MomoLondon: Demo Night 2014

Amazingly enough this demo night finished on time and even a little bit early. Thanks to Julia Shalet for keeping things running smoothly on the night and Jo Rabin too for the varied selection of demos — lots of great ideas.

Pictures and more commentary on the Mobile Monday Blog.

5 Tiles

Android keyboard app

Previous demo night success

• Christian Lindholm now an advisor & investor
• available on Android Wear (Samsung Gear)
• soon available on iOS

Grabyo

Benjamin Bourdin, http://grabyo.com

• realtime video sharing
• get any IP feed, apply title, edit
• save & share using twitter, facebook, ooyala, brightcove etc
• monetize through in-stream ads
• initial customers are broadcasters
• done deals with ITV & Sky Sports
• also did wimbledon & big brother
• also have a consumer platform: if a broadcaster wants to get people involved in sharing content

Good Food Talks

Matt Wadsworth, http://goodfoodtalks.com

• web app to let visually impaired people read restaurant menus
• a very few menus offer braille but only 1% of visually impaired people can read braille
• surveyed 5000 people — main complaint was difficult navigation
• web app has simple navigation
  • search/near me > restaurant name > menu
• free for users
• various ways of getting data in
  • restaurants pay for input
  • API ingest, full service, etc
• commercial for just over a year
• 400 venues
• biggest so far is Carluccio’s, then Pret

Swytch

Chris Michael, CEO, http://www.swytch.com/

• additional mobile numbers on your phone
• just closing alpha tester list
• free credits to alpha testers
• only service that allows you to have multiple UK mobile numbers on your phone
• aiming for worldwide too

QuizTix

Ian Masters & Albert Marshall, http://quiztix.co/

• mobile quiz games
• opt-in adverts for rewards
• all four versions are available on iOS, Google & Amazon
  • movies, pop, world football, video games
• targeting around existing passions
• also want to target venues with seats

Mylo

Martin Sandstrom & Mark Lee, http://mylo-app.com/

• split your bill when you live in a house share
• direct connection to various providers
  • energy, TV, phone, etc
• push notifications to other housemates
• settle bill with paypal (peer to peer is free)
• no business model at moment
  • aiming for future paid features
• aiming to attract lots of users first…
• app available for iOS and Android

Viewmaker

Douglas Robb, http://www.scramboo.com/

• location-enabled augmented reality
• Android & iOS apps, CMS for template-based content
• content discovery & engagement
• can control timing of content as well
• also support image-recognition-based AR
• first commercial partner is Jockey Club
• prototype app for Sandown Race Course
• involving novice race-goers in the racing
• planning to roll out to other Jockey Club venues

Pronto

James Roy Poulter, https://www.prontoapp.it/

• food to wherever you are
• don’t need an address
• only get a choice of four options (different each day)
• authenticate through nexmo API by voice call
• credit card payments only
• launched 100 days ago in Trento, Italy
• initially iOS only, then Android, + Windows coming next week
• launching next week in London (now available in the City)
• won an accelerator in Italy
• worked with restaurants in Italy, but difficult for food in 10 minutes
• aiming to get own centralized kitchen as margins are incredible
• also get drivers — performance based pay
• but made easier with centralized kitchen with limited delivery range

Adsy

Frederick Tubiermont, http://www.adsy.me/

• create mobile web apps on mobile for mobile
• can now create apps on desktop too
• web apps are square shaped
• magic touch swipe to choose link destination
  • includes email, telephone
• can embed videos, twitter feeds, etc
• can embed adsy apps in web pages or just view on mobile
• use case:
  • kids & teens making a web app about a concert during a concert
  • then sharing the evolving content
• meant to create snackable content
• will announce a product based on the platform in 2-3 weeks

IFS

Matthew Bridge, http://www.ifsworld.com/en/

• business critical messages to smart watches
• useful feature: view on device — opens up more detail on the phone through quick selection on watch
• driven from enterprise resource planning
• staff can subscribe to specific notifications

OpenTRV

Mark Hill and Damon Hart-Davis, http://opentrv.org.uk/

• 60% of your energy and 20% of UK emissions flow through TRVs
• 50% of that energy is wasted
• one thermostat usually controls whole house
• target price £10 per radiator: save £300 in the first year
• production samples coming mid-November
• hotels losing £50 per room per year on heating bills

MomoLondon: Demo Night 2013

Another fun demo night from Mobile Monday London. Some new ideas and some old — you never know which ones are going to stick!

