@lindsay.at

I'm planning on going to the Music Hack Day in London in two weeks. I'll be waving the flag for The Echo Nest and their fabulous APIs. There's a lot being said elsewhere about it, but I wanted to send out a special welcome to French and Belgian hackers.

The hack day is being held at the Guardian's offices neat Kings Cross, London. That puts it just a couple hundred metres away from the Eurostar terminal in London. So, for precisely the price of a round-trip fare to London, you can hop on an 8am train, get fed throughout the event, housed on Saturday night, and return Sunday evening. Nothing else to worry about. Well worth considering if you're close to Lille, Paris, or Brussels. Oh boy, what I would have given for a weekend like this when I was living in Brussels...

So register right away: the spaces are now filling up fast!

And we can get up to antics like this:

(Which is just the Dissociated algorithm applied to video in synch with the audio, in the latest versions of the Echo Nest Remix API. In my opinion, it moves the image of the subject from being quirky to having serious battles with mental health.)

I haven't been writing on this blog. Never mind why not. I have, however, been writing on this site, trying to fill in the CMS's content a little more.

I wrote a couple pieces on work I have done with The Echo Nest Remix API. It wasn't planned, but it ended up being a good way out of a writing logjam I had found myself in. It was prompted, of all things, by a tweet by a colleague. Was there a place that explains it all? Actually, no, there wasn't.

It's not the finest literature, but I hope that my overview at least communicates my enthusiasm for the project. I've been talking about the principles behind Remix for years and years, but never found quite the right framework for giving those ideas shape. Why, yes, of course multimedia descriptions can be used to drive changes to the underlying media.

My favorite way of thinking of Remix is that it makes each song its own API: each song offers queries into its own features, and can return any number of transformed versions of itself, all of which are sensitive to the original song’s musical features

That sentence wasn't written off the cuff: it distills the essence of my current personal research.

I had meant to write about some further examples, but instead got sidetracked and spent some time looking at automatic documentation methods. It turns out that epydoc is pretty useful software. I had never used the reStructuredText markup language before, either. Although I found it to be a bit heavy on the "ant turd tokens," it was surprisingly usable, especially for code documentation.

So the second release I made last week was of the API documentation. I'm not completely comfortable with where it's hosted, but I did design the URL to be stable and long-lived, if it needs to be. In editing and polishing the documentation, it definitely helped me understand things better, and appreciate that this is turning out to be one formidable bit of software.

The third release was the one I had been planning from the beginning. I had hoped to let the world at all in one go, but the enthusiasm behind them (my own and from the people to whom I showed early versions) was too great for things to wait for my explanation of the Dissociated Mixes.

I knew I wanted to tell people about these mixes after the surprising results I got from writing a code example that illustrated what a sorting operator could do. A bit of thought, and the card metaphor came about. I wanted to make it as accessible as possible to a general audience, but also give enough detail to people who were technically minded—whether about technology or about music. Although the other documentation has gotten some attention from developers, I'm really enthusiastic about this piece for a general audience. It also approaches a silly topic with a fairly straight face. Sounds familiar…

So, after weeks of dithering, talking with my colleagues and hearing their enthusiasm for the event provided me enough impetus to attend BBC's Mashed. It's HackDay 2008, basically, and it really felt like I missed something special last year. I've been getting my hack-fu together, and it felt like it would be nifty to go as a team.

But no, said colleagues dropped out almost immediately.

Mother-in-law came to the rescue, though, in offering to take Helena for the weekend, un-prompted. Great! (What? She's now expressing mixed feelings?…) So, I'm committed to going, even if I'm not going to approach it as the young man's game it appears to be. I have a hotel, I have a train, and I will attempt to treat myself right in the process. I want to hack, but I'll be fairly happy soaking up the atmosphere and giving out most of my remaining LOLCODE stickers, if people are interested.

For the rest: we shall see what we shall see.

Looks like HBO has put series like Deadwood, the Sopranos, and Sex in the City on the iTunes store. Good for them, and good for Apple. What I don't understand is how all the commentary points to how this "new" variable pricing for television episodes suddenly augurs a change in the dynamics between NBC and Apple.

I've watched these negotiations for a while, now. And it annoys me that it's widely reported that it's a cracking of the flat-rate pricing stance. TV shows have been priced at more than $1.99 for a while now. Look at PBS, look at Lifetime. It's premium content, and it still presents a compelling savings over the DVD pricing.

Now that I look at it, it seems like bub.bilicio.us and Doug Amoth of PC World got it right. I'm glad someone has.

I wish Brian and Tristan and the whole echonest crew the best of success. Beyond dropping the Analysis API on the public last autumn, they've finally come out to the public with a real corporate website and a hint of what they do.

