New app called Boxfish takes the closed captions from 3,000 television stations to offer instant updates about what’s on TV.
If you’re an incessant channel surfer, put down that remote and pick up a smartphone. A new app called Boxfish takes the closed captions from over 3,000 television stations to offer instant updates about what’s on TV. Some have compared the app, currently a U.S.-only service, to having every TV station on your Twitter feed. Like Twitter, Boxfish presents breaking news updates, as well as topics that are trending across television.
The founders of Boxfish, Eoin Dowling and Kevin Burkitt, say they originally wanted the app to function as a sort of search engine where viewers could more easily find specific television programs. Their idea changed, however, when they discovered that the average viewer spends up to 40 per cent of their TV time surfing channels. By aggregating topics from all channels onto one screen, Boxfish functions as an up-to-the-second guide, or as the company’s slogan goes: “TV’s information engine.”