I think this is a very interesting idea Leo. My only concerns are as follows. 1. There is possibility for linkbait from any source through the XMPP system. While this may not be controllable, it would be useful to have the ability to perhaps block based on particular users if possible. This is probably going to be the biggest issue when using an IM client. 2. Perhaps a community question, but could a desktop app be created to view this stream, rather than through an IM client? Would be nice to avoid the constant "Ding" from Adium for each and every message that gets posted. Within that, if you could view popular hashtags, etc that would further help to narrow the field of view for users.
An onscreen ticker for TWiT live would be nice, but you might need some keyword filtering to cut out possible bad language.
I'm sure that your healthy community will be happy to help out, as I know you already have a good team of mods for the IRC chat room.
Joseph McLaughlin
· 11 months ago
I agree with Dom and wanted to follow up on the possibility of a Desktop client ( a great idea). If we created a FriendFeed room of of the RSS feed, people could use [Twhirl][http://www.twhirl.org/] in tandem with a FriendFeed account to not only read the feed, but also search, filter and contribute(?).
I think it's a great idea Leo, I would love to see it happen!
murdog
· 11 months ago
Upon reading concern 1 in this comment, I immediately thought of the thumbs up/thumbs down system used by Digg that allows users to moderate the comments. If I want to see the comment even though it has been hidden by other users who found it offensive, unimportant, spam, or whatever I can, but initially it is hidden from view.
I like the idea of self moderation as long as it stays open and democratic. I would hate for this brave new TWiT world to devolve into a circle of same-thinking elitist who simply repeat what the others are saying.
AussiMike
· 11 months ago
I have thought a lot about this and a few points I think are worth noting first....
Your analogy of the firehose is very appropriate - huge volumes at high speed. But not many of us can properly drink from a firehose...in fact it would overwhelm us and we would look elsewhere for our drink... So we need to think about how the firehose is paired down into digestible intelligent feeds and how that is best presented and controlled
Second, you have an extremely valuable brand that must be protected from abuse either inadvertently or via deliverate action. To that end I think you need to be a little more conservative than Steve Gillmour or Robert Scoble as your public brand/personna is much broader and directly related to ongoing advertising revenue. Thus the feeds derived from the firehose need to have some level of control ...possibly more than what the purists would like but hey...it is not their brand we are dealing with. You need to ensure that the two major TWIT channels of information, the show notes and the chat forum are tightly controlled for appropriateness as they will be the major carriers of your brand.
Third, we need to just recognise that XMPP is just a real time pipe or trnasport mechanism and the real value to be added here is how best to slice and dice and present the streams.
So....I am thinking that there should be a number of streams or channels that are defined by you and sent out as standard flows from twit.im These could include: - A raw feed of everything...for people to innovate off - A chat/comment stream...a la TWIT Army - A TWIT controlled show notes/links stream. This can also carry ads in sync with the ads within your shows...this is the main feed you show on your video stream and also the one you most publicise in your forums such as the Radio Show and any commercial television deals that you do....
Next I am thinking that a client like TWEETDECK would be a good paradigm for how these feeds could be consumed...one pane for the chat stream, one pane for the show notes/links stream. It would be great to have an AIR client that had the two main streams running beside a window with the video feed in it On the video feed you could have also have a permanent side panel on the feed (inserted via the tricaster??) that shows the notes/links feed and/or the chat stream flowing past...this would be useful when you distribute your shows to commercial networks as it will be like a CNBC feed with the ticker.
I have so much more to say here but my experience as a designer of trading systems in capital markets is that my clients are always dealing with a firehose of data and the art is not to just present the firehose but to think about how best to present and manage the firehose to ensure easy access and to also enable use by not drowing the consumer in the volume....
Perhaps you can schedule a GoToMeeting session so that we can all join in and whiteboard some ideas .....that is an great way to moderate a large meeting and enable people to present ideas and discuss options
Anyway...just some thoughts
Makrate
· 11 months ago
I like IRC style, I like the idea of a Pirillo-esque scrolling feed/river, but I don't like standalone IM client. As information will be coming pretty quickly, I like the idea of being able to pull individual feeds out of the "River" into my own "Pond" if you will, where I can look at my handpicked links, comments if i can't keep up with them. I know that the RSS piped into friend feed will provide all this for archival purpose, but I like being able to choose what I like on the fly, so that once the podcast is done I can save it for if I want to download the podcast later and look at my personal stream while listening. This might be beyond the scope of what you are trying to accomplish, but just my musings :)
j5_jhallgren
· 11 months ago
Some issues have already been discussed by others but here are some of my concerns/thoughts: 1) Ability to view stream at a later time when listening to podcast, for ex. Having this avail via archive, even if then one cannot easily filter it, could be very helpful to see those links mentioned...kinda like SN's transcripts...this would thus need timestamps as others have said.
2) How would we view the stream? I have IRC chat and Army open in tabs in Opera, and video in IE window over that...having yet another app open that I'd need to switch to on this small laptop isn't practical, especially with my eyesight issues...I use the techguy.startan.net to view video as I can make that window almost as small as the video itself and thus see it and IRC at same time...if the stream were incorporated in that site as a scroll above the video, then it might work.
3) Tags might need to be kept short to make usage easier, such as #loc vs #location, etc.
4) Having only certain ppl/ID's authorized to post is a must, and being able to select which ones you see could be handy as well.
5) once an item gets "posted", there may well be a need to be able to remove it later, such as when a typo or incorrect data gets into stream...we'd not want a typo on link that landed us on a incorrect/naughty site to remain, right?
That's it for now...
PcGuy
· 11 months ago
Good points, especially regarding have to have another application installed. I use Twhirl off and on but most off since I does not show prior posts. The only IM client I have is google chat which means I would have to have IE open for the video, mirc running and either gmail open in IE or Firefox window. I rarely use the # sign in the army as it is since I have shorten my posts.
Foodie Monster
· 11 months ago
I think it'd be an interesting idea, but only if the community does a good job at policing itself. Otherwise, the "river" would be polluted with not just spam, but also stupidity and distracting comments that would deter from paying attention to the actual content. What I'm saying is, this could easily be a double edged sword. It could enhance the communication and experience, but absolutely destroy it as well - still, if that were to happen, it's not like the "river" couldn't be turned off, right?
As for commands to add and such, I think the hashtags idea is a *MUST*, that way the content creator (you) could easily swap and filter messages according to the topic that is being discussed. That way, you would avoid the clutter that happens on IRC when, for instance, the topic is A and people in chat are talking Politics. User participation is all fine and good, but if it's going to be a permanent part of the actual content stream, it should be not only moderated, but also properly categorized to avoid confusion. Hashtags sounds like a solid idea.
