So it's Google and Adobe at the moment.

Makes sense.

David Weinberger :

So, because Google is growing a TV business, it now gets to decide that TV needs to shoulder aside all other traffic on the Net.

:-(

Gamasutra on Google's investment in Zynga, possible games platform.

WTF? Why are Google doing this? Smells very wrong (ie. defensive / me-too-ism) to me. And not at all core. (How is this organizing all the world's information?)

But let's see if they have an angle.

Update : I guess Farmville et. al. as a social gaming network that's folded into Google TV might make sense.

So ... GoogleTV. Clearly some interesting ideas.

(I still think they should have gone for the YouTube brand, though.)

Here's something interesting : look at how Chumby is not all about their hardware, but is making reselling their personalized feed handling to other companies and devices (including TV).

Comcast buys Plaxo... bringing YASNS to television?

Cringley on Multicast

Hugh is still calling this TV 2.0

A lot of people are hating on "2.0" names now have always hated on "2.0" names, so I'm not sure I'd be pushing it the way Hugh is. But I don't care one way or the other about "2.0", I can usually negotiate whatever terminology other people want to use.

However, I really don't like the idea of calling this "TV".

Like I said before, for me "TV" is all about "broadcast" ie. DRM, intrusive advertising, big-media dinosaurs etc. And, unless they turn out to be surprisingly clever and agile I don't think this is going to be about them.

Yes, 2008 may be the year that the big, cheap LCD in your living room is assimilated into the device swarm. But there'll also be little screens (Chumbies, portable gaming machines, mobile phones and video players), and non-screens (Nabaztags, Orbs)

Yep, Dave's done it again.

Update : And, of course, if Dave's FlickrFan takes off. It really won't be hard at all to upgrade it to do video, and then river of checkbox news.

For the BBC or NBC or Fox or CNN, now would be a great time to start paying attention and trying to get into this.

If I was Apple, I'd be dropping the price of the MacMini to take advantage of this launch : "Buy a MacMini NOW for only $400 before end of January and get Flickrfan preinstalled". OTOH, if I was Microsoft I'd assign a couple of people on helping port this application to Windows PDQ.

And if I was Flickr ... you know, I'd at least mention it on my blog.

Update 2 : Now, I wonder if this kind of newsmap would work well on a big screen.

Update 3 : Bonus Link. Remember this? :

Winer has nothing like the resources of Apple, but look, he's created the same shape of platform : he's got the content, he's got the nice reader, he's got the flow going through his middleware. And now he can start innovating on top of that.

Good end of year round-up from Marc Canter.

... we believe within one year they’ll be LOTS of social media features being plopped into existing productivity software, Intranets and legacy apps, etc.

Meanwhile Dave launches his photos from Flickr over RSS to your TV thing.

Hugh Macleod thinks Microsoft is going for TV 2.0

Well, it's not really surprising. Both MS and Apple have been trying to get there for .. well ... ever. However, "TV" for me means "broadcast" with all the bad things that implies : DRM, intrusive advertising, platform owners who want to dictate the conversation.

The question is, how much of this "broadcast" platform survive? And how closely do Microsoft and Apple want to tie themselves to it? As the computer explodes into a swarm of connected, "smart" objects and appliances scattered around our lives. (Nabaztags, Chumbies, Robosapiens and their various offspring) I wonder if the focus really should be on "TV"