I’d love for fifteen or twenty minutes to go by without my Google Reader barfing out yet another piece of software patent or “HTML5 video codec war” news, but that’s how it is. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the video tag didn’t become standardized until HTML6 or 7.

One serious downside to the lack of consensus is the fact that your browser may very well not have built-in support for some video files embedded with the tag. Firefox, for example, is running with Ogg Theora and won’t be bolting on H.264 support. Apart from patent issues, there’s a $5 million price tag to be paid to MPEG-LA if Mozilla did want to support the codec, and they still wouldn’t be able to include that code in their open source.

But developers love to spin remixes of the Fox, and it only makes sense that someone would take matters into his or her own hands. Enter Maya Posch, who has launched the Wild Fox project on SourceForge. The plan: add H.264 support to Firefox’s stable branch using libavcodec or GStreamer.
Posch feels “that decisions have been made due to patents which do not apply in most parts of the world.” He continues, “The Wild Fox project aims to rectify this by releasing builds with these features included, builds which will of course only be available to those not in software patent-encumbered countries.”

That sounds useful, right? A nice, pre-packaged Firefox build with H.264 support? Sure it does, but there’s a potential pitfall.

While you would probably be able to download and install Wild Fox even in the U.S. and Korea (two of the patent-encumbered countries), Thomas Holwerda of OSNews warns that you’d be doing so at your own risk, saying “MPEG-LA has clearly stated that it will sue unlicensed users (and is clearly not afraid to do so).” Their director of Global Licensing, Allen Harkness, has said “where a royalty has not been paid, such a product remains unlicensed and any downstream users/distributors would have liability.”

Yes, that means MPEG-LA could come after you if you choose to browse with Wild Fox. However, it’s infinitely more likely that they’d target Posch and Wild Fox.

Last week, YouTube announced beta HTML 5 video support: once you’ve activated the beta, you’ll see videos using a native browser element rather than the Flash plugin. The new player only works with a recent version of either Safari or Chrome (or Chrome Frame in IE), as the video is encoded with the H.264 codec, which isn’t supported in Firefox. A day after YouTube’s announcement, Vimeo made a similar one. They also now provide preliminary support for the HTML video element with a new HTML player.

Superficially this seems like a victory for the “open” Web, right? A few major sites, representing a significant percentage of online video, begin to move away from a proprietary technology (Flash) and towards an open standard (HTML 5). But when you look a little deeper it turns out to not be so simple. Both YouTube and Vimeo have chosen to provide their HTML video encoded with the H.264 codec, which is patent-encumbered. Apple has a big stake in H.264, so Safari supports it, and Google has paid a licensing fee to include an H.264 decoder in Chrome.

Mozilla Firefox, on the other hand, doesn’t support H.264: it will only play HTML video encoded with the Ogg Theora codec. This is partly for ideological reasons, as the Theora codec is open source and therefore inline with Mozilla’s principles. But there’s more to it than just ideology. In reply to YouTube’s announcement, Mozilla’s VP of Engineering, Mike Shaver, published a blog post explaining why Mozilla is sticking to its guns with Theora. He points to H.264’s licensing fees not only as a justification for Mozilla’s decision not to support the format, but also as a more dire threat: “[...] if H.264 becomes an accepted part of the standardized web, those fees are a barrier to entry for developers of new browsers, those bringing the web to new devices or platforms, and those who would build tools to help content and application development.” Mozilla’s Open Source Evangelist, Christopher Blizzard, also had a lot to say on the topic, likening the situation to what happened years ago with the GIF format (and, to a lesser extent, with MP3).

It’s important to remember that the current level of browser support for web standards comes, in large part, from Firefox’s ability to compete on a level playing field with other browsers, and from the Mozilla team’s dedication to open standards. When big sites like YouTube begin positioning a proprietary format as the de facto standard for HTML video, they significantly impede the ability of free-as-in-speech browsers like Firefox to rival their competitors in functionality, which hurts interoperability and innovation on the Web as a whole. Meanwhile, though Chrome and Safari may be excellent browsers, and while their support for modern standards-based HTML and CSS should be applauded, in this respect their choice of a proprietary video format is more reminiscent of IE, circa the mid-90’s.