Also, how about adding a "middle tier" of moderation? The users should be able to FOLLOW/BLOCK/TRACK etc, but also there should be a middle tier of select people (maybe the same IRC moderators?) that would block out spammers and that kind of nasties - Let the user decide who is a "flamer" or a "troll", but have some sort of group that will at least eliminate spam for them, as nobody wants to do that job and I could see people easily turned off if they had to block spammers, one by one, on their own.
I say it's worth the shot, and the concept is sound enough to potentially work.
could there be some degree of automation to help out the admins? if a certain number of people block a poster or mark that ip/login as spam, could links from it be depreciated? completely out of my depth on the tech involved, but it sounds ok at first blush.
Terry Henderson
· 11 months ago
sounds like a very interesting idea. I think your on to something pretty cool. Let us know how it progresses.
Terryh (Army Member)
Jay B
· 11 months ago
Dear Santa,
PLEASE
@LStacey
· 11 months ago
How about letting people log in with the Twitter API? You could kill two birds with one stone then. Not only would users have their own accounts (that they wouldn't need to any set up for if they didn't want to) but you could easily add the ability to repost to twitter.
leolaporte
· 11 months ago
Great idea!
Marivic
· 11 months ago
Would agree on the necessity for all posts to be tagged (is there a way to auto-tag?). Make it happy on my BB and I'd be all for it!
Marivic @techpr
Tsaot
· 11 months ago
Forgive me but I'm not really seeing the benefit here. It feels like you are using an IM client to do something http://army.twit.tv is already doing. People are already posting links, wisecracks, etc... and it is somewhat of a live stream in twhirl. All you would really need to do is create a river user, or maybe a user for each podcast, and throw links into it as you stream. Make a live updating page for those users and you're set.
Stan A-Z
· 11 months ago
Would you use some sort of contributer ID? So say we could track just "Leo@wherever.com"'s posts? Or would the client take care of that? Do you foresee an issue with the various servers, say iChat, getting bogged down? Monetization, one month free, then pay-to-play? Or charge for the River summaries? Just a few thoughts following a brief skimming.
helmsb
· 11 months ago
I think its a great idea. Great for links, also cool for a "Popup Video" style use. Have a channel with nothing but facts about the subject being talked about.
My recommendation would be a limited text stream on twitlive.tv then have an IM/IRC style interface that anyone can subscribe to the "firehose" stream. It would be cool if you could record and sync the stream to your video so that when you do replays you get the same text-stream in realtime.
Rob Goodwin
· 11 months ago
This feels like a refactoring of twitter. Which is a good thing. Take the good parts and learn from the mistakes. I would be interested in helping out when you get this going. Thanks for the information
pcguru
· 11 months ago
All i have to say is,good luck to you leo. i'm sure you'll get it to work like you want it too. cant wait for the direct t.v. comes through :)
John Smogolian
· 11 months ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but can you more clearly explain why you're trying to now migrate the thousands already following you on Twitter to a new service when you can just use hash tags on there?
Seems silly to create a platform just for Twit, or does this really just have to do with your long standing grudge with Twitter usurping your beloved Twit brand?
friedgeek
· 11 months ago
Picking up on the 'authority' topic, it may be useful to have some form of user feedback. That way the community could govern who has the most authority on a topic and it would police itself. How that could be implemented it beyond me.
I think an IM-like client would be better for this than a true IM client. The first thing that comes to mind is an AIR app. I'm seeing a drawer where you could drag a hash tag into a bin of things you want to follow or to float up higher in your view of the river and the same type of thing for users. This would be like following or unfollowing a user/topic. I might see a modified hash tag used for the creation of the special rooms like #macworld! or something.
Just some initial thoughts. Love the idea tho.
reechard
· 11 months ago
That sounds excellent. Get kiwinerd on board immediately, she's a great facilitator of your dslextreme chat (the elite chat I call it.) Hopefully this will boost the quality of the chat, and discourage trolls and stalkers :) -Richard Hmm, I see this isn't a replacement for the chat. But, perhaps it should be?
PaulFrankRizzo
· 11 months ago
Leo, you are truly a leader in the Tech Industry. Whatever you do turns to Gold. You are like a PhD Professor. I believe a lot of your success is due to your Professional Voice, and the fact that you are one of the NICEST people on earth. I wish you the greatest in life, and in tech. PaulFrankRizzo
optionshiftk
· 11 months ago
If this works, it will be a "proof of concept" for XMPP and real-time streams. I would like to see some type of integration with twit army. I hope twit army does not become obsolete once twit.im launches. Still, I am very excited about all of this, I think Leo, Steve Gillmor and the rest of the gang will be seen a true visionaries just as Dave Winer was for RSS. History is being made.
Chris Griffin
· 11 months ago
This is a great idea. I agree with Foodie_Monster that a semi/custom client would be nice. I think if there could be a 'show' tag that would be put on all everything that came down the river during a show so in the future it would be easy to just get all the comments made during a particular show, etc. You don't want to reinvent the wheel however you could do your own client using standards and have more control over tagging and content.
Tom
· 11 months ago
This sounds like a good idea, and I like the idea of using XMPP because it allows clients like LaTwit to hook into the feed without any changes
I'm wondering how you plan on handling the default stream a user gets from river? Do they get everything until they issue some follow or track commands, and then filtering starts? Or do they get nothing at first, and have to issue a specific command to follow everyone if desired?
leolaporte
· 11 months ago
I am currently thinking you get a default set of follows and then add others you're interested. The default is just the basics but you can build it up to Scoble levels of noise if you're so inclined. That's why FOLLOW is so important.
Rod
· 11 months ago
Hey Leo, It sounds great. There are the concerns above but like the chat rooms we "Leo Fans" police very well. Do a Beta by invite and tweek as we go along and then open it up. Just my thought. Rock7-24
Jerry Moore
· 11 months ago
I think this is a great idea and offer a fee comments. 1. Offer both a live feed and an archive 2. User friendly filters such as find all the links mentioned on TWIL12. 3. iPhone optimized feeds.
Steve Z
· 11 months ago
I say go for it. We need a more efficient reference of information (especially links).
Eddie Keating
· 11 months ago
Leo, Sounds great, the required tagging of posts will be essential for this to work, that along with user controls that let them fine tune their river results coming in, will be the most important elements in making this not only a community, but an amazing new way to disperse information in real time.
