My telly my way
Much like user profiles can be used to deliver customized information on the Internet to users, television is now branching into a similar service. Under the auspices of an EC funded project SAID that sought to develop an entire echelon of telematic social services, television can now be customized to cater to exclusive tastes. While the focus of SAID on a broader level was to provide social aid to the elderly and handicapped based at home, it also makes provision for both entertainment and socializing. The technology is based on an intelligent agent that gathers the users profile details then hunts down topics of interest associated with or stipulated in the respective profile. It can, for example, provide the latest news of the day. The agent can structuralize the content according to content interest prioritised by the user. It can display the provided items on screen that the user can access, utilizing a standard TV remote control interface. The SAID development is based on a novel technology called Intelligent Agent. The agent acts somewhat like a personalized assistant adapted to user characteristics. Yet the SAID project has gone a step further; in providing a level of interactivity between users through their televisions. It has raised the bar on iTV services. Users can interact with others through file sharing, games and even live chats with audio-visual components. The common household television is about to evolve into far more than its early founders could have envisioned. Under SAID, the television is poised to become a multi-featured platform for audio-visual conferencing, security monitoring and surveillance.
