Greek Complexity

TV remains King

But for how long?

Click to see original

There are many more households in the US with four TV sets than those with one, two or three? Wow. That certainly puts paid to the notion of TV time being family time.

Some of the stats here aren't explained in sufficient detail, but there's still lots to ponder.

House of cards

And like many very funny things, this has more than a grain of truth in it.

Google TV version 2

I really hope Google succeeds at this:

Google’s smart TV software platform, Google TV, is poised for its first significant overhaul since it launched in Logitech and Sony hardware a year ago. Via over-the-air updates that should begin streaming to hardware devices on October 30, Google TV users will find new TV-optimized Android Apps, an improved YouTube experience, and new features that provide easy, direct discovery of TV and movie content. When Google TV launched, it was supposed to seamlessly co-mingle “live TV” (read: broadcast, satellite and cable) with streaming video services like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Video On Demand. You could also use your Google TV software to search the web, and even access digital content from your home network or attached storage.

via Wired

Social gaming's opportunities and challenges

At Echelon 2010 in Singapore yesterday and today. Vishal Gondal of Indiagames and others on the social gaming panel point out opportunities for social gaming beyond just the PC Internet and beyond Facebook specifically.

• Non-Facebook social networks around the world, such as Mixi, Renren, Cyworld, etc
• Mobile social games
• Interactive TV

Zaki Mahomed of Game Ventures thinks that payments still is a barrier to seamless roll-out and adoption of social games in Asia and on the mobile. He says there's no one simple way across games and platforms (OSs, devices, whatever) to make it easy for users to micro-transact within games. People aren't comfortable typing their credit card numbers into a mobile social game. Vishal agrees but with the qualification that in India at least premium SMS is one way to monetise.