Wednesday, January 22, 2003

The rise of public web services RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing -> Jeremy Allaire comments on the predominantly individually generated content in the RSS world, the evolution of programmatic services being "syndicated" on the Web. This continues the evolving thread about the openness and interdependencies of the media management environment. I've been spec'ing an audio product and it is always a challenge to balance the grassroots qualities of what we call "blogging" with the "enterprise" (in quotes because I'm trying to emphasize not big media, rather the need for support and integration capabilities) in an application/business model that can serve niche and broad market content creators. [RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing] 7:21:36 PM  comment []       Marc's Voice -> Reply to Jeremy. Anybody who has media on-line somewhere [can benefit from these standards efforts.] Even Macromedia and Adobe would benefit from this sort of open standard. Adobe's Album product is a natural, as is Macromedia's ambitions to build 'rich internet applications.' I'm gonna do a big post on this tomorrow.  [via Marc's Voice]   As I keep seeing this thread I wonder whtether this is really just an evolution of existing standards that we have such as XML, XML Schema, RSS 2.0, MetaWeblog API.  Better handling for streaming data types and richer semantics for binary media in MetaWeblog would be steps in the right direction. [Jeremy Allaire's Radio]     Sorry I'm not done yet - but I thought I'd reply to Jeremy's comments:   "Yes and No".    Yes - these ideas build on RSS, XML, OPML and uses XML-RPC.  But No - as far as I know there are no open standards for photo albums or media collections.  Winamp's .M3U playlist format is fairly open and ubiquitous, but that's about it.    Yes - we can continue to patchquilt existing standards in a bottom-up like fashion, but we're all smart people, and there's no reason why we can't architect a 'mesh' of standards, which will not only be open and foster incredible new types of RIAs and knowledge management, but also enable new kinds of on-line communities - as well.   Once we integrate media management into blogging and personal publishing tools THEN an image can have attributes, can 'intelligent', and we'll be able to track it, and alter presentations and rendering based upon all sorts of dynamic models. But if media is just a URL, then - it's just text - for all intents and purposes.   Macromedia should participate in these OPEN standards efforts surrounding this area (I know you have contributed to other efforts) - that we all could benefit from.    No one company or entity can do it alone.  The day of closed systems is over. [Marc's Voice] 7:19:52 PM  comment []       Trepia -- your instant Wi-Fi community Scott Mace's Radio Weblog -> Trepia -- your instant Wi-Fi community: meet other people in your vicinity! [80211b News] Interesting...but how does Trepia make its dime? [Scott Mace's Radio Weblog] 7:29:20 AM  comment []       W3C working on a synchronized streaming standard RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing -> SMIL notwithstanding, the World Wide Web Consortium has launched a Timed Text Working Group that will develop a standard for synchronizing text and media streamed over the Net. We can certainly use a standard, since synchronizing content with audio and video can address a variety of markets, including presentations, enhanced news and entertainment programming (providing links for futher exploration of a topic in other media) and for both the blind/visually impaired and dyslexic communities, where synchronized audio-to-text is a key to learning to read. It's one of those efforts that sounds trivial but can have large impacts on markets and individual lives. [RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing] 7:22:29 AM  comment []       The proliferation of digital media receivers. Sean Captain of PC World notes that at CES no fewer than eight companies introduced devices like HP's Digital Media Receiver which let you wirelessly stream audio and video files off of your PC and on to your stereo or television. One name that's gone largely unnoticed: Cd3o with its Network MP3 Player (pictured at right) that lacks a display, but instead talks to you via a synthesized voice. Now that's one futuristic gadget! Read [Gizmodo] 7:16:09 AM  comment []         Joi Ito's Web -> Review servers. In Marc's response to my response to Russell Beattie's comments on moblogging he talks about "Shared Reviews servers can house moblogging reports on various resturants, movies, clubs, museums, art galleries and any meatspace location." So there is another very important part of this "location thing." Servers should be distributed too. You should be able to talk to a local server. A server in your restaurant, billboard, vending machine, car. Local servers can be higher bandwith and can have lots of cool local features. You can leverage things like bluetooth and IR on devices that don't talk location very well. This decentralization is important and relates in a weird way to Dave and Evan's discussions about RSS aggregation. So what if you had RSS aggregators where you had to physically be there to see stuff. You had to be able to physically get into a nightclub before you could see the news feed for what the club members were doing... It sounds backwards to what the Net is about, but I think that there are some applications. It definitely helps on the privacy security issue if certain kinds of information are stored only locally in servers that you trust. [Joi Ito's Web] 7:12:57 AM  comment []       Open source volley The Register -> RealNetworks goes live with Helix DNA Server. Open source volley Helix DNA developers signing up under the commercial license will also be required to carry support for the RealAudio and RealVideo codecs (available in object code only) in their end products. "Frankly, this is so we can ensure a wider increase in the amount of products that use our formats," Sheeran said. He added that the software will include support for MP3 streaming, with MPEG-4 support possible in future.  [The Register] 7:03:19 AM  comment []

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