Tim Bray: Foo Camp Notes captures a bit of the
diversity that is present at
Foo
Camp. What follows below is an attempt to impose
coherence on a slice of this diversity.
Raffi Krikorian: Let me start by
ssh'ing
into my Tivo back in Cambridge... This is the way that
Raffi began his talk at Foo Camp. This statement did not
appear to be designed as an attention getter, this was simply a
casual and everyday occurance. For Raffi, that is. For
me, it was mind blowing. Sure, I knew at a certain cerebral
level that such things should be possible, but at a gut level, it
didn't occur to me that this could be so routine. Not yet, at
least.
Bram Cohen gave a talk on the technical and legal aspects of
BitTorrent - a
product which enables allows large number of people to
simultaneously download large files. I was already familiar
with this product as I've downloaded CDs worth of Linux
distributions with it. This talk actually came before
Raffi's, but something clicked when you combine the two -
Brian Behlendorf was at the same two presentations at at the
end of Raffi's, he leaned over to me and said that he wanted to be
able to get content for his Tivo via BitTorrent. As soon as
he said it, it just felt right.
Beth Goza is
definitely a gadget junkie. One of the cool toys she showed
off was an
Archos
AV320 Video Recorder. "You can now enjoy anywhere 40
hours of near-DVD quality MPEG-4 video with MP3 sound.". The
AV340
has a twice as much storage. The
Sony CLIÉ had a smaller form factor.
Raising this up several meta-levels: a couple hundred people
descended on FOO simply for the opportunity to collaborate and
share. Most of the people present I didn't know two years ago
(before I started blogging). Most of them didn't know me then
either.
Now we know each other and collaborate via shared published
content. Increasingly, this will be visual. People will
be able to effortlessly capture what they see and share it with
friends and family. The recipients can time shift this
content as they see fit.
The limits are no longer technological. Many of the
products cited above had built in limitations that are intended to
either benefit the producer of the product or the producer of
content for the product. This will ultimately be self
defeating. People that produce interesting content and share
it liberally will enjoy a wider audience than those that only do
one or the other.
William Gibson: The future is here. It's just not widely
distributed yet. This is one of Tim O'Reilly's favorite
quotes. Never was the point more forcefully driven home to me
than here at FOO.
this is the Web, so I can update it later, right?
Tim Bray reports from Foo Camp, touching on matters of search and a Technorati vs. Blogdex deathmatch. Two things that make me want to talk to Cameron Marlow (of Blogdex): Cameron has been doing some work grouping people, with respect to any blogger, into Friends, the people who you’ve linked to......
[more]
I didn't have the time at Foo Camp to blog much about what I was doing, who I was meeting, and what we were discussing. I was too busy and interested to tear myself away. I went to bed each night very tired. Luckily, a few others provided some on-line notes and such: Doc took some pictures and wrote stuff several times. Check his weblog. Tim Bray has posted his Foo Notes Jason Kottke was one of the many to......
[more]
It would be great if the PVR became a platform of innovation by which independent content could be delivered over the 'net. It is however extremely unlikely to happen because the copyright cartel recognizes this. Witness the two new board members from Fox on Tivo's board. Or Comcast's roll out of a PVR that they are practically giving away.
Tivo and company should be saluted as innovators that have thrown a wrench in Big Cable's ITV plans (VOD). PVRs move the content closer to the user which is certainly a boon. But Big Cable can underprice any independent. Their boxes will certainly not be open. The traditional hardware manufacturers will only be able to sell high end boxes to premium consumers, Tivo itself will have the honor of joining Rupert Murdoch's empire once DISH and DirecTV merge.
Today is the last day of the Foo Camp at O’Reilly. What? You haven’t yet heard the buzz in the blog circles? Here’s some links: Dori captures the feeling Doc observing that this isn’t your mother’s conference Kottke on...
Tech: Sam Ruby on Foo Camp. Foo camp sounds cool; a little bit circle-jerky, but still interesting. But that's not what I wanted to write about -- the thing I wanted to mention was BitTorrent; it just struck me recently -- one key thing about BT...
Foo Camp was a sign of unconferences to come. Its always been the case that conferences were more about people than content, and the best content comes from attendees. The free-for-all structure of Foo gave attendees equal opportunity to provide......
This adventure started a number of years ago. The first time I saw an Archos device was when Beth Goza brought an AV340 to FOO in 2003. I then explored MythTV last year. My conclusion at the time is that what I wanted was technicall...
[more]
Yogi
Bera: You can observe a lot by watching.