We are proud to take home this prestigious award from ConnectedWorld.TV at IBC 2011. The’ Search and Content Discovery’ award for innovation in new search, content discovery and recommendation techniques is a testament to the importance Jinni’s unique semantic discovery solutions in the fast changing world of digital entertainment.

Jinni accepted the award at the beautiful Hotel Okura in Amsterdam alongside other notable winners such as the legendary James Cameron and Vince Pace.

The ConnectedWorld.TV Awards is an IBC Connected World associate that celebrates the creativity of broadcasters, independent producers, technology companies and consumer electronics manufacturers pioneering the business of ‘content everywhere’.

The Jinni Semantic taste-and-mood based Discovery Engine powers discovery of video content for TV operators, connected device manufactures and anywhere consumers make a decision about what to watch.

If you would like to meet with a Jinni executive and view our Jinni TV demo, contact us at sales@Jinni.com

Technorati Tags: Jinni, IBC, IBC2011, ConnectedWorld.tv, award, search, discovery, search and content discovery

Popularity: 2% [?]

This post by Yosi Glick, Jinni Co-Founder and President, originally appeared on AltSearchEngines.com in May 2009.

Say I want to search for something to watch on my next movie night. Whether online or on VOD, I’m comfortable with the options: view most popular, browse by genre, or enter a title or actor. The experience is familiar – yet it always falls flat. The text menus, lists of titles, thumbnail posters… None of it captures the exciting visuals, gripping effects, moving stories, and great soundtracks that I have in mind. The popcorn smells, pushing crowds, and overheard sounds effects in the average local cinema are more compelling.

In the entertainment industry, it is widely accepted that the key to consumption is the user experience. This is all the more true in our on-demand era, when each person chooses his or her own entertainment of the moment. The range of choice is intimidating, from top hits to long-tail titles, making the discovery experience more important than ever.

Yet there is a general industry consensus that the user interface is an unresolved issue. In other words, despite the time, money and experience thrown at the issue, the entertainment industry has not yet invented a disruptive interface for content discovery.

The conventional answer to complaints about a non-intuitive user interface is, “Bring in a better designer.” But is lack of design talent the issue? I believe not. Replacing the physical experience – the local record store owner’s great recommendations, the bookstore’s colorful display of new paperbacks – with an appealing online experience, requires a fundamentally new approach.

The core problem is not layout or graphics, but rather the underlying data that shapes and limits the user interface. Why do movie discovery interfaces, from e-commerce websites to VOD services to movie machines, all look so remarkably alike? I attribute this to the homogenizing influence of the data. Genres – originally meant for back-end catalog organization – have been the basis of movie search for fifteen years and more. There is a gap between how we think and talk about entertainment and how we search for it that an interface alone cannot solve. While a typical user review, for example, includes experiential descriptions like “made me feel good” or “food for thought,” search engines support flat genres and keywords.

The key to the next generation of users interfaces lies in a new approach to data. Multi-variant data simply gives designers a better structure to play with. Take semantic search, which many see as the key to organizing large amounts of information in future, providing users with intelligent answers based on the meaning of their queries. In entertainment, this could mean that “happy” is understood in context of other moods like “feel good” and “heartwarming” but not necessarily titles or broad genres like “comedy.” Semantic search will inevitably be a source of design as well as technical innovation.

Whether semantic, real-time, people-powered, or another combination, the next generation of search will better reflect real entertainment experiences. And this new data will support and drive innovation for disruptive, intuitive user interfaces.

Popularity: 3% [?]

A European TV operator noticed that when they increased the size of their video-on-demand (VOD) catalogue, usage went down.  They slowly reduced the number of the titles – and usage went up.  It’s not just the Europeans. “Less is more” is a well-known marketing concept. For an elegant explanation, I recommend the book The Paradox of Choice.

Of course, slashing the catalogue isn’t the only option. If the titles are easy to navigate and the recommendations are reliable, people can find what they want to watch without all having to watch the same thing. That’s our philosophy at Jinni.

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It seems likely that in an economic downturn, we’ll buy fewer theater tickets. Instead, we’ll rent more DVDs and continue to watch more online, free as well as pay-to-stream or pay-to-download. We expect that smarter tools for choosing what to watch will be especially important in huge DVD and online catalogues.

