Acts of Volition Radio: Session 28

Acts of Volition Radio: Session Twenty Eight

This session of Acts of Volition Radio is party will test your musical attention span with some long songs, but will reward you with some music gratification.

Songs short and long. Recorded Saturday, April 7, 2007 by Steven Garrity. Run time: 41min.

Session Twenty Eight Playlist:

  1. Joel Plaskett – Snowed In
  2. Fountains of Wayne – Fire in the Canyon
  3. The Shins – Sleeping Lessons
  4. The Arcade Fire – Intervention
  5. Matthew Sweet – Thunderstorm
  6. Explosions in the Sky – Your Hand in Mine

For more, see the previous Acts of Volition Radio sessions or subscribe to the Acts of Volition Radio RSS feed.

Acts of Volition Radio
Acts of Volition Radio
Acts of Volition Radio: Session 28
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The <Video> Tag

Brendan Eich, the Canada-loving technical leader of the Mozilla project, has written a piece on The Open Web and Its Adversaries and given a presentation on The Open Web. In addition to a general overview of what it means to have an open web, the post mentions work that Opera and Mozilla are doing with the WHAT working group to create new HTML tags for <audio> and <video>.

The basic idea (still in the early stages, I gather), is to create <audio> and <video> tags that would allow audio/video playback in the browsers without relying on a proprietary plugin (like Flash, in the case of YouTube). Browsers implementing the tags would be able to use any video format, but all browsers would support a base format of Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis.

Theora and Vorbis video and audio compression formats that are free, open-source, and unencumbered by patents. I’ve written before about the importance open formats for media.

If Firefox and Opera were able to leverage their combined corner of the market share and force Microsoft to implement such a setup in Internet Explorer (or if they did so eagerly on their own), it would be a great step forward for media on the web.

 

Remove Customization

REMOVE CUSTOMIZATION button from Virb.comThe new like-myspace-but-more-hip website Virb has a feature worth noting. Like many sites where you can create a page about yourself, you can do all kinds of visual customization to your page. On the same place (notably) on each page, though, there is a “remove customization” link. Clicking this link shows you the page using the default layout, fonts, colors, and overall style.

It’s an interesting idea to allow people to customize their pages to be as beautiful or ugly and as readable or obscure as they like. Then, give the visitor – the reader – the choice between seeing how the creator wants you to see the page and the plain original format.

I have the vague sense that there is a profound conclusion to be drawn about this, but it escapes me.