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Connected.TV runs on your Palm, and turns it into a universal remote control integrated with a personalized TV program guide. It has programmable touch-screen buttons with Pie Menus, that let you stroke in different directions to invoke different commands. And it also supports the hardware and silkscreen buttons on the Palm, for your most commonly used commands.

Pie menus enable multiple functions on a single touch-screen button, so you can not only touch, but also stroke up, down left or right. They're fast, reliable and easy to use with your finger instead of a pen, and with only one hand. You get much more functionality out of the same amount of screen space, so the resulting remote control interfaces are less cluttered and more functional.

You can touch the pause button and stroke down to stop, touch the program description and stroke up to switch to the channel, stroke left and right to page to the previous and next programs, stroke down to link to the index, etc.

I'm currently developing a ConnectedTV skin editor, that will let you create your own remote control interfaces with custom buttons and graphics, program them with any IR command, and bake your own pie menus.

The skin editor isn't available yet, but I'm interested in hearing from people who would like to beta test it, and who have opinions about what it should do. I'm especially interested in hearing from Pronto users: not only is ConnectedTV much cheaper than Pronto because runs on your existing Palm, but it also has useful features like the pie menus and the personalized TV guide, integrated with a universal remote control. So you can take your Palm with you wherever you go (like the kitchen, bathroom, school or work), and browse the ConnectedTV guide any time you want.

A free two week trial of ConnectedTV for the Palm is available at Connected.TV.

-Don

Connected.TV runs on your Palm, and turns it into a universal remote control integrated with a personalized TV program guide. It has programmable touch-screen buttons with Pie Menus, that let you stroke in different directions to invoke different commands. And it also supports the hardware and silkscreen buttons on the Palm, for your most commonly used commands.

Pie menus enable multiple functions on a single touch-screen button, so you can not only touch, but also stroke up, down left or right. They're fast, reliable and easy to use with your finger instead of a pen, and with only one hand. You get much more functionality out of the same amount of screen space, so the resulting remote control interfaces are less cluttered and more functional.

You can touch the pause button and stroke down to stop, touch the program description and stroke up to switch to the channel, stroke left and right to page to the previous and next programs, stroke down to link to the index, etc.

I'm currently developing a ConnectedTV skin editor, that will let you create your own remote control interfaces with custom buttons and graphics, program them with any IR command, and bake your own pie menus.

The skin editor isn't available yet, but I'm interested in hearing from people who would like to beta test it, and who have opinions about what it should do. I'm especially interested in hearing from Pronto users: not only is ConnectedTV much cheaper than Pronto because runs on your existing Palm, but it also has useful features like the pie menus and the personalized TV guide, integrated with a universal remote control. So you can take your Palm with you wherever you go (like the kitchen, bathroom, school or work), and browse the ConnectedTV guide any time you want.

A free two week trial of ConnectedTV for the Palm is available at Connected.TV.

-Don

I've developed a production web site in Python and Zope (http://www.Connected.TV), and I like Zope a lot, and absolutely love Python. But Zope is much more complicated than it needs to be, and not well documented at all. The Zope developers are certainly aware of those problems, and working to correct them. I don't agree with all the directions they're taking (like the messy dtml and crippled xml page templates that want to be a programming language but aren't quite -- didn't they already make that mistake with XSLT? Why repeat the mistakes of the past?), but since it's written in Python, you don't have to use the crazy stuff, and you can just drop down to Python and program the hell out of it to do whatever you want.

Zope's DTML is a pain in the ass, and the xml page templates are lame and bizarre. What I would really love, would be an elegent xml based and fully functional web templating and programming language like Water, implemented in open source Python, embedded in an interactive dynamic object publishing content management web server framework like Zope (but simpler).

If you're interested in language design, definitely read the white papers like the Water Rationale on the Water web site. They're to the point, brilliantly written, and hit the nail on the head.

-Don

[Interesting excerpts from http://www.waterlang.org/doc/water_rationale.htm]:

Water Rationale
Fry, May 2002
Overview

Water is a language for the web that embodies the three primary functionalities needed for general purpose information manipulation into one unified language:

- Code: Water is a general purpose object oriented programming language that is, at its core, more flexible than Javascript, Visual Basic and Java.

- Data: Water permits the description of persistent structured data on the web via an XML syntax yet having the capability of computing values that may contain self-referencial interconnections.

- Markup: Since Water is a superset of HTML, it inherits all of HTML's capabilities.

