Benjamin Higginbotham at TechnologyEvangelist.com.
With me I've got Nicholas once again, from the Participatory Culture Foundation.
Those are the guys who make Democracy Player
Nicholas, welcome! >> Hey, how are you?
>> Doing great, how about yourself? >> .... thanks.
>> So you guys are on the cusp of releasing Democracy Player 0.9.5
This kind of rolls right off the tongue.
Tell us a little bit about this new release.
>> Yep this is a big update for us
and it's the biggest update that you'll see before our 1.0 comes out.
We have a lot of important stuff in here a lot of it is behind the scenes
but some of this up you'll notice /// is a redesigned interface
It's smoother and solider /// and slicker-
We have some nice things, like,
for mac users it'll generate thumbnails automatically,
if you want to download a video you don't have that yet for 10 minutes ///
And that's something that we're definitely working on,
there's proxy support that are a bit torrent support
better -- it does a better job resuming if something gets interrupted,
and all knowledge .... /// a smoother and cleaner experience
and it's a big step toward the 1.0.
>> You know, one thing I noticed is that as each build keeps getting released
the system seems to use less and less RAM and get faster and faster and faster
in its ability to just playback files and download files,
because I remember working with a beta, I think like .8 or something like that
and it was a pretty big RAM hog.
How are you coming on the optimization of democracy at this point?
>> That's definitely a big focus for us, and as you know,
in the past two versions we've done a lot to reduce the .... ///,
improve the speed and that's going to be something that we continue to work on
which it's not clear right now whether we'll be doing some big changes
before or after 1.0 but you know, over the next six months,
we're going to continue to see much better performance
of using less resources, feeling faster and more responsive.
So we definitely see that as important.
>> Now you mentioned that this is one of the -- at least I believe
you mentioned this is one of the final releases before 1.0
or at least it's very close to your road to 1.0.
What do we have left to get to 1.0, what can we expect in 1.0?
>> Yeah the big thing that you expect -- you will see in 1.0s is stability
and we're going to be doing a lot of bug fixing
trying to nail down some of the last final bugs
that we haven't been able to fix so far.
the biggest challenge //////
is just being able to reproduce the ////// system
where we can see it happen
because there's so many different kinds of setups out there
that above not only happen you a specific circumstances
and that makes it hard for us to track it down and fix it.
Once we see it happening, you know, we can always fix it
and so, stability clicking about is definitely the biggest priority.
There's also just, you know, a few finishing touches.
We want to make it easier for people that use remote controls, komatsu //// player
something like that, to have a few more ways
that people can customize and interact
with it so it's sort of it's also going
to be clean up around the edges but I
think it will feel like more complete
experience one of the biggest things
that's about to happen we're going to be
renaming democracy player and we've
found that a lot of people get confused
by the name and they when they first
hear about it they think that it only
has content related to politic on which
is definitely not occasion that what we
intend to rip Anene so we feel like it's
important for us to find in your name we
have one that we think is going to work
or just you know going through some
legal stuff and we're also getting a new
icons and website design so as part of
that one when I process we're going to
be launching a new name new new style
that's like their am asking you bid to
the final thing and what I think right
now is probably the weakest part of the
democracy flight experience is the
channel that you're rewriting that from
scratch the version you see now is based
on distance offers us out there it
doesn't exactly fit on what we're doing
is starting over from scratch making it
very fast very responsive and once we
have a good foundation
built we're going to be a lot of work to
add that a rating systems find more ways
to turn off the best content as we've
seen the talent that you know reach
nearly a thousand different channels
becomes more and more important find
amazing filtering up the best stuff so
want to make it easier for people to
share channels great channels and see
what people really liked and these are
not a subscriber stuff that looks
exactly when the service it feels like a
next natural extension for democracy
player is going to get PMP supports such
as the PlayStation Portable the video
iPod or other small portable video
players and I know that that's not
currently a feature of democracy player
at least the ability to take the videos
that I've downloaded and push it to
these other devices mainly because it's
extremely complex i mean the video ipod
is going to take a totally different
video format than the PSP which is going
to take a totally different video format
then a place for sure when is a mobile
device now is that on your road map to
actually add and is that going to be a
one point 0 feature or later and you
know how are you going to deal with that
thinking the portable devices like the
iPad or PSP something that we definitely
and it's not going to happen for long
point out we feel like our mission from
one point hours to make a solid and
excellent desktop you can we use every
day and really rely upon that's that's
what we wanted to go home when they'll
get a good foundation in touch from
there we'd like to see democracy player
you know be able to get as content out
more different devices getting onto your
TV more usually onto any portable
devices that you're using and so we're
going to start tapping it make some in
stages and in may and may mean that we
start with the ability to sync to the
most popular devices to sync file
formats that they already play then
later on we add the ability to transcode
one format into another format and so
that you know more of your videos are
able to play on your ipod version but
that's you know that's definitely coming
Nicholas last time we talked we actually
went to you and we we talked at that
time itunes was one version lower
really didn't have very good video
support since then itunes has added a
whole new video catalog you've got shows
downloads of episodes of television
shows and movies and whatnot and they've
changed the way they deal with video how
does that compete with the moxy does it
compete with democracy and why are you
different or why are you better than
itunes in that front yeah I can't judge
made some improvements to their video
software but you know the focus that
they have is really on accumulating a
collection of videos for example movies
that you buy out the store or music
videos we both restore accumulating sort
of a certain kind of collection and our
focus is more on the flow of the
internet the flow videos that is
becoming more and more part of people's
online experience and I think you know
we're really offering an experience that
that's very different to those way
beyond the approach that itunes think so
you know the channel model that we have
really let you handle watch the videos
coming in you know seeing seeing what's
on a variety of channels organizing them
in different ways and I think you know
we still have them beads in terms of
video experience you know from a
publisher standpoint I think the big
differentiator between democracy and
itunes is torrent support I can directly
download a torrent video file and as I'm
publishing my high-definition 1080p
videos which we do the bandwidth has
taken off of me and so now I no longer
have to pay for the full distribution of
the file maybe a little bit now and I
think that's really one of the big
powerful features of democracy and you
know you guys get kudos for that for
having that from the beginning I mean
that's that's really what makes you guys
different and stand out from the rest of
crowd yeah i think that the BitTorrent
support that we have is definitely
something that you know I to you know
can't compete with and we also have a
lot more flexibility on video form you
know both on mac and windows now where
is the play flash video files which is
the most popular ominous video files are
a lot bigger variety of
then you could call you itunes and
Windows Media Player or anything else is
out there that has would be a video
organizers will do down well Nicholas
it's a great product and we always enjoy
chatting with you and I hope you'll come
back soon when you release version 1
point 0 whatever it will be called at
that point thank you so much that you
have a great day I believe you come back