With Google announcing in May that Google TV devices would soon be able to access customised apps through Android Market, giving developers the opportunity to make and sell TV apps, the world of internet-connected TV is set to take off. Google TV will be hosting free developers’ workshops at Apps World N.America to offer their insight on how to explore the challenges of this new technology. Connected TV will offer consumers virtually limitless access to content by bringing the internet straight into your living room. Here are some of the key changes to the home entertainment experience as a result of the development of internet-connected TV.

Making television social
In a recent survey by Yahoo! Connected TV 28% of women said they wanted to include their friends via social media when watching TV, the integration of social media as part of the viewing experience is surely the natural progression from the current social media interaction with TV that takes place using programme hashtags and fan pages for viewers to discuss shows as they watch them. Connected TV will allow broadcast and social experiences to blend in a more seamless way and this will be a natural development from the way people are currently using there smartphones and tablet devices to interact on Twitter or Google their favourite actor whilst they watch their favourite shows.

The next generation of TV advertising
Connected TV will allow viewers to simultaneously pull up more information about products being advertised whilst watching an advert, imagine a company distributing a standard car advert and adding an option for connected viewers to pull up more information or reviews about the car all with one click of a remote control. Yahoo! Connected TV found that over 50% of people surveyed would  be likely to interact with an advert if given the choice. Connected TV will also mean advertisements can become more locally relevant and interest based to make them more tailored and personalised to the individual.

Syncing the web with live TV
Known as “Broadcast interactivity” in the industry syncing web content with live TV means relevant and personalised content can be pushed through to the consumer, rather than the consumer pulling information out by downloading certain apps and finding the info they are looking for. The types of opportunities viewers will be offered as a result of syncing will be things like voting for their favourite actor, purchasing items they see on the TV, playing along with their favourite game show or viewing related videos and pictures just to suggest a few.

T-commerce
The other big opportunity with connected TV will be TV purchases. We’re not just talking about being able to browse through eBay and Amazon and make a purchase but to also be able to instantly snap up that handbag your favourite character is carrying and then browse the menu at your local takeaway and place an order for home delivery all whilst still watching TV.

The good news for consumers is that these developments are already in motion, internet connected TVs have already entered the market with some apps ready for download. The questions on the lips of the industry right now are how big is this market going to become? What new opportunities will it create for marketing and branding professionals? And who will be the driving force for TV app store competition?

Apps World North America in New York on 1-2 November has an entire section of its agenda dedicated to helping answer those questions with speakers from Google TV, NBC and KIT digital and Apps World Europe (London 29-30 November) has an entire day of the agenda dedicated to TV apps.

Check out the full agenda here and register for your pass today.

1. Two days of action packed engaging content within 30+ sessions, across three tracks covering all aspects of the social media & apps ecosystem.

2. 100+ speakers from top names in the industry including Twitter, AT+T, Radian6, Google TV, Yahoo and Bing.

3. Unique opportunity to network with 2500+ attendees made up from leading industry representatives.

4. Free to attend developers zone – two day showcase of technical presentations from leading developers, handset operators & apps stores covering a myriad of opportunities and challenges faced when developing apps.

5. Free to attend social media hub – two day showcase from leading social media networks & service providers providing an insight into the basics of successfully adopting SM, practical tips & tricks, budding start-ups & a look into social TV.

6. Free to attend exhibition, with 50+ exhibitors we will be creating an arena of buzz from service & tool providers from across the sectors.

7. One pass provides access to two shows – Apps World & SMWF – proving a rounded insight into these rapidly developing digital sectors.

8. Discover how global brands and corporations are adopting social media & apps and why these tools are the ideal platforms to build you brand.

9. Hear how advertisers and marketers are approaching these tools and their strategies for achieving ROI.

10. A chance to discuss & debate the current industry conditions and the predictions for their future.

Click here to book your pass today!

This year #AppsWorld welcomes back the Facebook Developers Garage, hosted by e27, to the Asia event who will be providing hands-on, practical advice for grass-roots developers looking to get into the fast-moving and lucrative
world of Facebook development. A great opportunity for developers looking to crack the hot topic that is social media.

