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    <title>greenhughes.com</title>
    <link>http://www.greenhughes.com</link>
    <description></description>
    <language>en</language>
    <item>
      <title>Using NFC tags in the car</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/using-nfc-tags-car</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/nfc&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;nfc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/mobile&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;mobile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/mtech&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;mtech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/handy&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;handy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-4&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/toptip&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;toptip&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-5&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/app&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;app&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-6&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/android&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;android&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-field-cover-image field-type-image field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot;&gt;&lt;img typeof=&quot;foaf:Image&quot; src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/nfctags.png&quot; width=&quot;246&quot; height=&quot;146&quot; alt=&quot;NFC tag stickers&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&#039;ve found a very handy use for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication&quot;&gt;NFC&lt;/a&gt; tags. When I&#039;m in my car I like to steam music from my phone to the car&#039;s stereo system using Bluetooth. Also it is handy to enable the Samsung &quot;Driving mode&quot; so I get a bit more information read out to me, e.g. if the phones beeps and it is a text message the phone will tell me who the message is from so I can decide whether I should park up and read it. Ideally I don&#039;t want WiFi on to cut power consumption. When I get out of the car I want to switch off Bluetooth (to save power), switch off Driving Mode and switch on Wifi. This all involves changing several settings on the phone everytime I get in and out of my car. Fortunately NFC tags can make this much easier.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;!--break--&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jwsoft.nfcactionlauncher&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;NFC Task Launcher&lt;/a&gt; is a superb little app that has made having NFC capability on my phone genuinely useful. NFC or Near Field Communication is a technology that allows your phone to pass information to another device right next to it or to read a small amount of information embedded in an &quot;NFC tag&quot; a little sticker with a small chip inside. These tags do not need power. I have put an NFC tag into my car and used this to trigger the reconfiguration of my phone rather than having to set everything up manually.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/nfctasklaunchercar.png&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of NFC Task Launcher app showing task run when in car, disables WiFi, enables bluetooth and enables driving mode&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;NFC Task Launcher can program a tag to run a task (a macro of functions) when a phone is swiped over it. A lot is possible, you can get it to open apps, to tweet, to &quot;check in&quot; on social media sites, but in this case I have just used it to switch on and off what I need to use on the phone. Handily, the app allows you to set up two tasks per tag, which can run alternately every time the tag is swiped. So the first tag runs everything I need when I get in the car, the second is run when I swipe the tag again just before I get out.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Running the task switches on the Bluetooth, so once that is on it starts the process of connecting to the car&#039;s media system automatically. It is very convenient, saving me from having to mess about with my phone when I get in or out of the car. Now I can just swipe it again the tag and away I go.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What uses have you found for NFC tags? I still have most of the packet left, so I&#039;m interested in hearing ideas!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 22 Sep 2013 19:35:43 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19674 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/using-nfc-tags-car#comments</comments>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Bye TouchWiz, hello Smart Launcher!</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/bye-touchwiz-hello-smart-launcher</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/samsung&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;samsung&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/android&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;android&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/smartlauncher&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;smartlauncher&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/touchwiz&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;touchwiz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-4&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/launchers&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;launchers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-5&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/mobile&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;mobile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-6&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/mtech&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;mtech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&#039;ve been very happy with my Samsung S3 since the day I bought it. It&#039;s a great phone with a lot of features that make it good fun. However, lately I&#039;ve been finding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TouchWiz&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;TouchWiz&lt;/a&gt; launcher a bit slow to work with. It seems a bit laggy at times which isn&#039;t a good thing on such a powerful phone. So I experimented with a stock Android launcher and that was fast and responsive, but I still found it a bit slow to use. It was time to look for a more radical alternative.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The problem is that I have quite a few apps installed on my phone leading to quite a large launcher menu. To get round this I had shortcuts to my most commonly used apps on the home screen, which was great until I wanted to use an app I don&#039;t use that often (cue scrolling though lots of apps again). Quite a few of the alternative launchers out there take the existing Android launcher and enhance it, which is great, but I felt that wouldn&#039;t get rid of the problem I was having. Looking around Google Play I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ginlemon.flowerfree&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Smart Launcher&lt;/a&gt;, a launcher that offered a very different approach from the traditional Android launcher.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/smartlauncher1.png&quot; alt=&quot;Main screen of launcher&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Smart Launcher puts your most commonly used apps on a front screen in a sort of &quot;flower&quot; formation. The set up wizard asks you for your choice of dialler, SMS, camera, music, browser and gallery apps. It also shows the time and date which you can handily configure so that when you touch them they can launch apps of your choice. I have mine configured to launch the Clock app and the Calendar app respectively.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/smartlauncher3.png&quot; alt=&quot;Main menue&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Once you click the apps menu icon (in the bottom left, or just just swipe from left to right) the real strength of this launcher becomes apparent. All of the apps on you phone are automatically split into category submenus (Communication, Internet, Games, Media, Utility and Settings). The split isn&#039;t always perfect or might not fit in with how you would classify them so it is very easy to move an app into a different category. If you can&#039;t remember the category it is not a problem as you can click on the search icon in the top left and this displays a menu where you can click on the first letter of the app&#039;s name. For convenience the Google Play store is always accessible too from the top right of the screen.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you upgrade to the paid-for version you also get support for widgets, although to be honest I think the way this support is implemented feels a bit like an afterthought. Widget screens are accessed by swiping right to left or clicking on the icon in the bottom right on the main screen. You then get three screens where you can add widgets. It doesn&#039;t feel very fluid though to go from the rest of the launcher to widgets. For me this wasn&#039;t a massive issue as I don&#039;t use Android widgets much, but might put some people off.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/smartlauncher2.png&quot; alt=&quot;Main menu, Ubuntu style&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;All versions have theme support, and I was surprised to find an &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ginlemon.sltheme.ubuntu&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Ubuntu theme&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ginlemon.sltheme.oxygen&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;KDE theme&lt;/a&gt; in amongst the many themes on offer. This could be a nice way to show your support for these projects though. Last, but not least, the whole launcher works in landscape as well as portrait mode. This is a real bonus on larger screen phones. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&#039;ve been using Smart Launcher for a couple of weeks now and even paid out for the premium version. It has been pretty good so far and I find it very quick to use. It takes a couple of days to get fully used to it and can feel a little minimalistic compared to the old launcher but I am enjoying using it and quite like the uncluttered feel. Worth trying out.