Visit our new blog

The DigitalBicycle blog has a new home at http://DigitalBicycle.org

100 SECOND FESTIVAL 2006 - Call for Entries!!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Jason Daniels
Education and Development Coordinator
Lowell Telecommunications Corporation
(978) 458-5400 x 13
jason@ltc.org

http://100second.ltc.org

100 Second Festival 2006 - CALL FOR ENTRIES

LOWELL, MA – January 19, 2005 – Lowell Telecommunications Corporation announces the next ‘Call for Entries’ for the 2006 - 100 SECOND FESTIVAL. This festival is an ongoing short format, non commercial motion media festival open to all. The 2006 summer screening will premiere in Lowell this coming June. The deadline for the summer screening is May 1st.

The 100 SECOND FESTIVAL is a festival for everyone. People of all skill levels and backgrounds are encouraged to submit their best work. Complete rules, promotional materials, RSS feeds, torrents and thumbnail videos from the 2005 Festival are available on the website - http://100second.ltc.org. The project is published to the web under a Creative Commons License making this a festival that draws on energy of both offline and online communities by harnessing the power of peer-to-peer networking through another LTC project, The DigitalBicycle.

There is no entrance fee but we encourage donations of $10 (checks made payable to LTC) that will help sustain this project. Submissions can be sent to 100 SECOND FESTIVAL, c/o LTC, 246 Market St, Lowell, MA 01852. Please label all entries with title, credits, a two sentence description and contact information.

Lowell Telecommunications Corporation is a community media and technology center serving the diverse urban population of Lowell, Massachusetts. LTC fosters open access to information and communication technologies for the distribution of free ideas, community development and personal empowerment.

If you are interested in participating or have questions about the 100 second festival, contact Jason Daniels at jason@ltc.org or 978-458-5400 x 13.

Local Access Point

community communication03
Originally uploaded by jdcreativity77.

An outline of 'Community Communications - ie, the future of public access merging with the Node concept

BitTorrent ditches Tonto

Just recently, Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol pulled a new feature out of the saddlebags: Trackerless Torrents. This feature removes some of the hindrances to hosting content, which will hopefully allow its use among a larger segment of the internet population.

For those that don't know, much of what makes Bittorrent great for downloading large files is all in the tracker. In a distributed downloading scheme like BitTorrent, everybody is sharing bits and pieces of a file (or group of files) with one-another in the hope that, at the end of the day, they will have the entire thing. Traditionally, the tracker, which resides on *one* person's server (usually the person that first decided to share), keeps track of everybody who is sharing and lets them find each other in that large ocean we call the internet.

Of course, the problem with this is that everytime you want to serve a file, you have to set up a tracker for it. I don't know how hard this (I've never done it, which I guess is kind've my point), but it's one more step between you and serving up rich, steamy content to anyone that wants it.

Enter the Trackerless Torrent... or rather, because the tracker is the real meat and potatoes, it's a bit of a misnomer to say that the new torrents are "trackerless." It's more accurate to call it a decentralized or distributed tracker. Now instead of just having one tracker, everybody participating is hosting their own mini-tracker. Why is this good? If a centralized tracker goes down, nobody can find each other. With a distributed one, as long as there are people sharing, they can find one another and continue downloading.

Now here's the rub, before this trackerless thing, you had to find the tracker (by getting the *.torrent file), but once you had that, you were golden. But now that everybody's a tracker, how do you find them in the first place?

The folks that made the Azureus BitTorrent client do this through a distributed (there's that word again) database --actually, they seem to have originally designed the distributed torrent and then Bram added it to the official protocol--and eXeem did it before them, but they aren't Open Source and allegedly bundle spyware... Anyways, this database lives on each person's computer and works by keeping track, on a personal level, of everyone you 'know' and then asking each of them who they know, and so on (like the Kevin Bacon game). Of course, there is still the problem of meeting that first person, so there are servers for that (it's called bootstrapping). But that's all the servers have to do: know people (or rather their computers). These servers don't actually need to know who they are or what they are doing... like downloading Grateful Dead concerts on the sly.

Azureus also implemented magnet links, which means that instead of having to download a torrent file to get connected, you can just click on a link (it's an ugly one though) to the database entry. This is great for say, embedding torrent links in a forum or comment, or scrawling them in public restrooms.

