Ampers & Dot

I’ve seen the future - and it’s beautiful. More specifically: it’s in high definition and has interactive capabilities.

This past week was my single favorite of all 52 a year: Masters week. A time during which the world’s top golfers flock to Augusta, Georgia to battle each other in the most pristine setting on earth. There is no other competition like it and it truly is “A tradition unlike any other”. I could happily go on for a few thousand words just expressing my love for the Masters but I’ll save the non-golf-fanatics the trouble and instead, talk tech today.

What completely blew me away during this year’s event (aside from Anthony Kim’s 11 birdies, Campbell’s opening round, or Sergio’s lack of sportsmanship) was the quality of coverage. Like all PGA events, the Masters is a four day tournament running from Thursday to Sunday - with network TV covering only the weekend afternoon slots. Unlike other PGA events, the Masters has a live, online component for the entire event.

Beginning Thursday morning, Masters.com provided viewers with live streaming video. Ok, so that sounds cool, right? But it gets better. Much better.

Instead of just streaming one feed, viewers had the option of four different feeds depending on your preferences. Also, as shown in the image below, the feeds have picture-in-picture, a live interactive leaderboard, a chat window to interact with other fans, player alerts, feed info, and a live ticker across the bottom. Incredible. (To see a better rundown - that inspired this post - check out Drew’s coverage at The Daily Muddle.)

It takes a lot to impress me with technology these days, but I can truly say that I was jaw-droppingly amazed by the Masters coverage. This is, hopefully not long from now, the future of TV. But not surprising: it’s all online.

Either through internet enabled TV, or TV enabled internet (more likely that the two will eventually become one in the same) streaming video online gives viewers a significantly richer experience, that we will soon grow to expect in our programming.

In the future when we watch a baseball game, we’ll be able to pick the camera to watch from - pitcher’s view, or batter’s. We’ll be able to pick the commentary - home or away. After a play we’ll be able to choose our instant replay angle and speed. We’ll be able to chat about different players, or plays - which will likely be annoying and overrun by spammers… When we watch American Idol we won’t have to text in votes, we’ll just click the on-screen button for our favorite contestant. And when we watch commercials (yes, we will watch commercials in the future) we’ll be able to click on the product to order it (and I don’t actually see that as a bad thing!).

To be perfectly honest: I’m not a big TV person. I have my favorite shows that I really enjoy, but beyond that I just don’t watch much. Instead, I’m an internet person. I could browse the web all day. But as TV and the internet converge, I could easily see myself enjoying watching TV again. Mainly because, I won’t just watch - I’ll interact.

Although I don’t use a BlackBerry on a daily basis, I understand them and the people that swear by them. They are fast, simple, and functional devices that easily empower business use with a sturdy feel in a stylish package. BlackBerries are great.

Maybe this is why I had such a difficult time understanding the touchscreen focused BlackBerry Storm. For those that don’t want to go back and read that post, mainly I argued that the touch-centric device took away from what makes a BlackBerry so great - pure functionality. By forcing the user experience to be entirely touchscreen, it makes even the simplest task - like checking email - a hassle.

My biggest gripe was that BlackBerry scrapped the clickwheel/ball, in favor of the poorly implemented finger dragging mechanism - meaning that if you wanted to navigate between two emails you’d have to click, hold, drag down, wait, and hope you didn’t overshoot. Considerably more difficult (and annoying) than rolling a little ball a little bit.

So I gave BlackBerry the advice that they should have started the move towards touch devices a little safer - testing the waters by adding a touch screen to their already popular devices - as opposed to the Storm, which was a full on belly flop into the murky drudges of Lake Touch. Now, only a few months later, a new device leaks into Rumorville (related note: Lake Touch is actually the main tourist attraction of Rumorville, millions flock there every year).

Courtesy of CrackBerry.com (who speculates this is likely a fake) we have  a leaked image of the BlackBerry 9900 for Rogers (oh, Canada…).

The 9900 is basically a Bold, but with a touchscreen… and without a clickball. Dammit BlackBerry, you missed my point. This is a perfect opportunity to trial touch capabilities within the BlackBerry OS - figure out the kinks and work on the the numerous bugs - but retain the full functionality of why people love BlackBerries. But I think this misses the point, again.

The Storm was a big overstep also because of its lack of a physical keyboard, so I guess the 9900 is at least a step towards sanity. But forcing users to still use the finger drag scrolling, clickable screen, and dysfunctional touch OS just seems cruel.

I guess all I’m saying is that I’m all about innovation, but it should come more gradually through an evolution. To me, it seems like BlackBerry is forcing evolution by skipping generations - which ultimately leaves the newer models missing the fundamental core of what makes a BlackBerry so cool.

Or maybe I’m just sad that we continue to lose out in the War on Buttons.