Category Archives: Multimedia

Multimedia content, content services, content tools, etc.

Emerging, Multimedia, Open Source, Reviews

ThePortableConsultant’s increasing portablility

The Portable Consultant has noticed that the few posts he once did about the Lexar Lightning and its portable USB applications are the most popular hits on his blog site, almost all of which come via Google.

So it is with great shame that I must confess to being remiss in not informing both my regular readers (Hi, Mom!) of the recent increase in my ‘PQ’, my portability quotient.

Over the past few months I have acquired:

1. a new Lenovo X61 ThinkPad… smaller, more powerful, and with far better battery life than my old refurbished T30 (!) ThinkPad.

Lenovo X61 Notebook

2. a new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet… pocket sized, blazingly fast at connecting to WiFi networks and bluetooth devices, a fine podcatcher and Internet Radio – with a linux terminal interface where I can enter most of the same shell commands I once used to manage big UNIX boxes.

Nokia's Linux powered N800 Internet Tablet

3. a new unlocked Nokia 6300 GSM cell phone… a phone not only capable of going “native” in most countries of the world with local SIM cards, but also the miniature camera I’ve always needed to get those unexpected photos at unexpected times in unexpected places.

Nokia\'s 6300 GSM cell Phone

The whole, however, is greater than the sum of the parts. Together these devices enhance the capabilities of each other in ways I’m only beginning to appreciate.

I’ll be writing more about how these devices play together in the near future.

Cheers,
-pmh

Grumbles, Multimedia, podcasting

Lamy-Rousseau and Chris Pirillo

library science, past and present
Many, many, moons ago The Portable Consultant was involved in the classification of audio-visual materials for a university library. I recall that the classification scheme in favour at the time was a modified Lamy-Rousseau which attempted to bring uniformity to a library’s A/V collections.

One of the issues I had with the system that was implemented was that it attempted to separate audio cassettes from photographic slides – they were stored in different physical locations due to their different size & shape (cassettes did not fit well into Kodak Carrousel tray boxes).

Another issue seemed to be that there was no satisfactory way to classify a slide/tape presentation or a 16mm. film that had been transferred to video… and what of a copy of the same content in a different format? Should they have the same library code and be shelved together?

I don’t have the background in library science to know whether these issues were specific to that one library’s implementation or whether they have been addressed since then, but a little library science would help in the brave new world of audio & video podcasting.

an iPod is not an iPod…
I would suggest there are two broad classes of iPod (or other portable media device): those that play video and those that do not. I still enjoy my 4th Gen. iPod with it’s 20MB disk. When I do go to video it may be on another platform, but for now my use of an iPod is strictly for audio. (I watch video online in iTunes or on the source website).

More importantly, my choice of audio or video has to do with when and where I choose to listen or watch the show. I will never watch a video podcast while driving my car, but that’s where I have been enjoying most audio podcasts.

My point, and I know you’ve been wondering if I have one, is that podcasters – audio or video – need to realize the difference between these media at the consumption level as well as the similarities and differences at the technical level. For example, the renowned technical trend tracker Chris Pirillo has recently begun using his original audio podcast feed at the URL

“http://www.thechrispirilloshow.com/subscriptions/mp3.xml”

for his new video podcasts. Note that the URL itself implies audio by referring to the “mp3” format. Technically, an enclosure is an enclosure and RSS doesn’t care if it’s an audio or video file.

That’s a good thing, but it’s up to humans to bring order to the podosphere!

the proper “shelving” of different media…
In order to separate my mp3 podcast downloads from my video I choose to use the Juice “podcast receiver” for audio while subscribing to video podcasts (which I do not load onto my iPod) in iTunes.

Chris’ feed was one of the first I subscribed to in the early days. His shows became less frequent, at least on his original feed, and I rather missed his “Bickersons” like conversations with his lady, Ponzi. I’m glad to see him back in a new format, but I would have preferred to hear an audio announcement of a new URL for the video podcasts.

Should Chris decide to release the audio portion of his video podcasts as an mp3 I would be happy to download it to my iPod via Juice. Video, however – like those A/V slide trays of long ago – does not fit well well in the audio “container” on my virtual media “shelves.”

This is not the only issue that brave new media have to deal with: don’t get me started on podcasters’ erratic use of mp3 ID3 tag metadata! That is probably more of a long-term problem than the overloading of my audio iPod with Chris’ video files.

Cheers,
-pmh

Multimedia, New Media, New Paradigms

DRM days numbered

Steve Jobs’ already famous Thoughts on Music probably marks the end of DRM.

Certainly it will take time, but when a major force like Apple iTunes’ boss suggests that the world would be better off without DRM you can be sure they are also working behind the scenes to promote this vision.

The statistics on the percent of DRM protected content found on the average iPod are a strong argument for the futility of the DRM approach. Apple iTunes has done everything by the book, as the media industry demanded, and DRM has been a spectacular failure, to judge from the figures Jobs quotes.

Jobs musings are entitled Thoughts on Music, but with a video iPod and videos available through the iTunes store it seems clear that the lessons learned about music DRM will also carry over to video DRM; same lessons, but I would guess it will take longer for the MPAA and similar industry groups to learn them.

The features incorporated in Microsoft’s Vista to protect so-called “premium content” have been said to threaten the new OS’s stability – and they certainly will raise the cost of many computer components, according to Peter Gutmann’s Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection.

Gradually the industry will realise that there is no ROI to justify these measures.

-pmh