August 10, 2006
Jay Fienberg emailed these interesting comments on the MP3HTML file format I made up a couple weeks ago:
I've been thinking about your MP3 embedded in HTML experiment, and I
keep meaning to write you about it. Mostly, I keep wanting to write
and say "no", and then think "why not?", and get stuck--so, I guess
it's an interesting experiment, and it got me thinking :-)
BTW, Why not just embed HTML and other stuff in MP3s?
Part of my bias against this kind of embedded approach is that, generally, I like the idea of decoupling data / information from files. The nice example, I think, is being able to put a URL in my browser and get back lots of files that represent a "web page"--the browser decides to load lots of images and supporting files to give me a page that is not just what's in the HTML. (And, generally, I think the browser / hypertext interaction can be pushed further, with the browser doing more / different things with various forms of links--all without me, the end-user. having to worry about what is or isn't in one file or another.)
Along these lines, I could imagine an HTML based media format, e.g., application/xhtml+mp3, that doesn't necessarily embed the media data inside the HTML, but media players would read this type and expect different / specific elements representing binary media files that they then would do something with / download / play.
In terms of the potential to exploit this using existing browsers with Javascript, I think it's maybe comparable with the embedded MP3 approach--the Javascript can download external mp3s via HttpRequest.
Anyway, I think there's something to what you've done--maybe embedding vs external is just a matter of options, the way it is generally. In other words, if we have a way to declare something a "media HTML" resource that should be played by a media player, in principle HTML allows binary data to be either embedded or linked, and either should work.
I actually think that is the bigger deal: suggesting that there might be a viable "media HTML" format that's not too much weirder than HTML itself.
An answer to one specific point:
Why not just embed HTML and other stuff in MP3s?
Because you wouldn't be able to get at the HTML and other stuff without knowledge specific to MP3. If nothing else, we should be able to get out of the problem where every user agent must understand every media format.
There is a secondary problem which isn't directly related to format
design: to get anything done, we need a strategy for avoiding the need
for client-side software.
One last thing -- I love the coinage Media HTML. It's
the kind of name which evokes the thing being named without any
explicit setup or explanation.
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unmediated.av:
The Weekly Show
drawing from extrastruggle.
We've been having a back channel conversation amongst the trackers at unmediated about how/whether to update the way in which we aggregate, present, and make useable the content on the site, in light of all the various aggregators, digg and its clones, and role model group blog sites that we all consume/use/hate/love. Since we all primarily support open media movements and the freedom of bits and so forth, and with all of us being busy with our primary projects, we are looking for ways to make getting content on the site easier and more streamlined, while making it obvious that we are presenting other sources content. With the availability of open API's for just about any type of media aggegration literally getting past the saturation point, and mashups taking every possible form, we are wondering, is it time to take a step back, or a step forward with how/what we do at umediated? In the course of my surfing today, i found this new site, Boxxet Which just might be the straw that breaks the camel's back in how we all perceive the current mix and match nature of the web as it now stands. What's different about Boxxet from other aggregators and mashups like the newest entry popurls, (which aggregates digg, slashdot, reddit, newsvine, tailrank, and flickr) is that Boxxet is a Website generator. Thats right, just pop in all the urls u want to aggregate (and WHAT from them) choose how u want to format it, plug in the url that u want it to be accessed at... and whammo: Your own site with everyone elses content, and all thats left to do is decide whether googleplex or yahooza is going to be the source of your linklove revenue. And if u have on older domain that u plug this into...well, we all know how the pageranking with search engines work by now. It used to be that u had to have a bit of code knowledge to make all this stuff work. Eyebeam's Re-blog engine which powers this site was not a simple undertaking at the time that Michael Frumin and Michael Migurski put it all together... a half a year before Marc Broadband-mechanicked the term Reblog as his latest buzzword before casting his attention on the ourmedia-meme. (kudo's, kudo's) But now, with the cut and paste mentality of webculture that we at unmediated have helped create, the pace at which people are remixing and repurposing code is accelerating at a rate similar to the curve that we saw with pro-sumer desktop video... almost anyone can do it. I have this sinking feeling in my gut that we will arrive sooner than later at the same existential threshold that the film studios and record labels are squirming under to our joyful cries of "die, dinosaurs, die!". What i am wondering, is how long until my hero of the open-information movement, Cory Doctorow, and the rest of our pals at BB will tolerate re-aggregation and repurposing of his content, (now that he is investing so much more time at the site) before he (or any of one us) screams, "FOUL!" Stewart Butterfield over at Flickr is dealing with this beast at the moment...and i have to admire the dryness with which he states, "I loaded the FlickrCentral pool and firefox got up to using 240mb of ram before dying. So that's not a great user experience, but it's really terrible for Flickr. If it catches on and you don't limit it, we'll have to cut you off :\" Sure, Stewart, blame it on the user experience and firefox. ;) I admire your candor, and personal attention/approach to what has become one of the hottest new BRANDS in Web 2.0 ...that u still have time to be personal and all flickr-fuzzy even after being acquired, but I am sure that your jeans feel like they're fitting a bit tighter all of a sudden. Pretty soon, I expect, a lot of us bell-bottomed infornistas are going to wake up in a similar pair of Jordaches. I'm curious which of us will cut the inseams and sew in another totally different material to keep our style,and which of us will claim that now that we're wearing skintight jeans ("they're really really comfortable...REALLY! You think i should get a pair of Reeboks to go with 'em?"), that the manufacture of bell-bottoms should be forbidden. I point this all out in good humour only to illustrate a point: The times, they are('nt) a changin'>, and Cory just might wake up one day soon in his magic kingdom, and say "Hey, man, where'd all my whuffie go? And he's going to have no choice but to join Walt's pinstripesuits in pushing for copyright extension. It's a pill i hope he (and we) never have to swallow. So i pose the question to our community readers: How do you see unmediated-Are we crossing the boundaries in how we repurpose content? Would you like to see more editorializing? Narrower/Broader scope? Are we a repository of information that you come back to use, or just part of your daily information addiction? Let us know... I, for one, would like to have an idea about what pair of jeans to wear this year ;) michael
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Berkeley Conference: Online Video and the Future of Television - Friday, September 30, 2005
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unmediated is a group blog that tracks the tools, processes,
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