Yahoo and Intel have jointly announced plans for Widget Channel; a platform for electronic devices running upon Intel’s hardware with support for various technologies and is powered by Yahoo’s Widget Engine, a platform that allows couch potatoes to get hands on experience with small Internet applications. The purpose is to enhance the experience of the general TV audience and amalgamate it with content and information from the web with the touch of a button.
Perhaps the most prominent feature that I found was the ability for developers to build applications using JavaScript, XML, HTML and Adobe Flash technology; thus expanding the age long view about the television and amalgamating it with a PC like experience. This would man that users would have an extended library of widgets to view along with their standard television programs.
Eric Kim, Intel’s SVP and GM of Intel’s Digital home Group said:
TV will fundamentally change how we talk about, imagine and experience the Internet…… Intel and Yahoo! are proposing a way where the TV and Internet are as interactive, and seamless, as possible.
Now where I see things heading for; I barely see a line between the television and the computer, the differences thinning out. Could this have a negative impact? Well depend on the users, many of them consider the television to nothing more than a device to relax and may not actually like the idea of widgets beaming in between their favorite program; I for one wouldn’t appreciate them at all.
But we don’t have to worry about seeing anything of the sort in near future as the current platform is integrated with Intel’s architecture that doesn’t have any amalgamation wit the current TV’s. And oh that’s not it; once the integration is done you will have to go on grabbing it. I would end up with words of Marco Boerries, EVP, Connect Life, Yahoo! Inc:
Yahoo! aims to extend this leadership to the emerging world of Internet-connected TV, which we call the Cinematic Internet™. By partnering with leaders like Intel, we plan to combine the Internet benefits of open user choice, community, and personalization with the performance and scale embodied in the Intel Architecture to transform traditional TV into something bigger, better and more exciting than ever before.
I will take that ‘exciting’ and put it in the pocket until we experience it, let the judgment rest for the time to come.