I think with careful attention paid to not making the mistakes of other services and the wonderful, intelligent members in the TWiT army, I think this will be great.
Pabster
· 11 months ago
I like the idea, Leo. You've been visionary about capitalizing on new technology and this would be great indeed. My only concern is SPAM but that's a problem we all have to deal with on any medium these days. I say give it a shot!
DavidWheelerPhD
· 11 months ago
I cannot imagine following such a stream. I only listen to podcasts days or months later - never any of the live feeds. I guess I am not your target audience
Chris Heath
· 11 months ago
The whole idea is to have a live stream of trusted users creating this river in real time during the recording of the netcast. Later when you're listening you can then pull up the river for that specific netcast and have that real-time list of links and comments (from trusted sources so it's not noisy) and follow along as if it was in real-time.
I hope that made sense, Chris Heath
Fabio Cevasco
· 11 months ago
It definitely sounds interesting, although, as others pointed out, it is prone to spam and to flooding (but again, it will be called *river* for a reason, right?).
Personally, I'm not a big fan of real-time streams, mostly because I think they are difficult to follow and therefore difficult to be really useful in the long term. While a live stream of this kind would definitely be amusing to look at, it won't be as useful as, say, a combination of del.icio.us and twitter.
A middle-tier of moderation could be a solution, but it's difficult to foresee how viable this might be: you'd need quite a lot of people checking the strem in real time, *all the time*. Maybe Twit fans can do that though, it's hard to tell at thi stage.
Another problem would be content duplication: you really don't want people to suggest the same damn link 5 times every time, right? StackOverflow encountered a similar problem: when a question was posted, it literally took a couple of minutes or less for the fast person to post an answer. Meanwhile, another 5 users may have been busy writing exactly the same answer: this resulted in frequent duplication.
I think a nice feature would be to have a "timestamp" link that is included with the "twit" members post that you could click on that would take you to that synced part of an audio archive. I think this would really be helpful in your TechGuy podcasts that way your shownote posts could also link to the specific section of audio that the post is relating to without the user having to listen through the entire podcast to find that part. I think this would be helpful in also getting people who normally just listen to a couple of your podcasts to listen into some of your other podcasts. They could see an interesting section of the river, click on the timestamp and listen to that section of audio.
Just an idea.
I wish you much success in this.
leolaporte
· 11 months ago
XMPP automatically time stamps every message. Done!
iScreem
· 11 months ago
I think a nice feature would be to have a "timestamp" link that is included with the "twit" members post that you could click on that would take you to that synced part of an audio archive. I think this would really be helpful in your TechGuy podcasts that way your shownote posts could also link to the specific section of audio that the post is relating to without the user having to listen through the entire podcast to find that part. I think this would be helpful in also getting people who normally just listen to a couple of your podcasts to listen into some of your other podcasts. They could see an interesting section of the river, click on the timestamp and listen to that section of audio.
Just an idea.
I wish you much success in this.
dp
· 11 months ago
Why not FriendFeed rooms?
leolaporte
· 11 months ago
You bet! We just don't want to begin and end with Friend Feed.
mellowgeorge
· 11 months ago
This sounds like a great idea but I can see myself not being able to make a lot of use from this feature and here's why: I don't listen to the shows live because I'm at work or busy taking care of the family when I'm at home. I listen to the podcasts over the course of the day when I can so the benefits of the live river doesn't apply to me.
I find it interesting that when you started out as a podcast only show, it freed us up from being slaves to programming schedules. But now that you're doing live shows for the majority of the day, it seems that you are, I think unconsciously, slipping back into the mold of traditional broadcast media with set schedules, etc.
I understand that the podcasts will always be there for us who listen when we want to but the more features you add to the live version, the more I feel that I'm being 'asked' to follow a schedule which is not compatible with mine.
Anyway, as the number of viewers you have in the chatroom can attest, there is a substantial percentage of your viewers that are able to watch you live and benefit greatly from this live river. I think it's worth a try and I'm definitely interested in seeing what you and other content providers can learn from this experiment. You definitely have the user base to pull it off.
For people on the move, I guess they can listen live and contribute on their iphones/G1s/nokias etc. but I don't have any of those nor the time during the day to sit through my favorite live shows. Good luck!
Don Covin
· 11 months ago
In fairness to Leo, there always was a schedule. How else would he arrange all the guests? He is now just broadcasting the recording of the podcasts for people that can watch them. The podcasts are (and probably always will be) available as normal. I think the real concern is that Leo continues to focus on great content and guests vs. growing the empire and adding extra "features" to the network. TwIT has worked so well up to this point because it's simple and direct. Although I'm sure the community will always enjoy trying out these new ideas with Leo and the network, I just hope he doesn't over extend himself. We can't forget he has a family and a life outside of TwIT......
leolaporte
· 11 months ago
My first concern is always for the download listeners - they're the biggest audience and, in fact, the ones the advertisers pay for. Dont worry!
And as far as I can tell this is practically free content for me - so I'm not worried it will overextend me.
Don Covin
· 11 months ago
Hope my comment wasn't taken the wrong way. More addressing the "slipping back into the mold of traditional broadcast media". I guess what I meant was that even though it's "free" content, you would need to find ways to tweek and moderate it so it's not a distraction to the main show. I fully trust that you always keep the core audience in mind as that's why you try all of these things to make the experience that much better. And face it, we all want to try new stuff like this. That's why we listen to your shows.
murdog
· 11 months ago
I am in the same boat as mellowgeorge most of the time. I too use the network time-shifted as do the majority of the people who listen to the shows I would bet. I know the "Live Web" is the next big thing, and TWiT needs to be at the forefront of the next big thing, please keep in mind that a huge percentage of the users here are time-shifters.
I am super interested in seeing what this turns out to be, but one of the things that might keep me from using it is the fear of spoilers. Am I going to read something that will take the joy out of listening to a podcast a day or two later?
But, I am of two minds, because I love the shows and I want to participate more in the conversation and this sounds like just the tool to encourage that. I like that TWiT can serve as a sandbox to learn and explore the value of emerging web trends. It plays a huge part in my decision about what my company invests its online time in.
I guess the long and the short of it is, don't foget about the 90% of us who will be listening to this two days from now and allow the focus and format of the shows be bent to much toward being live.
mikelerch
· 11 months ago
Agreed. I think this idea is extremely exciting and thought-provoking, but in fact almost all of my interaction with Twit is through offline podcast listening on a portable player (either in my car or in my pocket while gardening, working out, etc.). I think the video feed is very neat but rarely watch it. I do listen to the audio feed from time to time either at work or while working around the house (courtesy of a Squeezebox).