The real treat is their this is my jam web application. It's audio mosaicing made popular and fun. Best of all, it's let me realise something I've dreamt of doing for years upon years:

Bill Withers' Ain't No Sunshine has been my personal earworm for about 30 years, back to when I first heard it on AM radio. I rediscovered it late in college, early grad school, and then around 2001, I discovered just how many covers were out there, via a long-forgotten file-sharing protocol. It's immensely satisfying to have a terse mix of fifteen versions of the song with a couple minutes' effort.

It would be nice to be able to return to the mix and tweak it a little, without creating another one, but then there's a rough perfection to it already. It's also worth noting that the RSS created on each page is also an iTunes-enabled podcast, if you want a way to get the MP3s onto your computer. My feed has already been duly added to my everywhere feed.

After seeing the appropriate portion of the Macworld Expo keynote presentation by Steve Jobs, I have some thoughts about the revamped AppleTV.

First off, I'm pretty happy about it. I'm very pleased that the "version 2" is just a software upgrade. It was pretty clear that the original hardware was over-specced for what it did at the beginning, so I bought early with a lot of confidence that the hardware would last. (Subsequent teardown reports that suggested tiny margins on the hardware increased that confidence.)

It's interesting to note that the UK prices haven't changed. At £199 and £269, Apple is treating the UK AppleTV as a niche product. If you know you want it, you've probably already gotten it. As soon as movies are available internationally, then I would expect the price to go down a bit. You gotta have the blades ready to go, if you want to sell cheaper razors...

Looking at the demos available online, it's unclear where the "source" menu has gone. We have a 40GB unit, and when Rosemary or I are feeling in an aimless mood, we'll mount our 500GB iTunes library and browse that for inspiration. I worry somewhat that streaming from arbitrary sources might be compromised in the new software.

The store integration is very impressive, and very inviting. It's what's needed to make rentals work: highly visual, presenting a multitude of choices, and accommodating to impulse buys (or rentals). It looks like a model that all others should follow.

However, the AppleTV now appears to be little more than a portal for the iTunes Store. The menu system puts an extraordinary amount of attention on the Store, and pushes one's own content to the bottom. It seems odd that streaming content over the internet is given such priority after the first version: Apple's view always seemed to be, "Don't trust the internet's quality of service, but you can stream over the LAN." LAN-based content, as far as I can tell, seems to be hidden.

I always viewed Podcasts as a back door for (free) content onto the AppleTV. They are the "other easy way" to get content pushed (automatically) into the living room. Before, entering arbitrary URLs into iTunes (perhaps via a clickable itpc: link) was about equivalent to subscription via Apple's iTunes Podcast directory. Now, via the AppleTV, the iTunes store solidifies its position as an orifice to podcasts. It looks inviting, instantly gratifying, and well done, but it makes Apple more of a gatekeeper to free content.

The fact that high definition finally makes its appearance is exciting to me. It's not how I originally imagined it would be, but everything I've read suggests that SVC scalable video encoding isn't ready for prime time yet. It may make an appearance, once hi-def moves to a purchase model/off the AppleTV exclusively.

There has been some speculation on why hi-def is AppleTV only. Some think it might be due to piracy concerns by the studios, but I think there are technology reasons as well. For 5.1 surround sound, there is no reliable, universal way for Mac or PC users to enjoy content encoded that way. High-Definition video cannot be played out on any of the iPhone/iPod family, either, so simply placing that content into iTunes creates a confusing situation ("this content is not compatible with your iPod") for those much-beloved users. In other words, hi-def is AppleTV-only because the technology isn't ready to accommodate the other devices in the ecosystem. I've outlined the ways it could happen, eventually, but for now, a closed, black box solution is sufficient for content that will not have a lifespan beyond thirty days.

I'm really eager to see the updated software myself, but I do worry that Apple may have made itself too much of a gatekeeper to content in the rush to give people the movie rentals they wanted.

We've had an AppleTV in our house for about nine months now, and it really has changed the way my entire family views television. I am convinced that Apple has the wherewithal to make it a compelling story for a mass market. Much though I want to believe, Apple's big steps in this direction at Macworld this week don't necessarily have to include high definition. What's most important is that people see that the AppleTV is the best-of-breed device for viewing digital content in the living room.

I've bought into the Apple picture whole-heartedly, so I get why things are the way they are (the MPEG-4 video codecs are good, the complexity is well-understood, and they are much more legitimately standards than other video formats found in the wild). Still, people want to be confident they can view content without bothering about the format. The potential consumers are right.