The fact that YouTube and Vimeo are trumpeting their new HTML 5 video support as an open standards victory is misleading to say the least. And it does lead to confusion: as pointed out by Christopher Blizzard, more than a few people on Twitter seem to think that Firefox’s lack of support for YouTube’s HTML 5 video should be taken to mean that Firefox doesn’t support HTML 5!

YouTube stated that it was launching the new feature in response to a user survey in which “Support HTML5 open web video with open formats” was the most requested feature. It seems that YouTube might only have been paying attention to the first half of the sentence: HTML 5 video, yes; open formats, eh, not so much.

So what do you think? Is it the job of YouTube and other sites like it to lead the way in providing video in an open format? Or should Chrome and Safari lead the way by supporting those formats first? Or are Mozilla being hopeless idealists?

iStreamDirector is both a digital asset management (DAM) system and a content management system (CMS) that does such things as media ingestion, transcoding between multiple formats, metadata management, live event management, Silverlight and Flash player creation, playlist management, rights management and so on.

It’s been a long time coming, but Apple has finally secured the deals to sell the entire iTunes music catalogue without DRM and the entire music library is finally available in the 256kbps AAC format that has been known as iTunes Plus until now.

Starting in April, iTunes will also be introducing variable pricing for songs – 69¢, 99¢ and $1.29 depending on the prices set by the record labels. Despite the momentum that the likes of Amazon and other DRM-free vendors such as 7Digital have been gaining in the last few months, the iTunes store remains the largest (and most popular) online music store.

If you’re already sunk a fair amount of money in the iTunes store, Apple will allow you to upgrade your entire library to the DRM-free format – for 30¢ per song or 25% of the album price.

Read the complete article here.

The purpose of this change is to make it so you can all get your grades back on a more timely basis.  However, it also means that I will be getting more strict about assignments and quizzes.  I hope that between eCompanion and Mobimeet you’ll be able to get a complete resource for both classes.

One final note before the quarter begins – using any of the older editions of the textbooks is perfectly fine for both classes (well, really the Program Logic class in particular) so shop out on half.com or Amazon.  If you can’t get it right away, I will post questions taken from the textbook on eCompanion but you do need to get the textbooks.

Read the post “The Paper Version of the Web” and see the pics at deeplinking.net.

Dan Catt’s concept sketch for Flickr Places

Update 03/04/08 9:28am

So I guess the experiment worked – the demand on the servers was so huge that the entire system crapped out for a good chunk of the day.  To wit Reznor then posted the torrent links on his site but as of this morning it’s back up and working.  Will be interesting to see if he bothers to post up the results of this test.

Want to start a podcast, but don’t know the first thing about audio engineering, web hosting, or RSS feeds? Blogtalkradio’s newest service makes podcasting a cinch, which is probably why they call the service Cinch.

All you have to do is a call 646-200-0000 from any phone and start talking. Cinch will record your conversation and create a feed with your call as an MP3 enclosure. You never even need to visit the Cinch web page or sign up for the service. So how do you find your feed? Simple, just add your phone number to the end of the Cinch URL. For example, if your phone number is 555-253-4756, your feed would be published at http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/5552534756.

Now, the audio quality isn’t going to be amazing. We’re talking about recording telephone calls here, after all. If you’re serious about podcasting, you’re going to want to get a decent microphone, some audio editing software, and so forth. But if you just want to record short interviews on the go and you don’t have any other equipment handy, Cinch could be a lifesaver.

And if you’re worried about sharing your phone number with the general public through the URL, you can always use FeedBurner to republish your feed with a different URL.

