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Wednesday, January 08, 2003 |
CES Exclusive: Sonic Introduces first Media Center PC DVD Authoring Tool. The official announcement comes on the show floor tomorrow, but Sonic gave us (and you) an advanced look at PrimeTime, its new DVD creation application. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]
Microsoft's Media Center Edition PC now has product specifcially designed for it. It's made by Sonic - the leading DVD burning software company.
Here's a great DVD creation guide - by PC magazine.
Sonic hopes to OEM this product to hardware manufacturers. Sounds like a great business model.
The Sims Online. The games that last are the ones that use your imagination. The Sims' creators have this figured out, and now your imagination can extend to the entire online community. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]
This is by far the best game there is in the world today. I say that not only because there's no shooting, killing, driving or flying but because simulations are dynamic processes - that come alive and teeth with trembling reality. The Sims apparently has just passed Myst as the best saling PC game EVER! Congrats to Will and EA!
I really want to integrate the Sims into our tool environment. Sim characters could generate blogs and all sorts of on-line media content (and maintain their own digital identity and entire on-line persona), while real-world data, news and media - could be passed into the Sim environment - and brought to life at parties, in homes or embosse dinto lawns or swimming pools. The posssibilities are endless.
Yet another application of XML-RPC.
Add Pictures to Your Audio Notes. Digital voice recorders are hitting the market in full force, but the Olympus W-10 stays one step ahead with its built-in camera. [Fresh Reviews from PC Magazine]
This cool. A voice recorder and digital camera combo.
Now imagine it with a WiFi connection and you've got a mic-camera - that's small, handy and ready for moblogging - audioblogging - photo posting.
This is more evidence that devices are gonna play more and more of a role in our digital lifestyles. Let's just hope that the data is output as .jpg and .wav or .mp3.
Anyone could take a walk, and record their thoughts while walking. I find this is the best time to think, and having something handy and small to record my thoughts - would be great!
One could also take photos along the walk, and come home and upload it all - to share it with all of us.
If the wireless connection was good enough, one could walk by their neighbors homes - say Larry Ellison's house, or even John Doerr or Joan Baez, and use their WiFi network to do the posting.
One could actually map out the entire walk, using this technique. We'd all get to see beautiful Woodside and what that legendary estate of Ellison's looks like - from the road.
[ the reverse cowgirl's blog] Relevant content to freshen the air (courtesy of the Reverse Cowgirl.)
Start-up marries blogs and camera phones. Moblogs going commercial. Marc and Dave talk about how moblogging should support the MetaWeblog API. I agree.
Having said that, I think many carriers will go try to build the whole shooting match on their own. They don't understand the value of the community or the tools. At least in Japan, carriers are very cocky and relatively well funded so I bet they will go it on their own, generally. (Not that I won't try to get them to use open standards.) I think another more interesting target are people who don't have a network of their own.
People like digital camera companies, hiptop device companies (Danger and Good), and cell phone companies like Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Anyway, doing a simple moblog is easy. (Posting pictures from a phone.) Making it REALLY interesting is going to be very exciting involving hardware, firmware, embedded software, DSP's, wireless technology, camera technology, identity, voice, privacy, security, GPS and LOTS of other stuff.
The Register Start-up marries blogs and camera phones By electricnews.net Posted: 08/01/2003 at 11:03 GMT A Dublin-based start-up is to offer software to mobile operators that will enable mobile phone users to create and maintain Weblogs or "blogs" using only their phones.
[Joi Ito's Web]
Dave wrote.....
A survey of new stuff for 2003 would be incomplete without mentioning mobile weblogging, or moblogging, a term identified by Joi Ito, another new friend, also in Japan.
Joi is very excited about this and so are we. Imagine a small computer, a cellular telephone with a headset, and a standard qwerty keyboard, hooked up to an instant messaging network and to your weblog. To post a new item to your community, hit the Blog Post button and start typing. Hit ## to submit. Bing.
I'd like to ask Joi to tell us all, how his moblogging implementation works. What is the mechanism of getting that photo from the phone, to the PC and then into a blog. I know you use Moveable Type. Do you send the photo as an email attachment or some other form? Do you completely bipass the 'mobile carriers' or simply pay for he usage/bandwidth time? If your scenario is other than email, then what routing, access or commercial gateways do you have to navigate through - to get data onto the net?
Reactions to Dave Winer's First Essay of 2003.
Dave Winer just posted his "First Essay of the Year" on scripting.com. I always enjoy Dave's thinking and passion, so this is a good new year treat. In his essay, he ponders how far we've come with the Two-Way Web through advances in XML-based content publishing and syndication, the growing role of weblogging for everyone, new approaches to digital sharing through mobile blogging, and questions about the role of commercial software and personal data.
The question it really provoked for me, and one that has been lurking in my mind for the past few months, is whether weblogging as we know it will truly become a mainstream form of personal communications and sharing, rather than it's current perceived niche as form of personal or independent Internet journalism.
Often, when smart people hear about weblogs/blogs/blogging they really ask -- isn't this just the web? Isn't this just web publishing? Indeed, it is, and as Dave responded to someone in his essay, it's the promise of the web but just made easier (and more sharable). So what makes it different and how could it be transformed into a mainstream phenomenon?
