Nicholas Reville

Democracy Player - Nicholas Reville 9:17 2/13/07 We caught up with Nicholas Reville of the Participatory Culture Foundation. They are about to release version 0.9.5 of democracy player which will be their last big revision before their release of Democracy 1.0.

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