All of this adds up to enhanced ease of use. Now with the new distributed tracker there is even less keeping you from sharing with the masses. Right, Kemo Sabe?

Apology and Introduction

First, the apology.

If you've been impatiently clicking refresh every hour for the last two weeks, waiting for new content on this blog, well, we're sorry (though we do recommend you try our RSS feed and give you fingers a break). Things have been humming along and we're getting really close to making some bigger announcements, but we have been horribly lax in keeping the blog up-to-date.

Now, the introduction.

I'm very pleased to announce that we've added a new editor and volunteer to this project. His name is Ben Sheldon and we're big fans of his work at Atomic Workshop and we're hoping he can help us re-kickstart this blog. We met Ben at the MIT Grassroots Use of Technology Conference last month, one of numerous cool people attending that event. He's currently developing a Wiki-based community for Americorps and VISTAs and he makes a mean banana bread. We're looking forward to Ben's involvement and watch this space (though not too closely!) for some more announcements in the near future.

trojan horse....or while you were sleeping

Participatory Culture might be well suited for implementing the Digital Bicycle. This would serve as a legitimate way to integrate an IP enabled content playback system within a traditional television cablecasting environment. The latter by definition is a local arm's length community where the people being reached can congregate in person and get stuff done. When the cablecasting environment as we know it radically mutates in the next few years we don't have to necessarily follow, trying to tread water within this virulent environment. Rather, we focus on our existing IP system (DigitalBicycle+Particpatory Culture+Osprey+PEG stream) for distributing content to micro audiences (local community + small online group). Our social and community ties keep our feet on the ground. The network keeps our centers connected. We just need to fence off our area of the internet.

We establish the political legitimacy to do this by arguing that the cables carrying this bandwidth have already infiltrated our public rights of way. We are just reclaiming them back. At least the portion we need. Leaving the rest of the commercial sphere to converge becoming both bigger (high def, more corporate consolidation) and smaller (mobile, more hyperindividualistic) at the same time. This blanketing phenomenon increasingly permeates our daily lives, perpetuating a culture of denial and internal fragmentation. This would be a compromising place for Access to be situated, a situation where access is inevitably compromised. Why should we strive to conform within this perverse rubric when can chart our own path and bring the community with us?


next?

Content.

Participatory Culture Foundation Presents...

Sound the horns! After keeping it on the DL for a number of weeks I'm finally able to announce that the recently formed Participatory Culture Foundation is making its debut.

Announcing a new platform for internet television and video. Anyone can broadcast full-screen video to thousands of people at virtually no cost, using BitTorrent technology. Viewers get intuitive, elegant software to subscribe to channels, watch video, and organize their video library. The project is non-profit, open source, and built on open standards. Today we're announcing the project and releasing our current sourcecode. The software is launching in June.

Hot Damn! The internet is on fire about this. Not only did I read about it most of the sites I regularly visit (including MacHTPC) but this weekend at the "Grassroots Use of Technology" conference at MIT, it was brought up to me 5 times and was referred to in 3 sessions! It was pointed out by a presenter demonstrating del.icio.us that 221 people had it bookmarked!

(sorry for the exclamation points, but I think I'm actually more excited about these programs than I am QuickTime 7. And that's saying something.)

So yeah, this is big time stuff here. I've never compiled a program before but I'm going to spend some time trying to learn so I can try to start playing with it before they have real packages.

Osprey | An Open-Source Permaseed and Metadata Management Project

Okay, so this is really, really cool and it's coming out of iBiblio and the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina. It's called Osprey and it's a two part, server-side system that could ratchet this whole BitTorrent distribution process up a notch or two.

From their Project Overview:

Osprey is a peer-to-peer enabled content distribution system. A metadata management system for software and document collections enables local and distributed searching of materials. Items are available for download directly via URL or indirectly via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol.

Two components exist: the Osprey web application and permaseed (permanent seed). The web application includes metadata management for finding and exploring available content, as well as a BitTorrent tracker. The latter is a BitTorrent server application, which links content on a server to a BitTorrent swarm. Permaseed addresses the typical transience of BitTorrent file distribution by providing a daemonized service that functions more like a server than a BitTorrent client.

Cool, huh?

For more info check out this .pdf which will be presented at the 2005 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. Regarding libraries, community media has been tied to libraries on a number of fronts so its encouraging to see that we're working in parallel on new technological ventures as well.

