Month: March 2007

“Google’s Idea of Primetime”

Over at Shelly Palmer’s blog I wrote a comment in response to his thoughts on a recent Google presentation where it was noted that kids and teenagers weren’t consuming YouTube as much as previously assumed. He discussed some possible alternatives (video games, comic books, Long Tail) but missed one very important point. (I left the following as a comment on his blog but the formatting was terrible so it is below.)

Regarding the consumption of media by teenagers, I think you are missing one very important aspect of online life, particularly as it relates to teenagers: Talking.. Every teenager that I have talked to and asked what they do online has said one of the three following things: MySpace, Facebook and AIM.

I break this down as follows: Constructing identity, meeting people and talking with them. Sharing media and consuming media, I believe are aspects of that but take a back seat to the primary socializing behavior. I think it is possible that we are entering an era much more radical than the rise of the “Long Tail”, we just might be going back to individual and small group storytelling as the primary media.

Come to think about it, it isn’t that radical, only seems different from the norm if you were born between 1940 and 1990.

ComVu – Mobile Broadcasting

Wow.. Steve Garfield just pointed me to: ComVu – Mobile Broadcasting . Live streaming from my mobile phone.

This is something I have been looking for and/or contemplating developing for quite some time.

What is especially nice is that they don’t seem to be doing anything funky with QuickTime so I can embed myself live anywhere and it should work any time that I am live: MobVCasting: Double Wow..

ITP Projects at ETel

This past week, 7 ITP students and myself headed to San Francisco to attend O’Reilly’s ETel conference. The students were demoing their projects at the ETel Fair. The demos definitely created a buzz around the place:

Jim Van Meggelen and Brady Forrest wrote a couple of nice blog posts summing up the projects: ETel Coverage: The Future of Telephony – O’Reilly Emerging Telephony and O’Reilly Radar > Fun with Asterisk at the Etel Faire

If anyone is interested, most of these projects came out of my course at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, Redial: Interactive Telephony.

More projects from the class can be found on ITP’s show website by searching for Redial

Last, I would like to offer on behalf of the students and myself, a big thanks to the organizers of the conference and O’Reilly in general for inviting us and congratulations on the event.

Java Media – It is sad but I don’t care anymore…

Rebooting Java Media, Part III: Conclusion – O’Reilly ONJava Blog

Chris Adamson has put together a nice 3 part series of posts that explore the state of media support in Java. Long has this been a point of frustration for me and many of my colleagues (we tend to use QuickTime for Java but that is changing). I have been constantly on the look-out for a solution but one hasn’t been forthcoming. After reading Chris’ wrap-up, I have reached many of the same conclusions but I have a slightly different idea that I would like to propose.

Here are a couple of points that bring me to my conclusion:
1: I am not interested in Flash beyond what it can do with video. Flash does not have a desktop playback interface and it is not easy (as far as I know) to make a desktop app out of it. It is also seriously hindered without a plugin interface or the ability to playback other formats/codecs.
2: AJAX is open, well supported and not proprietary for rich browser based interfaces. It is very successful and is pushing hard against Flash (if it weren’t for Flash Video, I think we would be witnessing Flash’s demise (at least in terms of interfaces)).

What is missing is a truly open video format and player with the features that we all expect (codecs, wide distribution, browser integration, a plugin interface) that we can use with AJAX. QuickTime isn’t this, Real isn’t this, Windows Media isn’t this, Flash isn’t this..

This is what I think is needed.. Forget about Java Media. The people we have relied on have failed us (Apple, Sun and IBM), we should give them an F and move on.

Am I dreaming..? Can the mozilla-vlc-plugin become this?