27 JANUARY 2012

contentAI studios | Portland, OR | http://contentAI.com

True Story:  Once upon a time, a major motion picture Studio had one person assigned to traveling to their global offices to see if the films in development or production had any World Wide Web needs or if there might be any cross promotion potential?  The Distribution, Production and Development executives all said, “no.”

Which happened to be at a time when we were tapping into an online (remember Compuserve!) fan base for a series of novels that were being developed for a motion picture property (which we’d already licensed Electronic Game and merchandising Rights to) – The absolute hub of our activity was our Property’s URL and it’s Forums.  For us, all of the pieces fit together into one large User experience to dip in and out of from various locations.  The term “transmedia” hadn’t been invented.  We didn’t know what we were doing, other than knowing that the Whole Enchilada was a lot cooler than the individual ingredients.

Fast Forward +/- 15 years into the Future.  Today.  OK, technically  a couple of weeks ago at CES in Las Vegas.

The most exciting space for us was the INTEL® booth – OK, “booth” is used loosely, it was the INTEL Command Center at CES.

Featured were INTEL’s “trees” that we saw set up around the Command Center at their disconnected workstations.  Typically, it was different divisions and technologies and their team members focused on their silo of interest, including:

•  Ultrabooks– OK, we love them.  We use them for coding and building our apps (picked up an Asus U21 the first day it shipped)

• AppUP – Desktop apps for Windows machines; with an amazing team working behind the scenes to make the process rapid and enjoyable (See:  Encapsulator).  What an amazing platform and reach – Whether for Enterprise or for Education – Or, for home…(more on that in a minute)

• WiDi – Huh?  Wireless HDMI to bridge between the devices on your couch and your big screen

• Ultrabooks & Nuance Deal:  Lost in the press releases was a remarkable partnership announcement to advance speech recognition on Ultrabooks (yes, that Nuance, the one that really does a lot of the heavy lifting for SIRI).  No mention of this on the floor.

• Smart TV: Formerly the Digital Home Group, the device(s) to bridge from big screen to on-the-couch interface continue to expand.  While we saw competitors such as Panasonic (Vierra) and others all migrating to the “television app store” experience, the INTEL group, when coupled with other offerings within INTEL is what creates the groundwork to cohesively extend television to handheld devices.

• INTEL Embedded / Retail (though their presence at the Retail’s Big  Show the following week is what we were sorry to miss; Nice article HERE)  Update: Now found @IntelSys,  Intelligent Systems

You see, we at contentAI studios are really “content people.”  We’re storytellers.  We’ve worked on motion pictures, television, internet television and interactive television…oh, and mobile experiences.

Why is INTEL® massively exciting for us?

Because the “future” we thought was 2-5 years away is already here today.  If you just connect the dots.   If you envision how those silos all interconnect at a content experience level. ..

Our contentAI studios platform was originally created to produce emotionally engaging, personalized interactive experiences with film and television characters on hand held devices.

It looks like this:

That’s the image that’s been in our PowerPoint® deck for about a year.  It was a vision of our “Gen 4” UI.  It was science fiction.

But, looking at INTEL during CES, we realized this could exist now.  We can deliver this experience today.

The idea that the Audience can engage in one-to-one, personalized “conversations” (text or voice) with a character on television (Pause the linear show and engage in a one-to-one chat); where the consumer discovers new and alternate storylines…where Brands have all new interactive real estate (in someone’s hand).  All possible.  Now.  Today. #wayCool

When we looked around at INTEL’s “trees” at CES, we saw the forest.

We feel that in order to make this truly exciting, the content that is offered needs to be more than games or fancy new, intuitive cable menus.  The content needs to connect on an emotional level.   After all, “television” was always a storytelling device in our homes.  Tapping into that engagement level is what will both sell devices and also satisfy the new interactive audience.

And, what about the opportunities for retail solutions with these same tools?  Absolutely possible.

Where does will it start?

With the question:  Why doesn’t every Saturday morning cartoon allow kids to directly engage with the characters via a conversational interface?

We know the issues from the Television production side.  Someone needs to slap the Unions on the upside of their head so they don’t prohibit Writers and Actors from participating in these new storytelling formats.  Union contracts need to be “living” documents that can be changed year-round to adapt to emerging technologies (rather than showing up 5 years late to the party).  But, that’s another blog post…for another day…

But, the “forest” is much wider and deeper than Saturday morning television – with the contentAI studios’ platform solutions alone, we see ESL schools in China using these tools to improve conversational English.  We see in-store Retail “intelligence” also being delightful and intuitive. . .and more. . .because there’s always more. . .