The syntax of Water is a superset of HTML, or, more properly, a superset of XML. HTML has proven to be an easily understandable markup language since it has been learned by millions of people in the several years that the web has existed. XML is a standard for putting structured data on the web. Water extends the syntax of XML to make a language less cumbersome to write code in. Water provides a way to define functions and call them in addition to defining and instantiating objects. The object system is a multiple-inheritance, prototype-based object system with annotations. This will be described below, but for now it's sufficient to say that it is more powerful yet simpler than the class-instance object systems currently in vogue in languages such as Java and C++.

[...]

We Need Another Language Like A Hole in the Head

Right now the plethora of languages on the web causes more than headaches. New ones seem to be born monthly. Having to learn two or more to get a task done is more than twice as hard as one language because the interface between the languages is always additional hair which is, more often than not, poorly documented.

Why do we have HTML, XML, Java, Javascript, C++, Visual Basic, VRML, XSLT, PHP, etc? Because none of them are flexible enough to give programmers the functionality they need in building a modern Web application. Looking within the scope of what each of the above intends to cover, we often find serious flaws. But when we try to move outside of that scope, say doing markup in Java, we have a full-fledged disaster on our hands.

We do not need a new language for implementing some specialized functionality. Sooner or later that specialized functionality will need general purpose utilities like condi

Trackballs are much noisier, lower resolultion input devices than mice or pens, so they're not very good for gesture recognition. Pie menus are much more reliable than gesture recognition, especially with trackballs and touch screens, because they don't depend on the path of motion, only the endpoints.

Pie menus enable you to change and refine the selection during tracking, by moving around the menu to different items. You can also move out further to gain higher angular precision. On the other hand, gestures have no natural built-in way to cancel, change or refine the gesture, and no obvious prompting and feedback mechanism. So gestures are also harder to learn and remember than pie menus.

Once you've messed up a gesture, there's no way of controling how the computer will interpret it, cancel it, or correct it in-flight. You just have to hope your gesture mistake isn't interpreted as the wrong command, then undo the effects of the mistake (if possible), then try over again from the start.

Since pie menus allow you to easily browse the items, reselect, refine or cancel the selection at any time during tracking, they have much lower error rates than gesture regcognition, and are more appropriate for mission critical applications, use in noisy environments, and with low resolution input devices like trackballs or touch screens.

Compare the pie menus in The Sims to the gestures in Black and White: Pie menus can support many more distinct commands than gestures can, plus they're also self revealing (so they're easy to learn), and it's much harder to make mistakes with the pie menus.

Another practical example is ConnectedTV, a Palm application that lets you browse and personalize your TV guide, and automatically speed-dial channels by remote control (by "touch tuning"). ConnectedTV incorporates pie menus that you can quickly and reliably operate with your fingers. It's designed to be robust and easy to use when held in one hand, so you won't lose the pen behind the couch cushion, or miss the beginning of your favorite show because you were fumbling around with grafitti in the dark.

In 1993, Kurtenbach, Sellen and Buxton published a study comparing the speed and error rate of track balls, mice and pens, combined with pie and marking menus with different numbers of items. A link to the paper and the abstract are below. Their results are extremely interesting, especially comparing different numbers of items. (They showed that 8 items is the magic number, even better than 7!)

-Don

An empirical evaluation of some articulatory and cognitive aspects of marking menus.

ABSTRACT

We describe "marking menus", an extension of "pie menus". Pie menus are circular menus subdivided into sectors, each of which might correspond to a different command. Marking menus are pie menus in which the path of the cursor leaves an ink trail. Thus, selecting a sector from a marking menu creates a visual mark similar to a pen stroke on paper. Marking menus are also unique in that they ease the transition from novice to expert user. Novices can "pop-up" a menu and make a selection, whereas experts can simply make the corresponding mark without waiting for the menu to appear.

This paper describes an experiment designed to explore both articulatory and cognitive aspects of pie and marking menus. "Articulatory aspects" refers to how well subjects could execute the physical actions necessary to select from pie menus, given three different kinds of input devices (mouse, trackball, and stylus), and as the number of items in the menu increases. Articulatory aspects were investigated by presenting one group of subjects with the task of selecting from fully visible or "exposed" menus. To investigate the cognitive aspects, two other groups of subjects used invisible or "hidden" pie menus: one group with an ink trail, and one without. In order for marking menus to work effectively, users must be able to mentally represent and associate Selection from hidden menus was designed to reveal Both number of slices per menu and input device were systematically varied. We discuss the findings with respect to menu size, input device, analysis of markings used, and learning.