On Thursday 1 September at 1630 e27 will host the Facebook developers ‘meet & greet’ session which will include a talk on the latest issues for developers in social media and an introduction to Facebook’s new regional team including Alexander Klienberg (Facebook’s Head of Platform Partnerships in Asia-Pacific/Japan) and highlights of the plans for the region as well as networking opportunities.

This is a free-to-attend, hour and a half workshop for the local developer community, with advice and insight into how the platform is evolving and how to make the most of these new developments; providing an arena for developers to get stuck in, explore the platform, collaborate and test out ideas under the supervision of experts.

The Facebook Developer Garage forms part of a series of in-depth app developer workshops taking place on 1-2 September at the Suntec Centre, Singapore. Developers can attend this free workshop track, featuring sessions on Microsoft, Android, Samsung and more. To find out more please click here.

Related articles

• Free Microsoft developers track at #AppsWorld Asia (apps-world.net)
• Free developer sessions at #AppsWorld Asia (apps-world.net)
• What to expect at Social Media World Forum (e27.sg)

Apple announced Tuesday that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store by iPhone and iPod touch users worldwide.

“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months–this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

The news comes nine months after it hit 1 billion downloads, with the second billion taking a further six months.

When the 2 billion mark was reached, Apple also announced that 85 000 apps were available in the App Store at the time. This time, the company chose to stick to download numbers only.

However, in November 2009, Apple did say that 100 000 apps were published to the store.

There’s been some useful discussion recently about using the app store model for distributing enterprise software and services within organizations. Up until now, most IT needs in the majority of businesses have been met through one-size-fits-all delivery of solutions that are either hand-crafted or purchased and then imposed on all. It’s been this way for at least three decades, but now this aging and inadequate process is beginning to improve.

The premise of an app store model for enterprises is simple: By removing the middleman, the famous bottleneck between the business and IT demand can be reduced in many cases. Application backlogs can shrink, consumption of internal and external IT resources will increase, and fierce competition to provide the best solutions to niches can greatly improve overall quality (the long tail of IT argument), all while reducing costs. At least, that’s what is possible if we look at what’s happening to the non-enterprise software market today.

Related: The app store: A “must-have” new digital business model

Fellow Enterprise Irregular Jevon MacDonald posits this as a likely outcome of the emerging Personal Enterprise. Current trends involving the mass personalization of services and the consumeration of enterprise IT have come together and resulted in ready-to-use catalogs of IT solutions that are much easier to acquire and consume today than they from traditional channels. Jevon cites Force.com, Intuit Marketplace and Get App as current examples of app stores for enterprises and SMBs, to which I’d definitely add IBM’s Smart Market. Google is even rumored to be ready to release an enterprise app store of its own soon.

Distributing SOA, SaaS, & Mashups with The Enterprise App Store

Even the Web itself has become a sort of ad hoc app store writ large in the cloud with thousands of SaaS applications available today that most enterprise users can acquire and use with little or no provisioning or support from IT.

In this view, monolithic enterprise deployments become rarer and IT solutions begin to look more like their counterparts online: smaller, more specific apps that fit the local conditions better (and are usually cheaper too). That this might actually happen is evidenced not only by the already existing enterprise app stores today but by the work currently going into rethinking of IT in terms of emergent enterprise architecture (intentionally) and the growing use of shadow applications in the cloud (grassroots).

App Stores: Not Just For Apps

ebizQ’s own Joe McKendrick recently explored the app store’s applicability to service-oriented architecture (SOA) this week, quoting George Ravich, who promulgates the SOA-as-a-store approach to enterprise users in the same way that iTunes is available online to get whatever one needs at the time: “The SOA service catalog promises to have the same impact on enterprise computing as the iTunes playlist has had on listening to music.”

SOA has always been an approach that promotes reuse and interoperability between existing IT systems. Those who have adhered to SOA principles have been able to project their services and data into widely distributed and far-flung IT solutions, both within and between organizations. But successfully driving SOA consumption has been hard, and the focus is too often on opening up services instead of focusing on increasing usage. But the SOA industry quickly hit upon a potential solution. Proving that what is old is new again with the app store model, there have been commercial service directories for a long time now that have have helped organizations maintain open inventories of services, such as StrikeIron or IBM Mashup Center…

Social news aggregator Digg.com has released its free iPhone app in the App Store. Packed with a slick, feature-rich interface, the app is a strong start for the popular website, though there’s plenty of room for it to grow.

