- Video
- Collaborative Filtering
This is a prediction, not a promise or commitment.
Video
A year ago, I wouldn't have thought there was still so much room
for video, and specifically, sharing, technology online. YouTube
was "it" and you don't need 2 "it" places for video (or email, or
whatever), you just need 1.
Lately, I've been struck by the sheer volume of online video
sharing places that exist. And some are very, very good. I still
keep my video favorites over at YouTube, but that's just for now -
I fully expect to switch at some point.
My 2 favorites:
- Viddler: http://www.viddler.com/
- Blip.tv: http://blip.tv/
I mainly like these two for their players. (I also like the
players at: http://omnisio.com/ and TED: http://www.ted.com/.) Any time that
I see a video that is one of these on a blog, I am happy to see it.
Viddler in particular is cool. For a sample, check out this video
walkthrough of Chichen Itza: http://www.viddler.com/explore/MostlyLisa/videos/10/
There are little bits that are user comments, product links,
etc.. It's like a layer of "web stuff" (links & comments) on
top of the video.
There are interesting things happening in the video technology
space, but not for me, thanks1.
Collaborative Filtering
This is really interesting space - there are lots of interesting
stuff being done with it. I wish I could spend some time working
with CF algorithms. I've talked about it some (here,
here [editor's choice], and
here) and I've even toyed with 2 different projects where it
would be useful.
Aside: CF is how Amazon gives you the "people who liked this
also liked," and how Netflix gives you movie recommendations (and
shells out $1 million dollars to get a better algorithm - the
"Netflix Prize").
I think I'm just recognizing the inevitability of my limited
time and I won't get to do anything with this at this point in
time.
The upside is that I expect that this kind of technology will be
far more commonplace in 3 years that it is now. So, letting it
simmer and picking it up later, once it's more common, won't be
hard - and there will be more good examples of it then.
Links
- YouTube Musings
I wondered why YouTube didn't have anything happening in their
player. Oh sure, they released a "beta" player but it wasn't
anything earth shattering.
Is this because it was Google's fancy new acquisition that they
don't want to break? Or maybe it's just another secret project that
has yet to see the light of day (have you been to Silicon Valley
and experienced the common answer to "What are you working on?":
"Can't say."). I doubt this is the case, since I think the YouTube
purchase was about the community ("eyeballs" in bubble-2000-speak)
not the technology. (If the purchase reason were the technology,
you might be able to argue that they were taking the technology and
building a new better product - yet to be seen. If it's the
community, then they aren't building a new community - they should
be releasing new features to the community bit by bit.)
Either way, YouTube, the "Kleenex" of video sites, it sitting
yoga-still when it comes to publicly visible technology.