unmediated

Responding to INDUCE: Forget the tech industry -- where's our response?

A couple of days ago we posted a couple of links to Dan Gillmor's and Andrew Orlowski's rather bitter lashings of the tech industry for failing to put their political might behind a united response to Orrin Hatch's INDUCE Act. Edward Felten followed them up yesterday with a smart argument explaining why big tech just might not care:

Giving the entertainment industry a veto over new technologies would have two main effects: it would slow the pace of technical innovation, and it would create barriers to entry in the tech markets..... Just to be clear, an entertainment-industry veto would surely hurt the tech incumbents. It's just that it would hurt their upstart competitors more.

What I'm thinking about here isn't an individual response. You can already do that by faxing a letter to your House rep through the EFF or through savetheipod.com. I'm thinking about a group response from the "innovators" who may be most hurt by this legislation, to let Congress know who this is going to affect.

What format of message do we send to Congress? Do we need to be innovative about it? Is it a petition particularly from us? Are the EFF and savetheipod letters effective, and perhaps we should do more to raise awareness? A volley of short videoblog PSAs about the INDUCE Act, shared on p2p networks?

Get info:
EFF - Could the INDUCE Act Kill The iPod?
EFF - INDUCE Act = Hollings II?
Ernest Miller comments on the introduction of the INDUCE Act.

Playlists, Queries, Rules

Today I spent some time discussing playlists with Lucas Gonze, which got me thinking about the spectrum with simple playlists on one end and full-blown cinematography on the other. Both essentially describe sequences of media selected and arranged in a purposeful manner.

What Lucas made me realize is that a playlist needn't be a static record: it can be a query, a suggestion or template that can be realized by a number of possible content sequences. For example, a playlist entry that specifies only ["I Love You" by Cole Porter] could be satisfied by either Ella Fitzgerald's or Frank Sinatra's version of the tune (or countless others).

This realization brought to mind something from a paper I read recently:

The rules used to generate establishing shots are based on cinematographic principles to maintain continuity… [For example, we have a rule that] defines an establishing shot as a combination of two sequences of which both shots are in color, the focus of the first has a wider angle then the next shot, and the weather conditions are similar. Note that the rule can also be described as a query that returns all shot combinations that match a certain description: we found that in this (and probably many more) applications the difference between a rule and query is rather artificial.

This makes the thread of continuity along the spectrum a little clearer. Initially we have static playlists, which arrange specific pieces of content in a sequence. Then "smart" playlists, which define a space of possible sequences as a query over a media database. More sophisticated queries return not just individual pieces of content that match the query but combinations or subsequences that match certain criteria. These more sophisticated queries can be viewed as rules which formalize the techniques involved in creating time-based media.

(Continue reading this post at sindikk.aeshin)

Designing Interactive Systems - Cambridge, MA - August 1-4, 2004

Early registration for DIS 2004 just ended, but advance registration is open until July 18.

It looks like there will be some really interesting papers, and of course you can join me, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Lalya Gaye, Elizabeth Goodman and Dan Hill as we chat about Design for Hackability.

If that's not enough incentive, you can always go to check out the other interesting things in Boston and Cambridge - like the Stata Center, which Dan recently discussed in terms of adaptive design and I considered as an architecture of power.

Gizmodo posts pic of Sony's Black Projection Screen

Gizmodo has a better pic of the cool black projection screen Sony announced last week. Purdy.

AP to Launch Blogs, E&P Reports

Editor & Publisher reports The Associated Press will launch its first weblog at the political conventions in Boston and New York, utilizing Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Walter R. Mears.

Automatic video editing

muvee autoProducer does not quite sound as my idea of an ideal video-editing application: "Artistic Intelligence automatically selects the best scenes from your video, and cuts them to your chosen music with cool effects and transitions synchronized to the beat". According to this article muvee allows phone users to easily convert long video clips in short, fun video clips suitable for sending via MMS. The software identifies "highlights" in raw video and edits clips accordingly to predefined styles.

The examples does not convince me that this is for the best. On the other hand, it's quick, and even if it's dirty I guess there is some potential here.

You can read a little more about the concept of automatic video-editing in this article.

MMPython

A media metadata retrieval framework for Python: parses ID3v2, ID3v1, EXIF, IPTC and Vorbis data into an object oriented struture.

Court Rules Bookseller Can Spy on Customers

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit delivered (PDF) some very bad news for online privacy today. Ruling in U.S. v. Councilman, the court held that it was not a violation of criminal wiretap laws for an email service provider to monitor the content of users' incoming messages without their knowledge or consent. The defendant, the seller of rare and used books who offered his customers email accounts, set up a system whereby he received a copy of any email messages they received from the competition -- Amazon.com. As the court itself admitted, "it may well be that the protections of the Wiretap Act have been eviscerated as technology advances."

"By interpreting the Wiretap Act's privacy protections very narrowly, this court has effectively given Internet communications providers free rein to invade the privacy of their users for any reason and at any time," says our own Kevin Bankston. "This decision makes clear that the law has failed to adapt to the realities of Internet communications and must be updated to protect online privacy."

(Perhaps this is only tangentally related, but after a recent conversation a few of us had on creating trust networks within citizens' media, I thought it pertinent. -kc.)

AOL wins patent for IM TV

A potentially powerful application. Although AOL won't go into details, the patent describes the gist of the new technology: When an AOL user pops up her buddy list, it would show what TV shows her friends are currently watching. Click a link, and her TV would change to that channel. "This enables friends to exchange messages that include links to a particular network or TV show," the patent says. Very intriguing.

