WorldTV

It’s a new year, a new decade, and we’re really excited about what lies in store for WorldTV. It’s going to be a great year, and you’re going to love what we have planned!

First off, a couple of news items to share with you…

Editor Synchronisation

Some of you may have heard of Google WAVE, a new technology that lets people collaborate on the same document at the same time. In a similar way we have re-written the underlying technology used by our Editor to communicate with the WorldTV servers. Now when you make updates to the Editor it will automatically push those updates to any other Editors accessing the same channel. To put it another way, you can have two people accessing the same Editor, from different places in the world, at the same time. Updates by one will reflect on the other’s screen within seconds. It’s kind of geeky, but cool. Try it out!

SXSW

South by Southwest is a massive conference and festival that takes place each year in Austin, Texas for the music, film and digital industries. We’re excited to announce that WorldTV has been selected as one of 39 companies to attend the event as part of a UK Govt trade mission. The event runs from March 12-16.

Our Plans for 2010

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been asking you to tell us what features you would like to see on WorldTV, and to vote on other people’s ideas. We’ve decided to extend this until the end of January, so you still have time to cast your votes.

The features that are currently getting the most votes, and/or which are now on our shortlist are…

• Live broadcasting
• Homepage for channels
• Scheduling system / WorldTV time / Multiple playlists (build schedules of programs like real TV)
• Search for channels (on the World page)
• New and improved player designs
• Improved channel recommendation system (on the EPG)
• Weekly e-mails / awards system
• Channel genres / categorization (music, culture, sport etc)

Our shortlist is actually quite long (over 100 ideas for features) but these are the main ones. If you’ve not done so already head over to our feedback forum to place your votes!

Here at WorldTV we like to celebrate alternative forms of expression and collaboration and we welcome anyone to express themselves in a radically creative forum, wherever they come from in the World.

From time to time we like to bring you coverage of projects or events that share similar philosophies as our own, or which otherwise you might not be aware of. All this week we have been using our ad-hoc live channel on WorldTV to bring live streaming coverage of Burning Man – the legendary event in the Nevada desert that celebrates radical self-expression and creativity.

If you don’t know what Burning Man is, it’s hard to describe. Think of a cross between a ‘makers’, art and music festival where commercialism is banned, Star Wars and Mad Max, and you will get close.

The live video coverage comes from a 360 degree camera mounted high above the event with audio coming from the on-site 24 hour radio station BMIR. Watching the sun rise California time over the desert, and all the attendees ferrying around on bicycles is a true sight to behold.

Watch live video coverage of Burning Man

Have you ever wished it was easy to watch online video on your TV? Surf the likes of YouTube, Daily Motion, Metacafe and WorldTV from the comfort of your living room chair?

We’ve thought a lot about this idea and decided to build a prototype device that would make this really simple. Trademark WorldTV user-friendliness applied to a consumer electronics device, if you will.

Luckily our Founder knows a thing or two about this kind of thing and is heading up a project to build our first prototype. You can follow along and build your own set top box with the guide that he’s developing.

Read more about it on the WorldTV Projects Page

The smoke has finally cleared from this year’s awesome edition of The Global Marijuana March and The Toronto Freedom Festival. The festival featured many great performances by the assembled showcase of musical talent along with many thought provoking speeches given by the attending speakers. To see the footage captured by our team of videographers you can still go to the The Toronto Freedom Festival Channel here on WorldTV or if you prefer you can catch an encore audio presentation from our friends at DOPEfm on 93.3 CFMU McMaster Campus Radio.
Coverage of the festival will be rebroadcasted on DOPEfm on Saturday May 30th 2009 beginning at 1:30am Eastern Standard Time (Approximated) & repeating 4:30am EST (Approximated). The 90 minute production includes the following speakers from the day: Eric ‘Buzzzworthy’ Wood, Jonathan Dickinson, Dana Larsen, Marc Emery, Patrick Whyte, Sara Chekroun, Christopher Lawson, Alison Myrden & Vijay Sarma; plus the ‘themed’ music playlist of some DOPEfm favourites including: Kay & Cleary with The Chosen Few Band – What It Takes To Live, Madvillain – America’s Most Blunted, Nish Raawks – Canada’s Most Blunted, Singapore Kane – Do What I Wanna Do, Fly Guys – Fly Guys Rap.