From my perspective, weblogs are revolutionary because:
- They make publishing to the web really simple --- they are very simple, consumer-level content management systems. No HTML, no scripting, no knowledge of web servers, page layout, etc.
- They fulfill the promise of the semantic web (partially) by ensuring that your content is well structured (it's all XML!), and shareable (through RSS) in a standard way, and even well-described so their content can be harvested (RSS 2.0 in action will take is there)
But they're also very constrained in terms of what consumers will ultimately want if they are to become mainstream forms of personal communications, equivailent to email and the written word. For weblogs to become mainstream they need to:
- Break out of the calendar journal or narrative metaphor. While the time-based approach to personal content makes sense often, it shouldn't be the only one. Weblog software should harness the power of RSS 2.0 category metadata and namespace extensions to enable weblogs to store and render a much wider variety of content -- Dave gives some great examples of what some of these might be (medical histories, family trips, meeting minutes, etc.).
- Embrace richer forms of expression through graphics, audio and video. While it's quite possible to do these things today by hyperlinking to media assets, it's not deeply integrated into the creation and publishing experience. Content creation and communications tools need to support the MetaWeblog API, and these tools need to provide simple means for someone to share thoughts and expereinces with voice, or plug-in their webcam or camcorder or digital camera and transmit real life visual experiences into their personal spaces. Aren't photosharing applications just bitmap-based weblog tools? There's an invevitable collision here and in that weblogs can become much more valuable to consumers.
Like Dave, I look forward to 2003 and what it brings for the two-way web.
[Jeremy Allaire's Radio]
Jeremy is singing my song. It's great to hear Dave talk about weblogging beyond just journalism.
I recently sent a proposal to Jeremy which hopefully will blossom into another implementation of the 'two-way' web. 2003 sure should be an interesting year.
New kinds of tools will change the world we know today when they take these assumptions into account:
- virtual file systems that enable you to keep your media, email and other personal data - at your fingertips - wherever you travel
- persistent digital ID - which will enable you to share your media and conversations with prvate clouds (of friends, family members and colleagues)
- shared public servers - which will host multimedia conversations, shared databases of reviews and a topics registry
- new ways for on-line communities to be created and maintained - without EVER having to worry about HTML, sys admin issues or servers - at all!
- mesh-line inter-connections between blog tools, on-line communities (like Ryze, Brainstorms, the Well, eRooms, etc.) and existing islands of influence (like the worlds of messaging, media management and digital identity)
- standard compound document architectures - that multiple vendors's tools all support
Dave Hyatt, a member of the Safari team at Apple (that's their new Web browser) has a weblog, and there he responds to the issues raised by Mark Pilgrim. This is fantastic. This is how the Web is supposed to work. Bravo. [Scripting News]
Our current working prototype breaks with Safari. But Danny Goopdman (who's working on the project) just told me this is typical of the modern browser shipping process. It'll be months before this beta version goes gold - and in the mean time LOTS of bugs and in-exact implementations - will get fixed - or not.
Lots of things always get broke in new browsers - but we AREN'T gonna fix anything for Safari (especially in DOM support) until it's clear just exactly what Apple will be doing. Right now we're working on all things PC and both the Mac browsers, so we're keeping our fingers crossed Apple will do the right thing.
In the mean time - we got lots of work to do - to ship, so.......
Here's an RFC for an entry-point in the MetaWeblog API that uploads a new media object to the user's weblog. [Scripting News]
OK - here's what else is needed:
- connect to Apple's new Keynote and iPhoto products - supporting their open XML media format (whatever it's called)
- do the same with Adobe's new 'Album' product
- find equivalent products - and evangelize THEM to support this open XML format and APIs
- then stand back and watch all the cool things that will happen Obviously Macromedia also needs to support these open XML formats for storing media and implement the sorts of APIs/wires/protocols that Dave leads the way on..........
Register: Start-up marries blogs and camera phones. The right way to do this, imho, is to connect the phone-to-weblog software through the MetaWeblog API, that way existing weblog users could participate, and new users would have choice of backend software. Any cellphone service provider that buys into this proposal will have to scrap it in a few months when the general solutions come out. Maybe less than a few months. Mobile blogging, or moblogging is very hot. So is choice for users. [Scripting News]
Dave's right (as usual.) The only way moblogging is gonna work is for this software to support open API (like MetaWeblogAPI or equivalents) and let user's decide where they're gonna host their blogs. Some will choose a remote host - like Blogger, others their own machines - like Radio - while others may be satisfied by what the mobile service providers offer.
This would also enable new apps to get built - using Flashcom, MS's new messaging format, Jabber, Groove, Webex or whatever Polycom/PictureTel are gonna come up with.
But to make it a closed system is wrong.
The one good thing NewBay software has ging for it - is that their CEO is named Paddy. Any software company with a guy named Paddy has got to enjoy Jameson's, sitting around bars yelling a lot and in general - enjoy life. So that's a good thing. I just hope Paddy starts moblogging from his favorite Dublin pub, and expands his tools for audio-blogging, so we can hear him singing at the pub (just like James Joyce.)
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