Source: (Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/digg-iphone-app/#ixzz0jIb7zwIa)

Launching the app, you’ll be able to immediately browse popular stories on Digg. You can also view popular stories by topic (e.g., technology, business, science, etc.) or upcoming articles that are about to go popular. You can search through stories by typing a keyword in a search field.

The best part of the app is it makes it really easy to Digg or bury a submission. Tapping a link launches the story inside an in-app browser, and a bar below contains thumbs up and thumbs down buttons to cast your vote. There’s also a button to save a story for reading later. The entire interface is snappy; from my testing on an iPhone 3GS, stories loaded quickly inside Digg’s browser.

With that said, there are some features missing that I’d like to see in version 2. One major minus is you can’t comment on stories like you would on Digg.com. You can view comments, but you can’t actually write any. According to Tap Tap Tap, which developed the app with Digg, the public Digg API doesn’t support adding comments yet. So hopefully we can expect this feature in a later version.

Also, there’s limited interaction between the Digg app and other apps. For example, if you’re browsing your Twitter feed in Tweetie and you tap a Digg link, it doesn’t launch the Digg app. Instead, you’re stuck with viewing the Digg link in the Safari browser. To be fair, you can hit a button to share Digg links through Twitter, Facebook or e-mail, but the inability to use the app to view others’ shared Digg links is stifling.

The free Digg app is downloadable now in the App Store. A video demo of the app is below.

News release [Digg]

Whats next for Social TV? Below Mark Groves from NDS talks about whats next for social tv and how this will be intergrated into our exisiting platforms
NDS will be exhibiting at the Social TV and Social Media World Forum on the 15th & 16th March, London 2010. http://www.social-tv.net meet them at stand number 15.

The Social Shindig party, the official networking party of Social Media World Forum will be taking place on the middle evening of the event.All conference pass delegates are invited to head over to the Archangel venue situated opposite the Kensington Royal Garden Hotel.  The venue is a10 min walk from Olympia & The Hilton Olympia Hotel – the official event hotel and 5 m ins from High Street Kensington Tube Station.

Please Note: Open only to full conference pass holders – wristbands will need to be shown to gain access Networking Party Partners

About Social Media UK

‘Social Media UK’ is a networking community based in London consisting of a LinkedIn group of 850+ members, a crowdsourced blog www.socialmediamonday.co.uk and a monthly networking event ‘Social Media Monday’ with presentations & plenty of ‘social’ till late… (follow @SocialMedia_UK & tweet about #SMUK)

We’ve grown tremendously over the last 6 months and we’re really proud to be continuing these talks in the Workshops at the Social Media World Forum 2010.

‘Social Media UK’ is organised by the Digital / Social Media recruitment specialists; Fresh Resources. We’re ridiculously passionate about all things digital and absolutely believe that being an active part of the community and contributing towards the industry we specialise in, means we’re poised to consistently deliver precision services to our much adored clients. 

#SMUK loves social media, that why even this description is wrapped up in 140 words!

Monterosa (www.monterosa.co.uk) have confirmed their attendance at the Social TV Forum Europe, (www.social-tv.net) taking place on the 15/16th March 2010 at Olympia, London.

Monterosa are a creative and technology company based in central London. We’re a team of experienced producers, project managers, software engineers and designers with range of backgrounds backgrounds in broadcast, advertising, games and software development.

Ooyala’s player has always supported sharing to popular social networks sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Ooyala now supports deep linking which allows a viewer to share only a particular video within a playlist or a specific scene within a video. These deep linking sharing options are available for its player embeds, its sharing links to social networking sites, as well as the newly released URL link, also available in the player. What’s great about this is that it does not require any custom development work. A publisher can easily enable the various sharing options in Backlot for all their viewers.

Ooyala is a leading video technology company, for details visit www.ooyala.com/blog