Let me preface this by saying that before taking this class I had not really thought about many of the topics I am thinking about now before. I was always told to start writing by writing about what you know so here it is.....in its incredibly long, drawn out and possibly irrelevant form....
For our final project for Dynamic Web Development, Jadie, Nanna and I have been in the process of developing an idea for a cell phone application that would allow you to automatically upload the media from your cell phone (text messages, photos, video and contacts) to a website that would store them in a personal profile page. The site would function similar to flickr, in that you would be able to list your information as private, only for friends or family, or public (although we will also include a function that allows you to make your info private and only you can see it). You will also be able to tag your content and search for others content based on their tags, username or email. Jadie also had the idea, based on a Korean version of flickr I belive, to allow users to take other users' content and put it on their own personal page if they found something that they particularily liked. You would also be able to give other users comments and send messages. Initially, we imagined that this site would function as a kind of personal storage or a journal for all of your cell phone media, while also allowing a user to interact with other users and development connections through the content that was displayed. We were also very excited about attempting to create the actual app on the cell phone, either in java or flash, that would allow users with phones able to support the app to automatically have all of their information uploaded without having to send an mms or sms message. We would still leave that as an option for those whose phones do not have that capability.
In our research, however, we found, of course, that similar websites already exist this being an example that Jadie found. And after hearing Jay Dedman speak in my Prdocuing Participatory Media Class, I began to think about how we could make the site more functional as a new way to communicate with mobile video rather then simply being another copy of journal/storage sites already available. So I came up with the beginnings of an idea.....
After doing some thinking about what I would find interesting to discuss and explore further for this paper, one topic that kept coming up in my mind was the relationship between participatory mass media and the production of more low-end grassroots media and the interactive components that may be relevant as opposed to obnoxious for each. We have already discussed extensively in class the relationship between podcasting and radio and video blogging and TV. I have already expressed my disatisfaction with this particular simularity but I find myself also questioning what kind of participatory media really matters, is effective in producing some kind of relevant response and will be used and found important by enough people to be a useful tool. In my own life I have found that I have little need or desire to particpate in any real way with mass produced media, beyond perhaps conversating in a chat room. If I am watching a movie or a television program or listening to a piece of music, chances are I am doing so because I want the media to effect me in a certain way. And while I may want to talk to others about its significance after the fact, the idea of interacting with it in any real way while being a passive viewer/listener is somewhat diffciult for me to imagine.
For this week, I looked further into the capabilities of the folder object in jitter trying to figure out exactly how I could implement it to automatically stream media emailed or sent by mms to a particular email address. I ran into a couple of problems. The first explained why the jit.broadcast object did not work last week, apparently because I am wireless the rtsp address that jitter produces is not an actual IP address. I have to go to NYU technical services in order to fix this, which is obviously a little bit of a pain. The other problem is that in order to read in files from a folder on my server, I have to mount my server on my computer so that the files have a local path. The problem with this is that the files have to download and it is extremely slow. In doing tests on Luke's computer, it seemed that the slowness was not a huge factor if a video file was already loaded and playing. But it was significantly slow when a video would be uploaded and have to play immediately.
Here is the patch that I used in testing. The folder object is reading in a file from Luke's server so it would obviously be different when used for a folder on my server.
After extensively researching the current applications of streaming media, I was somewhat disappointed that it seems to have become a forum to replicate TV and radio rather then to experiment with different ways to present live video or precorded video in an immediate way. Most of what I saw was based heavily around the delivery of news, weather and radio style audio. Some of these applications were interesting such as the radio streams from the BBC or the news streams from ABC NEWS NOW but I was still lost in trying to find anything different or interactive with video.
I began to reasearch the capabilities of MAX/Msp/Jitter to deal with streaming media and discovered that this program had some amazing resources that could potentially create a much more interactive experience. Please see my presentation blog.
Ultimately, i am interested in further experimenting with this to eventually set up a patch that would accept streaming media coming from different sources and then setting up a blog or website that incorporates the URL for this stream along with instructions in how to contribute. I imagine that it may intially become something of a video mash up if people actually get involved, with various different kinds of content. However, it would be most interesting to expore the application of this if it were centered around a specific topic or a specific kind of content. We've been talking in class about the dissemination of news from grassroots sources. What if the site was centered around a specific political topic and people would report on the topic by sending in video from their cell phones? Or, on a much more social level, what if it was a way that friends could communicate the contents of their day with each other? The ideas for its application need to be much more flushed out but I think that it certainly has the potential to be a much more interesting and interactive way to present streaming media. It may also be interesting if all of these video files (since they will already be in a specific folder on the server) could be incorporated into a database so that you could also view them when you want, rather then only being able to access them through the live stream. I need to think about this a lot more, but it certainly has a lot of potential.
Xin, Alex and I have been working on a video-blogging application that allows people to comment on specific frames of a given video. It is a work in progress. Here is what we have so far:
This is some footage that Alex and I shot this Sunday on a trip to Belleyare Mountain.
