What’s a Smart TV?

A Smart TV or Connected TV is either a television set with integrated Internet capabilities or a set-top box for television that offers more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary basic television set.
They provide high focus on online interactive media, Internet TV, over-the-top content, as well as on-demand streaming media, and less focus on traditional broadcast media like previous generations of television sets and set-top boxes always have had.

What services are available?

Services delivered through Smart TV include traditional broadcast TV channels, catch-up services, video-on-demand, EPG, interactive advertising, personalization, voting, games, social networking, and other multimedia applications like gaming. Many applications can be downloaded through dedicated Application Stores in a similar way as Smartphone app stores.

What are the benefits?

Smart TV devices enable consumers to view all of these advanced services on their flat screen TV, via a single device. In addition to a broader range of content from TV providers – ranging from traditional broadcast TV, video on-demand, live information and catch-up TV –, Smart TVs also provide consumers with access to user-generated content through applications like YouTube or Flickr. In addition, TV widgets can extend the Smart TV functionalities to show real time information like sports results.

What’s the technology behind it?

In general, Smart TVs integrate internet and Web 2.0 features like Flash and HTML5, into modern televisions. Software applications are integrated in Smart TVs like in modern smartphones (iPhone or Android). However, some platforms use their own technologies, for example, Apple TV uses iOS while Google TV uses Android.

The technology that enables Smart TVs is not only incorporated into television sets, but also devices such as set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, game consoles, and other companion devices. These devices allow viewers to search and find videos, movies, photos and other content on the web, on a local cable TV channel, on a satellite TV channel, or stored on a local hard drive.

What’s the current status of the Smart TV market?

The concept of Smart TV is still in its incipient stages. Many Internet and consumer electronics companies are competing to get public attention and an important market share with their proprietary solutions. Currently, Samsung, Sony, LG, Apple, Yahoo-Intel and Google are leading the market but most of them are still only available in some countries. At present, the Smart TV European market, although is just starting to grow, has a clear leader with Samsung making a huge effort to position its Smart TV solution as the most popular platform. In addition a pan-European standard called HbbTV is starting to shine as more and more broadcasters are adopting it to offer interactive services along with their emissions.

Provided by Life360.com

Quick Note @ Android Market   
Quick Note @ AndroidPIT   

The moral of the story is: if you are an Android developer think about the best category for your app :)

So, what is a hand’App??? Well…in 2011 tourists no longer want to carry the extra weight of several books, maps, etc, specially in summer ;) With your smartphone you have all of these and much more in one compact device. Why carry a tourist guide handbook when you can have similar information in a hand’App? :):):)
The application features several interesting features that may come very handy before and while visiting Spain.

Text-to-speech technology. If your Android device has a TTS engine installed, just click on any phrase or word and you will hear how to pronounce it in spanish.

Basic expressions for different situations during your journey: at the airport, courtesy phrases, telling the time…

Interesting facts and info including a list of Spain’s 17 regions tourism websites and toll-free emergency phone numbers.

5500+ word Spanish-English and English-Spanish dictionary…and what’s better, there is no need for an internet connection! We know data roaming rates are expensive discouraging the use of the excellent Google Translator. Of course, text-to-speech is also available with the dictionary.

Our aim is to make the application the definitive Spain tourism guide application for Android so before publishing it in Android Market, we were already preparing new features that will be included in future releases:

• Spanish pronunciation
• Must-visit places checklist with notes
• History of Spain
• Spanish gastronomy
• Spanish culture

¡Hasta Luego!

At present, text to speech (TTS) engines are almost everywhere: GPS devices, translators, robots, …and of course, smartphones ;)
Starting from v.1.6, Android has an embedded TTS engine accessible to all developers. What’s really cool is that you can choose the TTS engine you want to use. Your apps won’t be limited to the default one bundled with Android. Just go to Settings -> Voice input & output.

Several engines are available…Pico TTS is the default one bundled with Android, it’s pretty simple and includes only 5 different languages (English, French, German, Italian and Spanish) but will be more than enough in most circumstances. A free alternative is eSpeak TTS, based on opensource speech synthesis technology. It includes more than 30 different languages like Greek, Chinese or even Latin! Download   

Although very well implemented, with these engines you will soon notice the electronic voice….
SVox is a free TTS engine, but you will need to pay US$2,99 per voice. It may seem quite expensive but the quality of the voices, which seem very natural, makes it worth the price.

Download   

What about the iPhone/iPad? Well, unlike Android, there is no built-in TTS but several libraries like acapela or OpenEars are available for developers.

In the next weeks, movin’App will release its first TTS enabled application for Android. ¡Hola! Spanish hand’App will teach you basic spanish phrases :)

How to use it
First off all, you will need a device with a camera and a barcode scanner app. Although you have very good paid apps, there are several free ones with lots of functionalities. Most of them let you scan and download mobile apps from Android Market or Apple App Store.

Barcode scanner apps
On Android, “Barcode scanner” is probably the best….It’s very easy to use, just launch it and point your camera to the QR code. It also detects the type of contents, so it can tell you the name of the product, and it’s price if Google can find it :)

The best iPhone/iPad alternative is a paid one: QR App…but there is also a free one, it’s simpler but much faster: QR Reader for iPhone. It’s very similar to “Barcode scanner” for Android in its concept: point your camera and scan.

Creating your own QR codes
All this QR stuff may seem very complicated…indeed, it is…it’s specified in an international standard (ISO-18004…..just in case you are really bored :D:D:D ).
But unless you want to create your own QR code reader, you don’t need to care about the specs, usually you will only need to create a QR code to let people download your apps or share your contact. To do so, you have lots of websites like goqr.me.

That’s it :)