My bets are on Vyclone and Critical Arc…

Blue Badge Style

Fiona Jarvis & Kishan Gupta @bluebadgestyle

• a guide for the discerning less able
• app available for iOS: Blue Badge Style
• graduated from the Mobile Monday & UCL Mobile Academy
  • (it’s really great! sign up now! :-))
• social media advisor suggested:
  • video of app to attract people to download
  • RSS feed in app
• added TTS (but not voiceover?)
• got 1000 downloads in Nov (PR & press) + 300/month afterwards

Boss Level - Scavengers

Nick Brown @boss_level

http://playscavengers.com

• game based solely in HTML5
• aimed at PC, mobiles, tablets & smart TVs
• want same control system across everything
  • up down left right & select - lowest common denominator
  • fixed 720x720 resolution at the moment (will need to change for different devices)
• closed alpha at the moment
• aiming for Kickstarter to raise profile
• cross between xcom & worms
• freemium business model with in-game purchases
• also thinking about a store for game assets
  • there’s a game editor that allows you to completely customise levels and characters
• would rather not have in-game adverts, but depends on the eyeballs
• currently two developers

Connecthings

http://www.connecthings.com/

• NFC tags for street furniture
• 1500 tags displayed in Strasbourg
• real-time transport info
• integrated with cycle info too
• also has event & POI database
• POI tags show POI info first, transport tags show transport info first
• tags have QR codes too
• license the platform to municipalities
  • though not sure how well it would go down with councils that already have their own portals….

Critical Arc

http://www.criticalarc.com/

• previous company led security & surveillance for Olympics
• security & safety in large open spaces
  • e.g. universities
• define SafeZones where there is a response team available
• security team have an app to see a situational view of the campus
• free app to call for help & get notified
• have created a platform for sharing location and situational information
• universities are first market
• no tracking in the background for general public
• security officers are tracked in the background
• Wi-Fi positioning covers off GPS issues
• can report on security staff location — heatmaps etc, can be used to actively plan response

Decibel Analytics

http://www.decibeltechnology.com/analytics/ @decibelanalytic

• actionable analytics
• object maps, which integrate with elements on page, to show which are actually being clicked
• attention maps — shows which areas of page are actually viewed
  • i.e. where is the fold for all your customers…?
• which content is contributing most to goals & revenue generation
• can filter by device and by incoming source
• adding A/B testing soon

Men’s Fitness UK iPad app

Paul Cooper, Design Director, Dennis Publishing @dmfcoops

iPad app: Men’s Fitness UK

• COPE — create once, publish everywhere
  • started by NPR in the US
• Drupal CMS with responsive design & native elements
• started with The Week (iPhone & iPad)
  • takes one person one day to lay out
  • less than 100Mb an issue
• now done a monthly magazine — more content
• Drupal 7 & responsive is a complex thing
• Adobe DPS takes over a week to lay out an issue of EVO
• content producers (photogs etc) struggled a little with responsive design, but get training
• can preview the issue before generating the app
• looking at licensing the system to other parties
• developing a system like InDesign that outputs responsive HTML

GO!Enterprise

Globo plc - Enterprise Mobility in a BYOD world

http://goenterpriseserver.com

• deploy access to back office systems in a secure manner
• no need for mobile device managment
• client app available from standard app stores
  • GO!Enterprise for iOS
  • GO!Enterprise for Android
• three products:
  • office — point and go
  • mobilizer — development for custom enterprise apps (cross-platform)
  • reach — make apps for customers

Trademob - mobile click fraud protection

Adrienne Gauldie @adriennegauldie (ag@trademob.com)

http://www.trademob.com/

• did a study in june (6m clicks)
  • 22% accidental (< 0.1%)
  • 10% botnet & hijacked clients
  • 8% server-side fraud
• can see it from data…
  • e.g. in-app clicks from non-mobile user agents
• don’t get fraudulent clicks from publishers with real customers
• building a blacklist of dodgy publishers
• 100 people in company

Vyclone

http://vyclone.com/ @vyclone

Download the app for iPhone

• wouldn’t it be amazing if we could make a single video from all the angles at a rock concert…?
• combine multiple vids in one
  • had 200 people filming a Jason Mraz concert
  • 150 people at Ed Sheeran in Hammersmith Apollo
• business model:
  • lots of interest from music industry
  • want to get footage and release it to fans for behind the scenes
• copyright: music industry recognise that this is already happening
  • now they get access to video, so a win-win
  • customers can choose to keep video private, or share with everyone
• app is winning lots of awards!