The iPod was helped immeasurably by MP3s that people had on their computer already and by CDs that people own. People expect, by drawing a parallel, that the AppleTV's play is for downloaded DiVX-video and DVDs that they own. Ultimately, the winner in this race will be the player who can make that back-door content work seamlessly for people.

I suspect Apple got into the AppleTV to help the MPEG-4-encoded content (read: iPod) ecosystem along. It's been a success already, in converting YouTube to H.264. However, it draws too much attention to its own store as being the odd man out. Even though the iTunes store's content is based on an international standard with a much more open pedigree than Windows Media, it appears to the outsider to be a closed ecosystem: the only convenient way to get video onto the AppleTV appears to be through the iTunes Store.

Although I use the iTunes store a lot, I get video from a lot of other sources, from downloading .flv's and .avi's, to DVDs that I own, to content from my digital camera or mobile phone. VisualHub worked well for many months, but I eagerly embraced the Turbo.264 when it was released (and now that it reliably works on all content I throw at it, the workflow is easier). I do recognise that I've drunk the Kool-Aid: I mention "workflow" when talking about the AppleTV. That's a sign that getting video onto the AppleTV isn't good enough yet. The perception that the iTunes Store is the only convenient way of obtaining video isn't that far from reality.

Apple is sure to introduce a new way or ways to get iTunes Store content onto your AppleTV within fewer than 24 hours of me writing this. I'm a staunch AppleTV defender, but thinking about it, the critics are right: there have to be more and easier ways of getting your content onto the AppleTV.

While the "easiest" way would be to get Perian's Windows-centric codec support onto the AppleTV (and allow iTunes to understand and sync that content as well), I don't think we're going to see that so soon. It's an aphorism that broader choice of content will win over devices that restrict that choice. However, I think that because (1) no one else provides the same compelling device interface, (2) going with bastardised standards (like Xvid) is too distasteful to Apple, (3) it steps outside of the iPhone/iPod ecosystem, which is more important than the AppleTV on its own, and (4) it has to toe the line on piracy with Hollywood, Apple will not make a play for expanded codecs until there is serious competition.

Apple is almost sure to make it easier to buy content directly onto the AppleTV. Is it time to tap the other source of freely available content and enable PVR capabilities on the AppleTV? That has the possibility of working, because there's the possibility of getting reliable metadata into the mix.

Back in 2002, I gave some lectures to students on multimedia metadata, and waved my first generation iPod. "I don't know if you've heard of this device yet," I said, "but it runs on metadata. All of the menus, scanning through by artist, album, or genre, depend on metadata to find your music." The same can be said of the AppleTV, as well. Electronic Programme Guides provide the link between broadcast content and getting content metadata covered. If you want to evaluate the strength of possible methods for adding video to the AppleTV, look to the metadata.

So, what does that mean to me in a couple hours? Rental content, content direct to the AppleTV, and the option of an interface to digital television? Likely. High Definition content amongst the content available on the store? WANT. But it's not as likely as I once thought, sadly.

Hey, has anyone else noticed that there has finally been a boost to the iTunes Plus library on Apple's iTunes store? I noticed while browsing the iTunes Wi-Fi music store, but confirmed it using the normal store.

There are some notable things about it:

• The independents have arrived: it's not a cluster of further EMI songs, but rather they appear to be from small labels.
• The per-track price of the iTunes Plus (DRM-free, 256kbps AAC) tracks are $.99, not the increased $1.29 price. See, for example, the new Iron & Wine album's listing. The album costs $9.99, but the individual tracks are still only $0.99.
• As of this writing, the FAQ has not yet been updated: it still says that "iTunes Plus songs are available at $1.29 per song."

Which came first, the agreement with the indies on the new price, or Amazon's MP3 store? From where I sit, this looks like a reaction to Amazon, which seems like a first for Apple with the iTunes store.

Oh, in case anyone is curious, but hasn't been following my Twitter feed, I got an iPod Touch last week. It's magnificent, and a delight to use. It's even more of a joy to demo it to my colleagues and friends around here. They're very impressed with the price (£199), as well.

This is the last time I'll indulge in this sort of iTunes-HD speculation until at least January 2008. I will freely admit that it's colored by wishful thinking, but here are some thoughts about Tuesday's upcoming press conference at the Regent Street that allow me to hope that Apple could possibly advance the state of the art in Hi-Def video delivery.

I'm not denying an iPhone announcement. That would be a fool's bet. I just think there could be something else cooking as well.

1) It's been quiet on the new television season front. While there are a few US shows whose seasons have already started, the big series seem to be starting from Sunday (23 September). Last year, many pre-paid, discounted season passes were trumpeted and pushed on the iTunes store. The distinct impression I get is that the store is waiting for something.