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 14 Jul 2013 20:55:30 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19673 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/bye-touchwiz-hello-smart-launcher#comments</comments>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Boxee changed my life</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/boxee-changed-my-life</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/boxee&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;boxee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/video&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/xbmc&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;xbmc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/samsung&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;samsung&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-4&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/television&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;television&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-5&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/tv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;tv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-6&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/stb&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;stb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;The news that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/03/samsung-buys-boxee-report/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Samsung has acquired Boxee&lt;/a&gt; caught me a little by surprise. Boxee is software that I don&#039;t use much anymore, but it changed my life. Back in 2009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/content/boxee-makes-your-tv-social&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;I first started using Boxee&lt;/a&gt;, which was then a fork of &lt;a href=&quot;http://xbmc.org/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;XBMC&lt;/a&gt;. Initially I was interested in the social aspects of the software, the ability to share and recommend content, but what became increasingly important to me was the presence of web content as a central feature of the user interface.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;!--break--&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/videochoices.png&quot; alt=&quot;The original Boxee user interface&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Back then if you decided to build yourself a media PC to connect to your television you would probably have ended up using software that put local files at the heart of the experience. Nothing wrong with that particularly if you have a lot of local content to view. Today, the continuing rollout of high speed broadband has increased the popularity of online sources of entertainment such as Netflix, Lovefilm Instant, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Blip and Spotify. The local file or disc is starting to look threatened. Boxee was the first app for me that accepted this change. They also had a system for creating third party apps that could integrate with the system at the precise time that a lot of people were upgrading to smart phones and becoming very enthusiastic about such things.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I had been experimenting with other software offering a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;ten foot user interface&lt;/a&gt; such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/category/tagskeywords/mythtv&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;MythTV&lt;/a&gt; and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://freevo.sourceforge.net/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;Freevo&lt;/a&gt; before Boxee but it was Boxee that really got me interested in Internet powered television. Through developing apps for the platform and exploring the other apps on offer I became interested not just in the technical aspects of this technology but the opportunities that the Internet as a television delivery platform offers independent producers to bring their stories to the silver screen. It became not just a technological interest but &lt;a href=&quot;http://teleremix.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;a cultural one too&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Apps for the TV&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;In early 2009 Boxee announced a developer contest. I don&#039;t normally go in for such things but this seemed like too much of an opportunity to miss. At the time I was working for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open.ac.uk/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Open University&lt;/a&gt; and broached the idea to a couple of colleagues. In quite a short space of time we got a team together and even got some time from a proper graphic designer to produce an app that would &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/content/rising-boxee-developer-challenge-open-university-app&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;bring the university&#039;s podcast content to the TV&lt;/a&gt;. The designs for the app were fantastic and when I initially saw them it was pretty amazing to see the idea start to become a reality.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/ouboxee600.png&quot; alt=&quot;The OU Boxee app&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It also made me slightly nervous as I had to go away and make all of this work, despite having never worked on a TV app before! We didn&#039;t win the competition but got a lot of positive feedback. Even though the app is no longer available I am still very proud of it and feel it was years ahead of its time. As universities fight to become global education brands I think apps like the one we developed will become more commonplace. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/yourmpapp.png&quot; alt=&quot;The Your MP app for Boxee&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My second app was a completely &quot;out there&quot; experiment to make finding out how your MP has been voting as easy as finding out the football scores on teletext. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/content/experimental-boxee-app-keep-track-how-your-mp-votes&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&quot;Your MP&quot;&lt;/a&gt; was an idea created after a fairly awful evening of watching Government and Opposition working together to pass the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act_2010&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Digital Economy Act 2010&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite awkward getting the app to work visually. A lot of information had to be presented and even getting to the end design made me think a lot about the &quot;ten foot user experience&quot;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Changes to work and leisure time&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today I work in a company that specialises in metadata solutions for the media industry. I don&#039;t build apps for TVs but work extensively with TV &amp;amp; Radio metadata as well as data from social websites that helps us increase our understanding of the media landscape. If it hasn&#039;t have been for Boxee I probably wouldn&#039;t have added lots of feeds to do with TV &amp;amp; the Internet to my Twitter account and found out about that job. At home I watch less broadcast TV and more web series than I used to. Boxee started me off on a journey to find a lot of this content and to learn that great TV does not have to be made by giant corporations.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;The future&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Boxee have been a very interesting company to watch. Without a doubt some of their business decisions have left some people feeling quite annoyed, such as the decision to stop the open source version of Boxee and to leave behind the Boxee Box. However I am choosing to see the news of the acquisition with great optimism. Why? Look no further than &quot;Smart TVs&quot;. They have apps and a user interface and are capable of grabbing content from the Internet, but many of these platforms never really got further than being just ok to use and a little uninspiring.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Boxee had many features that made it not just a delight to use but also fun. Samsung have a scale and a hardware production capability that few can match. If Samsung get this right and know how to make the most of the Team Boxee&#039;s talents they could end up with &lt;a href=&quot;&amp;lt;a href=&quot; http:=&quot;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;a very special product&lt;/a&gt;. One that will be a delight to use, bring the Internet right into the heart of television viewing and most importantly of all make people envious! TV is going though radical change right now, not at the pace of something like the mobile phone market but enough new opportunities are being created for money to be made and new faces finding themselves on TV. Let&#039;s hope that Samsung understand, at every level, the opportunity that they have.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 07 Jul 2013 18:59:05 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19672 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/boxee-changed-my-life#comments</comments>
