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Google, coming to your TV soon!

by Hugh O'Carroll on March 18, 2010

in Facebook, Google, The Future Internet, Twitter

Tech tipsComputer Tricks

Google have partnered with Intel, Sony and Logitech for a project which is being called Google TV. The companies involved want to create a technology to facilitate easy navigation of the web through your TV set.

Citing sources with “better knowledge about this tie-up”, The New York Times has reported that Google intends to open its TV platform (based on its Android operating system) to developers. It a nutshell, it wants to bring web applications (Facebook, Twitter etc.) and Google search to your TV screen. Games, TV and Movies would be downloadable too. Logitech will be charged with making a ‘keyboard equipped’ remote control device which will work in conjuction with a set-top box (containing an Intel Atom chip) in order to make the magic happen.

Google on your TV

Google on your TV

It has also been reported that Google has already built a prototype set-top box and it is very likely that the Google TV platform will also be incorporated into new TVs directly. Google is expected to release a tool kit  to developers for developing applications in the coming months which would likely mean that products based on this new interface would appear later this summer.

While Web-enabled TV sets  are already in use on a small scale  today (mostly used to watch YouTube videos, view family albums and to stream movies from services like Netflix), it now looks like Google is going to turbo charge this new hybrid-medium in its seemingly insatiable appetite for Advertising revenue. The internet is about to hijack your TV! The results should prove ‘interesting’, to put it mildly.

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FarmVille Mania: Irish Facebook Users Flock to Virtual Farming

by Hugh O'Carroll on November 29, 2009

in Facebook

Tech tipsComputer Tricks

An associate of mine recently told me of a bizarre experience he had had recently. He had been in a pub in East Cork on a saturday night, sitting at that bar enjoying a pint when one of the regular female patrons announced that she was off home to “harvest” her “soya beans”. Her fellow drinkers, worried about her sanity no doubt, inquired why a middle-aged school teacher was leaving a nice warm pub at 10 o’clock on a saturday night to harvest soya beans in the middle of winter given that she lived in the village itself and not on one of the many local smallholdings. The lady went on to explain that she was actually referring to her virtual farm on FarmVille, Facebook’s most popular application to which she proudly announced she had become  ‘addicted’. Two days later, I hear irish radio talkshow host Joe Duffy announce that the popularity of FarmVille was to be a topic on Liveline, the country’s biggest nationally broadcast talkradio show. According to Wikipedia:

“FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social networking website Facebook. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees, and livestock. Since its launch in June 2009, FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook with 63.7 million active users on November 9th, 2009.”

Farmville Screenshot

63.7 million active users!! These are truly staggering numbers (larger that the number of Nintendo Wiis consoles on the planet) for a game was only launched on Facebook last year! There isn’t really any point to this post except to illustrate the exponential adoption of Facebook by all manner of folk. Irish business take note. Where there is muck there is brass! Here are 8 other reasons to start using Facebook for your business today.

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