WEBVTT

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Benjamin Higginbotham
with TechnologyEvangelist.com.

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With me, I've got Nicholas once again,
from a Participatory Culture Foundation.

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Those are the guys who make 
"Democracy Player".

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-Nicholas, welcome!
-Hi, how are ya?

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Doing great, how about yourself?

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Amazing, thanks.

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So, you guys are on the cusp of
releasing Democracy Player 0.9.5,

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it just kinda rolls right off the tongue.

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Tell us a bit about this new release.

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Yeah, this is a big update for us,

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it's the biggest update you'll see before
our 1.0 comes out.

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We have a lot of important stuff in here,
a lot of it's behind the scenes,

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but some of the stuff you'll notice
is a redesigned interface,

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it's smoother and simpler and slicker.

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We have some nice things like
the MAC users,

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it will generate thumbnails automatically.

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If you want to download a video and
don't have that yet for Windows or Linux,

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that's something that 
we're definitely working on.

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There's proxy support,
better BitTorrent support.

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It does a better job resuming downloads
if something gets interrupted.

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And all in all, I just think it's a
smoother and cleaner experience,

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and it's a big step towards
the update coming out.

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You know, one thing I noticed is that as
each build keeps getting released,

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the system seems to use less and less
RAM, and get faster and faster and faster

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in its ability to playback files
and download files.

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'Cause I remember working with the beta,
I think it was 0.8 or something like that,

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and it was a pretty big RAM hog.

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How are you coming on with the
optimisation of Democracy at this point?

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That's definitely a big focus for us as 
you know with the past few versions

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we've done a lot to reduce the number use,
improve the speed and that's

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going to be something
that we continue to work on.

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It's not clear right now whether we will
be doing some big changes before

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or after 1.0, but, you know, over the next
6 months we're going to continue to see

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much better performance, but using less
resources, feeling faster more responsive.

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So, we have to see that as important.

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You mentioned that this is one, at least
I believe you mentioned, that this is

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one of the final releases before 1.0,
or at least close to your road to 1.0.

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What do we have left to get to 1.0?
What can we expect in 1.0?

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The big thing that you'll see in 1.0 is
stability and we'll be doing a lot of

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bug fixing, trying to nail down some of 
the last final bugs that we haven't been

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able to fix so far. The biggest challenge
on our end for that is just being able to

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reproduce the bugs; finding a system
where we can see it happen because there

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are so many different kinds of setups out
there that a bug may only happen in

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those specific circumstances, and that
makes it hard for us to track it down

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and fix it. Once we see it happening, you
know, we can always fix it, and so

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stability, fixing bugs is definitely the
biggest priority.

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There's also just a few finishing
touches - we wanna make easier for

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people to use remote controls with
Democracy Player if they have something

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like that. I have a few more ways that
people can customise and interact with it,

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so it's mostly gonna be cleanup around
the edges, but I think it'll feel

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a more complete experience.

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One of the biggest things that's about to
happen is we're going to be renaming

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Democracy Player and we've found a lot
of people get confused by the name and

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when they first hear about it they think
that it only has content related to

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politics on it, which is definitely not
the case and not what we intended with

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the name, so we feel like it's important
for us to find a new name. We have one

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that we think is gonna work, we're just
going through some legal stuff and we're

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obviously getting a new icon and
website design so as part of that

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1.0 process we're gonna be launching a 
new name, new style for the player and

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that's gonna be big too.

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But the final thing, and what I think is
the weakest part of the Democracy Player

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experience is the channel guide; we're
rewriting that from scratch.

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The version you see now is based on some
existing software that is out there and

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doesn't exactly meet our needs.

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So what we're doing is starting over from
scratch, making something very fast,

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very responsive and once we have a 
good foundation built

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we're going to be doing a lot of work to
add a rating system, find more ways to

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trickle off the best content.

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As we've seen the channel guides reach
nearly a thousand different channels,

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it becomes more and more important for us
to find ways of filtering the best stuff.

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So we wanna make it easier for people to
share channels, rate channels,

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and see what people really like and not
just subscribe to stuff that looks

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attractive on the surface or on the guide.

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It feels like the next natural extension
for Democracy Player's gonna get is

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PNP support such as PlayStation portable,
the video iPod or other small portable

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video players and I know that's not 
currently a feature of Democracy Player,

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at least the ability to take the videos
that I've downloaded and push it to these

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other devices, mainly because it's
extremely complex.

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The video iPod is going to take a totally
different video format than the PSP which

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is going to take a totally different
format than a Place4sure mobile device.

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Is that on your roadmap to add, and is
that gonna be a 1.0 feature or later?

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And how are you gonna deal with that?

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Yeah, syncing portable devices like that
is definitely something we wanna do.

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It's not gonna happen for 1.0.

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We feel like our mission for 1.0 is to
make a solid and excellent desktop app

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that you can use every day
and really rely upon.

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That's what we wanna do for 1.0; 
get a good foundation in place.

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From there we'd like to see
Democracy Player be able to get us

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content out on more different devices,
get it onto your TV more easily,

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on any portable devices that you're using.

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So we're going to start tackling that.

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It may come in stages and it may 
mean that we start with the ability to

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sync to the most powerful devices to sync
file formats that they already play.

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Then, later on, we add the ability to
transfer from one format into another,

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so more of your videos are able to 
play under iPod, for example.

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That's definitely coming for us.

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Nicholas, last time we talked, we actually
went to you and that time, iTunes was

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one version lower and it didn't have
good video support.

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Since then, iTunes has added a whole new
video catalog, you have episodes of

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shows and movies and whatnot, and they've 
changed the way they deal with video.

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How does that compete with Democracy?
Does it compete with Democracy?

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And why are you better and different
than iTunes on that front?

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Yeah, iTunes has made some improvements
to the video software but the focus they

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have is really on accumulating 
a collection of videos, for example,

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movies that you buy off of the store,
music videos that you buy from the store,

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and accumulating a 
certain kind of collection.

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Our focus is more on 
the flow of the internet.

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The flow of videos that is becoming
more and more a part of peoples'

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online experience.

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I think we're really offering
an experience that's very different and

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goes way beyond the approach 
that iTunes pitched.

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The channel model that we have really
lets you handle lots of videos coming in.

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Seeing what's on a variety of channels,
organising that in different ways and

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I think we still have them beat
in terms of video experience.

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From a publisher standpoint, I think the
big differentiator between Democracy

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and iTunes is torrent support.

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I can directly download a torrent
video file and as I'm publishing my

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high-definition 1080p videos, which we do,
the bandwidth is taken off of me and so

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now I no longer pay for the full
distribution of the file,

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or maybe a little bit now.

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And I think that's really one of the big,
powerful features of Democracy.

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You guys get kudos for having that
from the beginning.

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That's really what makes you guys
different and stand out from the

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rest of the crowd.

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Yeah, I think that the BitTorrent support
that we have is definitely something that

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iTunes can't compete with and we also have
a lot more flexibility with video formats.

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Both on Mac and Windows now, both able to
play Flash video files which are the most

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popular online video files now.

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And a lot bigger variety of formats than
you can play on iTunes or

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Windows media player or anything else
that tries to be a video organiser

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or video downloader.

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Well, Nicholas, it's a great product and
we always enjoy chatting with you and

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I hope you'll come back soon when you
release version 1.0;

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whatever it'll be called at that point.

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-Thank you so much.
-You have a great day.

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I'll definitely come back.
You too, take care.