(Are alarms going off for anyone else here, or am I just patent paranoid? -kc.)

Flash Lite 1.1 with SVG-Tiny support

Macromedia has released version 1.1 of its Flash Lite player, targeted at mobile phones and smartphones. Flash Lite supports a subset of the proprietary Flash vector-based animation system, widely used on desktop-targeted web sites. The new version also adds support for the W3C standard SVG-Tiny (Scalable Vector Graphics), which offers rich vector-based images and animation using the open XML standard. Flash Lite also supports network connectivity (as does its larger desktop sibling), allowing a Flash or SVG-Tiny animation to access a remote server to download additional content on the fly as needed. The player supports several audio formats, including MP3 and PCM (the most common flavor of WAV file), and includes APIs to allow Flash content that can access MMS, dialing, network status, and other handset features.

Flash Lite 1.1 is available through handset makers and network carriers. So far Bellwave, NTT DoCoMo, Sony Ericsson, Symbian, Texas Instruments, and T-Mobile have all expressed varying levels of interest in the new software.

bittorrent auto uploader

With a bit of help from Roger I was able to complete my Folder Action script for auto uploading BitTorrent files. Download it here and save it to your /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/ directory. Then make a new folder on your desktop, call it somthing like 'torrent drop box' and make sure you have Radio UserLand running. Don't forget to change the username, password, upstream directory and category to route to in the script and you should be good to go. Just drop a torrent into the folder and you will be prompted for a title of the file and a description.

(Continued at Adam Curry's Weblog)

New HDTV card from ATI

HDTV cards for PCs have been out for a couple years now, but are frequently priced in the $300-500 range. Today that all changes. ATI is one of the leading graphics cards manufacturers with a long tradition of producing TV capture cards, and they've recently released the HDTV All-in-wonder card for $199 with an included antenna. I assume due to the mass market nature of ATI's operations, they could finally bring the prices down compared to other cards in the market.

Now, this will only record over-the-air broadcasts from the major networks, not cable or satellite HDTV programming, and depending on where you live that is likely to mean half a dozen channels of standard network shows. ExtremeTech has a so-so review as well as HotHardware's favorable review.

Please don't deep link to my video

VideoBlogging: Deep Linking To Video Etiquette

How Copyright Policy Gets Twisted

The Register's Andrew Orlowski analyzes the latest, and perhaps most serious, threat from the copyright cartel. The legislation, sponsored by senators from both major U.S. political parties (here's my previous posting about this horrid bill), is aimed at peer to peer technology but has a much wider application.

As Andrew notes, citing warnings from critics of this legislation, "It may soon be possible to carry around an AK-47 assault rifle and an iPod with you down the street - and be arrested for carrying the iPod."

He asks how this could be happening, given that Orrin Hatch, the key sponsor, once seemed to be on the side of fair use and other users' rights. Part of it is money, no doubt.

Andrew aims a well-deserved barb at the technology community for not taking its case to Congress in a more organized way, and this is also true. But I think he underestimates two things.

(Continue reading this post at Dan Gillmor's eJournal)

Java3D Source Code Released

Over the past few months (aka year) the future of Java3D has been in question. Not too long ago Apple announced a port to OS X, but still no official update from Sun. A few weeks ago Sun announced that they were going to release the source code and begin collecting comments for version 1.4/2.0. And today they delivered, right before the JavaOne conference. The announcement can be found here and the CVS here. The code includes the core scenegraph, the vector math library, and Sun's own add-on utility libraries.

First Ever Ruggedized Satellite Glove Phone Unveiled

Network Anatomy has revealed that they're working on a multimedia communication system built into a ruggedized, waterproof glove for emergency workers. Called CommanderGauntlet, the glove is powered by Microsoft Windows CE and will feature wireless data, satellite phone, video and text messaging. It will even support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and feature an optional fold-out keyboard, according to published specs.

Up time (Supernova Conference Blog)

The connectivity is much better from Supernova today. Here's the conference blog.

IT Conversations is webcasting the event. More about that here.

Mobo for Vertically Challenged Devices

VIA is shipping an ultra-low profile mini-ITX mainboard suitable for flat TVs, LCD-panel computers, and other vertically challenged devices. The Epia MS uses a minimalistic I/O backplate and SODIMM memory for a slimmer form-factor, and is VIA's first mini-ITX board available with a fanless 1GHz Eden embedded processor. The board has several processor options, but they all include the PadLock Ace hardware RNG and AES encrypt/decrypt features that are now supported by the Linux and BSD kernels.

Free Video Hosting on the Linux Public Broadcasting Network

Linux Public Broadcasting Network.

Wireless a priority for big media

With high-quality wireless video on the horizon, media companies like Disney and Time Warner are thinking about providing full mobile phone services.

FCLA-Digital Archive: File Format Information

A series of technical reports on various file formats, including available metadata.

PHP media file parser

PHP4 script that extracts useful metadata from multimedia file formats.

New Services Improve Access To Independents

"High-speed computer access is not the only way to spare yourself a trip to the video store.

Among the most popular alternatives, rent-by-mail giant Netflix has attracted millions of users with its giant library of DVDs and simple fee structure ($20 for as many movies as you can watch in a month).

It has been so successful that brick-and-mortar video giant Blockbuster plans to expand its online DVD sales service next year to include rentals, for mail delivery.

