last100 » Twitter

TwitterPeek: a device for tweeting and nothing else

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:29:54 +0000

I love me some Twitter (follow me @sohear) and I have a thing for mobile QWERTY devices too. That said, the TwitterPeek is probably taking these two obsessions just a little too far. It does one thing and one thing only: Tweet.

Building on the company’s original email and messaging-only concept, users put down a one-off payment for the TwitterPeek (available in the US-only) and get a lifetime’s worth of tweeting, with no additional data charges. Unless the company goes bust of course.

[Update: Unlike the original Peek messaging device, it's not a lifetime's service. "Includes 6 months of service, $7.95/month thereafter".]

Put a camera in this thing and dead easy support for Twitter-based services such as TwitPic and maybe, just maybe, for less-tech savvy celeb types who have a large base of Twitter followers to please (or their PRs operating on their behalf) there could be some appeal for a single purpose device. What do readers think?

(via Engadget)

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Opera wants to put Internet widgets on the TV too

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:17:55 +0000

Opera, the Norwegian company behind the desktop and mobile web browser of the same name, wants to be a major player in the nascent Internet-connected TV space.

Like Yahoo’s ‘Widget Channel’ or the boutique gadget maker Chumby’s own platform, Opera’s newly released Opera Devices SDK 10 is touting the ability for TV and set-top box manufacturers to add Internet widgets to their feature set, along with full web-browsing if required.

The widgets on display in a video demo published by Opera (embedded below) take on a familiar look and feel and pull in content from all of the usual suspects, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Amazon etc. While the Twitter example shown perhaps typifies the hopes pinned on widgets on the TV: the ability for viewers to pull in and publish web content contextual to their viewing experience, in this case status updates to and from their social network. Swap social network for shopping cart, Amazon for example, and it’s not hard to imagine the potential business opportunities.

On the other hand, if Fox TV’s recent Twitter experiment is anything to go on, perhaps this whole Internet widgets stealing screen real estate on the TV is a bit of red herring. Although at least one market survey, which we reported on earlier in the year, suggests that consumers do have an apatite for Internet widgets on the TV and are willing to pay for such functionality.

As for full web browsing on the TV? Well we all know how that worked out the first time round, albeit in a predominantly dial-up era.

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XBox 360 to support Twitter and Facebook. Who’s the biggest social network on TV now?

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:56:12 +0000

Facebook on XBox 360

For a long time now, Microsoft has made the rather lofty claim that the company’s XBox 360 was the biggest social network on TV. For the most part that was in reference to XBox Live – the games console’s online service – and its integration with Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft’s cross platform Instant Messaging service (Windows, Mac and mobile). Yesterday, however, Microsoft announced at E3 that the XBox 360 will soon be adding support for two competing social networks – Twitter and Facebook – making the XBox 360 undoubtedly the most socially networked set-top box, but not necessarily a Microsoft-owned social network the biggest one on the television. I’m not sure how Windows Live Messenger user numbers and Facebook’s compare in terms of cross-over with XBox Live membership but it’s nonetheless significant that Microsoft has chosen to embrace two competitors.

Interestingly, the Facebook integration won’t be one way. Not only will XBox 360 users be able to access a Facebook application providing the usual functionality (status updates, view friends’ news feeds, photos etc), but XBox Live will also incorporate Facebook Connect so that various activities can be posted back to Facebook e.g. in-game screen shots and footage. The User Interface for the Facebook app could do with some improvement, reports Gizmodo, which isn’t surprising considering that the social network’s feature set is fairly extensive and is rooted firmly in the PC, making designing the perfect “ten foot” UI challenging.

In comparison, Twitter’s minimum core functionality looks much better suited to the TV (see screen shot) and, accompanied by the XBox 360 gamepad’s thum-board QWERTY add-on, could work quite well. Both services to be supported through a software update “this fall”.

Twitter on XBox 360

Other XBox 360 announcements yesterday of interest to last100 readers included improved Netflix functionality with full on-screen access to the service’s movie and TV show catolog, support for music streaming service Last.fm, and 1080p High Def content (download and streaming) through XBox Live’s newly branded video store now called “Zune”.

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