up until now, the widgets weren’t that exciting, and basically replicated the widgets of other portals. This widget, however, shows the real value of platform that other developers can get excited about. It takes what was previously an uninspired platform into new territory.
Solves a Real, Unsolved Problem
Recommendations are nothing new, but recommendations for TV shows are few. So this effectively helps to solve a previous unsolved problem, and a potentially powerful way to get adoption by people who don’t see the value of live.com. (if you’ve read me at all, you know that I think recommendation systems are the future of the Web)
Leverages Microsoft’s Media Center Platform
By allowing communication between remote users and their home computer, this feature leverages the Media Center platform, functionality that can’t be readily provided by Google, Yahoo, or Apple. Recent rumors suggest that Apple is working on a DVR-type device incorporated into their Mac Mini desktop, however.

I’m really interested to see how this widget is adopted. If it’s easy to use, quick to set up, and provides valuable recommendations, then it could be a big boost to the nascent live.com site. However, we’ll undoubtedly soon see something from other companies, most particularly Apple. Any Dashboard widget developers working on something similar?

Ajax Pushes Microcontent Out the Door

Josh — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:07:09 +0000

By now you’ve heard why Ajax is great for web-based applications:

It is standards-based
It is degradeable with unsupporting browsers
It is relatively easy to implement
The benefits of a one-screen interface (no disruptions for page refreshes)

The Side Benefit of Ajax

But there’s another side benefit, that I think might be as influential as any of the above. When you build an Ajax application, you need to break down your server calls into smaller chunks. You’re no longer requesting complete web pages when you hit your server, you’re requesting information via a simplified API that you create (something as simple as a PHP script, perhaps).

This is yet another step toward microcontent, or pieces of data that live on their own and are called together to form applications screens or web pages. If you weren’t planning on accessing your content in this way before you decided to use Ajax techniques, you will definitely have to if you move that way.

This seems to be an overall trend, however. First we gain granular access to our own content for our own needs, and then we provide public access to others after we see how useful it is.

AJAX Pages: Embedded Javascript

Josh — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:06:16 +0000

This has the potential to be very popular: a project called Ajax pages has just been released, with the intent to allow people to embed Javascript code in HTML like we do with PHP, ASP, and JSP.

It’s not server-side, though, from what I can tell. It’s simply a way to manipulate things client-side in a familiar way.

Here’s an example:

<% var hello = "Hello World"; %> <%=hello%>

Check out the tutorial to see how it works.