Clearleap, FourthWall Media Create EBIF-Based, Video-Centric Interactive TV Weather App

Clearleap, an Atlanta-based company which offers a technology platform for bringing Internet-sourced video content to television sets, and FourthWall Media, the interactive TV technology company formerly known as BIAP (note: for more on the company's rebranding, see the article published on itvt.com, October 26th), will today announce that they have partnered to create a video-centric, unbound EBIF interactive weather application featuring content from The Weather Channel. According to the companies, the app, which will be demo'd as part of the Innovation Showcase at next week's 2010 CableLabs Winter Conference in Denver, is designed to demonstrate "how the television industry can leverage video in EBIF form."

Clearleap and FourthWall bill the app as "combin[ing] the best of Internet and cable technologies to deliver fresh and timely weather information," including video forecasts delivered by on-camera meteorologists. The app allows viewers to watch video minutes after it was produced, the companies say, and lets them check the forecast for other markets without restarting or refreshing the app. "This demonstrates how Internet technologies are delivering on the promise of the next-generation television experience," Clearleap co-founder and CEO, Braxton Jarratt, said in a prepared statement. "From expansion of local offerings to increased personalization for the viewer, this application is just one example of how Web technologies have shifted the industry conversations from 'what if' to 'how fast.'"

According to the companies, FourthWall was able to leverage Clearleap's ability to ingest video content from any source, convert it to a TV-ready format and deliver it for near-real-time integration, in order to design an EBIF application using perishable, localized video content as its centerpiece. Using "Internet-like but cable-friendly technologies," the companies say, advertising can easily be inserted in either a graphic or video format, and advertisers can also track the effectiveness of that advertising based on clicks or video plays. "Our goal is to provide TV widgets that are personalized, dynamic, and result in contextually relevant video," Patrick Peters, FourthWall's EVP and general manager of programming, said in a prepared statement. "After all, the killer app on TV is TV. We plan on adding video to every TV widget in our app store over time, and Clearleap will help us do that."