It has been argued that open source is only good at commoditizing big markets, but the news that TV-B-Gone has been open sourced perhaps provides a compelling counterpoint. (OStatic has a great write-up.)
I've never used the TV-B-Gone remote, which lets the user turn off just about any TV, anywhere. But I've long wanted to get one. The power to instantly stop the noise box is...tempting..
Even so, I may now wait a bit longer to see what the budding TV-B-Gone community will make of this already useful product. As Phil Torrone from MAKE Magazine suggests, this supposedly frivolous device could be the spark to a young would-be engineer's mind and, because it's open source, she can let out the resultant creativity in the form of a modified TV-B-Gone.
You may not think much of TV-B-Gone. But the potential it has as an open-source project is impressive.
(Credit:
Hopscotch Technology)
BOB is destroying my life. I never invited BOB to my home - my wife brought him in and set him up next to our TV. Now I can't get away from him.
Who (or what) is BOB? BOB is a little device that limits the amount of time that you can use electronics, be it a TV, computer, etc. For example, my wife has set BOB to limit me to six hours of TV each week, and my kids each get three hours.
In my case, the only TV I ever watch is soccer (and The Office most of the time). I don't get anywhere near six hours of TV time each week, because Arsenal only plays once or twice each week. For my kids, our general policy is to answer "No" to any request from our kids to watch TV. So, I wasn't really sure why my wife got BOB. If anything, it provided more TV time than we currently use, not less.
Being who we are, my nine-year old son and I now spend inordinate amounts of time trying to crack BOB, finding ways around it. My son has figured out his sisters' codes for BOB so that he can borrow their time. When my wife found out, he got penalized. Big time.
I'm sure our rebellion will fade as the novelty wears off. It is nice to not have to answer my kids at all on the "Can I watch TV?" question. BOB always knows.
I just need BOB to boot me off this computer....
No one watches commercials anymore, right? In particular, 18-to-34-year-olds hate ads and will do anything to quash them, right?
It turns out these and other TV myths may be just that: myths. As The Wall Street Journal reports, researchers are discovering that the nature of the show and how soon after it airs publicly has more to do with ad-watching behavior than one's age group:
... Read moreOne evolving theory: that advertisers should pay more attention to people's viewing patterns than to their demographics, such as whether they are a twentysomething or a male. Fans of the NBC Universal show Heroes, for example, whether they are 18-year-old men or 54-year-old women, generally tend to watch the show the same way--often clicking through ads...
So far, commercial ratings show what advertising executives have long suspected--about 3 percent to 15 percent of an audience changes the channel during commercials or fast-forwards through them, while teens and older people tend to skip commercials slightly less than viewers aged 18 to 34. In general, the closer viewers watch a show to its original airtime the more likely they are to watch the ads.
One great way to determine whether your digital product is destined for greatness is how many people want to steal it. As the television industry is starting to realize, there's a great deal of positive information that can be gleaned from illegal torrents of the shows. If no one wants to watch it, no one is going to steal it.
The open-source analog, of course, is the download. If you aren't getting free downloads, then it's probably futile to try selling a product. Downloads, in other words, tell us a lot about future purchases, assuming there's a compelling business and revenue model behind the download. According to an article on Last100.com:
Tech-savvy consumers have been boldly declaring that piracy can help and not hinder industry for years (especially when it comes to music downloads), but I was shocked the first time I heard the same claim from some very knowledgeable marketing types one day over a year ago in a boardroom. One of them simply asked, "Is the show on BitTorrent? How many people are downloading it??" The rest of the group looked genuinely interested in the answer from a demand point of view, not from an outraged one. I've since heard the same thing again several times, from different companies.
... Read more
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