#tweeplayer

[tomorrowish-blog]

TWEEPLAYER LAUNCHES WITH LAUNCHROCK

TweePLayer just launched it's invitation page using LaunchRock.com.  Over the past year we have been archiving Tweets about TV shows, sports, political events, conferences, and more.  We will be harvesting Tweets for as many SXSW sessions as we can.  If you are there, and can't be in two places at once, Tweet "help" to @TweePLayer and you will get a response telling you how to start harvesting tweets from the event you are missing.  If any sessions have videos up on YouTube you will be able to see the Tweets synced with the video of the event.

If you are a TV addict missing the live Twitter conversations about your favorite shows, you can relax, because we are harvesting conversations for all of the most popular TV shows in the US. You will be able to watch the show on your DVR or Hulu later and take part in the Twitter conversation on TweePLayer.com just like you were on Twitter live during the show.

[tomorrowish-blog]

Lean Tweeplayer With PostMark, DjangoZoom, LaunchRock, and More

I saw the AppSumo SXSW Lean Startup Challenge on my iPhone via one of the dozens of channels, (Twitter, Facebook, HackerNews, etc) I use to keep myself connected to the startup community and best practices and new tools.  I looked at it, thought "Great idea" and promptly forgot about it until a few days ago when several more friends running startups posted about it as well.  I picked it up and dove right into PostMark and setup a mail server.

What I Needed

I had just got back from SXSW where, my startup Tweeplayer, had competed in the LaunchRock SXSW Battle of the Startups.  We used it to gather prelaunch user interest and contact info so we could launch the site with a solid base of original users.  We got our logo up on a 22' projection screen right in the middle of Austin, got a good number of interested people looking and actually signing up on the site, and readied the site to launch.  I've been working to get the full list of people that requested a invite out to them without triggering a spam filter and to do it programmatically from the signup list.  Enter PostMark from the AppSumo bundle.  When I saw what it offered, it was an excellent opportunity to build a nice tool on their API without having to build my own email system, and get some cool analytics rolled into it as well.

Any Opportunity To Use Python and Django

I saw that PostMark has a ton of different pre-built libraries on there site and the Python example had a Django implementation for good measure.  I am not the Technical co-founder of Tweeplayer but I absolutely know the value of being able to dive into the code.  So, I've been learning "Python the Hard Way" for a little while now, and just started some Django projects to build my chops.  My friend has a new startup called DjangoZoom, which is like Heroku for Django apps, that I have an account on to try out and see how a beginning Django developer will use it and where the pain points may be.  It is solidly built, and I have been able to easily deploy simple apps to it, but this was my first implementation of a useful tool for Tweeplayer on it.  I easily deployed  the sample Django project for PostMark from my fork on Github of the original implementation, changed it to use my own credentials, switched it to post HTML email and use bcc for the invite list.

Why Is This Interesting

I am not a strong programmer...yet, but the tools and distributed knowledge-base that we are swimming in as entrepreneurs today are deep and wide.  I kind of littered the text of this blogs with links to give you an idea of what is out there, and I think any smart and motivated entrepreneur can take advantage of what is around them to create something great.  I have always felt that  the best use of time is spent both learning and doing at the same time.  With the AppSumo SXSW toolset the benefits to building on these super useful lego pieces should be obvious.  I only used one in this example, but I have used, or plan on using Twillio, Texting.ly, uTest and am trying to schedule my time to catch a Startup Weekend among all the other tools out there I use everyday.  They all help entrepreneurs learn, push their own boundaries, and grow their startups, which can only be a good thing.

[tomorrowish-blog]

Tweeplayer Launches Open Beta

  March 29th, 2011 - TweePLayer(tm), the first DVR for social media conversations, launched in closed beta at SXSW2011, and now it is available in public beta. 

TweePLayer's Mission: Syncing Content and Conversation.

TweePLayer Syncs Events and Twitter

TweePLayer syncs the contextual Twitter(tm) conversation about an event to video, audio, or any other kind of media, of that event.

Users can select conversations collected from Twitter about their favorite TV shows, sporting events, conferences, or any other event.  Then they can play the show on their TV and 'Play' the Twitter conversation synced in real time with the event.  TweePLayer users can take part in the conversation at any time and their new Tweets are synced to the moment in the show they are Tweeting about, so that anyone else using TweePLayer after them will see the new Tweet placed in that same moment in the conversation.

TweePLayer has a growing list of over 5000 events from TV shows, sports, conferences, to movie previews and podcasts.  TweePLayer automatically harvests the conversations for most major TV shows in the US, and users can create their own Twitter event harvests by following @TweePLayer on Twitter and adding an event. 

