Introducing Shelby Genius on iOS

Shelby Genius is available today in the iOS App Store! Download it here.

While in the midst of building the next generation of Shelby, we learned that YouTube would no longer be a core app in iOS6. We knew YouTube would inevitably fill that void with their own app, but we had an idea that was too fun to pass up, so our iOS dev Arthur hacked it together in a couple weeks. Using a piece of the Shelby platform that hasn’t yet seen the light of day, we’re pretty excited to announce Shelby Genius.

Shelby Genius is search + serendipity. On iOS, we built Genius to be a very simple app. It supports searches across YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion and returns a list of results that serendipitously includes results from Shelby’s video graph.  

We have to admit it’s pretty fun searching for random stuff (see our list above), and seeing what Genius thinks, but we’re even more excited about some of the tech under the hood. In particular, the Genius app supports background streaming to AirPlay and continuous playback of video.

What does this mean to the average user? Run a Genius search for your favorite band, start playing video and send it to your AppleTV via airplay. Now start using another app on your phone - you’ll notice that Genius video keeps playing on your TV in the background. When the video is done, the next video in the results will start playing.

Though it’s just the result of a quick hack, we’re excited to ship it and potentially use more of Genius in other places within Shelby.

You can download it here and let us know what Genius searches you love!

Announcing Shelby iPad/iPhone apps + public beta!

When we initially thought of Shelby.tv, we knew at least one thing… that tablets, the iPad in particular, are a complete game-changer for video consumption. Which is why I am very proud to announce the release of a native iOS Shelby application for the iPad and the iPhone!

We’d love for you to go download the app from the app store and y’know… a 5-star rating would be cool, too. ;)

With this announcement, we are also taking Shelby out of “private alpha” and releasing a public beta. Which means whether or not you’ve been waiting for an invite, you can check out Shelby.tv on the web right now.

With your feedback, we’ve worked really hard to improve the speed, performance and overall user experience of Shelby on the web, and translated that into robust iOS apps. The best part is that the web and iOS apps work really well together with the Shelby bookmarklet - allowing you to save videos to watch later at your convenience.

I’m not going to list all of the great features here… COUGH - deduplication! - AHEM… excuse me… but we will blog about those features here, so follow us to learn more or you can watch this great demo video done by Mark…

Finally, we just want to say thank you. Building Shelby has been a dream so far. We are really grateful for all of your feedback, ideas, and support and we hope you like this, our first real release of Shelby.tv

“Reality TV.” Some of us love it. Some of us hate it. 10 months ago, if you’d asked me if I’d ever participate in a reality TV show, I’d say “no f***ing way.”

And yet, tonight is the premier of TechStars - a 6 part series on Bloomberg showcasing our team and our fellow TechStars from the winter class.

So what changed my mind?

Most importantly, the TechStars program DID NOT change for the TV show. The Davids guaranteed us that their primary goal was to help us build our companies - that meant excellent access, advice and mentorship from great people like all the entrepreneurs and investors featured in the new trailer above.

Also, I knew TV production well enough to know that anything seen on camera can and will be used to craft a compelling story. So how did that change our behavior?

Not at all.

I’m really proud of the team we’ve assembled and the company we’re building. I believe in what we’re doing and I don’t fear any sort of press that may show us in one light or another. Will the footage be edited to make us look like former jocks? Probably. Will there be goofy scenes of us drinking beers? Definitely. Will we let any weird opinions form about us bother us? Nope.

On the flip side, will the show be a great way for other entrepreneurs to learn what mistakes NOT to make? I think so. Will it inspire others to say “hey, I have an idea… I can do that.” I really hope so.

We can make all sorts of guesses as to the potential impact of the show, but at the end of the day, TechStars is about helping great companies build amazing products. I’m really proud and I consider myself very lucky, to be a part of that.

If you have thoughts or questions about the show, hit me up @reecepacheco

Series starts tonight at 9PM on Bloomberg.

Awesome Science Video of the Week:

 

The Physicists Anthem.  (really for the particle physicists out there)

This is a great video/song to get what those crazy scientists are up to at CERN.

Also great for karaoke, I just sang it with my daughter.  Great bonding time!

[henry]

Awesome Science Video of the Week:

Prof. Sir. M. Berry talks about my PhD dissertation topic, Singular Optics, the study of light with holes!  

Some light in singular optics looks like a donut, some light bends around corners. Regardless of “what type” of light it is, it has points of zero intensity or phase which we can exploit to do cool shit.  Like compute much faster than possible with 1’s and 0’s or make micro/nano machines move and bend to our will.

This is a great explanation, by a very smart man, on a cool topic (at least this shelby-er things so!)

- henry [h@shelby.tv]

Awesome Science Videos:  Week 2!

In honor of the last space shuttle mission, check out this Japanese astronaut dude throwing a boomerang on the International Space Station (ISS).  Pretty cool.  When I was an undergraduate at Colgate, my Physics (I always capitalize that word) advisor got it in my head that I should apply to to be a scientist astronaut.  I though that was an amazing idea.

My physics studies on beams of light that twisted and turned through space would have been a natural fit for the ISS.  And I always thought the promise of the ISS was to allow us to have a base to start doing more advanced scientific studies in space.

I haven’t gotten there… yet!

Team Shelby (at least Dan and I) wants to take an expedition to space though!

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