microformat

Media 2.0

Media 2.0 Workgroup - Social, Democratic, Distributed
 

As one of the many (no doubt), who try and catch the internet waves, I realised my own personal weakness - tangents.  In the latter part of 2004 I started a venture mullshrimp, whose aim was to provide an online DAM (Digital Asset Management) System, providing services to upload video of multiple formats types, rought-cut edit, and stream online.   It was based on sound open source servers,encoders,decoders, cms.    I am sure now I wasnt alone in that "idea" - in fact of course we have the cream that rose to the top in youtube - s truly user-friendly and clear service, and still is.  I, on the other hand, became obessed with supporting as many formats as possible, and attempting to build a revenue model when just getting people to just use a service like this was a challenge.  The question is have a I learnt from my mistakes, now that it seems media 2.0 is upon us.

Asides the unfortunate 2.0 tag, I see media 2.0 as convergence between web 2.0 technologies (microfomats, social networking) and digital media.   I also note that these movements happen, regardless of fashion.  So the original mode of web 2.0 is now proved in the field, so to speak, so time to incorporate more than just the generic.  And so onto microformats … this is the web 2.0 area I latched onto to begin, albeit late!  I have long used rss/xml as forms of aggregation, but now there are extended formats designed to support different purposes.  Media, regradless of type - video, audio, photo, presenetations needs metadata, and it is this data that needs to be in machine-friendly format in order to be read easily by current and future microfomat SOA’s.

What my mullshrimp-bruising has already taught me is that just because you find a good application of technologies, what really forces the sell is adoption by the masses - the impatient ipod-generation ( a large market sector now).   Eschewing the virtues of a DAM that supports multiple file formats, when instead I should have presented the public with a fait-accomplit.  Why should they care what format their video file is in - they should just be able to upload and view it.  THey want to be able to tag it easily, and also be able to rate the videos.   I am forgetting that adults also have the "look at what I made!" drive.    In many ways, I am victim of my generation - in a era where only outcasts used computers.

I have more or less given up trying to start a company in the UK - the environment and atmosphere is poor, and at many points over the last fgew years I have felt thoroughly ashamed to be english.  Why i have latched on to technology so much, and the communities it is only place where you can truly count yourself as a "world citizen".