PRX involved with Chris Lydon Show

the link is to a piece about the Chris Lydon show and PRX.

Take back your DNA

I search endlessly through the net. When I lose my footing it is like landslide, I jump on website after website reading and looking at only fragments. The experience is compulsive, and it doesn't really matter what the content is, just that the behavior is reflective of an intensely personal quest.

I'm one of the lucky ones. A few months back we installed a broadband internet connection at home. Now there is a faucet that is waiting to flood my consciousness any time my ability to deal with life is challenged. So, at times this privilege leads to these incredibly isolating experiences. Reveling in the pinnacle of human communication by sitting in the peanut gallery, watching the cool kids at recess. I watch videos - I see faces - I hear their voices, watch them eat dinner and observe them laughing, crying and sleeping. I consume their life by myself. At least I can write about it.

I know that there are people who are capitalizing on this psychic tension and seek to aggregate our digital lifestyle into an easy to digest panacea. They say the future is now and that we should get on board. But will this make our lives easier or just easier to escape from?

There is a lot of groundwork that needs to be done if we are to rebuild our communities, ourselves and the world. We'll need to use the existing internet infrastructure in facing these challenges. It is incumbent upon us to continue to harness, repurpose and implement systems that facilitate dialogue, promote action and that have real world results.

We do have a precedent for these kind of plans. Craigslist comes to mind. But when it comes to media, and the consumption of video and audio - we are so very easily lead down a dead end path. We are so desperate to turn the television experience into something positive because it feels so good. Television (not video) is a drug, why amplify its effects willingly, gleefully, by making content for the internet that is delivered in the same way as TV, ALONE.

Socially, the internet is a tool that can help us build bridges. Then we can take the steps to get across those bridges. But, when we get to the other side, we are not on the bridge anymore.
Can you dig it?!

Sell Access To Your Torrent at Prodigem

Gary Lerhaupt is a smart man. This was initially made evident with his release of the Torrentocracy plugin for MythTV, and furthermore so with the his launching of Prodigem, a service/community that tracks and seeds torrents licensed under the Creative Commons. He's now added the ability to sell access to your content. Consumers sign up for a prodigem account and then pay for the content using a credit card through PayPal. Prodigem collects the money, takes a nominal amount for overhead (10%) and mails the content owner a check every month. I'm glad to see this happening in general and I'm estatic to see it in Gary's hands, cause if anybody can make this work well, it's him. On a related note, Prodigem has had a bit of a makeover and as of the beginning of the month was legally incorporated as Prodigem Inc. Congratulations Gary!

VJTorrents

I love the tagline of this site: Download Hi-Res VJ clips in Your Sleep

You can't say it any clearer than this folks!

Here's a new community that gets it and is putting up great content. Fans of Steve Albert, Walter Wright, and Jason Daniels should definitely check this out as there are some great video mixes up here and a huge potential for even more.

I made a DVD last night using the four videos that have been put up so far. They are definitely hi-res and look great even when recompressed into a DVD. The only disapointing thing is that my favorite of the videos Light Movement Nestled on Poor Footing is not a standard aspect ratio (instead of 4x3 its 4x1, 3 screens across) and iDVD streches it to try to fill the screen vertically. It still looks good given the material but the effect is different.

I also added a couple pieces of "Bonus Fun" including two of my favorite pieces on the Archive by Jason Daniels: This is Your Life and Grand Unified Theory (Houston Tapes Exercpt) and two of my favorite pieces by Human Dog: Lac St Clair and Robot Hand

Apple and H.264. What's the deal?

Hmm. It's strange but I feel like information about Apple's upcoming implementation of H.264 has been a little too scarce. I mean, they had a bit of a press release about it when it was first announced but I still have a hard time finding any information of what its going to be like. My theory has been that its going to be tied into a new product when its released or at least that there will be a new product available at the time they release a program for encoding stuff to it. But still, I feel like I try to do some reasearch and there are crickets chirping. The most concrete thing I've seen is "H.264 delivers 1920x1080 content at about 8 Mbps" and that's on Apple's FAQ.

-----------------------------
UPDATE: Thanks to 'MevlvinD' for tipping me off to this excellent forum thread at Apple Insider. Definitely more information than I've seen anywhere else.
-----------------------------

I've been playing with the x264 codec within Handbrake and can play these 640x480 .mp4 files using VLC and they look great.