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      <title>Android on a stick: Using the MK808</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/android-stick-using-mk808</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/android&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;android&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/mk808&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;mk808&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/tv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;tv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/video&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since the app that played YouTube videos on my Roku Player became unavailable I had been searching around for a good solution to stream online video content to my TV. I had been looking at newly announced devices like the Asus Qube or the Samsung Homesync and they looked good but seemed to be taking forever getting to market her in the UK. Another alternative was to get a cheap mini-PC with Android on it. Initially I had been reluctant to do this as they are very cheap and had mixed reviews. Would it be a waste of money? Then one day I saw such a device for £33 (including postage from China). It featured Android 4.1, a dual core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB storage and a power supply! It was time to take a risk so I ordered one. It turned up within a couple of weeks and the device I got actually has Android 4.2.2 on it! So it was time to see what it could do.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Top Tips&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/mk808compare.png&quot; alt=&quot;MK808 compared to a mouse&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; /&gt;The first thing to note is that this device connects to your TV through HDMI. It then seems to select the best HDMI mode that your TV is capable of. My main TV is a few years old and doesn&#039;t support some HDMI modes. I made the mistake of powering up the unit before the TV, which resulted in it selecting the wrong mode and I got a &quot;Mode not supported&quot; message from the TV. Avoid this by powering up your TV first so it can negotiate the mode! The unit is turned up configured in a slightly bizarre way. You will need to switch on the setting to update the time automatically and set it to your time zone. Until you do this you probably won&#039;t be able to log into Google Play or YouTube.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The browser was also incorrectly set up. The unit has Flash already installed but it didn&#039;t work with websites as it had been switched off in the browser! Go to &lt;i&gt;Settings&lt;/i&gt; -&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Advanced&lt;/i&gt; and set &lt;b&gt;Enable plug-ins&lt;/b&gt; to &lt;b&gt;Always on&lt;/b&gt;. Also set the &lt;b&gt;UA Agent&lt;/b&gt; to &lt;b&gt;Android&lt;/b&gt; not &lt;i&gt;iPad&lt;/i&gt; as IPads don&#039;t have Flash. You should find that websites with Flash now work.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Controlling it&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/mk808III.png&quot; alt=&quot;Android remote app for MK808&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; /&gt; I have been using my MK808 with a small Rii remote keyboard. This is about the size of a remote control with a keyboard and a small touchpad for the mouse. This works very well. There is also a slightly more expensive MK808B on sale which has Bluetooth connectivity which would enable you to save a USB port. If you go for an external keyboard like this the presence of the on screen keyboard might get annoying so the best option seems to be to install the &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wparam.nullkeyboard&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Null Keyboard&lt;/a&gt; and set the keyboard to that. This will stop the on screen keyboard pop ups.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Interestingly, I also found that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rockchip.remotecontrol&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;MK802III Remote Client&lt;/a&gt; app works perfectly with the MK808. You can install this onto your Android mobile phone using it as the keyboard and touchpad for the device. Very clever!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Performance&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;I have been surprised as how quick this unit is. The browser is actually quicker than my tablet and the whole thing feels quick and smooth to use. On the 8GB model that I have it looks like about 6.5GB is available (the rest is the operating system). However there is a mini SD card slot in the side and also two USB ports (one full size and one mini - but an adapter is supplied) so you can connect external storage. I found that I could connect a 2TB external hard disc without problems. I have read that some people have had problems with the WiFi and the unit getting hot. I haven&#039;t noticed any WiFi problems yet, although it does sit about two centimetres from the router! I did a quick test using it further away from the router and didn&#039;t notice any problems. On the heat side it does get a little warm but nothing alarming yet, although I haven&#039;t overclocked it which I suppose could add to overheating.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/mk808desktop.png&quot; alt=&quot;MK808 desktop&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;What can it do?&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;As you can install apps from the Google Play store the device is potentially capable of quite a lot. My interest in it is watching web series from online video sources. YouTube, Blip, Vimeo (through apps) and Koldcast TV (through the browser) all seem to work perfectly - even in HD! I was also able to watch the near-live coverage of the Ice Hockey World championships through YouTube on the browser. For broadcast television catchup services the results have been more mixed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/bigscreen/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;BBC iPlayer Big Screen&lt;/a&gt; seems to work through the browser but their mobile app doesn&#039;t support the device leading to a rather confusing user experience. ITV Player redirects you to their Google Play app which does not support the device. 4OD installs but does not play video and Demand 5 does not play through the browser. Interestingly &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gzero.tv&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;TV Catchup&lt;/a&gt; works as does Spotify!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I tried to use Netflix with the MK808 too, but the picture is scrambled on videos. I have read that this is meant to work with the unit, so if anyone knows why this could be let me know! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many other types of applications will install but obviously you do not have a touch screen with this so your mileage will vary. Interestingly I found that &lt;a href=&quot;http://appinventor.mit.edu/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;MIT App Inventor&lt;/a&gt; can be used with this device so you could experiment with using this to build TV apps!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So far I have been very impressed with the MK808. I wasn&#039;t sure what to expect, to be honest I wasn&#039;t expecting much but so far it has proved to be a delight. It is interesting to think about this in comparison with something like the Raspberry Pi which is in the same price range. That is of course quite a bare bones experience whereas this is almost consumer ready (with a few rough edges). What would happen if Google made a £30 &quot;Nexus Box&quot; or something along these lines? It feels we are very near to this being possible. If they could make a device that did not need reconfiguring out the box they could pretty much own the Internet TV space in terms of technology.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 05 May 2013 09:57:36 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19671 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/android-stick-using-mk808#comments</comments>
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      <title>New blogs and old blogs</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/new-blogs-and-old-blogs</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/blog&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/blogging&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;blogging&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/webseries&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;webseries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/teleremix&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;teleremix&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-4&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/greenhughescom&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;greenhughes.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&#039;ve been getting increasingly fascinated with the world of web series for quite a while now. It feels that this area is the centre of such a huge amount of creative energy at the moment that it wouldn&#039;t make any sense to ignore it. On this blog I have written a few posts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/category/tagskeywords/webtvhighlights&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;highlighting some of my favourite series&lt;/a&gt;, but recently I haven&#039;t felt that &lt;i&gt;greenhughes.com&lt;/i&gt; was the right vehicle to explore this world in. There are many reasons for this.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My blog has traditionally been about gadgets, computing and social media, posts purely about content have sat a little awkwardly in this mix. The whole format of blogging hasn&#039;t felt exactly right either for what I was trying to achieve. Instead I&#039;ve ended up with lists of good series, but they do not necessarily link to each other very well. Blogging can also be quite time consuming and fitting in that time could be awkward so this meant it took a while to get round to writing about series, which was less than ideal.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Introducing teleremix&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;It just so happened that I had been sitting on a domain name that seemed perfect for a new project. It was originally intended for something entirely different, but for a blog about web series &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://teleremix.com&quot;&gt;teleremix&lt;/a&gt;&quot; seemed like a perfect name and I started to think about what I would like to do differently this time. What I have gone for is a format with very short posts. Each post will only be about one web series with a paragraph or two explaining what it is and why it got my attention. Very short posts would allow for regular updates, I am aiming for a couple a week.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Something else I am doing differently this time is to use a hosted platform rather than something that I host myself. After thinking about the format the perfect choice was obvious: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tumblr.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Tumblr&lt;/a&gt;. Millions of people around the world already use Tumblr to record creative items they find interesting. It is also used quite extensively by web series creators so I would be able to write my blog and follow some shows in the same space. It also lends itself perfectly to the type of short post that I am planning to do. Crucially it would be a contrast project to this blog making it a whole new experience to enjoy.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Tumblr also provide great apps so I can easily create a short post from my mobile phone. They have a feature where other tumblr users can follow you and subscribe easily to your updates. This is a very useful mechanism as it is often difficult to keep up to date with posts in Twitter (posts go by too fast) and of course RSS is a bit worse off after the demise of Google Reader. It also means I can get a lot of good experience of social media in a different domain.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Life is too short for bad technology (or bad web series)&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;So this blog will go back to being more technically focussed and I will try to do a post at least every month about my technological adventures (I have a lot of ideas, plus I have been exploring a lot of technology since I changed jobs just over a year ago). There is a lot of amazing technology to explore and so much to talk about.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So I hope you follow my new blog at &lt;a href=&quot;http://teleremix.com&quot;&gt;teleremix.com&lt;/a&gt; and keep following this blog. I&#039;m very excited about the new blog and the future for this blog. It is a very interesting time to be into technology and media.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:21:21 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19670 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/new-blogs-and-old-blogs#comments</comments>
