Marc's Voice
Home LANs + Broadband + Devices

Intro to an Open Standards Architecture

The web is currently made up of HTML links, connecting pages together in an ad hoc fashion.  The blogging world tracks these links, defining communities by who links to who and counting those links, but there is no 'structure' to these inter-linkings and nothing beyond a URL to link to.

Media and Communications are converging on-line with personal publishing and on-line communities.  Digital Identification and 'buddy lists' define an end-users on-line presence, which is increasingly becoming more and more valuable as we understand the value of an end-user's profile. Cell phones, PDAs, PVRs, MP3 players, wireless and Home LANs are becoming ubiquitous and broadband is finally making it's 'mark' on our society.

Digital Convergence demands that we establish standards that go beyond just 'HTML links'.  Web browsing and reading pages was fine for the first wave of the web, but now that broadband has arrived, Home LANs are appearing in our homes and networked devices (whether wirelss or tethered) are becoming mainstream - it's imperative that we figure out what else interactivity is, besides web linking and buying things.

It is possible to extend the current definition of what a link is and to establish new ways for media enthusiasts, on-line communities, educators, commercial software vendors, blogs and journals to interact, share and collaborate together. 

To extend the concept of what a link is, we also have to establish several new kinds of 'servers', which will be used to share Conversations, look up and ricochet to a particular Topic or store databases of shared Reviews.

Dedicated micro-content servers

Blogs (and other personal publishing systems) are content managed web sites, which usually get rendered into static HTML pages (with the exception of LiveJournal - which is a dynamically generated journal.)  Blogs have a well defined data structure and framework - so that it is virtually impossible to tell which blogging tool generates what blog.

A syndication standard called RSS is being used to distribute content to not only other blogs, but also 'news aggregators'.  These tools work together with the web to enable personal publishing and 'blogging'.  The RSS format is also currently being extended for archiving blogs, distributing media and even interchanging entire blogs from one tool to another.  Working in tandem with it's sister standard - XML-RPC, RSS forms a basic element of a 'mesh'-like system that enables content, services or communications to be freely distributed throughout the web.

And that's just what it does today.  Entire executables, complete with their own content and services will soon be able to be subscribed to.  What blogs and the blogging community (including news aggregators) have proven is that complex systems can be reduced to XML packets and transfered between disparate servers and systems and supported by a wide range of tool vendors, browsers and authoring platforms.  That's the benefit of having a set of open standards for syndication.

For the sake of this discussion - we going to refer to blogs, and the entire world they encompass as the first type of 'micro-content'.  Now imagine - (building on the same building blocks that blogs use) what other kinds of micro-content can we create?

New kinds of micro-content can be defined to represent new kinds of interactive on-line systems, applications and/or services.  One example is of a Review.  The micro-content type:Review would have several types: Movies, Books, TV Shows, Music, Restaurants, Clubs, Resorts, Places, Hair Dressers, Car Mechanics, etc.

Reviews could be generated or read from cell phones, PDAs, PCs or home stereo systems or PVRs.  Shared databases of Reviews could be subscribed to or accessed from anywhere on the web, or within private clouds of friends, family or colleagues.  So the same idea of syndication (using RSS) is still there, but now it's applied to Reviews - instead of a blog.

And Reviews are just one example of a new type of micro-content.  Media Galleries are another.  Or Multimedia Conversations.  Micro-content servers are dedicated servers that support specific kinds of micro-content types and handle all of the details necessary for supporting the particular sets of interactive activities, storage, behavior and rules of the micro-content type.  Subscriptions, notification, transactions, remote access, gatewaying to outside systems, converting, encoding, logging, monitoring, rendering and interacting with end-users are just SOME of the activities of a micro-content server.

This proposal outlines several micro-content servers working in tandem to provide a rich environment for combining, accessing and managing media, communication and personal publishing.  It leverages existing blogging and journaling tool environments, and stands on the shoulders of and extends existing standards in this space.   It proposes associated object models and protocols which will become the mesh that connects all of these micro-content servers together.

Best of all - this proposal enables new kinds of tools, which will make it as easy to create and manage an on-line community (or new kind of interactive experience), as it is to use IM or email today.

Connecting media to the web

Media is big, permanent and easily generated.  It comes in buckets of tens of millions of bits, and is not really suited to the 'straw sipping' mentality that gave birth to the web.  That basic conflict is the source behind all of the frustrations of media moguls and entrepreneurs, and legions of digital artists and musicians who have attempted to use the web as a media distribution piepline - which it isn't.

To make a long story short - many different media standards, formats, delivery mechanisms, laws, rights, patents, leading tool vendors and 'lock-in' agendas have been born out of this situation.  We find ourselves - as end-users and toolsmiths - befuddled by the cornucopia of issues and concerns. Let alone figure out how to get it all to work together!

It is because of these conflicts that many of the web standards that exist today (HTML, browsers, web links) are not ideally suited for media. 

To help solve this conundrum, we need to start thinking about going beyond what a 'web link' is today.  While some efforts (mainly revolving around 'groupware' systems and burgeoning web services standards) attempt to go beyond simple web linking - none of these approaches take media particularly into account.  But they do intrinsically support communications. 