ConnectedTV for the Palm takes the universal remote control idea a few steps further, combining a personalized television guide with an automatic universal remote control. So you never have to press in channel numbers: instead you just touch the name of the show you want to watch, and ConnectedTV sends the numbers to change the channel.

"Touch Tuning" with ConnectedTV is like speed dialing with the remote: you can forget all those channel numbers, and easily operate ConnectedTV with one hand.

One handed operation is an extremely important feature for a universal remote control, which should be purposefully designed into the user interface from the day one.

Like Mozilla and The Sims, ConnectedTV features "pie menus," which enable you to quickly and reliably select several different commands from one button by stroking in different directions, without using (and losing) the stylus. Pie menus make ConnectedTV more powerful per square inch than physical remotes that only support one function per button.

The buttons are big enough to easily select with your finger, and have useful functions in different directions. For example, stroking left or right scrolls to the previous or next page. You can stroke up on the name of a show to find out more about it, or stroke down to watch it, and ConnectedTV sends the numbers to change the channel, without you having to know or press any digits.

ConnectedTV also functions as a hot list and spam filter, so you can easily mark and find your favorite shows, while hiding shows you don't like. It's much better than the slowly scrolling on-screen guide, because it doesn't block the tv screen, you can take it anywhere with up to two weeks of guide, and use it at your own pace.

ConnectedTV is indispensable if you have hundreds of digital cable or satellite channels, because you can filter out the channels and shows you don't like, and mark your favorites so they're easy to find whenever they're on.

-info@Connected.TV

ConnectedTV for the Palm takes the universal remote control idea a few steps further, combining a personalized television guide with an automatic universal remote control. So you never have to press in channel numbers: instead you just touch the name of the show you want to watch, and ConnectedTV sends the numbers to change the channel.

"Touch Tuning" with ConnectedTV is like speed dialing with the remote: you can forget all those channel numbers, and easily operate ConnectedTV with one hand.

One handed operation is an extremely important feature for a universal remote control, which should be purposefully designed into the user interface from the day one.

Like Mozilla and The Sims, ConnectedTV features "pie menus," which enable you to quickly and reliably select several different commands from one button by stroking in different directions, without using (and losing) the stylus. Pie menus make ConnectedTV more powerful per square inch than physical remotes that only support one function per button.

The buttons are big enough to easily select with your finger, and have useful functions in different directions. For example, stroking left or right scrolls to the previous or next page. You can stroke up on the name of a show to find out more about it, or stroke down to watch it, and ConnectedTV sends the numbers to change the channel, without you having to know or press any digits.

ConnectedTV also functions as a hot list and spam filter, so you can easily mark and find your favorite shows, while hiding shows you don't like. It's much better than the slowly scrolling on-screen guide, because it doesn't block the tv screen, you can take it anywhere with up to two weeks of guide, and use it at your own pace.

ConnectedTV is indispensable if you have hundreds of digital cable or satellite channels, because you can filter out the channels and shows you don't like, and mark your favorites so they're easy to find whenever they're on.

-info@Connected.TV

ConnectedTV for the Palm takes the universal remote control idea a few steps further, combining a personalized television guide with an automatic universal remote control. So you never have to press in channel numbers: instead you just touch the name of the show you want to watch, and ConnectedTV sends the numbers to change the channel.

"Touch Tuning" with ConnectedTV is like speed dialing with the remote: you can forget all those channel numbers, and easily operate ConnectedTV with one hand. ConnectedTV features "pie menus," which enable you to quickly and reliably select several different commands from one button by stroking in different directions.

ConnectedTV is indispensable if you have hundreds of digital cable or satellite channels, because you can filter out the channels and shows you don't like, and mark your favorites so they're easy to find whenever they're on.

-info@Connected.TV

ConnectedTV for the Palm takes the universal remote control idea a few steps further, combining a personalized television guide with an automatic universal remote control. So you never have to press in channel numbers: instead you just touch the name of the show you want to watch, and ConnectedTV sends the numbers to change the channel.

"Touch Tuning" with ConnectedTV is like speed dialing with the remote: you can forget all those channel numbers, and easily operate ConnectedTV with one hand. ConnectedTV features "pie menus," which enable you to quickly and reliably select several different commands from one button by stroking in different directions.

ConnectedTV is indispensable if you have hundreds of digital cable or satellite channels, because you can filter out the channels and shows you don't like, and mark your favorites so they're easy to find whenever they're on.

-info@Connected.TV

One handed operation is an extremely important feature for a universal remote control, which should be purposefully designed into the user interface from the day one.

