Saturday, January 11, 2003

Marc Center: Proposal for Open Media Management Servers 10:11:18 PM  comment []       Blogging 2G: Does it need a Media Management Gateway? Harold Gilchrist: Blogging 2G: Does it need a Media Management Gateway? 2:43:45 PM  comment []       Smart Mobs -> Moblog watch: AkuAkuing in San Francisco. So I got my blogpost perl script working so that I can use it as part of the system that accepts an email from the hiptop and posts it to my main blog and also hiptop nation. There's actually several parts of the system: procmail accepts the email and calls the other scripts blogpost.pl posts to my moveable type blog using XMLRPC, according to the blogpostrc configuration specified in the procmailrc recipe (or the default in $HOME) munge_hiptop_nation_post.pl does some tweaking to the message body and subject to prepare it for forwarding off to hiptop nation. This piece is hella buggy :) ...I'll get around to cleaning it up someday.... [Smart Mobs] 2:42:30 PM  comment []       Media2Go Gizmodo -> More on Media2Go. There's more info and a photo available of that new Media2Go personal video player designed by Microsoft and Intel. The Media2Go can store up to 175 hours of VHS-quality video, and has a battery life of six hours, and runs on the Windows CE .NET operating system. Read [Gizmodo] 2:40:05 PM  comment []       Mark Kraft: "As some of you are no doubt aware, China has blocked access to all Blogspot weblogs. Users can post, but they can't see whether what they've written has gone through. Likewise, others from China can't read their weblogs." [Scripting News] 10:54:46 AM  comment []       NY Times: "Some 10,000 people took the streets in the eastern city of Hefei this week in what appears to have been the largest student demonstration since the Tiananmen Square human rights protests of 1989. But the students had a much narrower agenda: traffic safety." [Scripting News] 10:54:06 AM  comment []       RFC: MetaWeblog API RFC: MetaWeblog API Update 1/10/03 -- Started mail list, New entry point  A new mail list for developers to discuss implementing and moving forward the MetaWeblog API A new entry-point, metaWeblog.newMediaObject. 10:51:05 AM  comment []       FCC Chairman: TiVo is "God Box" FCC Chairman: TiVo is "God Box". Today at CES, I heard Michael Powell, Chairman of the FCC, talk about everything in an interview conducted by Gary Shapiro, the CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association. Powell was generally right on -- surprisingly so, in fact -- and made quite a splash when he called TiVo a "God Box" and said that he wished it could do things like share shows with his sister. This is, of course, a feature that the competing ReplayTV device already has, one that's getting them sued by the Hollywood studios. Powell's at least half a geek: he owns and uses a WiFi access-point, three or four game-consoles, and a TiVo. In related news, TiVo is getting network utilities for sharing media. Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernie!) [Boing Boing Blog] 8:10:28 AM  comment []       Asset Managers & Media Management - Media Objects in Weblogs Jeremy Allaire's Radio -> Media Objects in Weblogs There has been an active discussion recently amongst blog software vendors about a proposed extension to the MetaWeblog API for handling binary media.  It appears to be getting traction and perhaps we'll see it soon in MoveableType and Radio, if not others.   It raises an interesting issue especially as it relates to long-form streaming audio and video, where the user isn't really uploading a binary image or document, as is typically the case with binary data in web pages.   I've been experimenting quite a bit with Flash as a container for multimedia messages and content, with user recorded audio and video as the primary data types.  But the architecture is very different than a document-based HTML page.  The audio and video data is captured and recorded to a streaming server (Flash Communication Server) in real-time from the client, and then a Flash application loads and streams it in real-time from within an HTML page.   The challanges here for an open API are a plenty: With long-form video, especially, we can't assume (yet) that the weblog system is the primary storage and delivery vehicle for the streaming asset.  Each streaming architecture for rich media is different, and weblog systems don't have a standard API to be aware of that data. How can weblogs account for content and data external to their system? The solution we've come up with is very simple --- don't use the weblog to store or deliver any of the binary data, just use it to encapsulate HTML fragments that do live in pages and therefore can apply category meta-data and participate in RSS feeds.  But this just doesn't feel right, it's sort of hacking around a system that hasn't yet been designed to handle multimedia conversations. [Jeremy Allaire's Radio] Marc's Voice -> How 'bout this: - an open source media management system written in Apache Cocoon? - it looks like an XML storage cloud, object store. It could map to the Userland XMLStorage system and other existing storage systems - it would hold object attributes (obviously), and a pointer to the actual location of media - which practically speaking could be on your local hard drive, your own storage cloud, on some other device in your home, or at school, the office or practically anywhere else. This media could also be streaming media or one of those whacky Rhapsody files that only download 99% of the file, and stream the last 1% on playback - this would enable bloggers to share each other's images, audio and video and in general, create a sandbox for media fun This sort of media management system could be accessed from many different kinds of blogging tools, on-line communtiies or other web services or web apps.  As long we we all can share the media, all of our goals will be fulfilled.  I believe that Macromedia had something to do with Apache Cocoon and it's XML - so that should be cool.  Open APIs - for everyone to use! [Marc's Voice] RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing -> Jeremy's suggestion that the files be encapsulated in HTML but reside somewhere else off the blog is absolutely the right way to deal with the problem. The question is how to meta-tag and facilitate the integration of non-blogged material into a distributed a/v distribution system. Marc's got some of the keys to this puzzle.... [RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing] 7:27:33 AM  comment []

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