Sky Sports iPad app gets second-screen features

Here’s something to think about if you’re a Zeebox, a GetGlue or any of their (many) social-TV second-screen startup rivals. British satellite broadcaster Sky just gave its Sky Sports for iPad app a second-screen update.

What’s that? Well, until now, the app was mainly a way for Sky subscribers to watch Sky’s sport channels on their tablet – when away from home, for example, or unable to wrestle control of the living-room TV from non-sport-loving family members.

Now it’s also a second-screen aid to watching, say, live Premier League football on that bigger box. Users will get a Football Match Centre section with stats galore on players and teams, as well as a “curated Twitter feed with aggregated football fan commentary”.

Just the sort of thing the social TV startups are looking to do, in other words.

And while there’s still an argument for people using one app to get second-screen and social features for all the shows they watch, the fact that broadcasters like Sky are looking to own this second-screen relationship with viewers is undeniably a challenge to the likes of Zeebox.

Oh, which as you may remember, took investment from BSkyB earlier this year…

Grr! WWE gets a second-screen wrestling app

When I was hugely into American wrestling back in the glory days of the WWF, second-screen action was out of the question: if I was distracted from the action, it would only be to try and suplex my little brother into the fireplace, emulating my heroes.

(It’s okay, he’s fine. I wasn’t very good at suplexing. And we didn’t own a fireplace. Actually, this whole intro has rather spiralled out of control…)

Anyway. Rebranded as WWE after a spat with the wildlife folks, the WWE has continued to be one of the biggest sports entertainment brands in the world. And what kids nowadays want to do, seemingly, is second-screen their way through all those televised suplexes. Hence its new iOS app.

You get news and videos – the latter being a mixture of new and archive clips – but the real meat comes with the second-screen features, designed to be used while watching the weekly Monday Night Raw broadcast.

The idea being to foster the community of wrestling fans around the broadcasts, including encouraging them to meet up at official events. And, of course, sell them stuff too, with an in-app shop.

Watch TV While Syncing Music, Taking Screengrabs and Group Chatting With IntoNow’s iPad App

The goal of “technology powered media company” IntoNow, purchased by Yahoo! last year, was to create an engaging connection between TV-watching, iPhone and iPad use. This sounds easy in theory, as 80% of users now watch TV with a mobile device in their hands, but it turns out most of those folks are checking email and playing games, as TechCrunch rightfully quips.

How do you get these people to pay attention to TV stuff on that second screen? By facilitating TV-related content surfing that would actually be of interest (even if many users don’t know it yet).

IntoNow’s latest release, according to general manager Adam Cahan, revises previous versions of its offering that weren’t actually of use to users. Its iPad app now includes:

• A TV and music syncing function that tells people what songs are playing during a show or during its credits — including covers and live performances — then enables them to watch the music video or buy the song on iTunes.
• A group chat feature that I guess would resemble your hashtag stream of choice for liveTweeting a show, except within the IntoNow universe. Users can also create recurring conversations for new episodes of the same show.
• Inclusion of CapIt (similar in spirit if not in coolness to GrabMagic!), enabling users to capture and share imagery straight out of what they’re watching. (Can you imagine the GIF potential?!) You can also add captions to the images (yes, with the Impact font). 

TechCrunch has a cool explanation of how CapIt works: it essentially captures “one image per second of pretty much all the moments that happen on screen, and then holds them for a week.” That’s over 15 million images a day, says Cahan.

What’s cool about these features is that they leverage TV-related activity that users may engage in from one moment to another, then unifies them, making them top-of-mind: hunting down clips on YouTube, livetweeting on Twitter, Amazon-searching the soundtracks or frantically trying to Shazam a scene song that’ll only be playing for the next two seconds. We’d still prefer Twitter show hashtag integration to internal group chat; but with 3 million downloads and counting, maybe the Game of Thrones community we find there will more than suffice.

They have iPad email apps for kids, nowadays…

Email makes me sad. Well, specifically my inbox makes me sad, as I watch the unreplied-to count soar past 50, 60, 80, 120… Email is out of control in our modern society, and we can’t do anything about it. So we may as well get The Kids started early.

Meet Maily. It’s a new, free iPad app that wants to be your child’s first email client. It’s for kids as young as four, and aims to provide a safe way for them to scribble messages (complete with digital stickers and self-shot photos) and send them to family and friends – all set in a contacts list by their parent(s).

Your five year-old yelling “INBOX ZERO!” and running a lap of honour of the living room? It’s going to happen. Prepare for it.

(Source: appsplayground.com)

Lionsgate launches Infinite Trailer app for The Expendables 2

Stallone! Van Damme! Schwarzenegger! Those Other Guys Who Might Be Getting On A Bit Now But Could Still Probably Kick Your Arse Or At Least Get Their Stuntmen To Do It!

The Expendables 2 is on its way to cinemas soon, and Lionsgate has just the thing to promote it: an iOS app called The Expendables 2 Infinite Trailer.