Now, a subscription service called Film Movement is aiming to bring small independent movies to viewers no matter where they live..."

iChat AV at 35,000 Feet

Can you astroturf your own marketing dreck? I suppose it's just coincidence that in the screenshot Apple's product line manager took for this Apple Hotnews story he casually mentions to a friend that "Sales should be up significantly this quarter." But fine, we'll excuse the iShill since the page is actually pretty cool -- it details the "first commercial in-air videoconference," between two Apple employees, one in Cupertino, and the other on a jet using Lufthansa's wireless high-speed internet ground-to-plane internet.

(via Gizmodo)

Internet Radio Bots

rand()% (yeah, that's a real name) is an Internet radio station that streams nothing but computer generative music. Down Kraftwerk fans down! It means music generated from computer algorithms. Everything you hear here is composed in real-time, therefore in a sense this is an avant-garde jazz station only that the cats are software bots.

A survey of playlist formats.

"This document is a survey of playlist data formats. It is useful in two ways. One, as a collation of data which is normally scattered all over the web, it is a helpful reference. Two, having this data in one place makes it easier to observe patterns.

Playlists are comparatively simple objects. They are nothing but lists -- here is the first song, here is the second. As a result they fail to excite the imagination of many people, because the expressive possibilities seem too limited. But from my background as a musician, arranger and composer, I know that the sequencing of aesthetic experiences has huge expressive possibilities. In my work on playlists I aim to help extend the expressive power of sequencing to objects on the world wide web."

Maxtor SATA MaXLine III

Maxtor has introduced its third-generation MaXLine series of hard disks. Originally introduced over two years ago as the 120GB and 160GB DiamondMax D540X drives, the MaXLine series are designed for larger organisations and ship with a whopping 16MB buffer, native command queuing (up to 32 instructions execution to improve storage subsystem bandwidth), and additional SATA II features.

Apple To Bring H.264 Codec To QuickTime

"Apple on Wednesday announced that the H.264/Advanced Video Codec (AVC) will be incorporated in its QuickTime software in an upcoming release next year. The video technology has been ratified by the DVD Forum for use in the High Definition (HD) DVD format; it was jointly developed by the Motion Picture Expert's Group (MPEG) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and has been ratified into the MPEG-4 specification as well."

Comdex 2004 Trade Show Cancelled

"Computer trade show Comdex, once the biggest event on the tech calendar, has been canceled this year, a victim of the growing interest in shows emphasizing consumer electronics and specialist IT gear. Eric Faurot, vice president of Comdex organizer MediaLive International, revealed the plans in an exclusive interview with CNET News.com, saying the company plans to give Comdex a breather after years of falling attendance, in the number of both..."

(For years I had asked my employers to stop sending me to NAB and Comdex and start paying my way to CES. They thought I was crazy. Maybe I am, but at least I know where the important ideas are. :) -kc.)

FLV Metadata

Some info on FLV (Flash Video) metadata from a Macromedia developer.

FLV MetaData Injector

A Win32 application that can add 'onMetaData' AMF (Action Message Format )data to FLV (Flash Video) files.

The fan films strike back

A well-done look at the fan film phenomenon: The Fan Films Strike Back. Thanks to digital cinema and the Web, geeks are filming their own STAR WARS and STAR TREK stories. "Fan Films" are works that steal characters and situations from a licensed movie franchise without permission.They are usually, but not always, shot by amateurs. The films themselves (which made the bootleg rounds at conventions before the Internet) are now distributed for free online. [Cinema Minima, JD's New Media Musings]

WiFi in Cars

Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press (and his own eJournal) has seen the future; it's a 2004 Lincoln Aviator SUV with Wi-Fi. The concept probably won't show until the 2006 model year, but third-party applications could show up as soon as next year.

Taking the Induce Act to its Illogical Conclusion

What would the world look like under Senator Orrin Hatch's (R-UT) Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act (PDF)? To give you a glimpse, we drafted a mock legal complaint (PDF) against Apple for "inducing" copyright infringement by manufacturing the iPod, CNET for reviewing the iPod, and Toshiba for providing hard drives for the iPod.

As we note in Prelude to a Fake Complaint, filing a lawsuit under the co-called Induce Act is like dropping a litigation bomb on any company that gives users products that have even the slightest potential to assist in copyright infringement. If this bill had been law in 1984, there would be no VCR. If this bill had been law in 1995, there would be no CD burners. If this bill had been law in 2000, there would be no iPod. If this bill becomes law in 2004, there's no telling what we'll be missing.

While the mock complaint is fake, the threat that this bill poses is real. If you care about innovation -- not to mention free speech -- take a few minutes to visit EFF's Action Center and let your Senators know that the Induce Act is a very bad idea.

Another video blogger

See this about the Manhattan Neighborhood Network and all the video content the people want to make and show. It'll all be coming online soon. [via Loic] Earlier exploding TV posts here.

(Go Jay! -kc.)

meshcube

The MeshCube is a new hardware platform dedicated to WirelessLAN mesh routing, developed by 4G Systems, Hamburg.

The future of wireless internet? If I understand this correctly, this allows anyone to create a wireless backbone.

(Darrel of The Thing just got a couple of these in the other week for a wireless project. Hoping he'll let the meshcubes come out and play in a bit. -kc.)