Bottom line: any live content I see as a value-add, not the essential service I'm using with TWIT. With that said, if there was the ability to play back the video or to otherwise consume live streams (video, audio, text or ALL) TIME-SHIFTED, I think that would be very neat. I would only use it rarely, but I hope that the end result of this is a page that would essentially let you play back all of the live components (ex. the ultimate would be a web page for an episode of the show that showed you the video, chat and text streams as they happened during the recording).
Don Covin
· 11 months ago
Great Idea! I suggested the ticker in the chat on Monday as a usesful tool to put FAQ's on the live feed ie: "Why is the caller audio muted" or "What happened to Steve's eye". I find the repeated questions and answers just create noise in the chat room and don't add to the experience.
I would think that anything regarding show notes would need to have some static area (like FriendFeed) to retrieve as you may see somthing on the "stream" but may be unable to access that link or whatever at that time.
I look forward to trying it out!
Ryan Shrout
· 11 months ago
Leo, my main concern for something like this is an over-abundance of streaming content. One problem I have with the chat room is that sometimes when it is busy I feel like I can't keep up with all content and discussion being shown. If there are too many people posting to this live text stream, would not the same thing occur?
Maybe one way to help that would be to allow people to subscribe to "groups": only Leo, only Leo and Hosts, only users with a certain "rating", etc. Then you might have a moderator of some kind that can pass on really good individual posts from all users to the "main feed" that people that only subscribed to the "hosts" would get, etc.
I just feel like you need to be sure that people that don't have the ability to watch the stream 24x7 don't feel like they are unable to keep up with the really good content that will be on it.
leolaporte
· 11 months ago
I think that the clients can be designed to handle this. For instance, I LOVE someone's idea of putting a slider in a client that can titrate the rate of flow. These things are easily solved with XMPP and RSS.
bleeper
· 11 months ago
Great evolution of micro-messaging! I will closely follow this and start to develop ideas around it.
I've been listening to your discussions on using XMPP and the ideas you came up with. I really like the ideas in principle, but I'm very concerned that the noise would overcome the useful information.
I would like to see a SHOWNOTES command that would automatically filter on a subset of trusted users and tags (this would be set by Leo and designates). That way, for shows like TWiT where I'm concentrating on content, I can filter out the fluff. And an inverse command like FULLFEED to put it back to my default filters. You could also capture the shownotes filtered feed for use in creating your shownotes. This gives the option to the user of having a very controlled feed or just letting the firehose go. Thinking long term, you could also create a TWiT bot to replay the shownotes when you replay the video stream.
Yes, you could build such a feed by hand using FOLLOW/BLOCK etc, but I wouldn't. I just wouldn't use it starting the instant the noise overcame the useful information. Also the new user wouldn't know where to start and you need to make it easy for the user to get at the useful information. Who to trust? Who to block?
It's promising, don't rush it into production. Maybe do some honest beta testing to see what works.
Thanks for your work on this idea Leo.
Chilling in Ottawa (6°F), Clayton
leolaporte
· 11 months ago
That's the point of having a FOLLOW command. We'd populate it with a default set of follows (say, me, the show hosts, and a few trusted contributors) but you could add others. You won't see ANY spam unless you explicitly follow a spammer (or watch the unedited feed, which few will do).
Clayton
· 11 months ago
Than I don't see the point (and maybe I'm just being dense about this). If I only ever see the tightly controlled stream, how will I ever find new people to follow who might have good content? Why would I contribute to the stream if nobody will ever see my thoughts or ideas? What mechanism would exist so that I could at some point be heard? Or is this not the point of the stream? Perhaps I am making this more widely available than is your intent. Is it your intent that the general user contribute to the stream or just the trusted subset? Don't get me wrong, only the trusted subset would still be a useful set of data. But if the general user is to contribute, how will they be heard?
I think I'm still having a bit of a problem getting my head around expected/intended usage.
I see filtering as the big problem of the web. Lots of content, limited time to drink it in.
j5_jhallgren
· 11 months ago
I think the idea is for general users to supply info to "mods" who will then post the info to stream, thus keeping junk/spam under some control. A link to another site that is validated by someone like Darth_Emma would go thru, but a random submit by Listener-xxx wouldn't go direct to stream, ok?
Clayton
· 11 months ago
It appears that the intent of the new stream is not to replace the chat rooms as the primary way for live viewers to interact with each other but is to provide a very controlled way to supplement the live broadcast with ancillary information. This ancillary information could also be used to help form show notes and could, potentially, be associated with rebroadcasts of the show.
And as a secondary use, the system would provide the infrastructure for less structured one-off live blogging events like MacWorld keynotes.
I can't help but wonder if we are introducing a human scaling problem here. Can we really expect to have community moderators sift the firehose looking for the gems to promote up to the moderated stream? I guess it depends on the size of the firehose. I suppose if the bulk of the stream content comes from Leo, the hosts, and the pre-approved users the mods can be very picky about what gets promoted up from the masses.
I hope I'm not coming across as against this (I'm not, I like the idea), but it is hard to take off the tester hat that I wear at work as I look for holes or think of ways I can break the system. It creeps into real life far to often.
Still fighting to understand the use cases. Am I getting closer?
Robert Copelan
· 11 months ago
Bingo. I find the twitter public_timeline to be interesting but there is a lot of noise. An XMPP feed with a Real-time "ticker scroll" client will help that 24/7 "CSPAN" type of environment you want to create. On our side the ticker can be configurable as you suggest above or as someone else suggested with "Moderation points" or left wide open.
leolaporte
· 11 months ago
Actually the whole idea germinated because I wanted a better way to create full show notes for the shows. We'd tried doing it ourselves (very time consuming), using volunteers (very inconsistent), and live-blogging (using CoverIt Live) but none of them did the trick.
You won't have to consume the river live at all. We'll pipe it into a Friend Feed room where you can search, read, and comment on it at your leisure, and also incorporate a cleaned up version into the actual show notes that go out with the podcasts. This is a benefit for the downloaders as much as the live viewers.
Chigaimasu
· 11 months ago
I love this idea, Leo, but whatever you do, please somehow get it to interface with Digsby!
aac74
· 11 months ago
How is this different to laconi.ca/twit army ?
You already have follow, track, block, IM, air and xmpp there.