And now comes this random rumor, who knows how much validity it might have (god bless the internet) and please don't take this as the endorsement of rumormongering, but come on, some one must have some info on what H.264 will really look like in QuickTime 7. I'm dying here!

the dirt roads

Along the side of the internet superhighway I get a flat tire. It's a fortiutous little disruption from the information onslaught that has me trapped in this comfy civilization. It's a sunny afternoon and I decide to leave my vehicle and go for a walk. There's a meditative little hill not too far yonder and I brought a brought a snack. The fresh aire will do me good. From atop the hill I gaze upon the the roads and paths connecting the community networks of which I have become involved. Some of these are toll roads (corporate controlled), some are dirt paths, there's a big red light district and plenty of activity. Most of my experience with the internet happens so quickly, ever more immediate - it is hard to find the time to reflect upon where these relationships are headed - because at the moment it feels like there is no end it sight. In terms of a cultural legacy - we are all hooked up until the power goes out. And even then, alternative energy can support wifi and decentralized servers, so it's no time to turn our back.

Virtual communities lack so much of the substance of what makes life worth living. However, these networks can make real connections: connections that are realized in the real world. The computer's role is one of either a destination for relationships or a tool to facilitate them. The destination model leads to indulgence of the ego. The tool model incorporates partnership and altruistic exchange (thank you creative commons.) Smaller file sharing communities that exchange information through a p2p have a real chance to provide a viable cultural instrument , these are the dirt roads off the beaten path of the information superhighway.

Handbrake 0.7.0

You know you're a geek when the release of a new version of your favorite software is an event you've been anxiously awaiting. For those of us who consider Handbrake their favorite app, we're in luck.

Handbrake is the currently the best way to make MPEG4 files for use on the DigitalBicycle. While there are a number of different ways to compress video we've yet to find any that match the quality and flexibility of Handbrake'd files. This is of course something we are eager to do though as the Handbrake solution is not perfect for those without a fast Mac or Linux machine or who would not be putting their content to DVD anyway. So please contact us with alternate options.

We were so anxious to see an update to Handbrake be released that we went ahead and wrote a detailed guide to using version 0.6.2. Lo and behold, shortly thereafter the first beta for version 0.7.0 was released. We're now on the second beta and while it fixes most of the significant problems of the first beta, I'm still getting a strange audio glitch when compressing a DVD made by the one of the youth organizations here in Lowell. But those are beta issues and judging by the stability of version 0.6.2, I expect that these bugs will be ironed out by the time we see an official release of 0.7.0.

And as for our guide to using Handbrake 0.6.2, we'll leave it as is until 0.7.0 is released and we've figured out exactly how to use it best for our purposes. In the meantime you can use this excellent tutorial for 0.7.0 at FreeSMUG (Free Open Source Software Mac Users Group).

ONE Minute of Light

Today, March 24, 2005, is an important day. Today marks the beginning of a new network, one that starts with a single minute of light shown simultaneously across the country by every public, educational, and government access station. This minute of light is to commemorate both Media Democracy Week (March 20-26) and the life and work of Dirk Koning, a man who embodied the vision and spirit of Community Media, and who had a strong, personal influence in my life and the development of the DigitalBicycle.

Excerpt the email sent by Tony Riddle (Executive Director of the Alliance for Community Media) that started this:

Why is this important? Well, once an idea is born-once it first happens, once it takes life-every other thing that happens is an elaboration. Once we act as one across our channels, we give birth to a network. It doesn't matter what the content is. It doesn't matter if every single channel can do this at this time.

What matters is that, for once we will be acting as one organism to emphasize our commonality, to emphasize our common values. Acting as one, we set in motion the vast resource we have all across this land.

In a year which will see sweeping changes to the country's telecommunications law, we give humble birth to a television network which can speak directly to the public on the need for Media Democracy. We have to do this now. Do not expect corporate media to proclaim the need for community media.

We must use Community Media to protect Community Media. Protect not only franchise fees or PEG channel capacity. We are part of a larger community of Democratic Media that desperately needs us to organize this tremendous resource of ours. We begin this now.

Though we suffered a great loss this year, this gives me hope.

