Jeff Beckham

The interactive portion of South by Southwest has been over for about a week, and a couple of things have really stuck with me. I was thrilled at my first opportunity to moderate a panel discussion, and gratified at the positive response. I’d definitely jump at the chance to do it again.

Aside from that, the presentation that has stuck with me the longest was “The Future of Television: Super-Modality” by frogdesign’s David Merkoski. David showed a fantastic demo of a television interface (code name Mondrian) that frog is working on for OpenTV and will show widely at the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters convention.

Mondrian blows apart the age-old television grid on-screen programming guide, instead relying on shifting the viewers focus via zoomable user interfaces. A touch of the up arrow on your remote shrinks the main viewing window slightly as a bar with video previews of other channels drops in from the top. Moving the arrow to the left brings up your recorded library; to the right is recommendations. Along the bottom are chapters of what you’re viewing, much like selecting DVD scenes. To quote from David’s presentation, it allows you “control without interrupting the televisual experience”.

For what it’s worth, “super-modality” was defined as the “lifting of borders and restrictions.” To illustrate his point, David showed a demo of the Half-Life Portal game, where players use their weapon to open doors and warp from room to room.

I also enjoyed a Monday dinner out at the Salt Lick with fellow geeks, graciously hosted by AMD and organized by nice-guy extraordinaire Robert Scoble. Here’s a photo of Robert considering a sizable rib.

Finally, the big thing at the trade show were the mimobot designer flash drives from mimoco. From whimsical Japanese designs to a Star Wars set, these flash drives were amazingly cool.