Welcome to the cable news roundup, T.G.I.F. edition.
Interactive television startup Cognitive Networks Inc. has a new name, a new CEO and US$2.5 million in the bank thanks to an initial round of funding from Rogers Venture Partners, the V.C. arm of Canada's Rogers Communications Inc.. Cognitive, formerly known as TV Interactive Systems, is now headed up by industry vet Michael Collette, the former CEO of PhyFlex Networks (now part of Ciena Corp.), Ucentric Systems (sold to Motorola Inc. in 2005), and an exec late of OpenTV and ICTV Inc. (now ActiveVideo Networks Inc.). Cognitive, founded in 2008 "over beers" (the Rogers investment is worth 58,207 cases of Moosehead, in case you were wondering), has developed an automatic content recognition (ACR) platform for smart TVs that can be used to support interactive advertising and other types of personalized iTV apps that synch up with video programming. Shazam Entertainment Ltd. and Comcast Corp.-backed zeebox also use ACR. (See Motorola Buys Ucentric Systems and Comcast, HBO Back Zeebox.)
Collette's on board to lead the development and rollout of the company's product, raise capital, build staff and ramp up operations. A Cognitive spokesman says the company has "commercial relationships with a couple of the largest TV OEMs" that have not yet been announced. It expects to have "a few million active users" by the first quarter of 2013, and 5 million to 7 million active users by the end of 2013.
Time Warner Cable Inc. has added a voicemail-to-text transcription feature for its home phone service, a capability that has also been recently introduced by Comcast. Offered through TW Cable's VoiceZone portal, its version lets customers send those messages (transcribed into English or Spanish) to as many as five mobile phone numbers and email addresses. The latest bell and whistle comes as cable operators try to juice up flattening voice subscription growth. TW Cable ended the third quarter with 4.99 million voice subscribers. (See TW Cable Misses Q3 Targets .)
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