Seen anything good on TV lately? If the answer is ‘No,’ then maybe the problem is that you and your TV just aren’t communicating as well as you could be. The same may be said of your experience across other viewing mediums, like smartphones, tablets and PCs.

Veveo wants to change the picture, so to speak. “We want the TV to be as friendly as possible so you and the TV can have a really productive relationship,” says CMO Sam Vasisht. The company, which earlier this month exhibited its Conversational Interface Technology at TV Connect 2013 in London, says there’s a need for a universal interface based on natural language capability, so that people more intuitively can grasp what is available from where in a world of fragmented content sources, including how to better search for that content and manage their viewing experiences with greater speed and ease.

“Voice is probably the most natural way for us to deliver this experience,” says Vasisht. Veveo wants to be the platform that enables service providers and OEMs and video programmers to give their audiences the power of speech. Read more

Veveo, [a company we have covered previously and] a leading provider of semantic technologies to bridge the usability gap in connected devices and applications with intelligent search, discovery, recommendation and personalization solutions, today announced that the company will showcase its semantic Knowledge Graph-based solutions at the upcoming TV Connect 2013. The company will be demonstrating advanced new conversational interface technology for television and video, as well as personalized channel guides and recommendation solutions being rolled out by one of the leading cable providers in the US. Read more

Jinni, a company that we have covered here, has released its first set-top-box for personalization of real-time television. The article states, “Introduced progressively by European IPTV operator (Belgacom), starting June 19th, this enables the subscribers to benefit from a complete cross-platform content consumption experience. Belgacom partnered with Jinni in September 2010 and took part in the startup’s second round of funding, in early 2011. The already available platforms include an online service, mobile app and Connected TV app, all powered by the Jinni engine. The Jinni cross-platform experience is part of Belgacom’s hard-hitting strategy, aimed at maintaining competitive advantage by offering a superior service to its customers.” Read more

Red Bee Media, a company that “builds bridges between content and viewers” has posted a new article to their corporate blog regarding the growing volumes of television metadata. The article states, “TV Metadata is becoming increasingly rich and complex – powering increasingly advanced experiences. At a basic level, metadata tells us which programmes are available, and informs us about the content of those programmes. But metadata is getting richer and even bigger to support more visually engaging and functionally sophisticated user experiences.” Read more

A recent article reports that Twitter has partnered with the Weather Channel “to push weather related tweets onto its enormously well-trafficked cable network and website, with the two groups splitting the ad revenue. For Twitter this is an opportunity to finally use its scale and speed in a partnership that can rake in good revenue. For New York based Trendrr, this was a chance to work behind the scenes on a massive deal. The company will be doing the semantic analysis to separate a tweet about a sudden rain shower from a tweet about your decision to take a quick shower after the gym.” Read more

Here’s what Bluefin Labs is trying to capture for mass media content providers, be they media companies or brands: The word-of-mouth about TV shows and commercials that has migrated to the social media space. It wants to make visible the feedback loop that is very evident in live human communications – be they one-on-one at the water cooler or speaker-to-audience on the lecture circuit – but which has been essentially invisible in the world of mass media for decades.

“The value proposition of broadcast and mass media is that you can magnify your audience and reach,” says Bluefin founder and CEO Deb Roy. “The primary cost is you lose the feedback channel.” Instead of talking with each other or with a speaker, listeners are talked at. And the speakers lose the immediate connection with the listeners that helps them understand if they are communicating effectively.

Providers such as The Nielsen Company have long offered services that track how many people were seated to watch a particular show and something about their age or gender, for instance, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “Most people still see mass media as a one-way shotgun into the dark, and they hope to hit as many people as they can and that approach is and not where the future lies,” says Roy.

Where it does lie, he believes, is with using semantic technology to do something with public social media as a new and real-time data stream to build a richer feedback loop for mass media content creators.

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A research center is looking for a Software Developer of Semantic Service Platform for Web, TV and Mobile in Austria. According to the post, “STI International Consultancy and Research GmbH (STI Research), a research centre based in Innsbruck and Vienna, Austria which contributes to the international semantic technology community, seeks applications for a software developer. Both students and graduates are welcome to apply. The position is available from anytime from May 2011 onward, with an initial duration of up to 2 years. An extension is also possible.” Read more

NoTube, a European research project exploring semantic web and television, recently noted that, “The W3C has now issued a summary of the 2nd workshop on Web and TV, which took place this February in Berlin. NoTube was present at this event and project representatives Libby Miller and Dan Brickley pushed for the use of semantic technology, especially Linked Data, in the TV space as well as for the provision of shared APIs for interacting with the TV playout device.” Read more

2010 ended on a down note for VC funds. Word came this week that 2010 represented the fourth consecutive year of declines and the slowest annual period for venture capital fundraising since 2003, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

The silver lining, the NVCA said, is that downsizing of the venture industry has positive implications for investors and entrepreneurs.  “An agile venture capital model likely translates into more capital efficient and fewer duplicative deals in the IT arena,” said its president, Mark Heesen in a release, adding, “The most innovative and efficient companies will continue to be funded by the venture community.”

That must be happy news for semantic web movie and TV “taste engine” Jinni. 2011 started out on a good note for the site, with its announcement that it closed a series B funding round for $5 million. The round was led by two strategic investors: Belgacom – Belgium’s leading telco – and an undisclosed Tier-1 connected-TV manufacturer. Jinni’s service enables Belgacom to offer its customers personalized movie recommendations and discovery, on TV, mobile and web platforms. Venture capital firm DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures (which previously led Jinni’s Round A funding) also participated.

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