Friday, January 28, 2005

Some interesting links about P2P TV

Positive big businesses view of P2P
http://www.masternewmedia.org/2005/
01/17/why_p2p_file_sharing_is.htm

Comment on above P2P manifesto

http://jmweirick.blogspot.com/2005/01/
p2p-manifesto.html

Corporate solutions to P2P TV

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,643698,00.asp

Academic streaming P2P articals

http://www.developer.com/java/ent/article.php/1496861

http://www.anarg.jp/achievements/web2003/Paper/
m-sasabe04bio-adit-MediaStreamingBio.pdf

P2P and java - thin client

http://www.gihyo.co.jp/magazine/SD/pacific/SD_0110.html

`WMD - weapons of mass deception`

An example of the sort of films we can transmit and an investigation into the very reason we need a working/accessible alt-media

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/01/303974.html

The sort of short news flashes that would make up the content of the 30 min news each day.

http://www.undercurrents.org/hamish/

Can people post comments/add links to other sources of alt-media news/films

Monday, January 24, 2005

Project outline - Plugin's

The whole project is based on plugging together different bits of existing technology in a stupidly simple tec way and quite clever political way.

Version 1–2 geek level

Azurase - handles all the backend

  • RSS plug-in handles communication and meta data (or maybe data embedded in media? Or both?)
  • Blog with RSS feed handles rowr broadcast
  • Headline story’s meta data – handles news content

Version 3–4 user level

  • Undecided P2P app handles backend
  • RSS handles communication and meta data -Program guide database handles rowr broadcasting
  • Headline story’s and user preferences handle news content
  • Program guide handles archive and download on demand video catalogue.

The program guide has no front end it is simply a data base which can be searched by bullion commands. The links page is the same – no front end.

The front end for each are different applications, made by different teams. This is a technical and political part of the project – they will do a much better job and will then have a strong sense of ownership. Thus commitment which they won’t have if we brand it

We need something that can feed commands to apps, an installer, some coded modules, and then lots of script files saved as text.ini which can change the config?

How would you do it in such a way that it all remains very configurable and pluggable...

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Alt-culture, installers and tails of meta-data

This will be a strange hybrid of alt-project and bureaucratic project thus it is essential that these two opposites don’t spend all the time fighting. They are different ways of doing things!

links about the culture the project came from:

http://www.godhaven.org.uk/aboutgh.html
http://www.chaos-works.com/ch28.html
http://www.tomrobinson.com/work/klf.htm

Would be good if some one could add links to mainstream ways of doing things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html

As this is a project of "gluing" existing apps together the installer will be a key part of the project to seamlessly install and configure the different appes.

Links for installer:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4b6140f9-2d36-4977-8fa1-6f8a0f5dca8f&displaylang=en
http://upx.sourceforge.net/
http://nsis.sourceforge.net/
http://www.advancedinstaller.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/

Interesting Link about meta data and RSS
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/mrss/

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Lets use skype for a physical/virtual meetup soon

Download and install my username is "hamishcampbell"









Saturday, January 01, 2005

The program guide

This is another one of the potentially revolutionary parts of the project. Every day half an hour of short films will be added with 1-2 longer documentaries each week. With in 6 months with the extensive use of archive features this will quickly become a huge repository of activist media from around the world. The P2P nature of the project means that individuals and groups can easily setup “mirrors” to host the video’s, this combined with creative commons license will create a very real “center” for people wonting to add to and/or access the work of alt-media groups.

The program guild will grow into a download on demand TV resources which with decentralised nature of the database will avoid the problem of a single point of failer. This is not a complex sight with a wiz bang interface rather a simple database with a “user defined front end” as with every thing involved in the project it’s a “keep its stupidly simple TM”. This database should be in a very stable “standard” format.

Social centers could use this database as a “videoshop” to burn videos compaltions onto CD’s and DVD’s, these could be given away or sold as a fundraiser. This will give people who do not have access to broadband access and would nurture public screeninings which are currently the most successful form of activist media outreach.

These “videoshops” would also act as mirrors for the project adding to the de-centralised robustness of the project.

Basic views on the database:

  • by channel
  • By date
  • By subject
  • Production group
  • Keyword search

Each video would have meta-data, description, translated subtitles and space for user comments much like a blog.

Translation

The database would have to have a connected website to deal with the “Open translation” side of the project.

Link to (tobe added)

Bens page

Indymedia page

European newsreels page