2) As I've pointed out before, if Apple wants to include high-definition televisual content on its store, it is best done at the start of the US TV season. Changing mid-season will confuse and frustrate users. The next opportunity will be September 2008.

3) The BBC has a lot of high-definition content that's just begging to be more widely distributed than it currently is. "Planet Earth" is consistently cited as a best-selling title in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats. Selling titles like "Hotel Babylon," "Robin Hood," and "Torchwood," for example, might actually benefit from the one-at-a-time taster format of the iTunes store (rather than the outlay required for a whole season on disc).

4) Partnering with content producers like the BBC may well be a way for Apple to soldier forward with its ambitious plans: Hollywood and the major American TV broadcast networks have been digging their heels in response to Apple's increasing power as a digital content distributor.

I've had a lot more thoughts on Apple's recent moves since last posting. None is quite enough to post individually, but they seem to make for a decent set of thoughts.

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There has been a wide range of prices thrown around as possibilities for a new pricing structure for television shows on iTunes. Prices from $0.99 to $4.99 have been quoted. I have only seen the prices reported at their face value and only compared to $1.99 for the existing standard definition purchases. Has no one else considered that $0.99 might be for a rental, and higher prices might be for High Definition?

Incidentally, people should not forget that HD television purchases have had an established price for nearly ten months: Xbox Live has offered 720p download purchases for $3.00 since last November.

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Mike Lee's rant on the entitlement people felt on hearing about Apple's iPhone price drop was amazing, and expanded on my initial reaction perfectly. That said, Apple's premeditated response was perfect. I also see it as being a

1. one-time benefit to early adopters of any of Apple's products ("This is life in the technology lane." In other words, "I hope you've learned your lesson."), and
2. the product of a wide-ranged sociological experiment. (Would users take this sort of price drop? No? Okay, we've learned a lesson.)

Perhaps it was enabled by – or even the reason behind – Apple selecting a subscription financial model for the iPhone.

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I am a bit stymied by the specificity of the naming of the "iTunes Wi-Fi music store." At first, I got it: Apple's not going to deal with delivery over the mobile telecom networks, and they're not dealing with video. Fine. It's verbose, but clear.

On second blush, however, I wasn't so sure. Why couldn't this be used for purchases over the AppleTV? The same underlying model (and controller) surely would serve the AppleTV's interface equally well. In fact, the seven major store headings ("New Releases," "What's Hot," "Genres," "Featured," "Top Tens," "Search," and "Downloads") line up fairly well with the YouTube interface headings ("Featured," "Most Viewed," "Most Recent," "Top Rated," "History," "Search," and "Log In").

I would have thought the ITunes Wi-Fi music store was a sure sign that similar functionality was coming to the living room. Perhaps it is, but under a different name: "iTunes AppleTV store." That gets around the music-or-video question as well.

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Last week, I had thought the iPhone's closed API was because of the the mobile carriers. Apple didn't want to come up with a guaranteed API until it had all of its carrier agreements down, and there was no chance of the carriers pushing to have their own applications on the Springboard. Independent reverse-engineering and programming has been allowed because there's little chance of it appealing to institutions. Thanks to Ben Metcalfe, I now think that the iPhone interface may never be "open" in an official way:

Dave Winer has a good observation:

“Scoble wants an SDK so developers can create cool iPhone apps. Of course I do too. But I doubt it’s going to happen anytime soon. Look at all the deals they can do if they don’t. Starbucks wouldn’t need them if there was an SDK. And Tulley’s could do their own, as could Peet’s, and Whole Foods, etc etc. Apple wants all that business, I’m sure. And they want to be able to sell Starbucks an exclusive. They couldn’t if there was an SDK.”

When he announced the iPhone, Steve Jobs said there would be no SDK because you could do everything you needed to in a web-browser/web-development environment. Clearly that’s not the case - the Starbucks’ widget is not something that the rest of us can implement.

It’s bad enough that users will be forced to have Starbucks marketing on their iPhone/iPod Touch screen. It’s a kick in the face to have built that with hidden functionality that goes against the previous ideals that were made about openness of the platform.

Apple may well be trying to be the new "orifice" here, via its Applications and unique partnerships, to displace the mobile carriers' own entrenched positions.

Well, I'm glad I still own some Apple stock.

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I also noticed the iPod TV-out picture suddenly got more complicated. The new iPod nano and the iPod classic will not output video to the television without a (new) cable or accessory including an Apple authentication chip.

Could this be the start of Apple's (public) implementation of a "secure signal path" for the purposes of complying with Digital Rights Management requirements of High-Definition video content providers?

Also recently: iPod classic vs. Flash, Where's the HD?, iPhone vs. iPod touch, and Technical feasibility on HD delivery.