ConnectedTV for the Palm is a universal remote control integrated with a personalized television guide, that's designed to be easily used with one hand.

Like Mozilla and The Sims, it features "pie menus", which enable you to easily and reliably select several different functions from each button, without using (and losing) the stylus. Pie menus make ConnectedTV more powerful per square inch than physical remotes that only support one function per button.

The buttons are big enough to easily select with your finger, and have useful functions in different directions. For example, stroking left or right scrolls to the previous or next page. You can stroke up on the name of a show to find out more about it, or stroke down to watch it, and ConnectedTV sends the numbers to change the channel, without you having to know or press any digits.

"Touch Tuning" with ConnectedTV is like speed dialing for the remote control. It also functions as a hot list and spam filter, so you can easily mark and find your favorite shows, while hiding shows you don't like. It's much better than the slowly scrolling on-screen guide, because it doesn't block the tv screen, you can take it anywhere with up to two weeks of guide, and use it at your own pace.

-info@Connected.TV

One handed operation is an extremely important feature for a universal remote control, which should be purposefully designed into the user interface from the day one.

ConnectedTV for the Palm is a universal remote control integrated with a personalized television guide, that's designed to be easily used with one hand.

Like Mozilla and The Sims, it features "pie menus", which enable you to easily and reliably select several different functions from each button, without using (and losing) the stylus. Pie menus make ConnectedTV more powerful per square inch than physical remotes that only support one function per button.

The buttons are big enough to easily select with your finger, and have useful functions in different directions. For example, stroking left or right scrolls to the previous or next page. You can stroke up on the name of a show to find out more about it, or stroke down to watch it, and ConnectedTV sends the numbers to change the channel, without you having to know or press any digits.

"Touch Tuning" with ConnectedTV is like speed dialing for the remote control. It also functions as a hot list and spam filter, so you can easily mark and find your favorite shows, while hiding shows you don't like. It's much better than the slowly scrolling on-screen guide, because it doesn't block the tv screen, you can take it anywhere with up to two weeks of guide, and use it at your own pace.

-info@Connected.TV

The first known published reference to the idea was in 1969, in a paper about a CAD system:

Wiseman, N. E., Lemke, H. U., and Hiles, J. O., "PIXIE: A New Approach to Graphical Man-Machine Communications" ,Proc. 1969 CAD Conf. Southhampton, IEE Conf. Pub. 51, p. 463

The basic idea was also mentioned in an early edition of the reference book on computer graphics:

Newman, W.M. and Sproull, R. F., Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics, 2nd. edition, McGraw-Hill, 1979, 1973

Jack Callahan and I published a paper about an experiment comparing pie menus with linear menus in 1984:

Callahan, J., Hopkins, D., Weiser, M. & Shneiderman, B. (1988) An empirical comparison of pie vs. linear menus. Proceedings of CHI `88, 95-100

Pie menus have been used in products, including Connected TV, The Sims, Unix SimCity for TCL/Tk, Maya, Habitat, Neverwinter Nights, Return to Zork, Logitech's mouse driver, UniPress Emacs, and the open source piewm window manager for X11.

Pie menus have been implemented as plug-in components for systems including NeWS, Hypercard, ScriptX, X Toolkit, Director, Flash, Asymetrix ToolBook, TCL/Tk, ActiveX, Java, Dynamic HTML Behaviors, and finally Mozilla).

-Don

The "Finger Pie" on handheld devices like the Palm is so fast and easy that no pen is required!

"As seen on Connected TV"!

-Don

Penny Lane's "Finger pie" was a Liverpudlian sexual reference included in the song to amuse the locals. "It was just a nice little joke for the Liverpool lads who like a bit of smut," said Paul. "For months afterwards, girls serving in local chip shops had to put up with the requests for 'fish and finger pie'."

Here is a link to some messages from 1991-1992 between Mark Weiser and myself, which I posted to slashdot earlier, in the thread about Xerox's patent infringement case against Graffiti.

We were discussing user interface design for handheld computers, handwriting input and pie menus.

It feels great to have finally put pie menus into ConnectedTV on handheld Palm computers, after just talking about it for 10 years.

They're called "Finger Pies", because using the penis not necessary!

-Don

I saw Bill Gates give the keynote address at CES, and he demonstrated several interesting technologies including wireless web pads, tablets, and ".NET" services.

What he didn't mention is that Microsoft never invented those things -- they're simply exploiting the "Ubiquitous Computing" research developed by other people at Xerox PARC, MIT Media Lab, and many others places.