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      <title>Web TV Highlights no.3</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/web-tv-highlights-no3</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/webtv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;webtv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/television&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;television&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/webtvhighlights&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;webtvhighlights&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/russianspy&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;russianspy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-4&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/oftenawesome&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;oftenawesome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-5&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/theinn&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;theinn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-6&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/abigail&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;abigail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-7&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/iamtim&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;iamtim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-8&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/actressdiaries&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;actressdiaries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;It may not be trendy to say it, but I &lt;i&gt;like&lt;/i&gt; watching television, but it has to be interesting television. Some of it I watch over the air in the traditional way, some of it on the web where many fine series are to be found. So here is the third in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/category/tagskeywords/webtvhighlights&quot;&gt;my series of posts&lt;/a&gt; about web series that I have been watching. It is amazing to see the variety of content on offer and all of the people who want to tell their stories, these are just a few of them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;The Russian Spy&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;I love the idea behind this. Faleena Hopkins&#039; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.therussianspy.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Russian Spy&lt;/a&gt; is about a character who has acquired the ability to read minds. Despite this she isn&#039;t that great at her job often being distracted by a break up with her ex boyfriend and a temper! She also doesn&#039;t really like killing people, which is unhelpful sometimes.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe src=&quot;http://blip.tv/play/AYOLp30C.x?p=1&quot; width=&quot;720&quot; height=&quot;433&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;embed type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; src=&quot;http://blip.tv/api.swf#AYOLp30C&quot; style=&quot;display:none&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;The Inn&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;I am not entirely sure what this series is about but hopefuly all will become clear soon! Steve Silverman&#039;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prettytheseries.com/the-inn-episodes/viewcategory/16/the-inn-season-1&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Inn&lt;/a&gt; follows the adventures of a woman whose car breaks down in a small town in rural America. The town is full of rather weird characters who contribute to a spooky setting for this drama. The owner of the Inn probably isn&#039;t about to be awared an NVQ in customer service, instead warning the main character against setting foot in the back yard. What goes on there? Well the series is still running, so we will all just have to wait and see. Sharp eyed viewers will no doubt spot some of the cast of &lt;i&gt;DeVanity&lt;/i&gt; in episode one.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/sJibA_pejRk&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Often Awesome: The series&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;It is not often that the word &quot;awesome&quot; is justified, but this is one such occasion. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allacesmedia.com/oftenawesome/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Often Awesome&lt;/a&gt; documents the late Tim LaFollette&#039;s battle with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis&lt;/a&gt; (ALS) better known as &lt;i&gt;motor neurone disease&lt;/i&gt; here in the UK and &lt;i&gt;Lou Gehrig&#039;s disease&lt;/i&gt; in the US. The ending of this series is tragically inevitable, but it serves as a reminder of just how amazing the human spirit can be. The series documents not only Tim&#039;s struggle condition but the love story between himself and his wife Kaylan. There is no cure as yet for the disease and the series, as Tim was himself, is brutally honest about what sufferers go through and what their lives are like. In such circumstances many would feel helpless, but their friends and family do an amazing job of gathering round and doing everything they can to help. We get many reminders of just how wonderful human beings can be to each other which is too easy to forget sometimes.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Tim is often shown expressing a lot of determination to raise awareness of ALS and hopefully encouraging medical companies to work towards a cure. The series is a great way to spread this awareness, I live thousands of miles from where he did and yet I have heard his story, now you can too. A great blog post explaining more about the series by the producers is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allacesmedia.com/oftenawesome/2012/12/18/wrapping-up-often-awesome-the-series/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Wrapping up Often Awesome The Series&lt;/a&gt;. Thanks to my Georgina Parsons for telling me about it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/COeSNqjReM0?feature=player_detailpage&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Abigail&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;A bit of sci-fi drama now with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abigailtheshow.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Abigail&lt;/a&gt;, a lady who turns out to be some sort of robot. This is a very enjoyable series, polished and well made. It is currently running so it will be interesting to see how this story develops!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/1Jq6e1Wu8IA?feature=player_embedded&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;The Actress Diaries&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is a comedy about a couple of waitresses who want to break into acting. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.actressdiaries.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Actress Diaries&lt;/a&gt; follows their mishaps, comical auditions and adventures and is great fun. Will they make it into acting? Not likely!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/qwKP1wUCgz8?feature=player_embedded&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;I am Tim: A Monster of a Documentary&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://iamtimhelsing.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;I am Tim&lt;/a&gt; is a British web series set in York. Tim is a monster hunter who works tirelessly to make the streets of the city free from scary monsters, stopping occasionally for a cup of tea.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;iframe width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/VSOcwm-XM_4?feature=player_detailpage&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you&#039;ve seen a good web series, let me know in the comment below. Happy viewing!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:36:33 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19669 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/web-tv-highlights-no3#comments</comments>
