Blog: David Loshin

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Time-Shifted Information Delivery

I have had a series of interesting conversations with fellow-blogger Shawn Rogers regarding interesting ways to deliver information, especially as different varieties of content presentation emerge and alternate combinations of content-delivery mechanisms evolve. Here is one example: time-shifted information delivery.

Think about the popularity of the digital video recorder for watching television - three major benefits pop directly into my mind:
1) I can skip over the parts that I don't really care about (i.e., commercials)
2) I can watch selected programs in a limited "on-demand" way, recording it at one time and watching it when I choose
3) I can easily navigate across different parts of the program at will, perhaps to hear a character's line that I missed the first time.

These are all concepts of time-shifted entertainment, in which one can decide to enjoy the entertainment at his/her own schedule, instead of the one dictated by network executives.

Now, all of these concepts were available during the VCR age, so what is really different today? It is the scope and scale of the delivery. With videotapes, the person needs to be in charge of managing the content, moving items from storage to the operating environment (i.e., putting a tape in the machine). And while navigating was available, it is clumsy when compared to the DVR environment. Clearly, watching recorded programs that are managed from within a single user interface and are categorized by topic or genre (or whatever) is much easier than having to keep all those bulky videotapes indexed and organized on the shelf.

OK, so we should be able to do the same with content delivery, right? I expect that the "pull" aspect of web browsing provides that kind of capability. Well, sort of, but not really, of course, because I still have to do my own organizing. On the other hand, there are some different ideas that allow you to engineer your own organization. RSS feeds, for example, and an RSS reader will allow you to have content pushed out to you, and you can review it when you want. Google now allows you to wrap web pages within a "widgetized" API which you can then organized around your own directives. Crafted Flash presentations can be downloaded and played later.

So where are we going? What are the next ideas? Downloading flash onto your video iPod? RSS feeds through your radio? Post your ideas...

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