AudioSnaps

Marc Sallent, We Choose Fun

http://audiosnaps.com

• record 5 secs of ambient sound while taking a picture
• JPEG + MP3 = JPEG! (plus extensions)
  • all devices can still show it
  • web site can play audio with just one line of javascript
• why not just take a short video?
  • want to capture a moment, not tell a story

Chirp

Geraint, Animal Systems

http://chirp.io

Download the app for iPhone

• send small amounts of data using sound
• want to release an API for third parties
• have an arduino that can chirp
• teach the machines to sing!

Catch-up with last year’s demos

Two of last year’s Demo Night presenters returned to give us an update. See my notes from last year.

Ko-Su

http://ko-su.com @kosumobile

mobile learning for everyone

• demoed last year, one month pre-release
• been accepted into BBC Worldwide Labs
• material created in lots of countries around the world
• now “officially out of pre-revenue” (?)

Six-Three

https://six3.tv/

Simon Frost, CTO @spli

• started out as a private closed network — a messaging thing
• sports stars started using it to keep in touch with their public, but also to communicate with their private street marketing teams
• made it onto WAYRA Telefonica business incubator

Apple iPhone Tech Talk London 2009: Preparing and Delivering Video for iPhone

Eryk Vershen evershen@apple.com — Software Evangelist

This presentation went really fast with loads of detail. I captured some of the highlights below, but you’ll want to get hold of the slides to get the full detail. Supposedly Apple will be putting them up later this month…

• challenge is to deliver better pixels, not more

there are absolute upper limits

• 1600 Kbps
• 48 KHz
• stereo
• can have alternate audio tracks (e.g. for different languages)
  • under the user’s control, not yours
• can do subtitles — but no apple-provided tool
  • can also have alternate subtitle tracks per language
• closed captioning not available to your code
  • anyone know the

containers

• streaming: .ts — MPEG-2 Transport Stream
• otherwise four other containers like .mov, .3gp

resolution & aspect ratio

• iPhone video always takes over entire screen
• can fit or fill video with different aspect ratio
  • fit: letterbox or pillar
  • fill: crop
• don’t support watching movies in portrait since lose too much of screen

bit rates

• bandwidth is not a constant
• so would want to deliver multiple versions, using adaptive to switch during playback

preprocessing

• there isn’t a recipe…
• big three:
  • deinterlace
  • crop/scale
  • smoothing — simplify the image

encoding

• make reference movies so can serve up multiple bitrates
• quicktime 7 pro includes advanced MPEG-4 settings
  • ensure you use the baseline profile

progressive download

• structure movie for more random access
• map of movie moved to the beginning
• server needs to support byte-range requests
• works with reference movies — picks appropriate movie based on data rate
  • once the system has chosen a movie, you’re committed
  • http streaming allows you to change during a movie

streaming

• http streaming introduced with snow leopard and iPhone OS 3.0
• need a media encoder from someone else: Apple don’t provide one
• segmenter:
  • converts stream into segments
  • continually updates playlist file
• client:
  • downloads playlist
  • downloads segments
• format:
  • MPEG-2 TS
  • also supports elementary audio
• playlist is an extended M3U file
  • should be unicode UTF-8
  • use extension .m3u8
  • #ext-x- tags added by apple to support dynamically changing playlists
  • #extinf tag comes before each segment url and indicates its duration
• on demand playlist just like live playlist, but has a #ent-x-endlist tag at the end
• player currently seeks to segment boundaries

variant streaming

• variant playlist contains references to other playlists
• just another m3u file
• new tag: #ext-x-stram-inf
• includes bandwidth, program-id, codecs parameters
  • see rfc4281 for codecs options
• client current starts with initial stream and works upwards, though this might change with future implementations
• really useful slide