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      <title>Blip: Not just a video site but your next TV channel</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/blip-not-just-video-site-your-next-tv-channel</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/blip&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;blip&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/bliptv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;bliptv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/review&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/television&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;television&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-4&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/iptv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;iptv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-5&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/webseries&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;webseries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-field-cover-image field-type-image field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot;&gt;&lt;img typeof=&quot;foaf:Image&quot; src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/bliplogo0812.png&quot; width=&quot;240&quot; height=&quot;175&quot; alt=&quot;Blip logo&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anything that can make it easier to discover great content on the Internet is always welcome. I&#039;ve been having a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://blip.tv/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Blip&lt;/a&gt;, a video service that helps do this for web series. It offers many facilities to help viewers and producers of web series alike. Blip is more than just a video web site or a collection of apps; it is the concept of a TV channel reinterpreted for the web. Crucially, it promotes web series content through its own web site and apps and on major social media websites and provides a business model where web series producers can make money too. In this blog post I&#039;ll be taking a look at the blip experience and examining what is in it for viewers and producers alike.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;!--break--&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Discovering web series&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/blipappfeatured.png&quot; alt=&quot;blip app featured screen on an Android tablet&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Blip has a website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blip.tv/apps&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;apps&lt;/a&gt; for Android phones and tables, Apple phones and table, the Amazon Kindle Fire, Google TV and the XBox 360 and also a presence on various video sites &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/bliptv&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;such as YouTube&lt;/a&gt;. In the US there is also a Roku channel (but not in the UK, why oh why?!). This is great as it means you don&#039;t have to be stuck in front of your computer to enjoy what they have to offer. When you use their website or one of their apps the first thing you will notice is that they have quite a rich way to explore the different web series on offer. They offer pages for popular, featured and genre specific content. This makes you instantly aware of lots of series and will maybe tempt you to try something new. Unfortunately as you only see a picture, an episode title and a series title there isn&#039;t much to go on so for producers I imagine getting that picture right is vital. If you hover over an episode on the website or tap on it in an app you get a bit more information which might tempt you to play the video.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;A wide range of content is available across a lot of different genres. Here you will find scripted drama, comedy, cookery programmes, fashion series and music shows as well as technology shows. I tried all sorts of searches and usually got a lot of results back suggesting a great deal of diversity was on offer. It was great to see the variety of content and spend some time watching different shows. Before a show starts you will probably see an advert, which can be a little bit annoying if the advert doesn&#039;t change!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I found a couple of shows that I liked so, not wanting to have to find them again through navigation or search I used Blip&#039;s facility to &lt;i&gt;follow&lt;/i&gt; a series. To do this you will need to register on the site. Fortunately this does not mean having to remember another password as they use Facebook Connect for this function. Once you have logged in with Facebook you can follow series and the &lt;i&gt;My Blip&lt;/i&gt; page will be populated with the latest episodes of the shows you like. You can also be sent a weekly email about these latest episodes. This makes it pretty easy to keep up with what&#039;s new.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/blipappfollowed.png&quot; alt=&quot;blip app showing latest episodes for series that I have followed&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Social TV&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;The use of Facebook Connect for login is no accident. It links to the strong social strategy for the site. By default the settings on your account mean that an activity message gets posted to your Facebook timeline when you watch an episode, follow a series of &quot;love&quot; an episode. This might make some people uncomfortable, but fortunately it is very easy to switch off. Posting to the Facebook timeline could be a good way to make your friends more aware of web series but I don&#039;t think people form friendships on the basis of common taste in content so I am not sure how useful this would be. Also people aren&#039;t used to their choice of TV programming being automatically shared to the web for comment and discussion by friends so maybe it would be best if this feature warned you &lt;i&gt;before&lt;/i&gt; it was about to post to give the viewer the chance to stop it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Blip also promote web series through social media sites. They have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/blip&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;a Facebook page&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/blip&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;a Twitter account&lt;/a&gt; and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.blip.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;a Tumblr blog&lt;/a&gt;. This is really useful as it means that you can hear about new shows with very little effort. In a way this is a bit like when TV channels play a trailer for another show before the one you are watching. It all helps awareness. The social media presence is very active so well worth following.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;For producers&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is no place for random cat videos. Instead Blip&#039;s aim is to work with a community of web series producers. Web Series who would like to be hosted by the platform must apply for approval. However in exchange Blip aims to offer producers quite a lot. Most notably advertising revenue is split 50/50 between the platform and content producers offering producers that chance to monetise their creations. They also get a dashboard offering audience numbers and demographics and provide tools to help producers promote their series themselves. Blip even have &lt;a href=&quot;http://studios.blip.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;their own studios&lt;/a&gt; where they produce content for the platform and also host independent producers. Content hosting is non-exclusive which is great as this leaves producers free to reach more platforms.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Interestingly, Blip also have a presence here in the UK. They host a number of web series by some UK television personalities, have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/blipuk&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;UK specific Twitter account&lt;/a&gt; and have had a sales team for the UK since 2010. Blip told me that they hope to deepen their relationship with UK producers with the aim of increasing UK audiences for high quality shows.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Who watches Blip?&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;In their press pack Blip mention some interesting numbers. According to figures they quote dated July 2012 from Comscore and Quantcast they have managed 160m views on content from 17.9m unique visitors with 25mins being the average for a session. This seems pretty good for a web site. They have a 60/40 split of male to female visitors and an average visitor age of 32. It is interesting to compare this to a more technology focused site like Revision 3 which has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://revision3.com/advertise&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;71/29&lt;/a&gt;. This suggests that they are successfully selecting content that appeals to both sexes.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;A TV channel for the future&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;I think sites like Blip will become increasingly important as video takes off on the web. Their ability to host and cross promote web series across a variety of platforms is very significant. Just as having a TV transmitter only in London isn&#039;t enough for a traditional TV network, having just a web site or an iPhone app won&#039;t be enough in the world of web television. Having a service that can deliver to a viewer&#039;s chosen platform is a powerful selling point and being able to use those platforms to help people discover new content will hopefully encourage the web series industry to grow.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Be sure to watch out for my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/category/tagskeywords/webtvhighlights&quot;&gt; Web TV Highlights&lt;/a&gt; series of posts for great content found on Blip and other video services!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 20 Jan 2013 17:34:26 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19667 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/blip-not-just-video-site-your-next-tv-channel#comments</comments>
