FOAF TV

So, how about this for a FOAF application idea. How to find out what other
people you know are watching, and hence, what you should be watching.

Take a service like tv.bleb.org, GreaseMonkey it to add a button “I want to
watch this” to each programme on the page (maybe with a “repeating
item” checkbox), publish it as an iCalendar file (so you can subscribe
to it in your calendar app and be reminded when it’s on) and rdf-ical,
and link to the rdf-ical in your FOAF.

Then spider the “What I’m watching” files of other people listed in your FOAF file, and see what they‘re watching that you‘re not. You can probably derive a
best recommendation by who has the most in common with you. You can
also spider out further to find out what other people are watching that
you‘re not, to see what you missed.

There was some talk recently I think about Social TV in terms of Tivos (like Tom’s post about Social Software for Set-Top boxes…
and there was something else on PVRBlog recently that I’m too lazy to
go and find), and on-screen display of the other people you know and
what they‘re watching (via the magic of webcams and so on), so you
could watch a TV show collaboratively and IM/voice chat during it
(namely going “I can’t beleive Rafael wasn’t gay!” if you‘re watching
“Playing it straight“).

So there we go then – a nice project for someone: auto-discovery of other people within six degrees of FOAF watching the same show that I am, right now, and being able to chat/instant message with them. Ideally right on your telly via hacking MythTV or whatever else people use, or is hackable (I have no idea), but via the computer is good enough.

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3 thoughts on “FOAF TV”

  1. Or even better… what they are listening too… I’m sure winamp would be easy to hack for this.

  2. I’d like to do something like this with torrentbot, but a) there aren’t enough people using it to make recommendations and b) no-one would be watching the show at the same time. Could still talk about a show afterwards though, if the button ‘was I’ve watched this’.

  3. Well, audioscrobbler produces FOAF (er, occassionally, it’s broken ATM), and from that and the other RDF access to “most popular tracks” you could do something simple straight off, at least.

    Like Alf suggests, the problem is the users – you not only need a minimal-size user base, you probably want to limit the people who you’re put in contact with to n degrees of your contacts, so you at least might have something else in common so that it’s no too uncomfortable.

    Social issues are so annoying 🙂

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