Although I had been exposed to video blogging in the past, I have to admit that before this semester I had not explored many video blogs at all. Now that I have been exposed to some I have to say that I am rather disappointed. While I understand the desire to video chat or catalog one's life via video, it seems to me that to use video blogging for this purpose is rather like reinventing the wheel. It would certainly be nice to see snipets of my friends' lives who live in other cities but that is a very personal form of expression and it is quite narcissistic to assume that this is a high level function that video blogging should fill. I thought that the showing of RocketBoom in class was rather fuuny and I definitely think it is a powerful thing to be able to create something with such a small budget that has the power to reach such a large audience. However, what excites me about this new medium is more the possibility of collaborative video performance and documentation and the possibility of a truly interactive video experience rather then being able to watch and comment on others videos, whether or not they contain valuable substance. I have always felt that video has huge potential to create conversations of importance, especially as more and more mobile phones are video enabled allowing diversified groups of people to contribute to the media making experience anywhere at anytime. I guess I agree with the one video blogger we watched in class who said that the medium is still in its infancy and we should not be so quick to define its purpose.
After some tinkering around, I got the enclosures for movable type to work on my server. Finding the music was the easy part in this case. The website was actually very good documentation of how to do it, my problem was that after uploading the mp3 I was pointing to the wrong file on my server (an html problem rather then a movable type problem...big surprise).
After reading the first six chapters of "We the Media" I found that much of what was discussed I was already aware of and I agreed with many of his predictions as to the future of media online as it relates to pursuit of accurate grassroots journalism. While I find it questionable that the internet offers people differing sets of opinions, as many people subscribe to and read blogs written by those whose opinions they share and agree with, I think that the opportunity to have a myriad of voices contributing to a global conversation (as least as global as reliable internet access is) certainly has the potential to offer welcome alternatives to the shock tactics and big business indeavors of "big media" broadcast companies. However, while many people seem to be concerned that the additional contributions of average people to the realm of journalism has the potential to produce a cloud of inaccurate misinformation or that the business of blogging will eventually become a similar business model to the current models of the broadcast giants of today, I have different more immediate concerns. One thing that the author did not address, at least yet, is the issue of access, especially when he was discussing the invetiable shift of government and service agencies to the use of online forums to reach and assist the public.
Durring last semester, we were all introduced to the concept of the digital divide and its relationship to issues of race, education and economic status and there is certainly no arguing with the fact that if someone cannot afford their electricity or to feed their children chances are they will not have a computer nor care about what the internet has to offer. However, i would argue that the problem is more then simply an issue of money and education, but rather a much more basic problem of lack of knowledge of what is available. There plenty of people who are, for all intensive purposes, middle class and don't own computers or have internet access not because they don't have the money but because they don't see the value. There are also many people, I have a lot of friends who fall into this category, who have internet access but who are unaware of the resources available online; people who may see the inherent value in email, search engines and maybe even downloaded music but little else. As the realm of "real" news, accurate information and relevant conversation becomes more and more likely to be found only online, as well as important government services, it seems as though we are leaving large portions of society behind, many of whom would benefit the most from having an audience for their concerns. And if this is the case, how can we presume that the diversity of voices online is an accurate and truthful representation of society and not simply another case of the haves having it all.
Maybe some think it is enough to say that eventually everyone will "get it" and realize the potential of online media and those who can't afford it will be assisted by public internet spaces and educational programs. But is it really possible to change the cultural tendency to trust "big media" as being the only accurate and acceptable form of information that easily? Most people, ITP and other tech savy social circles aside, still get their news from TV and print because they are programmed to trust news programs and the New York Times to be accurate. However misplaced that trust may be at times, how do people with little knowledge of what is out there inteligently navigate the plethora of available information without getting lost in the nonsense? And how do you convince people who see no value in being online, not only of the valuable resources they are missing out on, but of the potential of their own contribution?
I know many of us have heard this all before, but I felt it was very relevant to ask the questions, especially in light of reading such a text, which ultimately predicts and proves (accurately so) the potential of a shift to a more participatory form of journalism. It is important to realize that as the speed with which all kinds of new information becomes available increases we are leaving many people behind. And despite what you might believe, I don't think they are making a conscious choice to be left behind. I am not sure what the answers are, but I feel that ubiquitous technology, such as cell phones and media driven technology such as audio and video blogging hold many of the answers. To get people interested you have to speak their language and appeal to them with things that they already see as important. If video/audio blogging was taught in every elementary/middle school in this country (where it was feasible) and people became aware of how easy it was to contribute to the conversation, or that a conversation even exists, perhaps they would see the value in taking part. Yes it would create many irrelevant and extraneous blocks of information (too many cooks in the kitchen and whatnot) but if we are going to celebrate these technolgies for their ability to include anyone who wants to particpate we should make sure that everyone who wants to can.
Maybe the author will address this in later chapters.