This is a old write-up from a year ago of were/are at – still relevant (;

Is an outreach alt-media project – brining the simplicity of TV to the interactivity of web2

* make open source solutions and open standards useable by normal people
* using video to bring radical voices and approaches to the problems facing society
* creating communities around these solutions/approaches
* motivating/informing/networking these communities

We believe that closed corporate solutions will keep failing. So the are always spaces for open solutions to become real in the virtual world.

- people feel disempowered
- cut off from communities of like minded people
- they are swamped by information, much of it of very low quality.

Technologies
P2P - Torrents
Syndication - RSS
Video standards - H264
Open source CMS

What we need
* Hot designer who can use simplicity to create functionality
* Video content produces
* System admins for web back end and server upkeep

Why are we making a new version of MIRO
Well we started this project back in 2004 before the Democracy Player project had started; we developed our own download player app – using Azureus and an embedded media player. But this had a problem we couldn’t solve – the overly complex Sun Java installer so when Democracy Player (DP) was announced we were very excited as it was to have much the same functionality and was to be easily skinned – we thought this is fab, we could get on with video production and not worry about the tec backend.

DP took a lot longer than hoped to become stable and lost its easy skinning on route, finely we decided to search for a good programmer to do the skinning by hacking the UI code which we eventually found. Our VisionOnTV player backend is pure Miro we have only changed/added to the UI. Miro is a good app for computer savvy people – but it is less accessible for the every day TV viewer – it uses a lean forward interface and its lean back (TV) interface is lacking – we aimed to add this lean back interface so viewers can access the video content either way. In this we are adding accessibility and choice not taking it away.

Funding
At the moment we are using foundation funding, we received a small grant which has got us to were we are now. And have recently been approved for a big grant (2 years core funding) but this has taken a long time to work through the lawyers.

We aim to do ethical advertising/grassroots notice board/classified and show sponsorship for long term funding.