[via Scripting News]

The New Iteration: How XAML Transforms the Collaboration Between Developers and Designers in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) by Karsten Januszewski and Jaime Rodriguez

Blog post by Client Platform Technical Evangelist Tim Sneath

Download the Whitepaper

[Via TorrentFreak]

It’s a strange time to be an artist in the recording business. It’s pretty easy to see what NOT to do these days, but less obvious to know what’s right. As I find myself free from the bloated bureaucracy of major labels, finally able to do whatever I want… well, what is that? What is the “right” way to release records, treat your music and your audience with respect and attempt to make a living as well? I have a number of musician friends who are either in a similar situation or feel they soon will be, and it’s a real source of anxiety and uncertainty.

I’d like to share my experience releasing Saul Williams’ “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust” and what I’ve learned from the process. Perhaps by revealing of all our data – our “dirty laundry” – we can contribute to a better solution. A quick history: Saul makes a great record that I produce. We can’t find the right home at a major label. We decide to release it ourselves, digitally. Saul does not have limitless financial resources so we shop around for a company that can fulfill our needs. We choose Musicane because they are competent and are willing to adapt to what we want. The results are here: niggytardust.com

We offer the entire record free (as in totally free to the visitor – we pay bandwidth costs) as 192 MP3s, or for $5 you can choose higher fidelity versions and feel good about supporting the artist directly. We offer all major CCs and PayPal as payment options.

Here’s what I was thinking: Fans are interested in music as soon as it’s available (that’s a good thing, remember) and usually that’s a leak from the label’s manufacturing plants. Offering the record digitally as its first appearance in the marketplace eliminates that problem. I thought if you offered the whole record free at reasonable quality – no strings attached – and offered a hassle free way to show support that clearly goes straight to the artists who made it at an unquestionably low price people would “do the right thing”. I know, I know…

Well, now I DO know and you will too.

Saul’s previous record was released in 2004 and has sold 33,897 copies.

As of 1/2/08,

• 154,449 people chose to download Saul’s new record.
• 28,322 of those people chose to pay $5 for it, meaning:
• 18.3% chose to pay.

Of those paying,

• 3220 chose 192kbps MP3
• 19,764 chose 320kbps MP3
• 5338 chose FLAC

Keep in mind not one cent was spent on marketing this record. The only marketing was Saul and myself talking as loudly as we could to anybody that would listen.

If 33,897 people went out and bought Saul’s last record 3 years ago (when more people bought CDs) and over 150K – five times as many – sought out this new record, that’s great – right?

I have to assume the people knowing about this project must either be primarily Saul or NIN fans, as there was very little media coverage outside our direct influence. If that assumption is correct – that most of the people that chose to download Saul’s record came from his or my own fan-base – is it good news that less than one in five feel it was worth $5? I’m not sure what I was expecting but that percentage – primarily from fans – seems disheartening.

Add to that: we spent too much (correction, I spent too much) making the record utilizing an A-list team and studio, Musicane fees, an old publishing deal, sample clearance fees, paying to give the record away (bandwidth costs), and nobody’s getting rich off this project.

But…
Saul’s music is in more peoples’ iPods than ever before and people are interested in him. He’ll be touring throughout the year and we will continue to get the word out however we can.

So – if you’re an artist looking to utilize this method of distribution, make of these figures what you will and hopefully this info is enlightening.
- Trent Reznor

First, lots going on with iStreamPlanet, our Silverlight development and other technology advancements.  For those of you who are able to, head on out to CES – it looks like this will be a pretty good show this year.  And if you have a chance to head to Mix08 – there will be some really cool things to see there too.  In any case, the contractors didn’t finish our new office build-out so me and the team are stuck in temporary office space – no thanks to Wynn practically pushing us out the door from the office I’ve been residing in the last 5 years.

Second, I know a lot of you use and have gotten comfortable with Firebug.  Here’s a similar plugin I found that you should also get.  It allows you to do a lot of those user variations that you might not otherwise account for – exact screen resolutions, Javascript on/off, etc.