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      <title>Web TV Highlights no.2</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/web-tv-highlights-no2</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/webtv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;webtv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/television&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;television&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/internet&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;internet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/devanity&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;devanity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-4&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/squattertown&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;squattertown&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-5&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/mygimpylife&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;mygimpylife&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-6&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/iawtv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;iawtv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-7&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/iawtvawards&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;iawtvawards&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-8&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/bloodymaryshow&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;bloodymaryshow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-9&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/stockholm&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;stockholm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-10&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/webtvhighlights&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;webtvhighlights&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is an exciting time in the world of web series! So following on from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/content/web-tv-highlights-no1&quot;&gt;Web TV Highlights no.1&lt;/a&gt; here is the second in my occasional posts about tv shows that I like on the web. Last week saw the second &lt;a href=&quot;http://iawtvawards.org/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;International Academy of Web Television Awards&lt;/a&gt; which took place at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Paul Kontonis, Chairman of the IAWTV &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwmu05_iawtv-awards-2013-synched_people&amp;amp;start=340&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;released some surprising statistics&lt;/a&gt; about the web TV industry. Nearly five hundred web series submitted themselves for consideration for an award to the IAWTV, five times the total number of web series that were produced in 2009. In 2013 it is predicted one thousand new web series will launch. He also commented that in 2011 about US$50million was spent on original online content, but this is predicted to rise to $250million in 2013.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;!--break--&gt;&lt;h3&gt;IAWTV Awards&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;I like awards ceremonies, not sure why. They are usually entertaining shows to watch. I couldn&#039;t watch the IAWTV Awards live as I am in the UK as it would have been &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; late here but fortunately a recording of the who show is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwmu05_iawtv-awards-2013-synched_people#.UPGM_KGQQ08&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;available on Daily Motion&lt;/a&gt;. A few of the jokes weren&#039;t that great (as ever with awards shows!) but overall it was a pretty good show and gave a useful broad picture of what is going on in the web series scene. Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://iawtvawards.org/2013-nominations&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;nominees list&lt;/a&gt; is a bit of a treasure trove and it is well worth having a look at to find some great shows.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe frameborder=&quot;0&quot; width=&quot;480&quot; height=&quot;272&quot; src=&quot;http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xwmu05&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;DeVanity Season 3&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;I know &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/content/getting-started-watching-web-tv&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;I&#039;ve mentioned&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.devanity.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;DeVanity&lt;/a&gt; before but the opening episode of season three was so good that I wanted to mention it again. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.devanity.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Devanity&lt;/a&gt;, if you are not familiar with it, is a soap about a family and their crumbling jewellery empire in Los Angeles. It is a fast paced satirical tribute to the great soap operas of the 1980s such as Dallas and Dynasty with fantastic plot lines, one liners that will make you chuckle long after you have finished watching the show and glamorous costumes and settings. It is perfect television for a dull winter&#039;s evening after work and maybe shows what soaps could have been if they hadn&#039;t turned into a five times per week snorefest!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;DeVanity is going from strength to strength. They have just secured a new sponsorship deal (which is why you see an advert for hair straighteners before the show) and they have been getting a lot of good coverage in the press, including a &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/DeVanitysoap/status/289967499607412736&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;four page spread&lt;/a&gt; in a soap opera magazine. If you did watch Dallas and Dynasty in the 1980s you will see some familiar faces as guest stars too.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe src=&quot;http://player.vimeo.com/video/55064171&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;300&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; webkitallowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; mozallowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;My Gimpy Life&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Also from Los Angeles is &lt;a href=&quot;http://mygimpylife.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;My Gimpy Life&lt;/a&gt; a comedy web series loosely based on the real life experiences of actress &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tealsherer.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Teal Sherer&lt;/a&gt; (who you might recognise from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.watchtheguild.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Guild&lt;/a&gt;). The series is about Sherer&#039;s adventures as a wheelchair using actress trying to navigate the Hollywood dream and received two IAWTV awards. I really enjoyed the show and thought it was funny and really well made. Hopefully there will be another season!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/LtcxhckVvp0?feature=player_embedded&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Squattertown&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&#039;s time to leave America now and have a look at a couple of web series from other parts of the world. Marco Sparmberg&#039;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://squattertown.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Squattertown&lt;/a&gt; caught my eye when &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/SnobbyRobot&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;@SnobbyRobot&lt;/a&gt; live tweeted watching it along with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/DimSumWesterns&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;show&#039;s creator&lt;/a&gt; as part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/search?q=%23WebSeriesWednesday&amp;amp;src=typd&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;#WebSeriesWednesday&lt;/a&gt;. The series is a &lt;i&gt;Dim Sum Western&lt;/i&gt; a concept that &lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.cnn.com/hong-kong/play/squattertown-worlds-first-dim-sum-western-939614&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Sparmberg told CNN&lt;/a&gt; was a fusion of spaghetti westerns and the 1980s Hong Kong action movies. It is filmed on the rooftops of some of the old buildings in Hong Kong where squatter communities live. In the parellel universe of the show&#039;s plot the gap between rich and poor has grown so wide that the poor are forced to live in these communities while the rich live below.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The show is admittedly a little light on plot but its stylistic character and atmosphere are outstanding. Visually unique and paced really well the show is great to watch.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe src=&quot;http://player.vimeo.com/video/25592412&quot; width=&quot;500&quot; height=&quot;281&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; webkitallowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; mozallowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/25592412&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;The Bloody Mary Show&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly I thought it would be great to mention a British web series! I think it is fair to say that the UK has not travelled very far down the road of web series adoption but there are hopeful signs that things are changing. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloodymaryshow.co.uk/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Bloody Mary Show&lt;/a&gt; is loosely based on the legend of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_(folklore)&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Bloody Mary&lt;/a&gt;, but anglicised. This is quite an unusual show, certainly unique looking! The show is doing pretty well, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/bloodymaryshow/posts/468568666533653&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;it was named&lt;/a&gt; as one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://indieintertube.tv/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Indie Intertube&#039;s&lt;/a&gt; stand out web series of 2012 and has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.welovesoaps.net/2012/12/4th-indie-soap-award-nominations.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;nominated for the 4th Annual Indie Soap Awards&lt;/a&gt;. It is nice to see that there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/BritishWebSeries&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;British Web Series channel&lt;/a&gt; on YouTube now as well so hopefully web series made here will become a bit better known.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe src=&quot;http://blip.tv/play/AYOJmEIC.x?p=1&quot; width=&quot;720&quot; height=&quot;433&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;embed type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; src=&quot;http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYOJmEIC&quot; style=&quot;display:none&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h3&gt;And the &quot;I&#039;m not sure about that&quot; Award goes to....&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;There was one series that got a lot of critical acclaim but I wasn&#039;t sure about: &lt;a href=&quot;http://watchstockholm.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Stockholm&lt;/a&gt; (which is named after the syndrome rather than the city). The plot of this show is that a woman is abducted by a serial killer and then they end up falling in love with each other. It is billed as a dark comedy and is performed very well but for me the bit that did not work was the woman going from being terrified of to in love with her captor, which is a problem as that is basically the plot. It felt like the story made the jump between the two states far too quickly and did not really show how that could happen or explore the complex emotions involved. The episodes were very short (the longest being four and a half minutes), even having ten minute episodes might have enabled more exploration of the plot line.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 12 Jan 2013 17:06:17 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19666 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/web-tv-highlights-no2#comments</comments>