------------------------

The video that we're airing in Lowell tonight at 9 p.m. is available for download as a .torrent as a direct download from the Internet Archive,and is also posted at OurMedia,.

It's a 29.97fps, 640x480 standard, QuickTime compatible MPEG-4 that can be easily and freely cablecast if anyone would like to use it for their own station. I encourage any stations who created their own pieces to share them online as well and would be willing to walk interested parties through the process.

Drupal module : Creative Commons license

We have just released the first version of our Creative Commons licensing module for the open-source CMS Drupal (which powers the DigitalBicycle community). This module allows users to assign a Creative Commons license to their content when they post to the community or upload files. It also allows a site administrator to assign a license to the entire web site.

The module uses the Creative Commons API and can automatically update when new Creative Commons licenses are available (for example, the more recent sampling licenses). Admins can restrict the licenses available to users, as well as require specific metadata be included.

This version is a release for Drupal 4.5.x, and the current CVS is tested and working under Drupal 4.6. If you are using Drupal, then download the latest version from Drupal.org and let us know what you think.

BitTorrent May Prove Too Good to Quash (washingtonpost.com)

BitTorrent May Prove Too Good to Quash (washingtonpost.com)

Let's hope so.

BitTorrent May Prove Too Good to Quash

By Rob Pegoraro
Sunday, March 13, 2005; Page F07

Most file-sharing programs aren't the most upstanding citizens of the computing world. Yes, the entertainment industry hates them for the way they're used to download movies and albums without paying -- but many of these programs also fail to treat their own users well, often installing an unadvertised, unwanted load of advertising and spyware.

BitTorrent is different. This free, open-source program offers a spyware- and nuisance-free installation. And while it is certainly handy for downloading movies and other copyrighted material for free, it's also increasingly used to distribute software and entertainment legally.

This makes BitTorrent (www.bittorrent.com) not only a fascinating test case for legal experts, but it also looks a lot like the logical fusion of peer-to-peer file-sharing and traditional downloading. It's too robust to stamp out with lawsuits, but too effective not to adopt for commercial use.

BitTorrent works by enlisting everybody into the file-distribution process. A BitTorrent download starts when you click on a ".torrent" link on a Web page, in an e-mail or some other document. That link gets handed off to your BitTorrent program, which follows that link to a "tracker" computer. (BitTorrent doesn't have any file-search capability built in; you must find these .torrent links yourself.)

The tracker, in turn, points your copy of BitTorrent to a random grouping of other BitTorrent users who have the file you want. Your copy then starts downloading, assembling all these disparate chunks into a perfect copy of the original. But once you have part of the file on your computer, BitTorrent also begins uploading that to other people who come looking for it.

This uploading continues until you close the BitTorrent program.

The net effect of this is a vast increase in the resources available to distribute a file -- instead of the limit being one Web site's own Internet connection, you can theoretically put the entire bandwidth of the Internet to work. The original distributor of the file needs to upload it only once, after which everybody else takes care of the work -- and as more people download it, the torrent picks up speed.

This approach is overkill for a three-minute song, but for a 30-minute sitcom or a two-hour movie, it's highly effective.

As a result, the Motion Picture Association of America is less than thrilled about that particular use. It has taken tracker sites to court for their role in pointing users to movie downloads. As part of one settlement, it took over one such site, LokiTorrent.com, and turned it into an online billboard warning users of the legal risks they faced.

But the Washington-based lobby hasn't sued BitTorrent's developer, Bram Cohen of Bellevue, Wash., nor has it gone after individual BitTorrent users. (Full disclosure: For research purposes, I've used BitTorrent to grab two episodes of "The Simpsons" and Jon Stewart's famously combative "Crossfire" appearance.)

There are good and bad uses for this technology," said David Green, the MPAA's vice president for technology and new media. The association is instead focusing on the people who have gone out of their way to help others download movies -- "the people who are bringing together the people who want infringing material," as he put it.

This represents a shift from previous practices, in which the MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America and other groups have tried to have entire products -- for example, the first Diamond Rio MP3 player or the networked ReplayTV video recorder -- taken off the market.


One reason for this change of heart may be that in BitTorrent, unlike many other file-sharing programs, legitimate use doesn't amount to a token minority. It's central to this program's existence.

