It’s only been a couple of weeks since the European Broadcasting Union demonstrated the potential of the HbbTV specification at IBC2009 in Amsterdam. But it won’t be long before Europeans start seeing the results – before Christmas according to some pundits. And once compatible devices are out in the market, they say the speed-to-market of applications developed for the platform will be incredibly short… as the industry looks to new models that embrace open API’s and SDK’s much like Apple has done with the iPhone and the Open Source movement online with enormous projects such as Sourceforge. With an HTML environment activated by a simple red button, in the same manner as a Web portal, the resulting content can be delivered over the IP stream.

How similar this will be to the UK’s Project Canvas initiative, announced in February 2009, remains to be seen – and it’s still not clear which platform will really rise to the top or if they will, in fact, reach compatibility at some point. But Project Canvas does bring together content from some of the UK’s biggest channels, including the BBC ITV, Channel 4 and Five. They are working on a more ambitious project to bring what is called catch-up TV and a variety of other programming and interactive services to television sets as soon as next year. But the move faces scrutiny as the BBC is a public broadcaster and particularly from Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV which is the leading player in the satellite TV in the UK. In a speech last month, Sky heir apparent, James Murdoch abolutely slammed the BBC as an”Orwellian” institution—a provider of “state-sponsored” news with “chilling ambitions”. There were whispers of an an even more hair-raising Microsoft and the Beeb hooking up at IBC, as the partnership was not ruled out the industry titans.

The great news is, for the web development community, HTML arriving on the TV scene will surely mean flocks of coders, designers and entreprenuers making a transition to the next stage in the evolution of TV 2.0 – which may very well provide the next tech bubble much needed in this recession.

And it looks to be levering as possibly not only an EU standard, but also a global one. Asian companies such as Korea’s Tru2way are already picking up on the new standard from the European ETSI and teaming up with global player Alticast. which offers HBBTV with PVR, a pluggable HTML Browser and Flash modules. And Korea’s Kaonmedia has hooked up with Founding member of the HBBTV initiative – ANT in their latest foray into the Asian Market. And Ant pitched a TV portal running a selection of HbbTV services based on the their Galio HbbTV Platform at IBC 2009.

During the IBC show in Amsterdam, Pleyo takes on Yahoo TV with its browser and widgets engine, which is compliant with W3C specifications and compatible with HbbTV (enabling access to interactive applications issued from broadcasting, Satellite or DTT, and broadband Internet networks), and a few other extensions for interactive TV based on the HbbTV standard. The Origyn Web Browser (OWB) is based on Apple’s Webkit and is more particularly designed for TV sets, TV decoders and other consumer electronic devices.

Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV or “HbbTV”, is THE major new pan-European initiative aimed at creating one standard for the broadcast and broadband delivery of entertainment to the end consumer through connected TVs and set-top boxes providing terrestrial TV players a platform to keep up with IPTV development in terms of Web and TV convergence.

HbbTV

Developed by industry leaders to effectively manage the rapidly increasing amount of available content targeted at today’s end consumer, Hybrid Broadband‐Broadcast Services is based on elements of existing standards and web technologies including OIPF (Open IPTV Forum), CEA, DVB and W3C.

The new technology is also called hybrid television because it uses over-the-air transmission as well as broadband connections and can do a lot. It’s terrestrial TV’s play at competing with rapidly emerging IPTV services which are more supple when it comes to Web/TV convergence.

What’s most brilliant about this technology, from the perspective of social media and other developers coming from the web is… it will open up possibilities of using open API’s and SDK’s which will allow independent developers to create customized applications. Imagine watching a sports program that ended with a page of links to similar, archived programs, or to the Web sites of online retailers selling tickets to the events.

HbbTV products and services provide the consumer with a seamless entertainment experience with the combined richness of broadcast and broadband. This entertainment experience will be delivered with the simplicity of one remote control, on one screen and with the ease of use of television that we are used to. Through the adoption of HbbTV, consumers will be able to access new services from entertainment providers such as broadcasters, online providers and CE manufactures – including catch-up TV, video on demand (VoD), interactive advertising, personalisation, voting, games and social networking as well as programme-related services such as digital text and EPGs.

So who else is tapping into HbbTV at the moment?

Within a few months, German viewers with specially equipped televisions will be able to watch public broadcasters’ Internet television services, which let users catch up on the shows of the previous week, whenever they choose, via their computers.

And the environment is less volatile in Germany, with the German-led hybrid TV project, which has support from several French broadcasters and a wide range of technology companies is seeking to create a set of hybrid TV standards for broadcasters and makers of TVs and set-top boxes. Broadcasters could then create and market their own hybrid services.