AI Enhanced Hash-tags

TweePLayer uses AI that tracks a conversation about an event and discovers new parts of the conversation.  It dynamically adjusts target keywords to a particular event.  "We are constantly adding new layers of intelligent tools to sift through all of the Twitter conversations for not only relevant but higher value parts of the conversation so users won't be overwhelmed with tens of thousands of relevant but unimportant Tweets.  We believe this will lead to a more vibrant and intelligent social media conversation." said TweePLayer CEO Mick Darling

TweePLayer Allows Whole New Kinds of Conversations

Now that conversations can easily be synced to events TweePLayer will soon allow users to create conversation 'Channels' about an event.  A "spoiler free" channel for TV shows that have already aired, or a "Book Club" channel to discuss a show in depth on any number of possible common interests for people, or even an MST3K-Style channel.  We will soon have channels directly reflecting your social graph allowing you to 'throttle" your conversations so you can discuss events with just the people you are connected to on Twitter or Facebook, or discuss town hall meetings with people in your area.

TweePLayer Advancements Coming Soon

TweePLayer is optimizing its website to properly work with the iPad and Android browsers and is developing dedicated iOS and Android apps.  APIs will be available for other Twitter clients to filter out spoiler Twitter content as events are discussed live, and allow other clients to sync time-codes with TweePLayer.  TweePLayer is free for users on the web and people who are interested in getting access to new features and exclusive content before they are available publicly can signup at SIgnup.TweePLayer.com

TweePLayer's Team

Based in Boston and New York City, they have been involved in multiple startup companies and projects.  Their recent involvements include several different social media related projects.

Mick Darling, cofounder and CEO, has worked on social media and technology startups for years.  He cofounded BioStrut LLC a company that worked to commercialize artificially grown tissue technology from Drexel University.  He also built out the IT infrastructure at A123Systems during their explosive growth from a few hundred to several thousand employees.  Recently he lead a team at the Boston HackDay Challenge to build YasminApp.com a Twitter and short message encryption application for smart-phones and the web.  YasminApp is an open source project inspired by the Jasmine revolution in China, the protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the middle east, and the "Original API of Boston" used to overthrow tyrants and allow freedom of speech and democratic representation for all.

Phil Dreizen, Lead Developer, runs a software consulting company, Kupad, in Brooklyn, NY.  He is also the main developer at TuringsCraft, which produces Codelab a web-based interactive programming exercise system for college introductory programming classes.  He also developed "StarSquare" at the first Foursquare hackathon. StarSquare is the first virtual trading game built by Gendoki, a virtual goods and virtual currency game layer built on top of real world locations.

Dan Afonso is president of EnfoldIT.com, a complete hardware and software consulting firm in Central Massachusetts.  He developed and manages system infrastructure for TweePLayer.  Mike, Dan and Mick were classmates at WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

About TweePLayer and Tomorrowish LLC

TweePLayer just opened its first major round of fundraising after bootstrapping for the last year.  TweePLayer is owned by Tomorrowish LLC and has a growing list of technical IP being developed for intelligent keyword discovery, context detection, and synchronization of social media and other content.

Contact: [email protected]

Links: TweePLayer:

Main site - TweePLayer.com

Beta Signup - Signup.TweePLayer.com

Blog - Blog.TweePLayer.com

Twitter - @TweePLayer

Facebook - Facebook.com/TweePLayer

Mick Darling - Cofounder, CEO

Tomorrowish.com

Personal Site - MickDarling.com

Personal Blog - MickDarling.com/blog

Twitter - @MickDarling

Dan Afonso - Infrastructure Developer

EnfoldIT.com

Phillip Dreizen - Lead Developer

kupad.net

Other:

Yasminapp GitHub.com/YasminApp

StarSquare http://gendoki.com/starsquare/

[bennettgavrish-blog]

Getting Twitter & DVRs to play nice together

As I've mentioned before on this blog, social media does not gel with digital video recorders. It's like trying to mix spaghetti with maple syrup (elves are excused from that metaphor). Networks like Twitter are based on realtime communication, which works great for commenting on live TV – but not so much for recorded shows and events that you watch on your own schedule.

Up to this point, the rules have been strict: if you choose not to watch something live, stay off Twitter while it airs. And when you do finally get around to watching it on your DVR, keep your comments to yourself because no one likes to read tweets concerning something they stopped caring about a few days ago.

However, a new service called TweePlayer is trying to solve this dilemma. It attempts to synchronize Twitter streams with TV shows, so that you can follow along with the online conversation even if you are watching on a DVR.

For example, you can go to the TweePlayer page for last week's episode of "Parks and Recreation" and flip the "On" switch when you start watching on your DVR. TweePlayer keeps track of your progress in the show and scrolls through related tweets so that it feels like you are part of a live commentary. You can even add a tweet of your own and TweePlayer will add it to the archived timeline.

I'm interested to see where TweePlayer goes from here, because it's backed by an interesting idea but needs to grow. Specifically, putting the service in mobile apps would make it much more practical to use from the couch. It won't totally replace the live TV experience, but if you're one of those people who can't watch a show without Twitter by your side, it can make your DVR viewings feel a little more social.