Developers of versions of the Linux operating system were some of the first to jump on BitTorrent as a way to ship out vast amounts of data. A Linux distribution can easily span four CD-ROMs; instead, companies such as Red Hat offer BitTorrent downloads of their work.

Independent musicians can also use BitTorrent to provide free samples. The Web site of the South by Southwest music festival

DigitalBicycle is . . ..

Digital Bicycle is:

Peer-to-Peer NOT Producer-to-Consumer

Open Source NOT Closed, Proprietary

Decentralized NOT Centrally-controlled

A Web NOT A Gatekeeper

Community-building NOT Isolating, alienating

What other comparisons can you make????

DigitalBicycle visual representation

This drawing illustrates the DigitalBicycle as fulcrum between a traditional community media and technology center and the web community of peer to peer file sharing. This drawing represents one organzation. The lower rings depict a hierarchy of specialization, a small ring of experts who then train a lower ring of the membership base about the DB. Knowledeg is transferred down the rings while content is transferred up as well as down. Once the content is published to the Digital Bicycle it becomes accesible by other organizations fostering a community that thrives on dialogue through trading and collaboration.

trading: you gotta post up to pull down

File sharing can seem such an isolated activity. An individual seeks out content and acquires it. There may be communication with other members of this online community or there may not be. Archive.org is exemplary of this. DigitalBicycle is striving for connection beyond this and we are at the point where we are looking for methods to establish a more firm connection between organizations that can be forged primarily through on line relationships. The thought today is to recall the importance of trading, and in particular bartering, as a social bond.

Trading implies a dialogue, and I think that when it comes to sharing files online - this might be just the sort of dialogue that can generate the roots of a sustainable community. Picture some kind of bulletin board. One side for what is offered, and one side for what is sought.

What is offered can be broken down by genre or organization or by region - but preferably not by individual title. On this bulletin board only genere's, organizations or regions are available as links - with a small area for festured content. The main subject heading link will lead to a page where there is more indepth descriptions of work - and from here you can see a 2 minute vlog and download, sift and search.

What is sought is somewhat more tricky to define. On the one hand, it can be a call from media centers to help to fill out their spectrum of content. To fill in the missing gaps. Additionally, this sort of posting can be a call to arms for revolutionary collaboration. In this case we are not trading completed programs but finshing off our square of the electronic crazy quilt.

The closer the ratio of material uploaded/downloaded is to 1 for a participating center, the more balanced their involvement, the more invested they are in sustaining themselves within the project. They will want more clearly a presence for themselves on the DB site.
g

mobilize your media!

The Digital Bicycle project has a greater vision for connecting grassroots organizations harnessing the power of combined semantic web techonology of social networks and peer-to-peer media transfer over the internet.

If that makes sense to you, then perhaps you're missing the greater, basic, and local problem of making sense of crap like that. Here's the most compelling plea I have to spend some time offline, and in your community.

-> Explaining Personal Media (a podcast)

-> MP3 Audio Download

new piano, old tune

One of the most frustrating aspects about the videobloggging scene for me has been the insistence that it is forging new ways to communicate. It is astounding how fast technology appears to be mutating. The software and hardware revolutions are palpably exciting, establishing ever faster ways to collapse time and space. But I think what is exciting about vlogging is not so much in the form of the video blog, or the content contained within, but the idea that people are cultural facilitators again. The dissemination of consumer electronics has past a tipping point, and the see saw is once again leaning towards producer rather than consumer.

All this harkens back to the good ole days before tv, cable, movies and 33's when people sang songs around a piano. In our generation the piano has a slightly different set of keys, and the music it makes sounds just a bit different. In this analogy a computer with a connection is our generation's piano, a musical instrument around which we can gather. Those souls were soothed by playing melodies together, distancing themselves, however briefly, from the tumultuous upheavel caused by the Industrial Revolution. We might be well off to aspire that communal electronic folk art gatherings can similarly restore balance to individual psyches ripped apart by a culture deaf to natural limits.

The idea of people being able to make their own culture is exciting, though it is hardly a new notion. It is a bedrock condition of a free society that people can express themselves freely, and it is only logical that they use the tools at their fingertips to do so. However, everyone typing away at their blogs in their own homes is just as close to the Brave New World nightmare as it is to a cultural revolution.

