What A Concept: Encouraging The Community To Make Your Product Better
from the good-ideas dept
Boing Boing is excitedly discussing how Neuros, a small consumer electronics company is actually encouraging people to hack its new set-top box to add new features. They've made the firmware open and they're offering cash prizes to anyone who can hack the machine to do things like show YouTube or Google Video content, or create software remotes for other gadgets. It's a smart idea... but the amazing thing is that it's really not that new. Few people remember that back in the early days of TiVo, it was also famous for supporting the hacker community who added more features and made their devices more usable. They didn't go so far as to offer cash prizes, but they at least recognized the value. Of course, that went away as TiVo's relationship with the TV companies got closer (and those same TV companies sued TiVo's competitor ReplayTV). It will be interesting to see where this goes, and whether or not the "bounty" method of encouraging hacks helps it gain a following... or simply gets TV execs one step closer to trying to sue. What's worth paying attention to here, is the idea that there's tremendous value in building an active and committed community around your products. While generally companies have a instinctive negative reaction to the idea that their products are being "hacked," it's really about people who are committed to your products, helping make them even more valuable. It's a real business opportunity that more companies ought to learn how to embrace.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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more systems need to do this
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Re: more systems need to do this
Actually Microsoft is working on it, they recently released the XNA Games Studio Express in beta on August 30. When the full version comes this Christmas it will allow the community to make games for the Xbox 360 and/or Windws XP/Vista. I have a blog devoted to XNA, click my name if you are interested in more info.
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Western Electric
Back in the bad old days, the phone company used to be able to prohibit you from attaching "non-approved" devices to the phone line - modems, extra phones, answering machines.
I wouldn't be surprised if the networks tried to revive this tactic by strong-arming the cable operators.
MjM
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Re:
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Another reason for broadcast flag...
The American way is to watch television when your are told, where you are told, how you are told, and to faithfully watch all commercials. Patriots rewind and watch commercials twice!
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i love hackable's
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Powerful philosophy
Hats off to Neuros....now if I could just get an open source PSP.............
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Own Set-top box
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Tivo hacking never went away
There still are hundreds of forums and websites where other hacking is discussed. TiVo employees openly participate in these forums without repurcussion. While noone is perfect, TiVo has done a pretty laudable job of balancing their own self interest, the rights of their customers, and the rights of the copyright holders.
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Open Technology good or bad?
On a side note I think that all hardware should use open standards. I like the idea that I could do anything I wanted to with my DVR equipment. It opens up more possbilities and makes it unique to me. In a world of generic crap I think we could all use a little more customizable hardware.
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