My hometown of LaGrange, GA is getting free, city wide, set top boxes and 128k cable internet access. I've registered "lagga.com" and am planning to port my search engine to the region. This has got me thinking about low res interfaces again... Designing the Interactive Digital TV Interface from ergogero is an interesting read, with some nice details on the morass of HDTV. There are a few related gems in the local engine.

Naturally, the folks that are giving all this away hope to keep the locals in their denizen by providing a "complete navigation solution." No details on the nature of the set top box are available, though there's a developer form that asks about flash, javascript, et al. Check 'em out.. My prediction is that the web will prevail and at least some of the no-lag lagga folk will trickle through the cracks...

Other resources on web via tv include this aging news link collection, a search engine aimed at webtv users (with horizontal rules?!?), Nielsen on WebTV from '97, and the M$oft WebTV developer site.

Take aways from Nielsen's exposition include difficulty with image maps due to the control system, 3 column layouts, and scrolling challenges including a lost in a page phenomena due to the lack of a scrollbar with position indicator.

4/21/2000 4:04:50 PM

I missed SXSW_B, but wired pointed to the award winning Art and Culture with mighty words about it's IA. The term "data cloud" was familiar but I was unable to dig up any results in the search engines (largely due to the large amount of atmospheric science out there). Anyway, it's a sharp site, well organized, and contains some spiffy flash work, particularly in the "IMMERSE" feature.

4/20/2000 9:42:38 PM