Our product ConnectedTV, which we demonstrated at CES, is also inspired by the same Ubiquitous Computing research, as well as using other proven user interface techniques like pie menus.

Besides the personalized TV guide and universal remote control, it has many useful home control applications, as well. For an idea of where it's heading, please read some the literature.

We owe a lot to pioneering researchers like the late Mark Weiser (director of Xerox PARC Computer Science Lab), and visionary writers like the late Philip K Dick. May they forever continue to guide and inspire us from half-life.

-Don

"I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be."

-Glenn Runciter

The newer Palms and WinCE Pocket PCs have quite powerful IR, but some of the older ones aren't very powerful, or have the window in an inconvenient location (so you have to tilt it forward to point it at the TV).

We tested the m505 at CES, and I was able to operate the TV from quite a long distance away. As with any IR control, it also has a lot to do with the angle from which you're facing the TV. Fluorescent lights also cause problems, but most people don't use those in their living room.

Of course ConectedTV is not limited to IR remote control. More and more handhelds support Bluetooth, 802.11b or have built-in cellular phones. It can be programmed to open URLs, send UDP packets, make XML remote procedure calls, query and control ".NET" services, etc.

It's also great for indexing all your music and controling your MP3 jukebox or computer. And the fact that you can operate it with one hand makes it great for watching porn.

ConnectedTV filters out all the channels and shows you don't want to watch, and brings the good ones to your attention, according to your personal preferences. So you can find just what you want, and don't have to put up with all the stupid spam and useless channels.

If you have a cell phone with a built-in Palm (or WinCE Pocket PC for that matter), and you misplace your remote control behind a couch cushion, you can just call it up and find it by the ring!

With a wireless RF connection, it's extremely useful for controling all kinds of home automation like lights, air conditioning, home theaters, alarms, security gates, etc. There was such a demand for this at the show, that we're also developing an extremely customizable, general purpose remote control product called "ConnectedHome", that enables you to program your own commands, behaviors, graphical skins and user interfaces.

For example, one of my hobbies is programming live video processing effects for parties (like interactive screen savers), and I can use it to remotely control all the effect parameters and switch between different modes, without messing up the nice full screen graphics with ugly user interface widgets.

One important thing about ConnectedTV is that it does not infringe on GemStar's obnoxious on-screen TV guide patent. It's much better to have the TV guide off of the screen and in your hand, so it doesn't distract from what you're currently watching.

That's one reason it's so inexpensive: just $30/year. TV Guide is $40/year, and it doesn't change the channels or filter spam. While ConnectedTV doesn't waste paper and postage, fill up your mailbox and garbage can, or bring anthrax spores into your living room.

Once you have a TV guide that you can hold in your hand and pass around, instead of taking over the TV screen, you will never want to go back to the slowly scrolling half-screen channel guide with that loud mouthed fakin' jamacian pseudo psychic.

-Don

More info and screen snapshots: http://www.Connected.TV

David Levitt and I demonstrated "ConnectedTV" at CES for the first time.

ConnectedTV is an online service and Palm application that functions as a universal remote control with integrated personalized TV guide, spam filtering and intelligent categorization.

We designed the ConnectedTV interface so you can hold it in one hand and easily operate it with your thumb or finger. ConnectedTV features pie menus: a fun, fast and reliable selection technique that you can do with your fingers.

Pie menus are provably much more efficient than old fashioned buttons and pull-down menus. Just as The Sims lets you use pie menus to direct the lives of virtual people, now ConnectedTV lets you easily navigate your own personal entertainment schedule, and control your TV and other devices. Because selecting entertainment should be more like playing a video game than taking the Standardized Aptitude Test.

More information about ConnectedTV including screen snapshots are available at: http://www.Connected.TV

-Don

David Levitt and I demonstrated "ConnectedTV" at CES for the first time.

ConnectedTV is an online service and Palm application that functions as a universal remote control with integrated personalized TV guide, spam filtering and intelligent categorization.

We designed the ConnectedTV interface so you can hold it in one hand and easily operate it with your thumb or finger. ConnectedTV features pie menus: a fun, fast and reliable selection technique that you can do with your fingers.

Pie menus are provably much more efficient than old fashioned buttons and pull-down menus. Just as The Sims lets you use pie menus to direct the lives of virtual people, now ConnectedTV lets you easily navigate your own personal entertainment schedule, and control your TV and other devices. Because selecting entertainment should be more like playing a video game than taking the Standardized Aptitude Test.

More information about ConnectedTV including screen snapshots are available at: http://www.Connected.TV

-Don