To catch the encore audio presentation go to CFMU McMaster online or catch the live MP3 stream here. DOPEfm is also available by podcast from iTunes and directly here or here

Many thanks to all those involved and the over 30,000 people who attended the Toronto event for making the day such a smokin’ success!

This Saturday May 2nd is the Global Marijuana March organized by volunteers in 250 cities around the world. WorldTV will be reporting on the event from Toronto (traditionally the largest such event) and is inviting anyone to contribute video from their city or country. The event highlights issues relating to medical marijuana.

If you have the ability to send video by e-mail or transmit video via Qik, you can participate. We would like to add your video to the live broadcast.

If you would like to watch the event on Saturday, follow us on Twitter or visit worldtv.com/live on Saturday afternoon.

This is part of a continuing series of experimental live broadcasts and marks the debut of WorldTV’s new Projects page. We’ve always said we will offer ‘imaginative projects that people can get involved in’. Imagination should be in abundance this Saturday…

Learn how you can contribute video and Tweets to this Saturday’s live broadcast

WorldTV in partnership with our friends at Ustream and London’s uber trendy restaurant Galvin at Windows is delighted to bring you our very first official LIVE broadcast taking place this Friday afternoon. It promises to be a truly groundbreaking event, and one not to be missed!

The event is an online stream of an exclusive Champagne and Oyster Tasting featuring some of London’s top food and drink personalities, all from the top floor of London’s famous Park Lane Hilton hotel. We are truly excited to be a part of it.

We will be capturing the event on three separate cameras to give the audience a unique insight into the proceedings and goings on. The restaurant itself is a truly legendary space with arguably the best view of London high above Hyde Park and with panoramic views from all sides.

A stellar selection of influential food, drink and lifestyle critics and bloggers are all attending and will be using social media applications like Twitter, Qik, live chat and so on to integrate their own audiences and followers. Guests will be presented with several exotic varieties of Oysters and Champagne from some of the finest houses including Galvin itself. Hosting the event for WorldTV is the BBC’s Food and Drink Expert Nigel Barden who will explain all the goings on to the audience following live around the world. Food and wine lovers will get a real treat and something of an education, and it can all be seen gratis at worldtv.com/live.

We are very excited to be producing such an original and innovative show as WorldTV’s first official live broadcast and we look forward to producing many, many more in future.

Don’t forget to tune in this Friday at 4pm UK time or 8am West Coast USA. Twitter users can follow @worldtv for a reminder and our founder @smashing who is producing the event. To follow all event activity use the search tag #galvinw.

Well this past Friday was an eventful day at WorldTV… thanks to a tip from a friend, the power of Twitter and then a sequence of serendipitous events, WorldTV pushed the envelope using our experimental live channel and broadcast the only LIVE video stream of U2’s surprise gig from a rooftop in central London.

After getting the heads-up from an industry friend, it began with our founder experimenting and creating a live audio broadcast of the band interview preceding the show. It soon became a live global video broadcast as our founder tracked down a video feed of the event from the BBC and made the necessary technical adjustments on the fly. Within minutes more than 500 people were watching the event from the four corners of the earth.

As one WorldTV user said, “… I’d like to thank you for broadcasting live the U2 gig last night in UK. I’m in the Philippines and, obviously, I can’t watch BBC. It was my birthday yesterday and your move was one of the greatest birthday gifts I’ve ever had in my entire life…”

If you missed the gig you can catch it here and watch this space for many more exciting and interesting experiments to come.

If you’re a food or drink lover you won’t want to miss our first ‘official’ live broadcast taking place this Friday.

This has to be one of the coolest implementations yet of WorldTV – an embeddable player and Facebook widget developed in conjunction with ZoomTV and Facebook to power coverage of tonight’s Oscars.

Our partner Sameer from ZoomTV writes “I got an email from Randi Zuckerberg this morning, Facebook wanted to do for the Oscars what they did with CNN for the Obama inauguration. We had little time so out goes our regular WorldTV playlist, in comes an Oscar related channel, fused with the Facebook widget and the WorldTV embeddable player, and here we are!”

The WorldTV/ZoomTV/Facebook widget is now in pride of place on the ZoomTV homepage and during the Oscar’s will be updated regularly with clips and original content for ZoomTV’s 300 million monthly TV viewers in India. There is particular interest in the Oscar’s this year due to the popularity of Slumdog Millionaire, the Indian set movie that’s up for 10 Oscar’s in tonight’s gala ceremony.