audio only

• can include still frames in an audio only stream
• want 3:2 aspect ratio
• still frame gets included in each segment (so can change on a per segment basis)

encryption

• encrypted by segmenter
• control key access using standard HTTP techniques
• add a #ext-x-key tag, w/ method & URI
• will apply to all subsequent segments until another key tag appears
• can clear with by having a tag with method:none

streaming encoders

• supported by hardware encoders
• don’t have a software solution that Apple are recommending at the moment
• average segment duration: find 10s is a good number
  • can go shorter, but don’t want to go too short
  • means that you have to supply more segments, and your server will take more load
• have to have at least 3 segments at once available in playlist
• users can seek if you provide more

segmenter

• Apple provide a segmenter tool
• want to get the one from the iPhone dev center — it’s newer than built-in with snow leopard and has extra features

deployment

• for CDNs — want to set expire time on delivery file to be about half of segment length

notifications

• can send a highlight parameter as a notification
• app can request that highlight to get a custom playlist
• e.g. when a goal is scored…

playback

• MPMoviePlayerController only does landscape
• UIWebView can cope with portrait
• iPod app can play portrait if you make it a video podcast
• can’t have a local HTTP stream

html content

• put embed tag inside video tag so old browser will cope

references

• Nonlinear by Michael Rubin
• Digital Video and HDTV: Algorithms and Interfaces by Charles Poynton
• Simple Encoding Recipies from telestream.net

EyeTV Export with HandBrake script

EyeTV by Elgato is an excellent piece of software that turns a Mac into a Personal Video Recorder. You can record programs using a tuner and play them back at any time. We have an iMac stuck to the wall in our living room that acts as our TV and media player. Even the babysitter can use the PVR interface and we get to use full apps like iPhoto and Spotify on our TV.

EyeTV records video using the format that it’s sent over the air. This is currently MPEG-2 for Freeview programs, which is decent quality but reasonably large files. I’d like to be able to archive my recordings using a better encoding such as H.264. However, EyeTV’s (and Apple’s) built-in options for exporting video are pretty poor. They generally take a long time to create poor quality video at an unimpressive compression ratio.

HandBrake is an open-source video transcoder. It can transcode between many video formats and has built-in presets for compressing different kinds of video. It’s great at taking EyeTV recordings and transcoding them into space-efficient, high quality H.264 MKV or MP4 files.

Fitting the two together is a bit of a pain. EyeTV has Applescript support but HandBrake doesn’t. Instead HandBrake has a command-line version that is available for separate download (see the downloads for Command Line Interface).

I wanted to be able to choose a suitable HandBrake export preset (some of my recordings are cartoons, some are movies) and a destination folder and export several recordings at once. Since transcoding video is a CPU hog, I also wanted to use the HandBrake encoding queue, but this isn’t available in the command-line version.

Various people have written scripts to take EyeTV recordings and encode them using HandBrake, but they weren’t quite what I wanted. Most of them were intended to import the results into iTunes so that files are available to AppleTV. I did’t need this — I just want smaller files. And none of them had an encoding queue — they all ran in the foreground.

So I wrestled with Applescript (it felt like banging my head against a brick wall several times), honed my shell script skills and built the EyeTV Export with HandBrake script. The script can be added to the EyeTV scripts menu, so that you can select multiple recordings in EyeTV and export them directly. The script will prompt you for a HandBrake encoding preset and an output directory and will pass of the encodes to a background shell script that runs one encode at a time. If you have Growl (also highly recommended), the script will announce completed encoding processes in a friendly manner (otherwise it will pop up a dialog).

I hope you find it useful. Please add comments below!

Instructions

1. Download the script (or get the source from GitHub)
2. Put it in /Library/Application Support/EyeTV/Scripts and restart EyeTV (see EyeTV Applescript instructions for details)
3. Download the HandBrake Command Line Interface (HandBrakeCLI) and move it somewhere appropriate. I use /usr/local/bin/, but the script will ask you to find it if it’s not there
4. Select one or more recordings and choose “Export with HandBrake” from the Scripts menu (just between Window and Help)