Lucas Gonze's blog

On the web as soundscape (David Humphrey):

When I go out looking for birds, I can cope with many overlapping sounds at once, some near, some far, and they provide clues and cues as opposed to content.  I imagine something not unlike Brian Eno’s ambient music (cf. Music for Airports), where sound is meant to be something you don’t concentrate on, but part of the experience of the space.

I’ve wondered if there is a place for sound on the web that is different from music or sound effects.  As Laurian discusses, a way to get more information about the content of a page before you encounter it, much as you gain information about a field or woods by the sounds you hear (and those you don’t).

Kinect motion control permeates the entire Dashboard experience. ... Voice control goes almost as deep as gesture control, and is infinitely easier to use. This too, was once available in the Kinect Hub, but the contemporary implementation is heavily refined.

via Xbox 360 Dashboard update review (fall 2011) -- Engadget.

For connected TVs the biggest technology obstacle is input devices. Being able to use gestures + voice control without even having to pick up a physical is a huge win.

However, the hardware may be too expensive. Putting an accelerometer in an otherwise simple remote may be the sweet spot for cost/benefit tradeoffs. This is the strategy for Wii, LG's Magic Motion remote, and the new Roku.

Jeff Atwood said any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript. Writing Photoshop, Word, or Excel in JavaScript makes zero engineering sense, but it's inevitable. It will happen. In fact, it's already happening. Just look around you. As a software developer, I am happiest writing software that gets used.

He's wrong that it makes zero engineering sense.

Apps written on the browser stack - HTML, CSS, Javascript - iterate faster than client-side apps. They start as weak approximations but end up as far better. They start behind but run faster.

For example, browser-based mail apps like Hotmail were originally much worse than client side ones like Eudora. But huge advances have been made in these apps, and now client side mail readers like Outlook are clearly lagging edge in comparison to ajax apps like Gmail. It's not just ancient rotting hulks like Outlook; even relatively recent client-side mailers like Mail.app aren't as good as the best web mail apps.

Any application that can be written on the web stack will eventually surpass the same application on the client-side stack.

Why do web apps interate faster? My intuition is that it's about the size of the community of developers attacking technical obstacles. On the web you aren't the only engineer blocked by Problem X. There are huge numbers of other engineers stuck there. All these engineers swarm the problems and knock them down. The near-instant speed of deployment of new code (especially in a shop using continuous integration) takes over and allows each incremental solution to go live. Then the transparency of web coding enables the innovation to spread: engineers discover one another's solutions, read the source (which is always available), and copy the innovation. And this applies to virtually every aspect of the web stack, so that all of these innovations accumulate to the benefit of all web apps.

It is sometimes more technically difficult to write applications that rely on internet standards rather than client-side conventions. That creates the impression that the client-side approach is better engineering. But the client-side approach can rarely accomplish as much.

If the owner of a copyright doesn't care to commercially exploit their work, they won't cover the ongoing expenses to police infringements by submitting takedown requests. There is basically a blacklist of works whose copyrights are valuable enough to cover the bill for submitting takedown requests. This blacklist is self maintaining - there doesn't need to be a central registry.

The gray list is works which are not policed. Some are in the public domain or under a permissive license like one from Creative Commons. Some are in copyright but not being actively exploited, including orphan works whose owners can't be reached, as well as barely-exploitable works whose owners can't be bothered.

Anybody can find out which is which: post a given recording in a visible location and see whether you get a takedown request.

The HTML5 audio element has unfinished business. This posting by Ian McKellar of Rdio to the Rdio-API mailing list articulates the problems well.

The conversational context is that he's explaining why the Rdio in-browser player uses a a headless Flash module to stream audio rather than the Audio element.

We have no plans to support streaming via <audio> tags. There are a few show-stopper issues with the specification and the implementations that make it inappropriate for our use.

First of all there is no audio codec supported across popular browsers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(HTML5_Media)#Audio_format_support As you can see Firefox only supports Ogg Vorbis and while Chrome supports that Safari and IE do not.

Current implementations are immature and generally of poor quality. For example while iOS browsers have an <audio> tag it seems that they apparently don't actually work very well: http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2011/03/the-state-of-html5-audio Most other browsers have have their own warts and bugs too. I'm sure this will all look a lot better in a few years, but for the time being the platform isn't ready. And for all of Flash's bugs and flaws they do handle music streaming pretty well.

The <audio> API doesn't support streaming which *significantly* increases bandwidth usage. Flash's RTMP protocol allows devices to only download what they're actually playing. If you skip 20 seconds into a song then Flash will have only downloaded about 30 seconds worth of audio. Using HTTP progressive download playback (the only protocol that <audio> supports) then you'd have downloaded as much of the track as could be streamed across your network connection. Seeking with RTMP also significantly more efficient and quick than with plain old HTTP.