As it is open source why not just mod it and create clients to your spec ?
leolaporte
· 11 months ago
The problem with Laconica (and Twitter) is that XMPP is an afterthought - starting with a messaging system then building static web pages makes much more sense. Laconica is decidedly not real-time - or even that reliable.
erier2003
· 11 months ago
I don't know anything that could help set this up, but from what you've mentioned, Leo, it sounds like a great idea. It would be yet another great source of content from the TWiT infrastructure. Do you have a mock-up of what this could look like? Would it be a scrolling bar on live.twit.tv? Or would it be a separate page?
Ragnar
· 11 months ago
How about adding some basic moderation tools to the stream itself, and use a slashdot-like karma system ?
I'm not sure if XMPP would support this, but in a semi-perfect world I'd slap a few "(+)" "(-)" "(report)" html links at the end of each message going into the river, and users would gain karma based on the response from other users. Then I'd add a feature to basically do the same as "Browse at +5" on slashdot, which would only give you messages from the highest rated contributors...
I didn't really explain that well, did I ? :(
Ken R.
· 11 months ago
how about you get your shownotes done with the Amazon mechanical turk? it would only cost pennies??
Rob Goodwin
· 11 months ago
Would you provide an API outside of the XMPP API?
Pratik
· 11 months ago
So will the text be on the screen of twit live like they did on currents hack the election?
KissMeKate
· 11 months ago
Beautiful photo, Leo. So... The user's experience would come as pop-ups, like SMS/IMs/Tweets do now? How would this be different from these other services? Or do you envision a "crawl" of live comments like CNN used with Anderson Cooper & Kathy Griffin on New Year's eve? My main concerns are the same as Foodie_Monster's -- how to cull out the off-topic or useless chatter that now goes on in the chatrooms? If these are to be SMS pop-ups, I'll need to upgrade my AT&T cellular account to unlimited texting, rather than the 400 it's set at now... and I'd have to consider the value of doing that. Have I misunderstood your suggestions, Leo? --KissMeKate (aka TweetMissMeKate)
Techzen
· 11 months ago
Great idea. When TWiT live started up I tried to keep and compile a note card with relative links and information to post in the Stickam and IRC chats. With the logitech G15's 54 macro keys I planned to try to cover common questions and links, but real life happened. lol
I'll see about getting back to working on it and count me in if you need help.
davesegrove
· 11 months ago
Hello Leo - sounds like you're on to something. Security and data ownership is always a concern. Using something like OpenID for access might keep some of the spammers out (yeah right). Another question would be who "owns" the information posted and what can they do with it?
Dave
Mark
· 11 months ago
I like the idea of the main interface being irc like. Then you can have bots control the chanel and push the content to twitter and the other outlets.
There are a number of web based Irc clients for those who don't want a full client installed. And the bot can handle #follow commands etc. As well as filter conternt before it's pushed to twitter and the like.
craisis
· 11 months ago
I agree with you. I think an IRC interface, maybe a moderated channel for some of the shows, (only voices can post) and open channels otherwise, and bots to grab and post, even with an XMPP interface would work. I also think it would be nice to have several channels, as the population grown on irc now, during some show's it's impossible to follow the conversations because of the number of them going on, so have one for gen chat, have one for show specific chats, etc.
doctor atlantis
· 11 months ago
I think all the expletives should (by default) be replaced with "DV0R@K!" in the River. (And if it isn't too much trouble you could have them link to dvorak.org/blog.
Swift2001
· 11 months ago
Working in closed captions, I see problems. I'd rather have these links and so on appear in the podcast as a sprite, like Alex used to do with MacBreak videos. In other words, there's always the problem of dealing with synchronicity and "the river." It could end up as the worst of FOX's lower third crawl, which got adopted by everybody else, but goes against everything I learned from broadcasting and captioning. You want things to be thought out beforehand, as in, we'll put the url up when you talk about that recommendation, etc. In other words, if you don't plan ahead, and proofread and time afterwards, then it's not going to add much. Sorry. I'm a skeptic. If you edit it down, and put sprites on the podcast, and notes in what you post to iTunes, it's one thing. But I listen because I like listening.
Catherine Ford
· 11 months ago
Hi Leo! I think this is an intriguing idea and I can't wait to see it implemented. I'm not a code monkey, but I'd definitely like to play with the finished product. I'll keep an eye out for your go-live announcement!
carrie
· 11 months ago
"We'll pipe it into a Friend Feed room where you can search, read, and comment on it at your leisure..." Now you're talkin'. I only listen to the 'casts on my iPod, almost never live so a web page to look at with the links etc. would be great. Especially the chat stuff I never get to see. -Carrie
MisterBlinky
· 11 months ago
Adding value to your content...Crowd Sourcing and Interactive Ranking:
I watch the shows pre-recorded. I assume the video will be on-demand sometime soon. Hash tags will be great to filter, but here is the feature I would think would be extremely helpful, though technically tricky possibly.
Each tag or comment should have an approximate time-code that matches up with the live video stream. Each comment as an "object" should be right mouse clickable as it streams across Right mouse click would expose a small menu: Example: 1) Funny, 2)Helpful, 3)Abusive etc A server would collect and rank the top Funny, top Helpful, and etc
Question: Can Stickam pass script calls like you could in Video Flash?
If I had a Client that could replay Video on Demand and add the Funniest, or the most Helpful that would be extremely helpful. Also, You might insert a "Best of" feed post broadcast later into the actual video as a CNN type crawl. (See Obama the Magic N***gro feed on Fox for why not to insert it live)
I think this would make the video extremely valuable as tool and resource. It would leverage crowd sourcing aspects and add tremendous value to pre-recorded feeds.
Also it would give the crowd generated content a ranking, give lurkers and quiet listeners an easy task and allow less witty, or less knowledgeable viewers a way to participate.
And it would give Twit Members a way to see the best of the TwitCrowd. A Blog or Site would list these rankings. A simple script might someday be able call up that segment when the comment was made. By restricting the voting ranking to live sessions only, you could control demand and spamming.
Its been years since I engineered interactive TV, but I recall flash video enables this and I think this should be possible yes?
Jesse
· 11 months ago
If you are going to offer an archived stream there needs to be a way to keep links from being broken or the link content from being compromised. Imagine what would happen if a link was suddenly pointing to malware. Yuck! How about doing some sort of tinyurl like link library that would be under TWIT control for later editing or redirecting.
jdwusami
· 11 months ago
That sounds very cool Leo. I would love to participate in a live IM stream of content. Just have it work with Adium or iChat and I am in.
heking
· 11 months ago
Conceptually this sounds like a 'stream of consciousness' (or in this case 'river of consciousness') for the net. Indexing would be crucial, but the idea is fabulous.
