Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

Surely some cool dude is sitting at his desk at Comcast or Time Warner just thinking things up. He probably has tons of cool ideas, but I thought I would save him a little time and give him the ideas he needs to get into development right now.

IMDB Integration
If you like movies and TV, IMDB.com has become the bible for video entertainment. You can get lost on that site. Look up an actor or actress, see instantly everything they have ever acted in, directed, produced or wrote or performed music for. Click any of those titles and see who was involved in that, what they have coming ahead, what it’s about, trailers, synopsis, etc. It’s the most comprehensive and enjoyable site to just sit and surf…right behind Wikipedia.

Take that, and integrate it into a search feature. I was just watching Life on Stars network. I saw a little blooper with Bernie Mack at the end and thought, “I wonder what else he is in that’s on cable.” With OnDemand there are always tons of movies on. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to search what’s on TV Now, in the next period of time and what’s on OnDemand be Actor/Actress, Producer, Director, Writer, Genre, Rating, etc.?

I know there would be licensing involved, but imagine reading people’s comments on the movie, maybe integrate some Rotten Tomatoes style rating with commentary. Talk about your awesome entertainment choosing experience. Most cable systems have two way Internet connectivity, they have a CPU and an OS, hard disk storage commonly these days and a pretty cable remote to navigate things with. What are you waiting on???

Remote Record
Media Center has figured it out. They have the connection to our boxes. When I am at work and someone asks me if I am recording the golf tournament, let me say, “Oh crap, I forgot, let me log in and start it!”

Think about it. They have the guide on their sites, add a simple user system that you authenticate into. You select the show in the guide you are interested in, it shows the boxes you have with DVR (you can alias them like bedroom, living room) and you click record, bam, you get home and you are ready to watch. Slick!

Guide Format Options
I don’t want to always have a tiny picture and a big guide, I have an HD TV for a reason, it’s big. Let me set aside say the right 1/3 of my screen and have it display the guide. We are in 1080i people, let me take some advantage of that real estate.

There are so many opportunities here, raise the resolution, add some Web 2.0 looking grace to it. Make it glossy, pretty, Media Centery! (I know that isn’t a word)

Central Storage
Speaking of Media Centery, I know you want to jack me to no end for $15/mo DVR rentals, and I get your point. I would rape and pillage my customers too (no I wouldn’t) but seriously, why can I not have ONE cable box with a DVR, and the ability to watch it’s content on any box in the house. Close the loop, use the coax like an internal network, and let me stream shows from box to box. That way I don’t have to have a DVR in every room to use it. Think OnDemand for my local content.

Dashboard
Ok, now this is pie in the sky, but stay with me for a minute. Think about the Dashboard in OS X. More economical, think iGoogle. Give me a portal type situation so I can throw on Weather, Stocks, Flickr Sideshows, whatever… and let me display it when I want. Give me a little picture in picture so I can throw a Vista Gadget looking deal so I can monitor something I want to keep an eye on while I watch TV. You might not want it while you are watching a movie, but how about when you are telecommuting and the TV is on but you aren’t paying a great deal of attention to it. Would be awesome then for alerting type stuff.

Ok, those are my ideas. What ideas do you have? What does cable need now! Other than a price cut of course….

It’s been awhile since I talked about gadgets. I have been super busy getting acclimated to Microsoft and Washington and it has left my blog posts a little geared towards topics I am encountering at work.

If you thought I had forgotten or lost some interest in gadgets, you would be sadly mistaken. To kick the topic back off, I thought I would give you my top 5 list of gadgets I can’t live without and why. Hopefully it will spark some interesting commentary and I can find out what you are using every day that keeps you living in the tech world.

1. My Macbook Pro: I really pained with wether I should put my cell phone here first. I definitely use the phone more, but the truth of it is, if I left my cell phone at home I would be ok, if I didn’t have my laptop for a whole day I would be lost.
2. My HTC Mogul Phone: A close second, without it I would miss meetings for sure. Add the ability to get my email right away and check my bank balance when I need to, it’s a super handy gadget.
3. Thumb Drive: The portable key makes the world go round. I am constantly having to shuttle files around that are just a little too big to email around or send to sky drive. The thumb drive is a must have.
4. Canon Digital SLR: When you are picky about photos, there is no replacement for a good digital SLR camera. I love taking photos and I want them to look just right. The digital SLR does the trick.
5. iPod: When I am driving around, I like to Jam. My super short attention span for music has me burning the click wheel like a DJ on vinyl. Having 160GB of music at my fingertips makes traveling super fun.

What about you? What gadgets do you use daily?

As a prequel to my soon to be posted review of the Magellan Roadmate 1200 GPS, and coming off of two road trips Dawngrrl and I took over the past 5 days, it occurs to me that it’s nearly impossible to be lost in 2008 as long as you are equipped with inexpensive and highly available technology products.

It’s kind of crazy if you think about how far it’s come. In 1997, a little over 10 years ago, the GPS unit was about 12″x12″x4″, weighed in at about 5lbs and displayed a very difficult to use pair of coordinates for latitude and longitude.

Fast forward to this year, and on our road trip we had four of such devices with us the smallest of which was embedded in my cellular phone. A chip I would be surprised if it was larger than a dime.

With this gear in mind, I wonder if it’s possible for a person to be hopelessly lost in 2008. The really interesting part is the change in your frame of mind when you travel. We left to drive all the way around Olympia National Forest and didn’t bring a map or any directions to where we were going. Let’s start with a little background on the pre-trip ritual.

We began our trip decision making process with a combination of Google Maps, Google Earth, Weather.com and Flickr. We knew we wanted to take photos, so we started by looking on Google Maps for towns and parks located along the path we had decided to take. With those in hand we turned to Flickr.

Many people might not think to do this, but if you are scouting a possible vacation spot, even one abroad, go to Flickr and search! You will quickly find the most scenic and beautiful places as they are obviously the most commonly photographed.

Once you have done that you can check each place for potential weather problems and peek Google Earth to see just how big the towns really are.

With a list of Port Angeles, Lake Crescent, Ruby Beach, Amanda Park and Astoria Oregon in mind, we set out on Friday late afternoon and typed in our first destination into the TomTom One XL conveniently stuck to the window via suction cup. It calculated our route and we were on our way.

Approaching Port Angel that evening, Dawngrrl grabbed her Internet enabled HTC Mogul Windows Mobile Smartphone and quickly found a hotel in Port Angel and we altered our destination to it’s address.

I won’t bore you with the details of our entire trip, but we were able to locate scenic areas, scout them, and drive straight to them the entire weekend. Not only were we not lost, we were so enabled that we drove out across the state with zero trepidation and the utmost confidence that we could find whatever we wanted and navigate there as simple as you could ever hope.