Creativity at TV Hack Day 2015

In Berlin, Germany, the 26^th and 27^th of September this past weekend were collectively known as “TV Hack Day,” or as the event describes itself:

“24 Hours of pure creativity, focused on innovation in the online video space in order to create something that has never existed before. For creatives, tinkerers, inventors, tech geeks, storytellers, design junkies and strategists alike!”

(For our coverage of this event last year, see here)

APIs and devices from companies like Tagesschau, Mozilla, IRT, Metrological and RBB were provided to attendees, who then developed innovative apps and software for television integration.

Here’s a look at the breakthrough contenders.

Jury winner: Wobbla

Wobbla analyzes subtitle metadata to create a pulsating word cloud of selectable hot topics on the TV. This allows a viewer to discover new content and related programs with its easily navigable interface.

Wobbla can also work as a ‘screensaver’ when the television is not in use.

Audience Choice winner: Monster Pet Store

Monster Pet Store is an interactive app for kids that serves as a “theater on the TV screen.” By utilizing an app on one’s mobile device, the user can manipulate four monsters that appear on the television in order to create a visual storytelling experience. The characters can be moved around to demonstrate a narrative.

Fagesschau

Fagesschau is an Apple TV app that ‘curates and aggregates’ information and video content that is served up in a personalized way to the user.

It can be controlled by voice if desired.

Tattle.tv

Tattle.tv is an attempt to ‘make boring television more interesting’ with viewer interaction. In the team’s demonstration, a politician’s speech is shown on TV; by using a mobile app, a viewer can chat with their friends about what they’re watching, which is then displayed on screen.

The chat system supports speech-to-text, voting and emoticons. Additionally, face-detection functionality identifies the politician, allowing the viewer to learn more about them.

FEEDY

FEEDY is an app for viewing various social media feeds on multiple devices. Often, video content can bog down one’s stream of updates. FEEDY lets the user scroll through their feed without videos, and then select individual items for further examination and inspection while projected on the television screen.

Journalism Taken to the Streets

Journalism Taken to the Streets self-defines as “Current news mixed with poetry, philosophy and musicality.”
Existing news is summarized and presented in a new context, performed live in front of an audience, which encourages a face-to-face dialogue.

GRIWS

GRIWS presents traditional news clips to the viewer in an untraditional way. Relevant topics from multiple sources are aggregated and personalized into a sortable grid; a user can then choose to view video content all related to one subject, or even delve deeper and view multiple videos from one provider.




Author: Brian Cameron

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