Telebuddies

Trailer

We want to enable “laid-back” social interactions using television as a primary interaction medium and allow mobile users to participate. By integrating semantic web techniques with interactive television we were able to create smart applications that can run as extensions of television shows and stimulate groups of users to communicate. Groups are composed based on the shared characteristics that can be found for subsets of spectators. Communication between spectators is done at two levels: direct communication like instant messaging and indirect communication like cooperating in a team to win a quiz. Our system does not necessarily require a new television format, but is able to reuse existing television shows and to “socialize” them so they can be re-broadcasted with support for group interaction.

Publications

• CHI'2006 extended abstract paper: Telebuddies: Social Stitching with Interactive Television and the poster:
  , CHI'2006, Montreal, Canada
• Telebuddies on the move: social stitching to enhance the ubiquitous networked gaming experience, Netgames'2006, Singapore.

Screenshots

Spectators have to log in and identify themselves before they can participate in social interactive television.	Chatting while watching television.	A multiple choice question. Input is restricted to the possible answers. Remaining time, score,... are shown on screen.
Two groups that were selected based on their shared characteristics. This shows requires two groups of two people to compete with each other.	By logging in the user gives access to her/his FOAF profile. The FOAF profile is used to find the social relation.	Spectators can answer the same questions the participants in the studio need to answer. The Telebuddies system makes sure the same timing and score as the ones in the television show are respected.
User interface on mobile device, used when playing along with a television set in the neighbourhood	More complete user interface on mobile device: mobile users can als play along without a television set.

Movie

Telebuddies on the move (wmv, 80MB)

Technologies

Telebuddies combines semantic web technologies with interactive television. It uses MHP, FOAF, Jena and XMPP. The mobile clients use Java and work on MIDP2.0

Credit Titles

The authors would like to thank Tim Dupont, Dimitri Plaisier, Peter Quax, Daniël Teunkens, Ruben Thys and Koen Van den Bergh for their valuable contributions. Part of the research at EDM is funded by EFRO (European Fund for Regional Development) and the Flemish Government.