Luxembourg-based Inverto Digital Labs, which is now a supporting member of the new HbbTV standard, has stated that its retail high-definition hybrid set-top box platform Scena 6 will support it. They plan to enter the German market in Q1 2010 and will support a CE-HTML browser from French firm Pleyo, which is working together with Inverto to launch a rich selection of Web-based widgets on the box, such as news feeds, mailboxes, weather updates, Twitter, stocks and games. The platform will also offer a variety of hybrid applications such as ARD’s catch-up service for the ‘Tagesschau’ newscasts, access to ZDF’s ‘Mediathek’ library with hundreds of on-demand programmes, and access to RTL’s super-text service, which also combines streaming clips on-demand.

From the hardware side, Global company, STM Electronics, also recently announced they completed a Proof of Concept (POC) next-generation Set-Top Box (STB) solution at IBC 2009, capable of receiving interactive digital television services via broadcast or broadband Internet connections.

In the USA, there are only about 10 million Americans accessing Internet-delivered content on their TVs today, so who will be the one to bring it mainstream? Who knows… there seems to be no movement to a single standard and it looks like a race-off to see who will dominate the landscape.

Terrestrial, cable, satellite and IPTV providers are all innovating in a hurry to fend off web-based TV superstars such as Hulu before they proliferate. And Google with their Youtube seem to be nowhere in the picture, content to let others get in the early fray and perhaps step in later with a loud thump.

Yahoo Connected TV is a potential candidate and is driving hard and taking a hardware approach to widgetize TV via the next generation of TV’s themselves. It was only a month ago that Yahoo! and Intel announced the Widget Channel, the first in a series of initiatives that will bring what Yahoo! calls the “Cinematic Internet” even closer to living rooms across America. But there are plenty of questions which remain about how the service will operate and how successful it will be in reaching consumers.

However, the company managed to convince a number of consumer electronics heavyweights to include the widget service in their future products, announcing partnerships with companies including Samsung Electronics Co, LG Electronics Inc and Sony Corp. The service will be included in TVs being shipped in North America and to 10 countries in Europe.

And Verizon Communications has integrated special widget versions of Facebook and Twitter with its FiOS TV (fiberoptic) offering. The company has joined hands with social media innovators like Facebook Connect, Twitter, ESPN, Veoh, blip.tv, and Dailymotion to offer users a fresh Web experience. The services will allow FiOS TV subscribers to connect with others while they watch TV. They can also search and view a variety of online, personal PC-based videos on their television screens simultaneously.

Yahoo! TV Widgets – Interactive TV and Intel CE 3100 Demo

The behemoth in the USA will likely be Adobe’s new Open Screen Project… and they have teamed up with the likes of the BBC, Cisco, Comcast, HTC, Intel, LG Electronics, Marvell, Motorola, MTV Networks, NBC Universal, Nokia, OpenTV, Palm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Texas Instruments, The New York Times, Toshiba, and Verizon Wireless partnering to use the Flash and eventually the Air Platforms to provide rich interactive experiences across computers, devices, and consumer electronics.

However, getting in as a development partner is another story and snagging a piece of the action with the US$10 million Open Screen Project Fund is likely not to be easy. Having said that, there are some inspiring examples at the site. It’s certainly not an Open Source project by any means.

Richard Kastelein, a social media strategist and publisher, is CEO of new startup, Agora Media Group LLC, a new creative and innovation agency based in London, UK. He works with partner in the global travel industry and in emerging technology such as Social TV. Kastelein has been building online communities for over a decade and is an Open Source evangelist. He’s an adept team player – a publisher, writer, photographer, marketing director, web developer and graphic designer with more than 20 years experience in the development and operation of newspapers, magazines, web media and marketing of multinational, companies in international settings.

Social Media, articles nuggets linked to longer, more in-depth analysis, and Social Networking and connecting will play a large part in how people keep up with their industries in the future – and one can’t do most of that in print.

However, having said that, there’s still a lot of people who are not web or tech Luddites that still like to read print – including myself. I hate staring at a screen all day and like to linger of a good read in the park on a sunny day.. or at home after dinner on my favourite chair… which is not computer-view friendly.

The future leaders of the trade magazine industry will be those in print who make a shift to online that embraces and encompasses developing trends in social media or, my feeling is, it will be those who come from the web to print.

And they will do it a lot differently.

With viable ondemand printing for magazines (http://magcloud.com/ , http://www.lulu.com , www.createspace.com etc) on the horizon, a huge slice of risk has virtually been eliminated for those that want to bridge to print from the web.

