According to the software giant's TV blog, it was a success:
Throughout the weekend, 370+ developers from both sides of the Atlantic united for an all-out session of intense hacking, coding, collaborating, and fun. We saw 60 teams create apps in just one weekend -- everything from games to home automation to chat.
The winners, listed in the blog post, built code for translating shows into other languages, playing games, creating dashboards, connecting family members and, most prominently, helping users find something to watch.
In this email interview with Paul Carff, senior developer advocate for Google TV, we discuss the special challenges a TV hackathon provides, why content discovery is still the key hack needed right now and what the prospects are for more weekends of innovations.
What is particularly different about the challenges of a TV hackathon vs. the more traditional variety?
A TV hackathon has all of the usual challenges: helping teams form and identify themselves, providing exposure to new APIs and services available to the platform, providing the necessary technical support and facilities for the teams to be successful and of course—feeding eager developers.
In content, we spent a bit of time discussing the differences in developing applications for a TV platform as compared to a phone or tablet, for example, not having touch-screen integration. While it might bring back fond memories for me being the “Channel Changer” for my Dad, I don’t think it would bode well today to have to get up and touch the TV screen to find something to watch. Also, given the platform that we were developing for, you need a lot of TVs. So we simulated TVs by using monitors provided to each team.
Tell me a little more about "Deja: an app on social video channels" and why it won in the U.S. "Best New App Built From Scratch."
I talked with David McIntosh, CEO of Redux and one of the judges who selected Deja, and here’s what he said:
"At Redux we've seen that discovery and lean-back are two core television experiences - especially when driven by curators and friends that share your taste. In the 48 hours of the Google TV hackathon, Deja built a prototype that shows the power of a lean-back experience. Perhaps the hardest category at the hackathon was the "New to Google TV" category - it's difficult to build native experiences for the TV from the ground-up because the living room TV is used fundamentally differently than mobile or tablet devices. But the lean-back use-case is core to the living room TV, and even with a simple prototype, Deja showed the importance of bringing the lean-back experience to connected TVs."
I also noticed that a discovery app also got an honorable mention and I wonder if content discovery is still one of the key challenges of a IP-based experience.
The Web has LOT of content, and with Google TV you also get all of the live TV from your cable or satellite subscription. So, a core part of the experience is helping you discover what’s interesting for you to watch. Just think how Web search has evolved, and how discovering content (that now includes Web, TV and Apps) is just as important.
On the UK side, MyTV played on the dashboard concept, which is a really interesting idea. It made me wonder where you see the averaging user "starting" their TV experience each time. Right now I just flip it on to whatever channel I was on before. Do you see that changing to more of a homepage/launch model?
Just imagine if you could walk into the room, turn on the TV and have recommended shows and channels ready for you. And — these items were tailored to your interests. As those interests change over time, the system could learn what you like and keep giving better recommendations.
I am excited that I no longer have to search endless grids to find something to watch. It is just amazing what I have been able to discover - things that I never knew existed! I can’t wait to see what further innovations come from events like our hackathon.
Do you plan on more of these and are you seeing an uptick in developers for TV apps?
We had a great response when we announced the event, overwhelming. We also had demand from around the world to participate. Since this was our first, we wanted to do this one well, so we focused on the London and Mountain View locations. The folks at SVAndroid and Londroid were amazing in helping this hackathon be such a success, and we can’t thank them enough.
There’s definitely momentum in the community, and specifically interest in Google TV, so I expect we will be doing more of these in the future. You can also find out more about our developer programs on our Google+ Page.
