The Perfect Program Guide

The Internet makes shelf space infinite.  This means that Amazon.com can stock an infinite number of books.  Not only the best-sellers that are stocked by traditional brick-and-mortar book stores, but ALL books.  Even books that only sell one copy every 10 years!  In other words, the infinite bookshelf can easily accommodate the "short head" (best sellers) and the "long tail" (non-sellers). See "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson  for more on the concept of the long tail.

A traditional interactive program guide lists available videos.

The same infinite shelf space can easily accommodate not only the short-head blockbuster movies but also the long-tail, special-interest ("affinity") programs that may be watched by only a few people.  We have all seen the user interface, or the "interactive program guide" to the short-head -- the Xfinity app on the iPad is a good example and so is the YouTube app on the iPhone.  They just list the names of videos that are available for viewing.

Listing of video titles works fine for (short-head) movies and even for (long-tail) video searches.  But is it effective for navigating rather than searching through special interest, affinity video?

The clue to the answer to this question is in the magazine industry.  Bacon's publishes an annual, 3,100 page, "Magazine Directory" that in the year 2009 listed over 18,500 magazine titles in over 90 affinity categories. To indulge in any one of those 90 special interests, a consumer will typically read one or more of the 18,500 magazines. Incredibly, many magazines listed in the Bacon's directory are now being released as iPad apps.  See for example the recently released Wired magazine app shown below.

Wired magazine released as an iPad app.

The reader reads the pages of the Wired iPad app as if it were a regular magazine.  However, many of the articles include text and photos that are linked to associated video. Touching a linked photo instantly plays the associated video on the iPad screen or on the TV screen. This is a perfect program guide!

Video is selected by touching linked text and figures in the Wired iPad app.