People gathering face to face is something that cannot be replaced. The energy of Vloggercon certainly proved that. Computers are not often thought to be integrated into small communal groups . It does sound a little weird to have, say, a Sunday night potluck dinner and then crowd around the computer as if it were a zoetrope but if this DigitalBicyle project takes off, hopefully that will become something we actually look forward to. The power of a networked computer is stunning, and if we can continue to shift our perception of technology, and our relationship to it, then we are getting somewhere.

Not that this won't be a challenge. The passive consumer mentality has infected generation after generation and it has done much to erode our social fabric, political system and ability to think critically. It has inflated our egos and tainted our souls, disconnecting us from the flow of energy and live that animates us and keeps us human. All told, it would seem foolhardy to then lean upon technology to somehow create the revolution with which we free ourselves.

And so it is, a new piano playing an old tune.

ps - and just like their might only be one piano player in a group, one singer, one harmonica, draw the parallel to computer technology. Share the knowledge and stregthen social bonds.

DropTorrent 1.0

Perhaps us geeks forget to include those that could care less about losing sleep over some crazy programming idea that gets stuck in our heads...

But, ultimately, it really is about inclusion.

Hopefully, a simple program like this will help people get into the world of BitTorrent more, or maybe help other programmers join in trying to be inclusive.

DropTorrent provides a simple way to handle the first step in using the BitTorrent protocol, by easily creating the .torrent metadata file required by this software.

Just drag it over the icon!

Configure it once, with your favorite BitTorrent tracker, and a comment, and drag & drop your way to sharing your own content.

It may not be thrilling at first, but as people come to rely on your media, this technology can save you bandwidth in the longrun. Honestly, it has yet to have a true test of it's limits. Even the pirates haven't had much of what could be considered a true problem with speed or popularity.

It's that potential, that our own personal media is becoming more important, that drives me to try and offer something like this, even if it sucks. And, to nerds, it probably does... or at least, they would think this gets in the way.

Good luck, thank you for downloading, and I hope that using BitTorrent works for you.

-> DropTorrent 1.0 for Windows @ Sourceforge.net

So who want to port this to the Mac? ;)

Bram Cohen has a blog

This is cool for all sorts of reasons... Bram Cohen (inventor of the BitTorrent protocol) has a LiveJournal. Just the opportunity to see what random ramblings are bouncing around in his brain is a treat, from his qualms with other software implementations, to his algorithm for betting on Final Jeopardy. But then I saw he'd written this...

I'd also like to point out the difference between radio-style streaming and play on demand. A lot of people think because of the history that being stuck on a TV schedule is what people want, but in fact people vastly prefer a tivo/netflix interface to a real-time streaming interface, and frequently completely dump the real time when the other one becomes available. Play on demand is when there's a specific file which someone might want to watch and it starts playing immediately when they click on it. That's the vast bulk of what users want. Tapping into whatever's going on in a live stream is a niche market.

The Houston Tapes

It's been a long journey for me to finally see the videos up online and that is why I am sharing them on this blog - which is not necessarily dedicated to such posts. First of all, many thanks to Erik Amlee at Weirdsville for actually recording the footage that was mixed down and letting me use the tapes. Also, might as well give a shout to Nate Longcope for introducing me to Paradise Camp 23.

This was the first time I ever posted anything to archive.org. It took over a week from the when the files were first ftp'ped to finally be accepted. In a previous post I was kind of down on archive.org and the idea of cataloging all human knowledge. I still am, but the tool of the archive and the digital bicycle as well - are amazing resources for the present - that will help us break move through this cultural moment.

Vloggercon 2005

On January 22, we'll be presenting the DigitalBicycle as part of Vloggercon at the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. If you're interested in attending, following it online (live video and chat), or downloading rebroadcastable copies of it later, check out vloggercon.blogspot.com

They even have an videopost / commercial for it. Wow.

Wired News: I Want My Internet TV

Wired News: I Want My Internet TV

So the porn industry is launching an adult Internet TV station. Wonder what the funding stream will be.

New Media Musings: Online video and Ourmedia

New Media Musings: Online video and Ourmedia
Will be interesting to see how the DigiBike will fit into all of these upcoming new ways of sharing video. I'm still convinced that like other Social Networking software the strength of the system will be in the real-world connections that organiations and indivdiuals already have. Tapping into the grassroots networks that LTC is part of will be a key to its adoption.

MythTV WishList from Newegg

Click here for the wishlist.