Released for free on the App Store, it’s all about user-generated content. “Think you’ve got what it takes to be in an action movie? Here’s your chance,” explains its store listing.

“Upload a short video and improve it with cinematic special effects. You can add yourself to the Expendables 2 movie trailer and share it with your friends! Public voting will let you know how you measure up!”

Yeah!

We really firmly believe at Mind Candy that the tablet device is going to be the dominant form of entertainment for kids over the next few years. As revolutionary and exciting as what Disney did in the 1920s…

-Moshi Monsters boss Michael Acton-Smith, speaking at the Children’s Media Conference

Sidecastr social TV app is a tweet-timeshifter. Well, timeshiftr…

The problem with a lot of social TV apps is that you have to use them at a specific time. Zeebox is no use to you for Mad Men episodes if you’re time-shifting them a few hours or days after their initial airing.

Sidecastr is a US iPad app that aims to be more useful. If you’re timeshifting your TV viewing, it timeshifts the best tweets about that show too. And it then even timeshifts your own (timeshifted) tweets. It’s enough to make your head spin.

“Sidecastr lets you experience a moment by moment replay of the best of the social TV content stream, even when you’re watching later. And because Sidecastr’s storage and playback of the social stream remains alive indefinitely, you can even add new comments long after an episode first airs, which in turn reaches fans who are watching after you.”

For now it’s Twitter-focused, although Facebook features are apparently coming in the next update. Most definitely one to watch – not least for a battle royale to come in the US with Zeebox (on its way across the Atlantic as we speak), Shazam, GetGlue, Miso and others.

iPad app lets kids mash up Van Gogh, Monet and Cezanne

Art snobs may shudder at the thought of classic artworks being remixed and mashed up by children on iPads, but I think it’s an incredibly exciting idea: a far more engaging way into the world of art than being herded round a museum.

The app is called PlayART by Tapook, and it’s just come out. It features artworks by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Henri Rousseau and Paul Klee, with kids able to resize, rotate and mirror individual elements (e.g. sunflowers) and mash them together however they like.

Playing with art? A marvellous idea: hopefully the app will find its way into a few schoolrooms as well as the iPads of art-loving parents.

MIT’s T(ether) tactile AR is all kinds of awesomeness

Remember Wild Palms? Way back in the 90s, Oliver Stone, Kathryn Bigelow, James Belushi and a few others made a sci-fi series where TV had become holograms projected into your living room. The freaky part was you could take a drug which enabled you to touch and interact with said holograms, totally blurring the real/virtual divide and making lots of people crazy.

As a gamer, I’ve always longed for this to happen, whilst fearing it at the same time. Well, those clever chaps at MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group have just got very close. T(ether) allows you to manipulate virtual objects in real time… and space. You simply attach a dongle to your iPad, which interacts with a similar device on your glove. You then look ‘through’ the iPad to create and move blocks which seem like they’re really there.

Perhaps the most impressive part of the above demo is the multi-‘player’ aspect (from 3 min 30 secs into the video): two people can build a structure together, by looking through 2 iPads at the same area, and placing virtual blocks on top of each other. This collaborative aspect could well make T(ether) a killer app for people like animators, its creators hope. Fingers crossed it does that… and much more!

Source: FastCoCreate via Wired

Bringing Up Baby … via iPad

Courtesy of: Schools.com

A powerful broadcast tool that we don’t even consider “media” is our educational system. You know, that place you go to that’s a lot like TV, except you’re just watching one person (or several) quote things to you out of a book. Then you read that book, then you take tests.

Most of us will agree that this procedure is neither stimulating nor nurturing. It’s actually just cheap baby-sitting, coupled with maths and a few useful dates.

Technology to the rescue! A survey conducted in Maine, quoted to us by Schools.com, finds that kindergartners who used iPads in the classroom scored better on a literacy test than those who didn’t.

Well and good, you say, but what does that actually prove?

Studies have also shown that the ‘net has been great for literacy in general, and that iPads especially have been useful in breaking educational barriers with autistic children.

But look at this less as evidence than as promise. The iPad is one of those powerful tools that children pick up and can almost instantly just use. They watch films, interact with stories and play games with them, mainly.

It’s this tactile quality we care about: they’re actually interacting in a physical way with content. The act of doing versus just listening is actually better for learning everything from the simple rules of grammar to reasoning skills to decision-making to complex systems — one reason why interactive educational games are so powerful. 

If you happen to be poking around for good iPad apps for kids, they’re easy to find (and many are free). Best Apps for Kids has great ones for preschoolers; and The Guardian’s Apps Rush (run by our own Stuart Dredge!) provides a weekly recap of brand-new apps, including fun ones for children.

I remain a big fan of Draw Something, which enables me to engage with my nieces and nephews from afar while we exercise our spacial logic and artistic savvy. (They’re usually stronger at both.)