O'Reilly Etech 2007 San Diego

What I learned at Etech:

Wearing a $happiness++; tshirt I designed for Right Media is a great way to get noticed especially when there's a Keynote about happiness that day. And a great way to get on flickr.
Speaking of happiness, Jane McGonigal's keynote on happiness has rekindled one of my passions in life, designing games and creating fun out of nothing.

Video games are apparently the key to the future of interface design. The three topics covered were how to emulate happiness in video games in applications, how to create video game-like fun in interfaces, and how websites should be made like text-based games. Apparently all those years I've wasted playing video games were not a waste at all. They were years of research that can now be applied.

Companies like Amazon are also banking the future means using someone else's infrastructure instead of building your own. They call it Amazon Web Services.

Others are banking on the fact that the next step to the 2.0 web will be offline applications. Adobe has Apollo and companies like Zimbra already have offline web apps.

I learned that when you play Werewolf with a bunch of strangers, don't make accusations right off the bat, that only makes the Werewolves want to eat your face. Also, sitting next to two werewolves is a great way to die in the first round. (Others might know this game as Mafia)

I learned a lot actually, but these are the most prominent.

A bigger pat on the back

Right Media has a feature article in Business Week. Unlike the last time, we actually get a whole article to ourselves.

Basically the article describes how Right Media had an "analyst day" where Mike Walrath, our wonderful CEO showed everyone exactly what we do, how we do it, and what the future holds for us. The fact that Yahoo bought a 20% stake in our company really sparked public interest for Right Media in the last six months, and the "analyst day" finally answered a lot of questions.

I won't go into the details, but the article is a great read if you want to get a glimpse of the future for the internet, concerning Right Media and other ad networks (like Google) in general.

Also, before I forget, Right Media was mentioned a couple weeks ago on a CNN article. It is also a great read and shows the role that Right Media would play in the online advertising game.

I'm juiced for Joost

Pardon the lame title pun that every other blogger has probably used, but it really is how I feel. Joost is a service that will put TV on the internet. This has huge potential.

While YouTube allows users to put random clips about their random stupid lives onto the net, Joost is setting it up so that actual channels and programming will be on the net. It cannot be denied that TV is dying. Everyone is predicting it and they think YouTube is leading that charge. I believe TV is dying because people aren't in the TV loop anymore. One of the best ways to promote new TV shows is showing commercials for new shows on the TV. People these days spend so much time on the computer that even if there was a show they wanted to watch, they miss it.

Recording utilities like Tivo and other DVRs allow people to record content conveniently, but from what I see, the totally population that owns one of these scheduled recording devices is still small.

With Joost, people will be able to run a TV stream in the background, much like the way people have their TV on while they do other things. This will allow the exposure of TV to perpetuate itself. Users will see promos for new TV shows. I also assume since Joost is an application, the ability to run specific shows or feeds instead of just channels. In other words, you shouldn't have to be a slave to a timeblock (8 p.m. for example), you could turn on Joost at anytime after an episode "aired" and be able to find a stream for that specific show. If you wanted to watch a live feed, you could do that. Basically, built in DVR functionality.

Now, on top of that, Joost will also have the unique ability to turn a channel into a chat room, and also, perhaps add in voting. Reality shows like American Idol can benefit from this technology as people can vote directly from Joost (or link to a website where they can vote). This is not a luxury people who watch TV have. How many times have you seen a commercial for a website, but by the time the show ended, you already forgotten what the website was?

From a business perspective, advertisers do not have to figure out how to monetize in a new market. In theory, Joost should work the same way as TV. If an advertiser can target commercials properly on TV, they can target ads the same way with Joost. In other words, Joost doesn't need a new way of monetizing, it's just a different method of doing what already exists.

Joost has huge potential, all they need now is a user-base and support from media networks in order for it to work.

edit: I may have been mistaken in assuming that Joost will have DVR-like functionality. I am only making that assumption because I feel that it would be a useful feature that would not be too difficult to implement if it doesn't already exist. Perhaps someone who knows more about Joost or has used the beta version can comment.