All-Digital Brazilian Cinema

The future has landed on Brazil, among the most technophiliac of developing nations, in the form of digital cinema production and distribution. Because it's so tough lugging film reels into Brazil's almost inaccessible hinterlands, the Brazilians have created a digital network of 100 movie theatres that pick up new films via digital download. Suggested by Emeka[Link]

Brazil has one of the highest rates of Internet use in the developing world, with 95 percent of taxpayers using the web to make their annual income-tax declaration. The country's voting system is fully electronic and its banking software is among the most advanced in the world. Even Brazil's computer hackers are so skilled that a leading expert recently warned, "Brazil is both a laboratory for cybercrime and also its largest exporter worldwide."

But it's also home to the creative spark that was harnessed for more practical ends by Rain when they sought to develop a new digital exhibition and distribution platform. Using Windows Media 9 soft- ware, engineers came up with MPEG-4, video compression software that is cheaper and faster than the current system. The MPEG-4 software can squeeze a feature film onto a file of just five gigabytes, 15 times smaller than the MPEG-2 technology presently used.

Government RSS Feeds

One of the cooler bits of network tech is RSS ("really simple syndication" is probably the most common defintion), which is a way of distributing updated site content to subscribers. For people who read a lot of websites over the course of the day, RSS is a life-saver. Most blogs (including WorldChanging) have RSS feeds, and an increasing number of news outlets do, too. But any website that publishes regularly updated information can provide an RSS feed. RSS in Government is a site dedicated to collecting and promoting the use of RSS feeds by government agencies, whether local, state, federal, or international. The main site page mixes general RSS and blogging news with specific updates on government-related RSS feeds.

Sony Projector Gets Bright Images From Black Screen

"Sony has developed a new projector that can give a bright, unfaded picture without the need to eliminate ambient light. The secret is that they project onto a black screen instead of a white one. Their screen uses species filters so that white ambient light is absorbed, but the red, green, and blue light from the projector is reflected. Sony sees a possible use in home entertainment systems because of the ability to have a much bigger picture than conventional TVs as well as businesses adopting the projectors for presentations."

Sky TV Game Channel enables viewers to transmit camera phone photos during program

From picturephoning.com I learned that today the first "mobile to TV" service would be launched, enabling camera phone users in the U.K. to transmit photos to a television program for display during the program.

According to the press release from Requestec, a London-based messaging company, the Game Network (a TV channel for computer gamers) on Sky TV will begin accepting photos from camera phones. The phone also will appear whenever the sender transmits a text message for the live TV chat feature.

Tapeless cameras gaining traction

Videotape is nearly history. From EditCam to XDCam to P2, TVTechnology breaks down the tapeless cameras on the market by talking to the early adopters who put them to work.

Mime Types

Common MIME types and their corresponding file extensions.

The XSPF Playlist Format

XML Shareable Playlist Format specification.

An RDF view of REST

Modelling REST resources using RDF.

Junxion: Shared Internet Over Cellular

Although they're still in the prototype stage, a Seattle company called Junxion is doing something potentially very useful. By plugging any number of cellular network PCMCIA cards into their 'Junxion' box, which then acts as a router over Ethernet or WiFi to any number of local machines, the company plans to capitalize on the ever-expanding data bandwidth available on modern cellular networks. So instead of scrambling to find a WiFi connection -- which is still a good option, of course, especially if it's a free node -- you can set up a mobile workplace with a decent internet connection anywhere you can get a cellular signal. You're limited to the speeds of the cellular network, of course, but between a Junxion box, which is pretty large now, but will surely get smaller, and built-in WiFi, you should be able to get wireless internet just about anywhere. And that, as they say, owns. (Thanks, Oliver!)

Lucent and Microsoft TV to collaborate in digital TV services provision

Microsoft and Lucent Technologies have signed a memorandum of understanding to integrate the Microsoft TV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) software platform with Lucent solutions to enable telecommunications providers to add digital TV services to their existing broadband product offerings.

Microsoft is keen to push its own technology platform for delivery and management of next-generation digital TV services via broadband networks. The two companies are working together in a nonexclusive arrangement to offer end-to-end network solutions integration, including OSS/BSS integration, consulting, design and deployment, through Lucent Worldwide Services.

This integration between Lucent Technologies and Microsoft enables the delivery of standard-definition, high-definition and on-demand programming to the Microsoft TV IPTV-based set-top box via the Lucent Stinger IP-Enabled Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexor (DSLAM) and Lucent ADSL2+ modem.

Multimedia Filetypes

A decent collection of info on the metadata available from various multimedia formats.

Codec Comparison

A fairly comprehensive comparison of various video codecs.

SBC Plans FTTH

SBC Communications said Tuesday it could spend up to $6 billion over five years to deploy a superfast Internet-based network capable of delivering digital TV and other premium services.

Beginning this summer, SBC said it plans "neighborhood-level" tests with the help of Microsoft, whose fledging Internet TV technology will get its first major tryout as a result of the deal.

Verizon, the largest U.S. local phone company, has previously said it will spend $1 billion to lay the foundation for a fiber optic network connecting homes and businesses in nine states with plans for video services next year.

Future of Media Meeting, Portland, Or. June 24, 2004

A Portland Town Meeting on the Future of Media will be held in Portland, Oregon June 24, 2004, 5:30pm-9:30pm at the Oregon Convention Center.

This event is free and open to the public. It is presented in partnership with City Club of Portland, MIPRAP, Jobs With Justice, Communications Workers of America Local 7901, American Federation of Musicians Local 99, and the Mt. Hood Cable Regulatory Commission.

