Three Items on my Tech Wish List
Thanks to Digital Literacy at CBS, I’ve come to appreciate that great technology businesses are often built not by creating wholly novel technology, but in finding innovative ways of applying existing technology. Since quarantine has given me plenty of time to brainstorm, I’ve listed here three potential innovations that involve building upon technology that already exists, but haven’t been (fully) rolled out yet. There are almost certainly concerns over privacy, feasibility and efficacy that could keep these implementations from coming to fruition, but that doesn’t mean we as consumers can’t dream about them!
1. Zillow & Augmented Reality
Zillow is a real estate database platform that includes value estimates for over 110 million homes in the United States. While they offer a variety of services on their website, the site is most commonly used to retrieve the estimated value of a house or apartment by entering the dwelling’s address. I’d like to shorten the process by incorporating a geographically-based augmented reality feature into the app that allows user’s to hold their phone up to a building and immediately find the estimated market value.
This function would allow for more immediate application of the site, as users wouldn’t need an address in order to be able to retrieve a listing. Furthermore, I love the thought of walking down the street with a friend seeing who can more accurately guess the value of each home you pass (whether you do Price is Right Rules is up to you). On the flip side, such functionality would lead to annoyed homeowners watching Gen Z brats holding up phones to their house from the street and then breaking out into fits of laughter.
2. Shazaam for Bird Calls
We’re all familiar with Shazaam, one of the “og” apps for the iPhone. I’ve had a dream for a while about a similar song-identifying service, with the important caveat that it would be able to identify bird song. You may think this application is niche, but I’d like to remind you that there are over 45 million birdwatchers in the U.S.
To my surprise, while writing this post I found that a few applications are already working on this! The two most successful applications on the markets are Song Sleuth and Chirp-O-Matic, and I’ve had fun playing around with the latter this week. I’ve decided to still include this technology on my “wish list” since it’s not quite up to snuff just yet (it’s worked for me approximately 25% of the time), and that’s frankly understandable. Identifying wild, varied recordings is a lot more difficult than ID-ing a recorded song, and ambient noise is always an issue when recording outdoors. That said, these applications are continually improving through user feedback and submission, and there is a lot of utility to be had with this app. Sound is the method most often used by birdwatchers to identify known species (we really should be called birdlisteners), so if any single app is able to rise above the rest it should be a real winner.
3. Live Player Tracking on Sporting Events
When watching, for example, a football game, I’d love to see the ability to toggle on a “names” feature that displays the name of each player on the field, tracking above their head as they move around the screen. Considering that the players all have helmets and their jersey numbers aren’t always visible, it can be difficult to determine who exactly you’re watching as the play unfolds live, and that can be quite frustrating when you’re cheering for your fantasy football team!
Now I’m certain that the technical capability exists because I’ve seen it implemented in small doses. In NASCAR of all things, ESPN will occasionally highlight certain cars as they attempt a passing maneuver, and the graphics displayed move fluidly as the cars change positions on the screen.
My guess as to the reason why this technology isn’t more ubiquitous is that fans who are happy with the status quo don’t want their viewing habits preemptively changed, and I can’t really blame them. For every welcomed innovation like the yellow first down line, there is a monstrosity such as the “Glowing Puck ” featured by Fox Sports in 90’s hockey.
However with the proliferation of streaming devices, viewers should have more ability to customize their viewing experience on their end. The same way you can turn closed captions on or off, you should be able to opt into more advanced technical displays that can optimize your viewing experience. As the value of live sports continues to increase in today’s media landscape, broadcasters would do well to innovate with their product, especially in a way that doesn’t unilaterally impose improvements on the masses.