Finally, I admit, I use cheat sheets.  It’s bad enough trying to remember markups, commands, syntax, functions, and methods for 1 or 2 languages, what about 5 or more languages that a web developer typically has to know (and if you have no idea what I’m talking about, see below)?  UK-based Internet dude Dave Child, who writes good, poignant articles and blogs about a ton of topics, has a great set of free (yes, FREE – and if you use them you should send him a note and thank him for saving you a few bucks after all the tuition you’ve paid) cheat sheets in PDF format for download.  I recommend grabbing them (at least the list below) as soon as you can – with the Web, you never know when something’s going to disappear.  Check out the list and links here.

And as far as the list of languages you should know as a web developer (and this rant is aimed directly at my students) …

1. HTML/XHTML (and you should know the difference)
2. CSS (and be current and know the hacks)
3. Javascript & Javascript prototyping
4. ASP Classic (sorry guys, I still think it’s a good fundamental language)
5. SQL (for MySQL)
6. PHP (both functional and object based)
7. XML (and variants of it, plus XSL)
8. ActionScripting
9. And if you really want to get ahead, you need to learn at least one of the following to stay ahead of the curve in the next few years: ASP.NET, JSP, Ruby on Rails, or C#

And no, AJAX is not a language as many of you still think – if you thought it was…GO LOOK IT UP!

See you in class … don’t be late!

For more information about this issue, go here.

On the plus side, he does make excellent arguments and pointers for the individual consumer.  This is a side of the story that I can more or less agree with against DRM, particularly if you are living the legit life and purchase licenses to listen to your music or watch your videos.

On the flip side, however, DRM does has its place in society and as the standard argument goes, if you owned the content, wouldn’t you want to protect it?  We spend billions in this country litigating against breaches of patents, copyrights and ownerships, so why isn’t entertainment or media-based property handled the same?  Why would we as individuals be so protective of our own ideas yet so blatantly disregard the products that others put out.

To expand, iStreamPlanet specifically helps business monetize on valuable resources by providing protection of media content.  Say a business wants to webcast internally because of confidential information – why shouldn’t they be allowed to use DRM?  And to their credit (now that the truth has come out), Apple still used DRM in it’s new release but for tracking purposes and not to keep people from sharing files – why can’t this be considered viable use?  If you wrote a song, wouldn’t you want to know who’s heard it?

So like I said, I think this whole thing has gotten way out of proportion – there is a place for everything in society and heading into the extremes is just preventing the creation of good solutions.

As the music industry begins to swallow the big picture and eliminate DRM in order to increase sales, the movie industry remains steadfast in its resolve. This week’s Economist features a no-holds barred editorial that slams the motion picture industry for attempting to force consumers into a cycle of buying and rebuying of media for every new platform they own.

“Belatedly, music executives have come to realise that DRM simply doesn’t work. It is supposed to stop unauthorised copying, but no copy-protection system has yet been devised that cannot be easily defeated. All it does is make life difficult for paying customers, while having little or no effect on clandestine copying plants that churn out pirate copies.”

The real piracy issue facing the movie industry isn’t Joe Q. Consumer ripping DVDs onto his home media box of choice, but Johnny Piratepants selling counterfeit DVDs in flea markets. Will we ever teach the industry to love thier customers, instead of holding us at arms length and treating us as de facto criminals?

Original article here.

DownloadSquad story here…

Now the content owners of the non-label videos are fighting back having filed a suit against Viacom for its rather rash approach.  I think the important aspect to remember here was stated succinctly by writer Grant Robertson:

“This is a pretty clear cut battle of corporate rights versus citizen rights. Viacom is playing the gotta break eggs to make an omlet defense, downplaying the chilling effect its indiscriminate use of the DMCA had on other legitimate copyright holders. What’s flawed about that logic is this; If Viacom’s copyrights are important, so are yours. We must seek to defend independent producers just as vigilantly as we aim to protect the Viacoms of the world.”

Interesting reads: 

• Viacom becomes DMCA bully
• Content Owners sue Viacom