WorldTV Founder, CEO & CTO Alx Klive says “It doesn’t get much bigger than the Oscar’s and a three way tie-up including ZoomTV and Facebook is very cool. What the team has done over at ZoomTV to put this implementation together, in just three days is nothing short of incredible. Tonight should be a fun night!”

The implementation shows how creative thinking and a little tinkering can be used to good effect with the WorldTV embeddable player. New features are planned to make this even more powerful for publishers in future.

You can track ZoomTV’s WorldTV and Facebook powered Oscar’s coverage over at zoomtv.in/oscar

WorldTV is proud to announce its partnership with ZoomTV, the pre-eminent Bollywood, Entertainment and Lifestyle channel in India, owned by the Times of India Group. Starting today, visitors to ZoomTV.in will get a flavour of what makes the channel so popular with an online version of the ZoomTV channel, powered by WorldTV.

“We’re excited to be working with WorldTV to launch this service for our web audience” said Sameer Pitawalla, Head, Digital. “The idea is to re-create the ZoomTV viewing experience online, and do it in a way that’s accessible to viewers everywhere. WorldTV lets us do just that and opens up our content to an estimated 3.6 billion Bollywood fans from around the World”.

Already the new service is showing signs of the global interest in Bollywood entertainment. Visitors have logged on from as far afield as Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Bhutan in the few hours the service has been live.

“We’re thrilled to be working alongside a channel of the stature of ZoomTV and the Times of India Group” said Alx Klive, CEO of WorldTV. “In terms of viewership, Bollywood is bigger than Hollywood, and ZoomTV is at the forefront of that. For us as well it’s our first CMS integration with a major media company and this can only be of benefit to all our users as we develop custom new features and functionality. Thanks to everyone at ZoomTV for their support and being such a pleasure to work with.”

If you’d like a taste of Indian flavoured entertainment and glamour TV from the best in the business, head on over to ZoomTV’s new online TV channel at the ZoomTV website.

As the world continues to slide into financial meltdown WorldTV is constantly working on providing our beloved Users with more FREE entertainment and today’s offering comes in the form of some musical medicine of yesteryear (in no particular order) to help ease the pain of those nasty red numbers…

Sinatra – WorldTV.com/Sinatra

Ol’ Blue Eyes was the leading crooner for many a moon which he flew us to on numerous occasions with his grainy silk wrapped voice and inimitable stage presence.  Sinatra also forged a career as an actor of some repute, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity and was also allegedly connected with some dubious Italian families..

Grace Jones – WorldTV.com/Grace_Jones

As we all know by now Grace Jones is no Shrinking Violet.  For 3 decades she has sustained her iconic status with her incredibly extrovert style, attitude and groundbreaking music and has just recently released her first artist album in 20 years “Hurricane“.  I’m a big fan and love her natural avoidance of the conventional and can even forgive her for the questionable acting performances in various 1980’s adverts and films (Conan the Barabrian being the best/worst). Check out some of the interviews in this channel for some vintage Grace Jones.

Bowie – WorldTV.com/Bowie

In the late 60’s & 70’s David Bowie’s musical output was consistently brilliant and his ability to continuously reinvent his stage persona as e.g. Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke (quite amazing really considering his drug fueled existence at that time).  Early albums included Space Oddity (1969), The Man Who Sold the World (1970), Hunky Dory (1971), The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), Young Americans (1975), Low (1977), “Heroes” (1977) to name but a few!!  Is he the greatest living Englishman of our time?

John Lennon – WorldTV.com/John_Lennon

The Beatles were (and still are) a global phenomenon and the writing partnership of John Lennon & Paul McCartney is considered to be one of the all time greats.  After The Beatles disbanded in 1970 Lennon went on to record his own material including arguably his most popular solo hit “Imagine”.  He also became a political voice and peace activist for a generation exposed to a gloomy war ridden world (sound familiar?).  Murdered in 1980 Lennon was voted eighth place in a 2002 BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.  Most people will always remember where they were when they heard of his murder…he is a legend indeed who will always be missed.

Also check out SmoothGrooversTV these guys really are awesome and their channel has been a favourite here at WorldTV for some time. Additionally, check out their homepage which offers all kinds of other jazz, soul and funk goodies.

In the not too distant future WorldTV plans to implement a new way to view channels by creating “Channel Categories” e.g. Music, Sport, Education etc.  You will also be able to add a personalised description to your own channel and to add the caegory tag of your choice.

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