KDP
· 11 months ago
Sounds good, but would you consider porting it out to Windows Live alerts, or some kind of new tab on Windows Live Messenger? I guess the alert noise is annoying, but the concept of important messages popping up in an already well-established IM is pretty useful. Also, could you integrate it with your twit.am audio stream, and send out text links? I know that Windows Media server has a command for sending out text inside a WMA stream, which custom-written receivers can interpret as needed (ie use as a url of a slide in a presentation, or use as a text command to trigger a function in an app or webpage.) You could have a floating window (or better yet, an HTML application running in it's own sandbox) which has a UI to recieve the TWIT.am stream, and display the text underneath.
blackfeathers
· 11 months ago
earlier thoughts that may be applicable: some applications i would like to see with this river, in a way, correspond to my thoughts a decade ago about incorporating a feed that streams directly to an led ticker. back then, perl or python seemed like it was doable -yet very restrictive. i've searched all over the internet and ebay but either the components of a finished product aren't there or you have to deal with an expensive product relegated to talking with a salesperson in addition to figuring out what you had to deal with -ie. serial port/usb port/comm port/ethernet and if you had the necessary drivers to do it. lots of guesswork and gamble for me at the time.
other thoughts: i think it would be great to have an adobe air application as well as an iphone application.
in all these implementations, i agree that having it versatile in accessibility is key. as long as there is a way for any device to pull data from the internet would make it really great.
and as you have stated, refining and tailoring the data for each user in realtime would help make it very viable.
Michael Wyres
· 11 months ago
As long as there is a decent tagging mechanism - (and obviously XMPP provides that) - it sounds like an excellent plan. I think you would need to have "topic" tags, so people can "sip from the firehouse" for stuff they want. You will also need "people" tags, so you can specifically take information from particular users, and exclude information from particular users, and possibly "group" tags - ie: say you wanted to join a group of people interested in all parts of the stream related to "widgets", you can join the group, and automatically get stuff from people in the group.
BenFranske
· 11 months ago
I would request that the stream be CC licensed (preferably the Wikipedia friendly and very basic CC-BY). This should be a requirement of contributing (like Wikipedia) and would allow future distribution of the show notes along with the (CC licensed) shows.
Mike
· 11 months ago
I strongly feel that the key to the sucess of this is simplicity! If you dont keep it quick, easy and simple to use the up take and usage will suffer. Look at the sucess both google and twitter had with a basic, clean but effective page.
I also think a possible problem will also be spam and spam bots on an open client with no 24/7 mods. Many music channel over here in the uk run txt to screen services, despite some very good filters they have all had to opt for 24/7 mods but i'm told this is outsourced to indian for cost.
ChrisGilmore
· 11 months ago
Very interesting and a great idea...
Is there any way to get that feed into the tricaster? If the Tricaster could act on what sort of content it was seeing from the feed and put up the appropriate CG up, and possibly link to that story or ad page which is then clickable (we're streaming in Flash so IT SHOULD be relativly easy but then again, I have no experience with the Tricaster).
Is this possible within the current Tricaster system?
So if in the XMPP feed (for shownotes), we might have an audible ad for http://www.audible.com/twit, the tricaster would then see this as an ad and put the relavent audible CG up. If the content was a link to a story or a website you're discussing, it would put up a CG that is predefined (let's say the general TWiT one) with a clickable link to that story.
AaronAsAChimp
· 11 months ago
I think it be also useful to distribute the river as a subtitle file when the shows are posted, instead of have to find the relevant links and stuff in friend feed. That way also the feed will be preserved along with the show.
Teen TWiT
· 11 months ago
Sounds like a good idea. I have a question about it though. Using this "river" would you be able to quickly post the order of the reruns you are going to play so people have an idea of when those recording would be on? Just an idea, and it should be quick and easy to just type episode names quickly. You could even just say SN177, WW88, etc.
Just my ideas on the XMPP, it sounds good to me.
dave mora
· 11 months ago
Here are my 2 cents i wrote up a while back http://eunknown.org/blog/?p=507 not sure why but it bugs me the use @ when sending someone a message I vote for ~username and using @ as a location short.
Ex:
~davemora , I am @ work. where you @ ?
Leo, if you can add a feature where people on phone device can txt me with out being a member and I can reply back to their phone device I am willing to pay $$ a month for that feature. You can assigned Virtual Numbers like VN8188188180@twit.im the idea I can give people who wont join another social network still have the ability to send me a message (DM) make me happy.
If you will ever have a focus group count me in :) I love the idea of a constant stream of information. But, with more information comes the need to try and police it and keep it relevant.
stepp
· 11 months ago
Leo,
Here's a link for a beta Wiffiti screen tagged @River that you could try.
You can txt a message by sending @River <message> to 87884 or any Tweet with @River (or any other word we/you choose to tag) would get displayed on the @river Wiffiti screen.
This is a "lean in" and chat or "lean back" and watch experience.
Jay Robinson
· 11 months ago
(Sorry for being off topic here)
Leo, Regarding your comment on TWiT #197, where you mention doing real time reactions to an Apple Event with silhouettes of you and your panelists a la Mystery Science Theater 3000.
This sounds very interesting! What if you did record an audio version of this which could be listened to with the video once Apple releases the Keynote to the podcast feed?
All Comments
1. There is possibility for linkbait from any source through the XMPP system. While this may not be controllable, it would be useful to have the ability to perhaps block based on particular users if possible. This is probably going to be the biggest issue when using an IM client.
2. Perhaps a community question, but could a desktop app be created to view this stream, rather than through an IM client? Would be nice to avoid the constant "Ding" from Adium for each and every message that gets posted. Within that, if you could view popular hashtags, etc that would further help to narrow the field of view for users.
An onscreen ticker for TWiT live would be nice, but you might need some keyword filtering to cut out possible bad language.
I'm sure that your healthy community will be happy to help out, as I know you already have a good team of mods for the IRC chat room.
I think it's a great idea Leo, I would love to see it happen!
I like the idea of self moderation as long as it stays open and democratic. I would hate for this brave new TWiT world to devolve into a circle of same-thinking elitist who simply repeat what the others are saying.
Your analogy of the firehose is very appropriate - huge volumes at high speed. But not many of us can properly drink from a firehose...in fact it would overwhelm us and we would look elsewhere for our drink...