Speex - speech-friendly audio codec

Speex is an Open Source/Free Software patent-free audio compression format designed for speech. The Speex Project aims to lower the barrier of entry for voice applications by providing a free alternative to expensive proprietary speech codecs. Moreover, Speex is well-adapted to Internet applications and provides useful features that are not present in most other codecs. Finally, Speex is part of the GNU Project and is available under the Xiph.org variant of the BSD license.

VideoBlogging: Video Blogging Week

I just signed up to participate in Video Blogging Week.

That means one video blog post per day, starting on June 20th.

This is going to be challenging.

Predicting The Shape of TV Over IP

"TV over broadband is coming, but it could manifest itself in any of several different forms, with significant consequences for ISPs large and small.

Whether it's downloading or streaming or traditional broadcasting, television service has not yet arrived in people's homes. Before it does, ISPsóeven small independentsóare trying to suss out how they can get a piece of the action, or at least avoid being left in the dust or out on a limb.

In the first in this occasional series on video over the Net, we talk to two small ISPs who are carefully watching the brave new world of broadband video unfoldóand taking some baby steps..."

(Thanks, hollywood liberation army)

giFT-FastTrack

"giFT-FastTrack is an Open Source implementation of the FastTrack P2P protocol used by KaZaA, iMesh and Grokster. giFT is a portable filesharing daemon which can be used with different front ends and can connect to multiple networks via plugins."

CreativeCommons SMIL Module

A format for metadata regarding the copyright license under which a SMIL document is released.

FAIRCOPY lets your fans make you money

FAIRCOPY has developed an innovative way for musicians to distribute their content over P2P networks and get paid. They've also built in a way for fans to leverage the power of P2P to resdistribute their favorite FAIRCOPY artists, and make a commission. Musicians can also offer free samples of their work under Creative Commons licenses.

Lessig speaks on tech IP law and indie filmmaking at LA Film Festival

Not tomorrow, but next Saturday June 26 at the Directors Guild in Los Angeles from 10AM - 1PM:

Symposium on Copyright, Piracy, and the Future of Independent Filmmaking: The MPAA's screener ban was a wake-up call to the independent film community. With our future threatened, the community joined together and was eventually successful in defeating the ban in federal court. But policy is being created every day, at every level, that impacts the channels for distribution, access to independent films, and the protection of creative rights. This symposium (the first of two parts) offers a forum for critical analysis and debate about these important issues -- issues that are not easily or often addressed among the very people they impact most: independent filmmakers. Our goal is to form strategic alliances that will help us maintain and extend a production and distribution environment where independent filmmaking can continue to thrive. Part II of the Symposium will take place at the IFP Market in New York on September 26.

Join Lawrence Lessig, named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries and author of The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace examine copyright and anti-piracy policies affecting the motion picture industry today and the future of the independent filmmaker. Following a coffee break, a panel of experts and advocates will join him, including Robert Greenwald, (Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, Burning Bed), producer, director and documentary filmmaker.

Torrentocracy

Torrentocracy (alternate) "is the combination of RSS, bit torrent, your television and your remote control...By running torrentocracy on a computer connected to your television, you not only become a viewer of any available content from the internet, but you also become a part of a vast grass roots media distribution network." I'm really excited about this. I bet Dave Winer, Adam Curry, Ernest Miller, Steve Gillmor, Paul Boutin, Jon Udell and a lot of other people will be too. The author says it's written to be integrated within MythTV. I wonder if it works with a connected DVD player? Update Torrentocracy gets Slashdotted. Update2 There's a comment in there from someone named "Grummet". It ain't me. But it could very well be a cousin.

(Looks like p2pvod is here. Just spoke with Alan about similar functionality in a forthcoming Freevo release. this should be a busy but fun summer. -kc.)

Feedster enclosure lists

Looking for RSS enclosures and feeds? Feedster has a new section that lists the latest enclosures it finds among the hundreds of thousands of feeds it scans continuously. Images, mp3 files, .torrents, basically any kind of file that can be dropped at a URL. Scott, you rule.

NYC Municipal Wireless Data Cloud

"New York City looking to spend up to $1/2 Billion to build huge wireless data network, to serve all public safety agencies, city wide, at 2 Mbps or faster, supporting multiple concurrent data and digital video streams, everywhere." [Edward Mitchell: Common Sense Technology]

Does Participatory Journalism Go Too Far?

Trudy Schuett: Did Denver Big3 Deliberately Endanger Citizen Journalists?

Because I have a satellite dish, I happened to be watching an evening newscast of a Denver station, KCNC Channel Four. Early this week, the Denver area experienced a spate of tornadoes. They included in their coverage a number of photos taken by citizens with digital cameras or cell phones. As you can imagine, many of these were very well done, close up and quite dramatic.

The newscasters also encouraged viewers to send in their pictures of the event, which is where this kind of citizen journalism stopped being a positive thing.

I can’Äôt imagine what they were thinking. They were actually suggesting their viewers go out, put themselves in harm’Äôs way, and take pictures of tornadoes.

Making wikivideo in a videowiki

I'm thinking about a system for editing individual videoclips, from videoblogs, into sequences which then can be stored as SMIL-documents in the editors blog. Afterwards the sequence might re-edited and stored as new versions by others without changing the original sequence or the video-clips. From now on I will refer to this concept as "wikivideo". Actually I'll probably end up writing about the wiki-like part of the system more than about the blogging part.

Anyway, wikivideo it is: Being "fast" and "collaborative" videomaking, but still crediting individual effort.

Music Metadata

Music metadata wiki workspace at Socialtext.