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      <title>Developing a Roku channel is fun!</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/developing-roku-channel-fun</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/roku&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;roku&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/development&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/television&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;television&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/internet&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;internet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-4&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/brightscript&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;brightscript&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-5&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/iptv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;iptv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;I recently treated myself to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roku.com/roku-products&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Roku LT&lt;/a&gt; which is an inexpensive little gadget (currently retailing for about £40) that streams content from the Internet to your TV. Roku has got a lot right with this device. It is simple to use, the user interface is consistent, and it is compact - the unit is about the size of a hockey puck. A software development kit is also available so you can develop your own apps, or &lt;i&gt;channels&lt;/i&gt; in Roku-speak. So I set myself the challenge of writing a new channel to see what developing for a Roku box is like.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;!--break--&gt;&lt;h4&gt;Getting started&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Software Development Kit is really easy to get your hands on. Just visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roku.com/developer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;http://www.roku.com/developer&lt;/a&gt; and register. You will then have a new link on your account page for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://owner.roku.com/Developer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;developer site&lt;/a&gt;. Channels are developed using a language called &lt;b&gt;BrightScript&lt;/b&gt;. As you might have guessed this is a Roku specific language, but is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;BASIC&lt;/a&gt; so if you have any familiarity with languages like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_basic_for_applications&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Visual Basic for Applications&lt;/a&gt; you will be off to a flying start. I think it is fair to say that BrightScript has a slightly retro feel, it reminds me slightly of writing macros for Excel 97, but it gets the job done and I found the Roku to be quite straightforward and fun to program.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Channels can be developed using the tools in the SDK download and a text editor or through an Eclipse plug in. Comprehensive documentation is included in the SDK (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/RokuSDKv48/Roku+SDK+Documentation&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;also online&lt;/a&gt;). Roku also run a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.roku.com/developer/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;developer blog&lt;/a&gt; and have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.roku.com/viewforum.php?f=34&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;developer section&lt;/a&gt; on their forum . The SDK can be used on Linux, Mac and Windows. One thing to note though is that you will need an actual Roku device as well, an emulator is not part of the SDK, instead you first add the developer features to your Roku (through a remote control sequence explained in the docs) and connecting to it from your computer using telnet (the Eclipse plug in takes care of discovering and connecting to Roku boxes on your network).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/pic_shot_1353581071591.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The Roku LT box and remote&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h4&gt;Parsing feeds&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;Getting started on your new channel is pretty easy. The SDK and Eclipse plugin contain several examples covering major use cases such as audio and video players. A debugger is available on the Roku box itself. You can&#039;t do things like set breakpoints in Eclipse but you can press Ctrl+C while your app is running and use a text mode debugger in the telnet session to examine the contents of variables etc. which is very handy. The video player example is especially useful as it contains code that shows you how to parse an XML file which is great if you are using an RSS feed as the source of your data. A JSON parser is also available. Parsing XML is quite straightforward as you get an object that you can access properties on to get the contents of an element. E.g. &lt;b&gt;xml.channels&lt;/b&gt; would get you all of the channel elements, something like &lt;b&gt;item.title.getText()&lt;/b&gt; would get you the text in the &lt;b&gt;&amp;lt;title&amp;gt;&lt;/b&gt; element of an &lt;b&gt;&amp;lt;item&amp;gt;&lt;/b&gt; element. One handy thing to know though is that you have to use a slightly different notation for elements with a namespace, e.g. if you had a &lt;b&gt;&amp;lt;dc:creator&amp;gt;&lt;/b&gt; element inside an &lt;b&gt;&amp;lt;item&amp;gt;&lt;/b&gt; element you would need to have a line like this:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;codeblock&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;creator = item.GetNamedElements(&quot;dc:creator&quot;).GetText()&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;p&gt;This tripped me up at first!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My little channel delivers podcasts from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ccmixter.org/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;CCMixter&lt;/a&gt; website to the Roku. I ran into an issue that many developers might face - that the feed of data was not quite as simple as I would have liked. To get the information I needed it was necessary to do a bit of text processing to extract some of what I needed from the feed. Fortunately regular expressions are supported on the Roku so you can write some pretty sophisticated text parsing routines, although ideally it is better to generate a cleaner feed on the server side. I started with the audio example channel from the SDK and built on the feed processing code in the video player sample. The code for my channel can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/liamgh/roku-ccmixter&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;https://github.com/liamgh/roku-ccmixter&lt;/a&gt;. All of this feed processing might take a few seconds so it is a good idea to add a splash screen for when your channel starts. Fortunately this is very easy, just specify the locations of SD and HD versions of your splash screen graphic file in the manifest file in your project.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h4&gt;User experience&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Roku platform has a bit more of a standardised look and feel than some other TV Internet environments. Standard screens can display lists of items to select or information about a media file currently playing. This is great as it means you do not have to worry too much about the design (although you still will need some graphics and a colour scheme). You can build these standard UI screen elements and pass information to populate them. For example you can build a screen to play an item, you would pass the title, author, length and these get displayed in standard places. You also add buttons which you can then get to control playback. The code has a main event loop where such things as button press events can be trapped and implemented.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.greenhughes.com/files/roku-ccmixter-600.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of the CCMixter Roku channel playing a podcast&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;One odd thing that I found was that the screen has a progress bar for how far through an audio track you are, however this does not need to automatically updated. You will need to keep updating this in your main event loop. The platform does not give you any meta data either about remote files that it is playing, so if you need to know the length of a track for example this will have to come from your feed. This caused me a bit of an issue as not every item in my feed had a length, so I had to implement extra code to not show a progress bar in this case. This also becomes a bit of an issue when implementing the fast forward and rewind buttons. I found I had to implement a timing variable and work out where to move to in the file manually, taking care to fast forward past the end of a track!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h4&gt;Distribution&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;When you are ready to try out your code the Eclipse plug in takes care of packaging it and putting it onto the Roku device. You can only have one development channel loaded at once on the box, so if you work on another project and run it this will replace any development channel that is already there. When you are happy with your creation you can either submit it to Roku for inclusion in their channel store (subject to approval) or make it available as a &quot;private channel&quot;. In the latter case the channel does not get reviewed by Roku or appear in the channel store, but you can send people a link that they can use to install the app via the Roku web site. This works really well. For example my channel can be installed with this link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://owner.roku.com/add/ccmixter&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;http://owner.roku.com/add/ccmixter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I am planning on experimenting more with Roku channel development. The platform has many interesting features, one I am keep to explore is the capability to pass data to a channel through a URL. This might be an interesting way to experiment with ideas around integrating TV and tablet devices on the same network. It did not take long to develop a channel for the Roku which was quite a refreshing change from some of the more complex platforms.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:09:02 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19664 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/developing-roku-channel-fun#comments</comments>