So we need to think about how the firehose is paired down into digestible intelligent feeds and how that is best presented and controlled
Second, you have an extremely valuable brand that must be protected from abuse either inadvertently or via deliverate action. To that end I think you need to be a little more conservative than Steve Gillmour or Robert Scoble as your public brand/personna is much broader and directly related to ongoing advertising revenue. Thus the feeds derived from the firehose need to have some level of control ...possibly more than what the purists would like but hey...it is not their brand we are dealing with. You need to ensure that the two major TWIT channels of information, the show notes and the chat forum are tightly controlled for appropriateness as they will be the major carriers of your brand.
Third, we need to just recognise that XMPP is just a real time pipe or trnasport mechanism and the real value to be added here is how best to slice and dice and present the streams.
So....I am thinking that there should be a number of streams or channels that are defined by you and sent out as standard flows from twit.im
These could include:
- A raw feed of everything...for people to innovate off
- A chat/comment stream...a la TWIT Army
- A TWIT controlled show notes/links stream. This can also carry ads in sync with the ads within your shows...this is the main feed you show on your video stream and also the one you most publicise in your forums such as the Radio Show and any commercial television deals that you do....
Next I am thinking that a client like TWEETDECK would be a good paradigm for how these feeds could be consumed...one pane for the chat stream, one pane for the show notes/links stream. It would be great to have an AIR client that had the two main streams running beside a window with the video feed in it
On the video feed you could have also have a permanent side panel on the feed (inserted via the tricaster??) that shows the notes/links feed and/or the chat stream flowing past...this would be useful when you distribute your shows to commercial networks as it will be like a CNBC feed with the ticker.
I have so much more to say here but my experience as a designer of trading systems in capital markets is that my clients are always dealing with a firehose of data and the art is not to just present the firehose but to think about how best to present and manage the firehose to ensure easy access and to also enable use by not drowing the consumer in the volume....
Perhaps you can schedule a GoToMeeting session so that we can all join in and whiteboard some ideas .....that is an great way to moderate a large meeting and enable people to present ideas and discuss options
Anyway...just some thoughts
1) Ability to view stream at a later time when listening to podcast, for ex. Having this avail via archive, even if then one cannot easily filter it, could be very helpful to see those links mentioned...kinda like SN's transcripts...this would thus need timestamps as others have said.
2) How would we view the stream? I have IRC chat and Army open in tabs in Opera, and video in IE window over that...having yet another app open that I'd need to switch to on this small laptop isn't practical, especially with my eyesight issues...I use the techguy.startan.net to view video as I can make that window almost as small as the video itself and thus see it and IRC at same time...if the stream were incorporated in that site as a scroll above the video, then it might work.
3) Tags might need to be kept short to make usage easier, such as #loc vs #location, etc.
4) Having only certain ppl/ID's authorized to post is a must, and being able to select which ones you see could be handy as well.
5) once an item gets "posted", there may well be a need to be able to remove it later, such as when a typo or incorrect data gets into stream...we'd not want a typo on link that landed us on a incorrect/naughty site to remain, right?
That's it for now...
As for commands to add and such, I think the hashtags idea is a *MUST*, that way the content creator (you) could easily swap and filter messages according to the topic that is being discussed. That way, you would avoid the clutter that happens on IRC when, for instance, the topic is A and people in chat are talking Politics. User participation is all fine and good, but if it's going to be a permanent part of the actual content stream, it should be not only moderated, but also properly categorized to avoid confusion. Hashtags sounds like a solid idea.
Also, how about adding a "middle tier" of moderation? The users should be able to FOLLOW/BLOCK/TRACK etc, but also there should be a middle tier of select people (maybe the same IRC moderators?) that would block out spammers and that kind of nasties - Let the user decide who is a "flamer" or a "troll", but have some sort of group that will at least eliminate spam for them, as nobody wants to do that job and I could see people easily turned off if they had to block spammers, one by one, on their own.
I say it's worth the shot, and the concept is sound enough to potentially work.
Just my 2 cents of a Peso from Argentina.
http://twitter.com/javieraltman
Terryh (Army Member)
PLEASE
Marivic
@techpr
My recommendation would be a limited text stream on twitlive.tv then have an IM/IRC style interface that anyone can subscribe to the "firehose" stream. It would be cool if you could record and sync the stream to your video so that when you do replays you get the same text-stream in realtime.
Seems silly to create a platform just for Twit, or does this really just have to do with your long standing grudge with Twitter usurping your beloved Twit brand?
I think an IM-like client would be better for this than a true IM client. The first thing that comes to mind is an AIR app. I'm seeing a drawer where you could drag a hash tag into a bin of things you want to follow or to float up higher in your view of the river and the same type of thing for users. This would be like following or unfollowing a user/topic. I might see a modified hash tag used for the creation of the special rooms like #macworld! or something.
Just some initial thoughts. Love the idea tho.
-Richard
Hmm, I see this isn't a replacement for the chat. But, perhaps it should be?
I'm wondering how you plan on handling the default stream a user gets from river? Do they get everything until they issue some follow or track commands, and then filtering starts? Or do they get nothing at first, and have to issue a specific command to follow everyone if desired?
Rock7-24
1. Offer both a live feed and an archive
2. User friendly filters such as find all the links mentioned on TWIL12.
3. iPhone optimized feeds.
I think with careful attention paid to not making the mistakes of other services and the wonderful, intelligent members in the TWiT army, I think this will be great.
I hope that made sense,
Chris Heath
Personally, I'm not a big fan of real-time streams, mostly because I think they are difficult to follow and therefore difficult to be really useful in the long term. While a live stream of this kind would definitely be amusing to look at, it won't be as useful as, say, a combination of del.icio.us and twitter.
A middle-tier of moderation could be a solution, but it's difficult to foresee how viable this might be: you'd need quite a lot of people checking the strem in real time, *all the time*. Maybe Twit fans can do that though, it's hard to tell at thi stage.
Another problem would be content duplication: you really don't want people to suggest the same damn link 5 times every time, right?
StackOverflow encountered a similar problem: when a question was posted, it literally took a couple of minutes or less for the fast person to post an answer. Meanwhile, another 5 users may have been busy writing exactly the same answer: this resulted in frequent duplication.
For some ideas on how to solve this problem, have a look at the StackOverflow blog: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/10/solving-t...
Anyhow, hope it works out, one way or the other!
Just an idea.
I wish you much success in this.
Just an idea.
I wish you much success in this.
I find it interesting that when you started out as a podcast only show, it freed us up from being slaves to programming schedules. But now that you're doing live shows for the majority of the day, it seems that you are, I think unconsciously, slipping back into the mold of traditional broadcast media with set schedules, etc.
I understand that the podcasts will always be there for us who listen when we want to but the more features you add to the live version, the more I feel that I'm being 'asked' to follow a schedule which is not compatible with mine.