More Exploding Jeff Jarvis :)

More great information for those following the exploding TV thread: Drazen Pantic, a pioneer in bringing the power of video to citizens, has two great pieces on his site:

: This one describes how a peer-to-peer TV network can work.

: This one -- called Anybody Can Be TV -- briefly gives details on such things as open-source video editing and streaming tools.

: More exploding TV: Disney starts its own direct-to-TiVo-like-box service, Moviebeam.

It's every mogul for himself out there. Add it up: Disney goes around cable and DVD distribution channels. Starz teams up with Real, risking the ire of cable. TiVo starts its own direct-to-TiVo service, challenging cable and satellite. CNN starts a broadband channel, which would have enraged cable operators except its parent is a big cable operator. McDonald's starts abandoning TV advertising.

We're witnessing the disruption of the TV business by the Internet. Fuse is lit. Explosion coming.

moops

Aisling Kellher and co at MIT are working on a Nokia interface for vogging. They've got a mupe server up and running and some test movies to have a look at.

Running a G4 Laptop with the lid closed

macosxhints - Run newer PowerBooks with the lid closed.

New PJ Educators Discussion Group

In an effort to start a broader conversation on the issues journalism educators face as they try to apply a civic focus into existing courses (or create new courses dedicated to the practice of civic journalism), I have initated a new online discussion group via Yahoo Groups: Public Journalism Educators.

For those interested in the educational implications of this movement, consider joining and chiming in.

Radio for Kids

"La Caja de Msica" (The music box) is a website which broadcasts a weekly radio program devoted to Chilean kids. Every Monday it uploads a new 45-minute long program with news, songs, and information for children. The news is it does not belong to a media company, but a musical producer, as El Mercurio explains in a recent story (in Spanish). Its success on the Internet has been followed by traditional radio, as stations in five cities are now broadcasting the program.

FAAC

Lesser GPL-licensed AAC/MP4 encoder.

National Summit For Community Wireless, August 20-22, 2004

From their press release:

The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN), Prairienet, and Free Press invite you to join us for a national Community Wireless Networking Summit August 20-22, 2004 in Urbana, IL. "Making the Connection: The 2004 National Summit for Community Wireless Networks" will focus on grassroots action, impacting national regulations and policies, and building a coalition of local groups, researchers, policy leaders, decision-makers, and community activists.

It's time we organized to take the public airwaves back from corporate interests. Community Wireless Networks offer more services for cheaper prices and are owned by the communities that deploy them. Anyone interested in making the "public interest" the number one priority in our wireless telecommunications infrastructure should definitely attend this summit.

Community Wireless Developers from across North America will be demonstrating cutting-edge technologies; researchers and programmers will discuss recent breakthroughs and developments; and policy-makers and funders will strategize with participants on how to launch new initiatives.

I just had a brief e-mail exchange with Sascha, one of the conference organizers, about adding a session on streaming media over wireless. He seems enthusiastic, so it's all about the details.

A Brief Introduction to GPS Photo Linking

Digital cameras record EXIF data that tells us when we took a picture, but what if wewant to know where; too? Contributor to O'Reilly's Digital Photography Hacks, David Goldwasser introduces us to using GPS positioning data with EXIF timestamps to build interactive maps showing pictures of markers. What a sweet convergence of technologies.

AudioCoding.com

AudioCoding.com's goal is to provide the community with free MPEG-4 audio codecs.

'Mass media marketing is over'

McDonald's marketing chief has a wake-up call for the networks. "The time has come for us to agree that mass media marketing is over," said Larry Light. McDonalds is shifting dollars to cable TV and the Internet. "We're asking media to come to us with creative ideas," he said. "Just like the (advertising) agencies compete, why don't media compete?"

NHJ's New Lineup, Plus D'zign DV-5 2GB Hard Drive Videocamera

Japan's NHJ announced a boatload of new products recently, including updates to their Che-ez! cameras (which tend to live up to their name), a new 1" hard drive player with a 1.5GB drive for Cornice, new V@MP players, a 5-megapixel camera, and, most interestingly, the D'zign DV-5 video camera [pictured] with an integrated 2GB hard drive. Slated to go on sale for around ¥40,000 (~$360), the DV-5 does have a 2-inch TFT LCD monitor, but no optical zoom. The 3-megapixel CCD can record still images or record video at 640 x 480 at 30fps (MPEG4). Sounds great to me -- I see flash memory as a necessary evil in small devices, and the sooner we can start migrating to hard drives the better.

Hatch to Introduce INDUCE Act

Fred von Lohmann at EFF Deep Links reports that Sen. Orrin Hatch is planning to introduce, possibly today, a bill to create a new form of indirect liability for copyright infringement. The full name of the bill is somewhat bizarre: the "Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation Act".

Not being a lawyer, I can't immediately say what impact this bill would have. But Fred von Lohmann, a very smart copyright lawyer, sees it as a threat to innovation, and Ernest Miller, who is also well versed in copyright law, uses me as an example of a person whose legitimate activities might be threatened by the bill. That's definitely not the kind of thing I wanted to read over breakfast.

We'll have to see how the Hatch bill is received. If it passes, it looks like computer security research may become even more of a legal minefield than it already is.

Tidepool and Storymill

Organize, browse and share photos using semantic web tagging technology.

Greenstone Digital Library Software

A suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections.

"It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License."

Metadata Features

Metadata features of the Windows Media Format.

3G/WiFi Combo Card

GlobeTrotter Fusion announced the first combo wireless card with everything to go; 3G UMTS, GPRS and 802.11g WiFi, in a single PC card.