Magazines can be created from web content, packaged, pdf’ed then uploaded to an ondemand service which handles subscriptions, prints the magazines and ships on per order level. The online publication collects a royalty above the ondemand costs. At Magcloud you might mark up 2 euro per issue on their cost and it rounds off to 6-8 euro for the client. Or more.. or less if you want. Then there’s advertising revenue to be added from existing web ad clients.

One step further has technology such as the http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm Expresso Book Machine printing up a copy of a book or magazine while you wait at the bookstore, the local library or your favourite coffeeshop.

Then there’s Kindle to be considered.

The future is offering a lot of unique alternatives to the old models we have lived with for a long, long time.

I am currently building a web B2B industry magazine that plans to segue to print eventually – and do it quite differently than the industry is doing it today.

Richard

www.expathos.com

G’day readers. It’s time to get a little more serious with my blog.

Please allow me to introduce myself….

I am a Canadian expatriate based in Groningen in the northern Netherlands where I ‘work’ – mainly remotely – with a number of startups and clients globally, utilizing social media and community to add Web 2.0 to their projects and businesses.

My background is in the print media and I have worked in far flung locales from the Arctic to the Caribbean as a reporter, editor and publisher of ‘old school’ paper products before making the jump to digital in 1997, when I formed my first community online in the Dutch West Indies.

Though I have worn a few different hats in my days…

I now operate a very small company and consultancy here in Holland with my wife and we do quite a few different things, many pro bono and personal and others for pay.

PRO BONO – We are active politically as progressives – and like to think we are part of facilitating change and disseminating new ideas with a group of sites at the Free Press Group – which has over 300 progressive and like-minded writers from around the world (20% hold PhD’s) who contribute in an Open Source Journalism format. We swap coverage on Google News (we are three of 4000 official Google News sources in English) for copy. They get fresh eyeballs and we get material – it’s a great barter. And I get the chance to write myself as well as create political Photoshops for the sites. We also host several of them at www.safehost.nl.

And despite losing money (hosting bills etc.) over the years, the connections I have made with many brilliant writers has brought an immense amount of satisfaction personally – as well as added professionally to my personal brand – at Linkedin for instance – where I have had several writers offer their recommendation.

More recently, I have been involved in a couple of web campaigns that rocked the boat for two corporate entities…

I think one of the most interesting areas to cover in terms of social media, and I know that so much of the money and interest in this field is generated and emanates from the relationship between corporate PR and what’s going on in Web 2.0 – is my history in both lauding a corporation to the point of gathering thousands of comments, hits and positive coverage, both on the web and in the mainstream with www.thankyouqwest.org. My phone was ringing off the hook here in Holland with calls in from CNN, NYT, USA TODAY, Denver Post and many more as the Mainstream wanted to get the Web response in this saga of Government muscle and corporate ethos.

That was good. That probably made their PR department all warm and fuzzy. And the Mainstream Media response to the ad hoc project that Chris Floyd I put together in a day was totally unexpected.

On the other hand, when I started up www.unassociatedpress.net to lobby thousands of political bloggers from all points of the ideological spectrum to boycott Associated Press, use banners to announce their boycott, and basically send AP into maximum damage control – it was a corporate nightmare. And the sad, silly decision of some guy in a suit, in an office, all puffy chested and with an ax to grind…. to test the blogging community was a silly one. He was – no doubt – a lawyer and not a hired social media strategist or even in PR. It was hell for AP as they buckled and retracted, covered their balls, and ran for cover in a media blitz which did ten years of brand damage in a week.

Whether or not the boycott affected their bottom line is not the point. The point is that AP got smacked in the ass by the citizen media and learnt a lesson or two in terms of how to… or rather, not to deal with the press. And there are still anti-AP badges floating around the net today.

Anyway, here’s my ‘official’ spiel:

Expathos is a professional web development and design network based in the Netherlands run by Social Media Strategist and Architect Richard Kastelein. Currently he is a Social Media strategist for Moho Holding B.V. in Groningen, Netherlands as well as several other consulting roles with other companies. Chief Networking Officer and Social Media Developer for Sparkling Media in London, UK and on the Advisory Board of Tel Aviv-based Zephyr Financial Technologies heading up their Social Media and Publishing development… Richard began developing online communities (forums at first) in 1998 in the Caribbean with Such is Life and was later head of his own web development company – Caribbean Web Wizards – based in St. Maarten, Dutch West Indies. He has also sailed, on small sailing vessels, over 25,000 miles offshore (2x transatlantic, transpacific, Indian Ocean and Red Sea), and lived aboard various boats he owned in the Caribbean for over a decade.