Please, Santa.

All I want for Christmas is a MythTV box that doesn't look like a computer for downloading community media content. I promise to use it to evaluate videos right from my television and I'll always be a good seeder. With the enclosed DVD burner I'll burn copies of my favorite Creatively Commoned videos to give to friends and family and deliver to my local cable access station for playback. Eventually I'll even use the box to make my own videoblog posts and short videos, compress them, and post them through the DigitalBicycle. And I promise to use as much open-source software as possible. Just don't give it a noisy fan.

Seriously though, these are the parts that we are looking at for our test-run MythTV box. We're actively seeking feedback so leave a comment if you have something to say.

Academy Ephemera

I think one of the greatest potentials of the Digital Bicycle lies in the opportunity to explore the ephermeral nature of media. Analog in the form of film, photographs, records, cassettes deteriorate over time. Digital formats such as DVD, CD and hard drives promise perservation into a boundless infinite future. The reality is painfully human. Discs get scratched and digital formats such as those mentioned require a complex electronic device to deencode the information contained within. Analog formats may last longer than digital formats in terms of years, there may be less potential for scracthes - but there is a point at which these will become useless junk, too. And I think this is a blessing, really, a reality check we are long overdue for.

It is a game of self deception on the highest magnitude to think that we are eternally preserving our culture in some mediated form. To think this process is sustainable is ridiculous. Written history is a drastic change from oral history but, when it comes down to it - all we are doing right now is extending written history in a different form. Rather than using letters and symbols - we are using ones and zeros - writing history to our hard drives instead of stone tablets.

But how far can this take us? Culture is an activity - not solely accumulation of objects. Sharing information over a network is a form of communication - an activity - not just accumulation. The Digital Bicycle can help us build culture. It can make the process of moving sounds and images that we have created and built and transformed ourselves between communities and individuals. It is not about writing history or capturing it or trying feverishly to grasp onto it - but about returning to the communal nature of the oral culture experience with a new set of tools.

Imagine this...

After awhile this Digital Bicycle thing will be up and running and hopefully getting some whacked out fragments of video and audio from every source imaginable. This reservoir is the collective consciousness from which the alchemists and shamans tap into. Their work stews in a cauldron of synthesizers and editing software, analog mixers. These visions are then integrated into performances - live video screenings that can be part of larger theatrical events. In this way the technology that has pushed us to the brink of losing our humanity does not necessarily lead us to a path of self destruction.

VideoPost Update #1

After months on the videoblogging list, I've finally created my first videoblog post, though it's primarily an update on the DigitalBicycle with a little ranting sprinkled thoughout. I made it in "Edit A" which is currently being setup as a videoconferencing and videoblogging suite (in addition to its other uses) and while the sound could be better (next time I'll use a lavalier mic) and talent could be more talented, it is what it is. While clicking on this link will open a standard 320x240, 15 fps, 3ivx encoded .mov (you'll need QT6 to view it). The adventurous among us should opt for this link
which is a torrent for a 640x480, 29.97 fps, 3ivx encoded file that's being tracked and hosted by Prodigem. Prodigem is a new service by Gary Lerhaupt, the man behind Torrentocracy, the amazing MythTV plugin that is making me build a MythTV box. Gary is one of the people who gets it and I expect that we'll see big things coming out of his current and future projects.

While I talk about near-DVD quality video in the post, I'm not sure that precisely describes the larger file in my torrent, but I've seen significantly better encoded video coming out of HandBrake and other 3ivx settings in the past, so I'm not sure what I did wrong (or at least less right) this time. It could just be that the encoder is less forgiving of the dimmer lighting and softer focus. Here's hoping that Steve will release QT7 and H.264 integration at the MacWorld in January so we can skip straight to the sweet stuff.

I Want My IPTV

I Want My IPTV: Corante > EventLab >

Short post at a new site at Corante called EventLab. The author demands his IPTV though he doesn't define what he expects or desires this content to be. Posts like this make an interesting compliment to the videoblogging list and the discussions they are having about the differences between television and videoblogging. It's like one of those situations where you might be the most liberal person in your family but the most conservative person in your workplace... My view of where television and the internet collide and can prosper is far less television-y than many people talking about IPTV (though I'm not refering specifically to this post as this author doesn't specify content) and far more television-y than most of the pure-bred videobloggers.