On a 3G network the card connects up to 384kbps. Within range of a public WiFi hotspot, it can go 54Mbps. In areas where 3G or WiFi services are not available GlobeTrotter Fusion still ensures reliable and secure data connection over the widely available GPRS services (20-40 kbps).

Wireless Network Storage - Cheap

Are you creating a Terabyte LifeLog and don't know where to put it? Now you can take it with you.

The Linksys Network Storage Link, with street pricing as low as $75, breaks open the Network Access Storage market, reports Tim Higgins. It converts any external USB hard drive into networked storage.

The Linksys Network Storage Link has two USB ports that support connection of two USB 1.1 / 2.0 external hard drives or one USB hard drive and one USB flash-based storage device. It has browser-based administration with built-in disk utilities that include a backup program. The backup program can perform scheduled backups between two USB drives attached to the NSLU2.

NEA media grants deadline 2004 September 10

The U. S. National Endowment for the Arts grants are available to support the development, production, and national distribution of radio and television programs on the arts. Complete Application Packages must be postmarked (or show other proof of mailing) no later than 2004 September 10. [Listen Up! Newsblog]

Talking about disruptive journalism

Talking about disruptive journalism.... "I'm noticing a trend in how I get certain news... and it's less and less from the media. Here's an assignment."

[Eric Rice]

BBC opens content floodgates

"The Creative Archive is fuel for the creative nation," said Paula Le Dieu, co-director of the initiative. "It allows people to download these excerpts and be able to edit them and incorporate them into their own creative works."

Outloud: Upload video from the internet to television in Amsterdam

With Outloud it becomes possible for everyone to show their own video clips on television. The Crossmedia jukebox offers a platform for media makers to show their films on TV. Upload short clips via the internet to the outloud server whereupon they are transmitted on salto TV... finding their way to the Amsterdam public.

Make Your Own Damn Movie! by Lloyd Kaufmann

Lloyd Kaufmann, of TOXIC AVENGEr fame (or infamy), wrote a book called "Make Your Own Damn Movie!" with a lot of very practical tips for indie/guerilla filmmakers, such as keep a copy of the script with no sex or foul language for city permit people, neighborhood groups, etc. to see. [HD For Indies]

Contrary to Reports, RSS Feeds Can Be Searched

MediaPost today has an article on ShadowTV. The service provides video clips of TV programming for businesses and consumers through a searchable database made possible by the closed-caption transcripts of each television program. Their primary business serves PR agencies, advertisers, and advertising agencies.

This quote from the story jumped out at me...

ShadowTV is similar to RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) in that RSS feeders filter news content by desired category, but (ShadowTV President Joachin Kim) notes that ShadowTV offers more granular targeting than RSS; RSS feeders can't be searched--yet.

LimSee2

A free, open-source SMIL 1.0 and 2.0 authoring application, written in Java.

Upcoming conference on Fair Use

The New York Times has a great story about the painful process a college professor went through to clear the rights for a short, informative video to be given to incoming students:

"It's crazy," Professor Turow said of the labyrinth of permissions, waivers and fees he navigated to get the roughly three minutes of video clips included on the CD, which was paid for by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The process took months, Professor Turow said, and cost about $17,000 in fees and royalties paid to the various studios and guilds for the use of clips. The film used ranged from, for example, a 1961 episode of "Ben Casey" to a more-recent scene from "ER."

Open Source Cinema

Brett Gaylor is a documentary filmmaker based in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. He plans to put online all the source materials for his next movie, BASEMENT TAPES. He says that It will be available for anyone to download, and that he plans to have certain sections of the film specifically left in the hands of open-source filmmakers, to test out the idea. [Fourthwall Weblog]

Roll your own pirate radio station with an iPod

BoingBoing reader Philip says, "After playing around with the new iTrip mini, the FM broadcasting accessory for the iPod our little minds got working on some ideas. We thought we might be able to make the range of Griffin's iTrip mini a little better if took it apart and exposed the antenna, turns out we could. And then we thought, hey -- we could use a couple iPods to broadcast something we wanted to get out there. Perhaps not 'should' that is, but could. Here's the How To."

Collaborative, open textbook

OpenTextBook.org is a collaborative project wherein university students (and others) can turn their course notes into a giant, open textbook. You need to know how to use CVS to contribute and edit the book, but there's a daily PDF snapshot of the state of the project, which is looking pretty good!

Link

(Thanks, Steve!)

CombinFormation

A generative information space for browsing, collecting, and organizing information samples from the net."You can express yourself with the program to create information spaces on a topic. These are visual collections of information samples. The spaces may help you get a fresh perspective on materials with which your already familiar. You can also share these information spaces with others by publishing them on the web. The information space will act as a special sort of active web page. The people who browse your information spaces will be able to modify them with the same tools you have. They can navigate back to the original and hyperlinked documents. They can use the generative capability to bring in more stuff. They can publish their own derivative versions.

The program can also be used by presenters of collections of internet content, especially when it is rich in images. Presenters, such as digital libraries, and catalogs, may wish to use the generative information space to provide active and fresh views of their collections."

TI Proposed Standard for Video Over DSL

Texas Instruments announced "a new high-bandwidth DSL technology that is backwards compatible with operators¥ current infrastructure and will make it possible to add competitive video service revenue to their existing data and voice services."

