(also pronounced fast forward, by the way)

More detailed DEMOFall08 debrief to come, but this was just too endearing to wait on

In the press room, there were a ton of usb keys - I grabbed one of each - you can see them in the video. FFWD wins for the coolest looking one - a surfboard.

DEMO attendee Paul Watson posted on his blog that one nice feature missing from our site was a bookmarklet to allow users to post videos directly from a web page to their ffwd accounts. So tonight we rolled out something along those lines, a "Share With FFWD" bookmarklet that pretty much does exactly that - send a video to friends, and it automatically gets added to your channel feed as well.

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At DEMOfall08 today, ffwd (pronounced “fast forward”) released the beta of ffwd.com, the web implementation of its revolutionary web-meets-TV service. ffwd’s vision encompasses a radically simple way to navigate the video web, an expansive digital television experience, and a media service that reflects your lifestream. ffwd can be found at Station #38 in the DEMOfall08 Pavilion and is currently available for sign-up at http://www.ffwd.com.

“Television and Internet technologies are converging and colliding, and so a close look at ffwd is absolutely in order. I invited the company to introduce this product at DEMOfall08 because it points to the future of television and to the rich social interactions this convergence will enable,” said Chris Shipley, executive director of the DEMO conference. “The ffwd solution fits squarely in two major themes of this year’s conference – ‘Television Meets the Web; Web Meets the Television’ and ‘Getting Embedded with Social Networks’ – and in doing so points to the innovative thinking of the ffwd team.”

ffwd aims to connect viewers to online video through personalized adaptive channels of videos from all over the web – replacing 500 channels and nothing on with custom channels for every viewer. Each channel combines the editorial wisdom of the entire Internet audience, the viewer’s social graph, and behavioral targeting, to sort through the limitless web video catalog with the click of a button.

“ffwd was inspired to create a way to navigate the video web as simple as channel surfing, yet more powerful than search,” said Patrick Koppula, CEO of ffwd. “By building an index of videos based on channels rather than individual videos, and constantly updating it with new discoveries made by the entire web video audience, ffwd will be the only channel you’ll ever need.”

ffwd builds standard channels based on topics or themes, favorite programs or a personality type. Early adopters will have over 500 standard channels available for creating their custom channel lineup – the raw material for creating a personalized adaptive channel. Then what a viewer skips and what a viewer watches will influence what they watch next and the overall makeup of their channel. Similarly, your social network profile or lifestream service can automatically program your ffwd channel, leveraging the information already provided by your online persona. Future viewers can save time and take advantage of the wisdom of crowds by simply subscribing to channels of viewers they’ve found to be similar to them.

As ffwd continues to implement its vision, you can expect:

• an API that will un-tether your ffwd channel from ffwd.com, allowing developers to create thin client applications that allow an even more ubiquitous, accurate, relevant and consistent web video viewing experience over multiple platforms, including living room and mobile hardware
• a social experiment where viewers create community around a shared interest and interactively decide what video content to watch in real time
• a subscription-based premium version of the service

About ffwd

For people who enjoy short-form digital entertainment and want unlimited choice and power over their experience, ffwd is your personal remote control for the interactive video web that makes navigating your options as simple as channel surfing and more powerful than search. Freeing you from the information overload of the web and “one-size-fits-all” approach of the cable companies, ffwd offers audiences a personalized adaptive lineup of channels organized by the entire web video audience and available from any web-enabled device.

ffwd was founded in 2007 and has headquarters in San Francisco, California.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/three-demo-companies-to-keep-an-eye-on/

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/ffwd-launches-a-last-fm-for-video

http://revision3.com/blog/2008/09/09/six-cool-new-products-from-demo/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ffwd_a_remote_control_for_internet_video.php

(First a big thanks to Josh Lowensohn for letting this lowly Mac-not-running-parallels slob check it out on his machine)

Clearly this is the most web-app friendly browser, ever. Whereas Firefox 3 enabled some great new technology (like Feedly), Google's Chrome gives due to all the existing web-app technology by recasting the essential metaphors of the browser from the perspective of web-apps rather than web-sites, for instance stand alone windows and shortcuts for applications. ffwd was designed to be such an app and I'm glad to say it runs great on Google Chrome. How could it not with exceptional support for Javascript and WebKit rendering? However I'm disappointed with one major decision: putting the tabs at the top. Granted the web-application world can feel good about giving the application names top billing in the window, but there would have been far more benefit in moving them to the bottom. If they had been moved to the bottom, then the browser-as-desktop look would have been complete. OS X, Windows, and most flavors of Linux dock active applications at the bottom of the screen. Immaterial of whether that's the best UI (which I happen to think it is), copying it would have reduced resistance tremendously to the adoption of web-apps by desktop users.

Google either did not think about it enough or is cynically trying to make the Omnibar look like it's part of every application. A giant search box just isn't the best first line of navigation for every web app. Don't believe me? Take a look at this screenshot of Yelp with the smallest possible Firefox header.

While Yelp has opted to highlight search lower in the UI. In Chrome (I can only imagine since again I'm a lowly Mac user), there would be an extremely confusing additional search bar given priority above the menus. Furthermore the fact that this Chrome-like minimalism is possible but so uncommonly used in Firefox that it has become a selling point for Chrome is further proof that a more desktop-like default layout is a huge missed opportunity.

Either way I hope Google changes it ASAP, otherwise a huge opportunity for the emerging web application space (that's not internal to Google, anyway) will be lost. Web apps will thrive more if they look as much like desktop apps as possible. So, please Google move everything you can to the bottom of the window, so the  javascript menus you went to great pains to process better will have a shot at thwarting the hegemony of "File Edit etc.".