Finally Rdio's business and the businesses of our content partners depends on being able to securely deliver content to subscribers. When I listen to a song by a friend's band (eg: http://rd.io/x/Q1I2VLLD) I know that my friend is getting paid. While we all know that no security mechanisms are perfect the ones available in Flash are significantly more sophisticated, robust and well tested than what we could build on top of HTML5 <audio>.

Media type:
application/json; schema=dublin_core

Null data URI with this type:
data:application/json;schema=dublin_core,%7B%7D

Link response header with null data URI:
Link: data:application/json;schema=dublin_core,%7B%7D; rel="meta"

Link response header with artist and song title:
data:application/json; schema=dublin_core,{Creator%3A"Michael%20Jackson"%2CTitle%3D"Billie%20Jean"}

Using a data URI instead an HTTP URI is more robust, simpler and faster. I had to invent the media type, though. application/json; schema=dublin_core is a neologism.

Also, having two semicolons in there (you need one for the media type parameter to the data URI and one for the rel attribute) might be a bug.

1. • lucasgonze clears throat
2. [6:21pm] lucasgonze: I have this thought -
3. [6:22pm] lucasgonze: apply http://www.w3.org/wiki/LinkHeader to audio files on the web, as a method to annotate pcm data.
4. [6:22pm] lucasgonze: as an alternative to id3
5. [6:22pm] lucasgonze: so let's say there is http://example.com/example.wav
6. [6:22pm] lucasgonze: wav has no metadata support
7. [6:23pm] lucasgonze: GET on http://example.com/example.wav would return a response header pointing to a metadata file
8. [6:23pm] lucasgonze: Link: example-metadata.json; rel=meta
9. [6:25pm] lucasgonze: GET http://example.com/stairwaytoheaven.wav
10. [6:25pm] lucasgonze: Link: http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/recording/ccfdd180-22e1-49b9-bd81-b5fcf2c6474e?inc=artist-credits%2Breleases; rel=meta
11. [6:35pm] lucasgonze: use CORS on the metadata resource http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/ to enable cross site requests from ajax
12. [6:36pm] lucasgonze: then a javascript-based audio renderer in the browser can access metadata for any file
13. [6:37pm] lucasgonze: the metadata technology is factored out of the codec.
14. [6:37pm] lucasgonze: the http request becomes the envelope for waveform data and metadata together.
15. [6:37pm] lucasgonze: metadata technology and audio signal processing technology can evolve independently

See also the Web Audio API and jsmad.

Scandinavian Music Company Set to Take Over By Reinventing the Mixtape.

X5 focuses on back catalogs of classical music and creating custom compilations with titles like “The 99 Darkest Pieces of Classical Music” or “The 50 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music” which, since being released in 2008, has made more than $2 million worldwide. Essentially, they buy up a truckload of song licenses at low-rates, package them into winning compilations and resell at a moderate markup. X5 has released more than 8,000 of these thematic albums — some by composer, mood, holiday, etc. — with most falling under the “classical” genre.

In 2010, X5 was the number two classical label in the U.S. with a 20% market share, and had 13 #1 Billboard Classical albums — more than any other label, save for Universal Music Group (with whom X5 is currently in talks).

The company has been able to make all that money through some simple tricks: The albums are inexpensive, the artwork is simple but striking, X5 distributes through all major music sites — iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Rhapsody, etc. — and designs albums with a kind of “music SEO” in mind. “Think of the person that types ‘classical’ into the iTunes search box,” says Scott Ambrose Reilly, X5′s new U.S.-based CEO. “That’s the kind of person we’re trying to sell to.”

Steve Jobs inspired me by building his business on quality. Before the rebirth of Apple the dominant designer in the computer industry was Microsoft, which specializes in willfully shoddy workmanship. They inspired others to do knowingly bad work and made it harder to develop a business consensus for good work. Microsoft's world was cynical, depressing and demoralizing. Apple under Jobs countered this. It showed that cynicism towards your own workmanship is not necessary.

But when you buy an Apple product you more or less give up your right to repair it. You can't install the software of your choosing, you can't sell your software to other owners without Apple's blessing. You give up your right to modify and improve a possession, which negates your own property rights. Apple is such a powerful corporation that they can sell you stuff without your getting true ownership. This is undemocratic. It increases the power of the biggest and most powerful corporations. Even Microsoft at its peak was more open. This makes me sad and a little more cynical.

Daring Fireball sez:

Show me something real, I say. Look at Amazon. Everyone knows they’re building a tablet. What have they said, though? Nothing. What have they shown? Nothing. When will they say something? When it’s done. What will they show? Something real.