"Video is the next big growth opportunity worldwide for the entire DSL market from technology and equipment providers to operators. The UDSL architecture enables operators to deliver triple-play services for voice, video and data to consumers while saving capital expenditures throughout their network since it supports all ADSL and VDSL standards and requires limited fiber investment," said Joseph Crupi, vice president of TI's Broadband Communications Group.

"TI expects to introduce its first UDSL solutions next year. UDSL-based equipment is expected to begin rolling-out in 2006 to deliver ADSL-, VDSL- and ultra-high speed services to consumers. "

2006. Well within the 5 year mark.

(Via PaidContent.org)

Pirates, sharks and moral crusaders

"Pirates, sharks and moral crusaders: Social control in peer-to-peer networks" is the title of a study conducted by European researchers published on FirstMonday.

The article proposes self-regulation as an alternative to music industry ongoing tactic of inciting fear with lawsuits, fines and even jail to compensate damages. Jurgen S. Svensson and Frank Bannister investigated two different P2P networks with its social norms and the informal social sanctions that are used to enforce these norms. There’s some evidence that in P2P networks in which its users are not anonymous and have an ongoing relationship with all other peers will have lower incidence of exchange of unlawful content (e.g. child porn and pirated music.)

The results of this investigation indicate that some self-regulation already exists and suggest that it may be possible to strengthen this self-regulation to reduce the occurrence of some types of offences. However, there is a limit to the effectiveness of peer control of illegal and antisocial activities on the Internet.

Videoblog email list

At http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging you can join a video blog email list. Jay Dedman in Manhattan has set it up, and when I subscribed there were ten on the list. Its charter is broad, largely to facilitate discussion about video blogs with particular interest in things like compression problems and those sorts of things. Sounds geeky? I guess so, but compression and bandwidth is to vogging what leading and kerning is to typography.

Mini HDD Seen Bringing Music, Video to Cellphones

A story on the spread of Mini HDD as a digital media storage devices for music etc...
Toshiba, which supplies 1.8 inch drives for Apple's original iPod, plans to launch stamp-sized 0.85 inch drives, certified by Guinness World Records as the world's smallest HDD, later this year, targeting the market for cellphones and other mobile devices.
Hitachi makes matchbook-sized one-inch drives which are used in mini iPods and can be squeezed into cellphones.
Crowding the market further, Seagate Technology HDD Holdings , the world's largest maker of HDDs, aims to launch its own one-inch drives, possibly by later this year.

(via PaidContent.org)

Using Dublin Core

An entry point for users of Dublin Core; a useful point of reference to the documentation of Dublin Core.

RDF Site Summary 1.0 Modules: Streaming

RSS module for metadata about the associated application for the media stream, the codec the stream is encoded with and additional tags for the segmentation of live/continual broadcasts.

One way or more?

Anybody seen the Radio YourWay AM/FM recorder? The promo poop on that page says it's compatible only with Windows, but I wonder if that's actually the case. It has a USB interface, and stores its recordings in MP3. If it shows up as a USB device, there shouldn't be a problem with accessing the files with a Linux or OS X system, I would presume. I kinda wish it had a stereo microphone input; but it has line-in and built-in mike features instead.

I also wonder how it works as a radio.

Linux set top box

My Settop Box - Very interesting is the Knoppmyth section.... Looks like a Knoppix/MythTV distro.

The purpose of mysettopbox.tv is to provide you the end user with the knowledge needed to assemble your very own settop box using Linux. Utilizing open source software and off the shelf hardware you'll be able to assemble a box that has the following functions:
- PVR
- Jukebox
- Image viewer
- Game station

Bitzi OpenBits

Open catalog of media file metadata.

More on the information commons

David Bollier, Why We Must Talk About the Information Commons, Law Library Journal 96, 267-282 (Spring 2004) . Excerpt:

At stake are the abilities of libraries to offer universal access to information;consumers to have competitive access to diverse sources of content, including noncommercial content; citizens to have free or cheap access to the government information that their tax dollars have financed; and students to perform research and collaborate online with each other. At stake are the ability of musicians and other artists to pioneer new forms of online creativity; creators in all media to freely quote and use a robust public domain of prior works; computer users to benefit from the innovations of competitive markets; and individuals to control how intimate personal information will be used.

Participatory Journalism, an Institution of Civil Society

Participatory journalism seems to be back in fashion after many years of an exile imposed by powerful media corporations. It's a tremendous comeback, given its potential impact on the meaning of democracy.

For some 2500 years now, political scientists have found it hard to converge on a crisp definition of democracy, even though they agree on several universally acceptable connotations of the term. Perhaps the most central of these connotations is citizen-participation in politics. This is the context that participatory journalism frames.

(Continue reading this post at PJNet Today)

The Power of Metadata

The importance of metadata for P2P filesharing.

The new protocols being developed at breakneck speed for peer-to-peer applications also add to the mess by disconnecting data from the fairly bounded arena of the Web and the ubiquitous port 80. Loosening the hyperlinks that bind all these various resources together threatens to scatter hay and needles to the winds. Where previously we had application user interfaces for each and every information system, the Web gave us a single user interface -- the browser -- along with an organizing principle -- the hyperlink -- that allowed us to reach all the material, at least in theory. Peer-to-peer might undo all this good and throw us back into the dark ages of one application for each application type or application service. We already have Napster for MP3s and work has begun on Docster for documents -- can JPEGster and Palmster be very far off?

Copyright and the Information Commons

Gary D. Price, MLIS, of The ResourceShelf points us to this: Nancy Kranich, former president of the American Library Association, has written a report for the Free Expression Policy Project titled,