But what will we watch? These kinds of things are hard to predict, but here are a few highlights of what Americans enjoyed during hard economic times in the past.

1929: Stock markets crashed worldwide and the U.S. entered the Great Depression.
Top-grossing movie (courtesy of The Numbers): The Broadway Melody

The Broadway Melody had many firsts: MGM’s first musical film, one of the first musicals with a color sequence, and the first sound film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. A backstage show biz love triangle starring two sisters, it’s a light melodrama with plenty of Broadway clichés.

1973: Quadrupling of oil prices by OPEC alongside government spending on the Vietnam War led to stagflation.
Top-grossing movie: The Exorcist

What are those noises in the attic? A young girl is possessed and her desperate mother enlists the help of two priests to exorcise the demon… Very graphic for its time, it was dismissed by Rolling Stone as “nothing more than a religious porn film” – but terrified audiences made it one of the top-grossing horror films of all time.

1987: Black Monday (October 19 1987) was the largest one-day percentage decline in stock market history.
Top-grossing movie: 3 Men and a Baby

Three bachelors find themselves forced to take care of a baby left by one of their girlfriends. With the tagline “They changed her diapers. She changed their lives,” this goofy, feel-good movie was a big hit.

1990: The early 90s recession began as industrial production and manufacturing-trade sales fell off.
Top-grossing movie: Home Alone

An eight year-old is accidentally left behind when his family leaves for Christmas vacation, and has to defend his home against bumbling burglars. A feel-good family classic. Those who remember the early 90s recession also remember Macaulay Culkin back when he was young and cute.

2001: The collapse of the Dot com bubble, along with 9/11 and corporate scandal, led to economic contraction.
Top-grossing movie: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

The first movie about the boy magician, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the fight against Voldemort and the forces of evil. The books became an international obsession among children and adults alike, and the movies stuck close to the original stories and rode the wave to box office success.

There are some notably similar themes among these hits, based on our Movie Genome.

Young heroes * In danger * Feel good * Goofy heroes * Good vs. evil * Sibling relations * Friendship * Lighthearted * Supernatural ability * Mother and daughter
- Inspired? You can search any or several of these on Jinni.

What’s your favorite in this list? And what types of movies do you predict people will choose in the current financial crisis?

Popularity: 13% [?]

Jinni is an alternative spelling of genie, which puts us in pretty distinguished company, cinematically speaking. Here’s a rundown of genies through the ages, with the help of four favorite and one not-so-favorite films.

1. Aladdin (1992)

Probably the best-known genie movie nowadays, Aladdin is a classic Disney fairytale about a young street urchin who falls in love with the princess - and finds a Genie who makes his dreams come true. Genie, mighty but kind (and fond of singing) at last gains freedom from the lamp.

2. I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970)

Who can forget the favorite 60s TV series I Dream of Jeannie? Starring Barbara Eden as a genie found in space by an astronaut, the show was so successful that more than 20 years later a direct to TV film was made. A modern version of the series is supposed to be released in 2010.

3. The Thief of Baghdad (1940)

Genies are not always nice! This fantasy adventure movie is a combination of several middle-eastern folktales from the book One Thousand and One Nights. Ali Baba, Aladdin and Sinbad all mix here into one story, where the hero has to outwit the genie to get his wishes.

4. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Kids, you can be a genie too! Sinbad and his men set out to retrieve a lost genie lamp. The genie is a young boy who reluctantly helps an evil wizard. An interesting historical note: this was the first full-color film to use stop motion animation effects.

5. Kazaam (1996)

Beware, not all genie movies are fun to watch! This one was rated 94 in IMDb’s Bottom 100 with a terrible score of 2.3/10. It features legendary basketball player Shaquille O’Neal as a genie helping a young boy avoid the local neighborhood gang. But even Shaq and his skills couldn’t save this flick.

Inspired? Search on Jinni for -
Genies * Curses, spells and rituals * Wizard * Classic fairytales * Young hero * Falling in love * Wish come true * Based on a folktale * Stop motion * (or any combination)

Popularity: 14% [?]