So, now we need to figure out how to tie the pieces together as a Developer.  Heck, I can’t even tell if my Ultrabook has WiDi?  Or, what device I need to make it so?  Or, if the Smart TV group have an App Store, or if they will be leveraging AppUP?

To navigate through the forest path at INTEL, we are fortunate to have a Senior Community Relations executive who can help steer us.  That kind of one-to-one relationship between INTEL and the Development Community is remarkable – We’ve been extremely impressed with their AppUP team since early 2010 and look forward to weaving our way through more branchs of INTEL in order to realize the potential, from a content Developer’s point-of-view, of their astounding technologies.

While HTML.5, Ultrabooks, WiDi and other technologies all link to one another, it’s the human component within INTEL® that serves as the Pandoran Neural Network…it’s humans that glue it all together…fortunately,  corporations have evolved in the past 15 years compared to  when different motion picture divisions ignored each other (especially digital divisions; and, um, Motion Pictures studios are now paying the price for such early ignorance).

Seeing INTEL’s forest, as an outside Developer, made the trip to Vegas worth every long line, worn out pair of shoes, over-priced everything and endless package of mints that were required for the trek.  For next year’s CES, seeing these devices all playing nicely together and creating all new content experiences is what we’re looking forward to and hope to be a part of.

#CES2012

http://latd.tv/Latitude-Robots-at-School-Findings.pdf

“By and large, kids (64%) described robots as if they were natural, human-like companions: as humanoid peers that could speak and communicate with ease, came “pre-loaded” with smarts and useful knowledge, and were social naturals. “

While contentAI studios and eslAI.com don’t create “robots,” we do create the intelligence that can drive conversational robots and machine::human interaction that has “smarts and useful knowledge.”

Please CONTACT US if you’d like to meet during the show (contentAI studios team).

Hello 2012!

For direct access to the mobile URL:  http://m.MySantaTalk.com

For additional access, the main site has links out to the various platforms:  http://MySantaTalk.com

Looking forward to the New Year (Teaser:  our new UI is continuing to evolve with all new responsive/adaptive features…check back in January for updates)

INTEL’S appUP (Windows 32 & 64)**
http://www.appup.com/applications/applications-My+Santa+Talk

The new UI developed by contentAI is featured with the mobile web and app versions.  Have a safe and happy Holiday.

Mobile Web URL:  http://m.mysantatalk.com

Android:  Marketplace or AppsGeyser

Windows 32 & 64:  INTEL AppUP

Text:  SANTA   To: 20757 (U.S. Only to receive URL via SMS)

Also available on most Android App Stores.  iPhone and iPad users please visit us on Mobile Web.

We’ve been working.

Barely time to Tweet, never mind, right a worthwhile blog post.

We are in the process of moving our contentAI studios platform and a service out of Beta to release our Ver. 1.0 product — Sometime during the first week of December.  The ESLai apps will be upgraded during December for release in January.

AND. . .there are nine new simulations being readied for release.  We also plan on releasing across more mobile app platforms, in addition to our mobile web delivery. . .

Stay tuned.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/infographic-sms-messaging-changing-world/

If you also include mobile web chat, instant messaging and in-app chat, those expand this engagement format even further.

OK, that’s a quick update. . .new conversational simulations are in production now; for release in December 2011.

And, a whole new User Interface will be featured.

Stay tuned. . .

One of the key areas we’re focused on is the ability to deliver more graphics in addition to the conversational text engagement.

Why?

The proverbial “a picture’s worth a thousand words” is only half the story – the other half is that a picture needs no translation.  The seamless deliver and “shared intelligence” between the graphics and the text is designed to create a more memorable and intuitive UX.

We’ll be rolling out the enhanced platform with new apps during September/October.  Another key focus is on responsive mobile web design so that tablets and netbooks also experience the optimized experiences, in addition to phone/mobile devices; we’ve recently added MEEGO to our OS delivery mix, watch for updates on more soon.

“Precision oftentimes kills the ability of the learner to discover multiple real-life applications.”

There have been a couple of follow up blog posts to the WIRED article entitled: IN PRAISE OF VAGUENESS.

One notable blog post is here:  VAGUE STORIES HELP LEARNERS DISCOVER.

This is very consistent with the responses we’re receiving from ESL teachers that note how our ESL conversational simulations allow vague and varied responses — they don’t encourage precision and fixed responses — they encourage conversational exploration.  We allow the vague.

The articles are worth reading, here’s another quote. . .

“Sometimes, precision is dangerous, a closed door keeping us from imagining new possibilities. Vagueness is that door flung wide open, a reminder that we don’t yet know the answer, that we might still get better, that we have yet to fail.”