There are some good isolated examples of media combining with the web, where Webex has successfully delivered a videoconferencing system and Ofoto and the other photo services, seem to make a living printing photos or renting hard drive space. 

 Everything we need has been invented already, now it's time to get it all to work together

This conflict between media and the web is just a metaphor to the challenges we face when trying to get all of the elements of our world working together.  We're living in a fragmented world, where media, communications and personal publishing exist as their own islands.  These islands are in a world where each element has to justiify it's own existence with proprietary formats and standards, stand alone business models, special kind of tools, their own developer community and unique set of customers and end-users. 

What we need is a mesh to connect all of these disparate islands together. 

End-users expect us to merge all of these elements together into a choreographed dance of synchronicity and design.  This digital lifestyle future world we all envision will feature new kinds of micro-content talking to each other and enable new kinds of on-line interactive experiences and communities. 

This Holey Grail we're all working towards - is called 'hypermedia' (as opposed to hypertext - which is what we have today.)  This idealistic state combines all of the aspects of unified messaging and ubiquitous communications, with personal broadband publishing, where every creator has 100Mbps lines and infinite storage.  Media would be pervasive and available everywhere, and all of the nightmares of copyrights, royalities and DRM would be completely transparent.

Unfortunately we're not there - yet, but we can start working towards that ideal world now. What we need are an open set of standards that blend media, communications and digital ID's with personal publishing and web services. The opportunity faces us NOW to establish new forms of linking, sharing and inter-connection that goes beyond what web links are today.

A whole new generation of tools and authoring systems will emerge once  we establish these new open standards. These tools will enable new kinds of on-line communities to form, that are as easy to use as sending email today.  These new tools can all share open standards and formats, without the need of 'closed systems' to lock end-users into, as most tools are based upon today.  

Tools like this will be able to create, support and maintain multiple kinds of micro-content - whether they be 'virtual publications', communities or projects.  Once we have shown the world the benefits and functionality enabled by these new open standards and new kinds of tools, then many new extensions, frameworks and viewpoints will be created as well. Huge public databases of 'available' content will be available for all to 'share'.

So now we wanna do something similar with all these elements outlined above.

What needs to get done

- go beyond just linking to me and me linking to you.  Establish hypermedia extensions and new kinds of 'micro-content', that enable new kinds of media integration, knowledge management and sharing.

- get people using media ubiquitously, by building media management into all our tools, servcies and systems.  Create structures (object models) that enable applications and services to deal with 'intelligent' media - so that all the cool things that people wanna to do (with media, communications and publishing) - will seamlessly work together.

- give digital ID's a context and establish super buddy lists to define the realm of 'fair use' - so that we can legally share our media (which we have purchased, created ourselves or that is in the public domain.)

- enable on-line conversations to be embedded with media and IM/chat sessions and available - so that others can contribute to these archived conversations - as well.

- start knowldge management as an open, shared process - by standardizing Topics and creating a Topic Exchange.

- establish a reviews system - so we can all create recommendations, warnings and clue people into our fav stuff - collectively.

- enable all sorts of digital lifestyle activities.  This will foster growth and move the functionality we all can enjoy NOW - and move new kinds of functionality down the pyramid to millions more on-line end-users.

An Opportunity faces us

- because XML-RPC, OPML and RSS and a community of tool developers and platforms like Radio, Moveable Type, etc. are available to build great new standards, services and applications.

- as blogging and journaling spread (personal on-line publishing), and as cell phones get cameras, the multimedia Home LAN is also becoming a reality.  Game machines, set top boxes , TVs, PVRs and stereos will all soon be connected to the same LAN.

- there is a community of people knowledgable enough about these issues, so that we can create our own AD HOC standards - driven by the marketplace and real-world functionality (much as RSS and XML-RPC have done already.)

- new activities like moblogging, audioblogging, the Mirror project, writing reviews that connect to other reviews, shared outlines and email indexing and new services like weblogs.com, technorati, Ryze, Internet Topics Exchange and Brainstorms can all coalesce (or at least be compatible) around these new standards.

- new ideas have been fostered and grow on private lists, boards and communities around the world.  One such idea - called RidiculouslyEasyGroupForming - helped foster many of the concepts included in this proposal.  The same can happen now surrounding these proposals.

- it is entirely possible to form a mesh of standards that will inter-connect the disparate Islands of technology that we live in today.  Only through a series of Open Standards can this mesh form.

- dialog, feedback and interaction would be appreciated surrounding these ideas.  A .org can form to sponsor and foster through the establishment of these new standards

- thorough survey and analysis of ALL established standards (both open and commercial) - to ascertain where there are holes, closed worlds and deficiencies - which can be improved via our efforts

- the current effort to extend RSS - using namespaces in the 2.0 spec - is key! Let's all root for Matt!

- Phil Pearson's Internet Topics Exchange is a great start towards a registry for knowledge sharing

- our proposed free media management system can become a foundation for media galleries and standard object models and meta-data for media

- Joi Ito's offer to help fund many of these efforts is also key

- so please feel free to send me email at: Marc@BroadbandMechanics.com if you are interested in getting involved.  A maillist/eGroup will be set up soon. 

Here is the proposal for an Open Standards Architecture