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    <item>
      <title>Web TV Highlights no.1</title>
      <link>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/web-tv-highlights-no1</link>
      <description>&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix&quot;&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;field-label&quot;&gt;Tags: &lt;/h3&gt;&lt;ul class=&quot;links inline&quot;&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-0&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/webtv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;webtv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-1&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/webseries&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;webseries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-2&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/internet&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;internet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-3&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/web&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;web&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-4&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/television&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;television&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-5&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/hipsterhood&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;hipsterhood&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-6&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/thegirlsonfilm&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;thegirlsonfilm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-7&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/thevaultseries&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;thevaultseries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-8&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/undercity&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;undercity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-9&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/robotpillow&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;robotpillow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-10&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/iptv&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;iptv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;taxonomy-term-reference-11&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/category/tagskeywords/webtvhighlights&quot; typeof=&quot;skos:Concept&quot; property=&quot;rdfs:label skos:prefLabel&quot; datatype=&quot;&quot;&gt;webtvhighlights&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-items&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;field-item even&quot; property=&quot;content:encoded&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you live and work in a world of technology it is easy to forget that it is not the technology that matters but what people do with it. Right now there is a huge amount of creativity being released into the web TV world. It is very exciting and I have been finding myself watching more and more online, so I thought I would start writing occasional posts about what has stood out for me. I&#039;m going to embed previews where possible too, so I hope that the folk behind the shows don&#039;t mind.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h4&gt;Series&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;h3&gt;The Vault&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;First up is the intriguing near future show &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thevaultshow.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Vault&lt;/a&gt;. Set in 2016 it follows a group of young people in a games show. Each contestant is in a room usually with something seemingly random, one room just has bottles of water, another a pie, another some goldfish and so on. The whole thing is a giant puzzle and solving it is led by a main character called Henry who can communicate with all of the rooms via a headset and a giant switchboard. It is quite a bizarre show and after a few episodes there is quite a bit plot twist that introduces a great deal of uncertainty into the minds of the contestants!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/AyrXg_lr_Rk&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Hipsterhood&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Being cool is hard (not that I would know), being a hipster is hard! It makes everyday life very difficult. The wonderful and very funny &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hipsterhoodseries.com/wp/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Hipsterhood&lt;/a&gt; is about the awkward relationship of a man and a woman who keep bumping into each other and like each other but the awkwardness of their hipster characters make developing their relationship, or even coping with everyday situations such a buying cereal very difficult! It is an unusual series in that much of the dialogue is not spoken but instead we are let into their thoughts. The series was great and the &lt;i&gt;Hipster Wisdom&lt;/i&gt; extras were great fun too.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/967tpg8helg?feature=player_embedded&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Girls on Film&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegirlsonfilm.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Girls on Film Project&lt;/a&gt; is a thought provoking web series that takes ultra-masculine scenes from films and reenacts them with women. If you follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everydaysexism.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Everyday Sexism&lt;/a&gt; project on Twitter you will see lots of evidence how gender stereotypes constantly feature in everyday life. The &lt;i&gt;Girls on Film&lt;/i&gt; project makes us think about these stereotypes in film and the sort of roles men and women play in Hollywood through the very simple but effective idea of a women playing the male role. Everything else about the scene remains as similar as possible. It has been out for while but worth seeing if you haven&#039;t so far.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe src=&quot;http://player.vimeo.com/video/45745333?title=0&amp;amp;byline=0&amp;amp;portrait=0&amp;amp;color=9d9d9d&amp;amp;autoplay=1&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; webkitallowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; mozallowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h4&gt;One off shows&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Undercity&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Shot without permission from the authorities &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/18280328&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Undercity&lt;/a&gt; might come across as a slightly edgy documentary exploring New York&#039;s hidden urban history. Urban Explorer Steve Duncan spends a fair amount of the film hiding from passers by and passing underground trains, but in between presents a fascinating portrait of the hidden side of New York from the top of a bridge to the tunnel system below. The unique video presents an usual exploration of parts of New Yorks history as well as introducing us to the people who call the tunnels home. We can only hope that they are safe and sound now given the recent storms there. The video is very well made and at twenty seven minutes is the longest of the programmes talked about here but I could quite happily have watched an hour.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe src=&quot;http://player.vimeo.com/video/18280328&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; webkitallowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; mozallowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Robot Pillow!&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Made as an audition video for &lt;i&gt;The Vault&lt;/i&gt; (above) this video with strike a chord with anyone who has tried to use voice recognition on a device and suffered the rather unpredictable results afterwards!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;iframe width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/TweoambFN34?feature=player_detailpage&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you like any of these series (or any other web tv shows) don&#039;t forget to show them your support by spreading the word or just telling them you like their work. Let me know if there is anything you have been watching on the web and would recommend in the comments! I will post more web tv highlights here soon.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 04 Nov 2012 15:43:56 +0000</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Liam Green-Hughes</dc:creator>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">19663 at http://www.greenhughes.com</guid>
      <comments>http://www.greenhughes.com/content/web-tv-highlights-no1#comments</comments>
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