He is currently the Managing Director of V.O.F. Expathos, a social media and web development company and network based in the Netherlands. His roots and education lie in the media and he has held positions as a reporter, investigative journalist, editor, photographer, designer, and publisher of numerous print publications ranging from the Canadian Arctic to the Caribbean and Europe. He has done work for the CBC, the BBC, Pacific Yachting, Yachting Monthly, TNT Travel, and various other international magazines. He is the publisher and founder of the Free Press Group (Atlantic Free Press, Pacific Free Press, Empire Burlesque et al.) – a leading progressive political online Media Group with over 300 academics, journalists, and writers and was formerly employed as a marketing director for two multinational marine industry powerhouses.

Kastelein is an Open Source software evangelist, advocate of Freemium Business models, and is active in the Network Economy. He has skills as a coder, designer, frontend CMS developer, copywriter, viral and guerrilla marketeer, photographer and general it skills.

Cheers

Richard

Got some tips via a lead.

It’s half a million views if we get in – huge coverage globally – doubt we will but it’s worth a shot.

Dear Techcrunch

It’s not just about Twinners – or what we are currently running on two European TV broadcast stations… it’s really about the technology.

Think Second Life making it’s way onto broadcast network television in Europe… on top of the Net.

It’s about what we can do in the future – aside from our tangible and innovative entertainment-based Cross Media Social Platforms (CMSP) -  in the realms of education and direct democracy. Cable and IPTV-based classrooms and lectures with Virtual Students answering questions from virtual professors, it’s about the possibilities for the hearing challenged being able to type in keys that allow their virtual characters the ability to talk and sign and communicate with others… it’s about about communities participating in discussions about grassroots issues in their area using virtual characters in a round table with their community leaders…

It’s fairly simply on the outside – we using an advanced IVR and Business Logic Server to allow people to create and control avatars using a simple phone keypad and interact on their mobile and landline telephones in a realtime virtual world (limited to approx. 100 users) on their TV – or on the Net of they so choose. But it has taken us five years to really shake out the bugs and develop what we now have today. There are videos here that elucidate what we do more clearly.

On an entertainment level, we are implementing bars, like Twinners, but ideas such as gameshows… or even something like ‘Barbie World TV’ for a company like Mattel have been pulsing around in our team.

No one is doing anything remotely similar at this time and we are currently live in RTL in Belgium, TV Copenhagen with rollouts slated for Uno in Spain and SuperRTL this autumn.

By innovatively using technology that is already in place – telephony, television, 3D, and the web – Twinners – from Sparkling Media -  has leaped over the potential competition and created a revenue-generating platform – largely based on Open Source Software – that simply creates an interactive, virtual world on both television and the Internet that envelops social networking, community, user generated content, competition, and entertainment.

In a nutshell… Twinners is – vocal social networking in a 3d world on television and the net -Think of a place where well known & successful concepts around communities are joining all together in harmony on the net, TV and mobile: Second Life meets, meetic, meets myspace, meets facebook, meets youtube… to create TV2.0. Think TV with user generated content coming from a web community – that can be accessed and interacted by mobiles, telephones, and the web. TV viewers use a phone to create a character that interacts in virtual worlds on TV and on the web. Web users create content that can been seen in a smaller streaming box viewable within the 3D environment on TV and the web while invited to vote, download, upload, participate, play, … in realtime.

We have produced a unique 3D multiparty live chat platform currently broadcasting a 3D environment on TV merged with interactive telephony and the web. Integration of telephony, TV, and 3D exists within this core video and audio community.

Simply, our goal is to entertain, stimulate interaction with content or with other people while feeling being part of a community.

We are confident there are various elements of our TV and web development that can bring added value to the broadcast industry and generate income on a revenue shared basis. Sparkling Media was a huge hit at MIPTV in Cannes early in 2008.

Please see videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/sparklingmedia and our company site at http://www.interactivechatsystems.com

When we exhibited at MIPTV in April 2008, broadcast executives were simply ‘blown away’ with our presentation which included 60 inch screens of the interactive Twinners product. We were being called, ‘the future of TV’ by more than one person. And we were probably the most innovative product at the show in my opinion. Richard Dickson of Mattel was agape and completely entranced by the product… Michael Costello of Polar Productions and Simon Nelson, head of BBC’s Multiparty Platform Strategy was as well… The broadcast execs were all over us and over 300 business cards collected.

Though we are releasing in Belgium, Germany and Spain, other opportunities that could be more lucrative or newly formed relationships that would allow us to financially move toward more R&D as well as diversify the product to more than just Twinners are not being explored as we are seeking Round A funding to take it to the next level.

Warm Regards

Richard Kastelein

Chief Networking Officer (CNO)

www.interactivechatsystems.com