Anyway, as the number of viewers you have in the chatroom can attest, there is a substantial percentage of your viewers that are able to watch you live and benefit greatly from this live river. I think it's worth a try and I'm definitely interested in seeing what you and other content providers can learn from this experiment. You definitely have the user base to pull it off.
For people on the move, I guess they can listen live and contribute on their iphones/G1s/nokias etc. but I don't have any of those nor the time during the day to sit through my favorite live shows. Good luck!
And as far as I can tell this is practically free content for me - so I'm not worried it will overextend me.
I am super interested in seeing what this turns out to be, but one of the things that might keep me from using it is the fear of spoilers. Am I going to read something that will take the joy out of listening to a podcast a day or two later?
But, I am of two minds, because I love the shows and I want to participate more in the conversation and this sounds like just the tool to encourage that. I like that TWiT can serve as a sandbox to learn and explore the value of emerging web trends. It plays a huge part in my decision about what my company invests its online time in.
I guess the long and the short of it is, don't foget about the 90% of us who will be listening to this two days from now and allow the focus and format of the shows be bent to much toward being live.
Bottom line: any live content I see as a value-add, not the essential service I'm using with TWIT. With that said, if there was the ability to play back the video or to otherwise consume live streams (video, audio, text or ALL) TIME-SHIFTED, I think that would be very neat. I would only use it rarely, but I hope that the end result of this is a page that would essentially let you play back all of the live components (ex. the ultimate would be a web page for an episode of the show that showed you the video, chat and text streams as they happened during the recording).
I would think that anything regarding show notes would need to have some static area (like FriendFeed) to retrieve as you may see somthing on the "stream" but may be unable to access that link or whatever at that time.
I look forward to trying it out!
Maybe one way to help that would be to allow people to subscribe to "groups": only Leo, only Leo and Hosts, only users with a certain "rating", etc. Then you might have a moderator of some kind that can pass on really good individual posts from all users to the "main feed" that people that only subscribed to the "hosts" would get, etc.
I just feel like you need to be sure that people that don't have the ability to watch the stream 24x7 don't feel like they are unable to keep up with the really good content that will be on it.
I will closely follow this and start to develop ideas around it.
Ralf
http://bleeper.de/bleeper
(bleeper.de is the largest laconica site outside North America)
I would like to see a SHOWNOTES command that would automatically filter on a subset of trusted users and tags (this would be set by Leo and designates). That way, for shows like TWiT where I'm concentrating on content, I can filter out the fluff. And an inverse command like FULLFEED to put it back to my default filters. You could also capture the shownotes filtered feed for use in creating your shownotes. This gives the option to the user of having a very controlled feed or just letting the firehose go. Thinking long term, you could also create a TWiT bot to replay the shownotes when you replay the video stream.
Yes, you could build such a feed by hand using FOLLOW/BLOCK etc, but I wouldn't. I just wouldn't use it starting the instant the noise overcame the useful information. Also the new user wouldn't know where to start and you need to make it easy for the user to get at the useful information. Who to trust? Who to block?
It's promising, don't rush it into production. Maybe do some honest beta testing to see what works.
Thanks for your work on this idea Leo.
Chilling in Ottawa (6°F),
Clayton
I think I'm still having a bit of a problem getting my head around expected/intended usage.
I see filtering as the big problem of the web. Lots of content, limited time to drink it in.
And as a secondary use, the system would provide the infrastructure for less structured one-off live blogging events like MacWorld keynotes.
I can't help but wonder if we are introducing a human scaling problem here. Can we really expect to have community moderators sift the firehose looking for the gems to promote up to the moderated stream? I guess it depends on the size of the firehose. I suppose if the bulk of the stream content comes from Leo, the hosts, and the pre-approved users the mods can be very picky about what gets promoted up from the masses.
I hope I'm not coming across as against this (I'm not, I like the idea), but it is hard to take off the tester hat that I wear at work as I look for holes or think of ways I can break the system. It creeps into real life far to often.
Still fighting to understand the use cases. Am I getting closer?
You won't have to consume the river live at all. We'll pipe it into a Friend Feed room where you can search, read, and comment on it at your leisure, and also incorporate a cleaned up version into the actual show notes that go out with the podcasts. This is a benefit for the downloaders as much as the live viewers.
You already have follow, track, block, IM, air and xmpp there.
As it is open source why not just mod it and create clients to your spec ?
I'm not sure if XMPP would support this, but in a semi-perfect world I'd slap a few "(+)" "(-)" "(report)" html links at the end of each message going into the river, and users would gain karma based on the response from other users. Then I'd add a feature to basically do the same as "Browse at +5" on slashdot, which would only give you messages from the highest rated contributors...
I didn't really explain that well, did I ? :(
--KissMeKate (aka TweetMissMeKate)
I'll see about getting back to working on it and count me in if you need help.
Dave
There are a number of web based Irc clients for those who don't want a full client installed. And the bot can handle #follow commands etc. As well as filter conternt before it's pushed to twitter and the like.
Now you're talkin'. I only listen to the 'casts on my iPod, almost never live so a web page to look at with the links etc. would be great. Especially the chat stuff I never get to see.
-Carrie
I watch the shows pre-recorded. I assume the video will be on-demand sometime soon. Hash tags will be great to filter, but here is the feature I would think would be extremely helpful, though technically tricky possibly.
Each tag or comment should have an approximate time-code that matches up with the live video stream.
Each comment as an "object" should be right mouse clickable as it streams across
Right mouse click would expose a small menu: Example: 1) Funny, 2)Helpful, 3)Abusive etc
A server would collect and rank the top Funny, top Helpful, and etc
Question: Can Stickam pass script calls like you could in Video Flash?
If I had a Client that could replay Video on Demand and add the Funniest, or the most Helpful that would be extremely helpful. Also, You might insert a "Best of" feed post broadcast later into the actual video as a CNN type crawl. (See Obama the Magic N***gro feed on Fox for why not to insert it live)
I think this would make the video extremely valuable as tool and resource. It would leverage crowd sourcing aspects and add tremendous value to pre-recorded feeds.
Also it would give the crowd generated content a ranking, give lurkers and quiet listeners an easy task and allow less witty, or less knowledgeable viewers a way to participate.
And it would give Twit Members a way to see the best of the TwitCrowd. A Blog or Site would list these rankings. A simple script might someday be able call up that segment when the comment was made. By restricting the voting ranking to live sessions only, you could control demand and spamming.
Its been years since I engineered interactive TV, but I recall flash video enables this and I think this should be possible yes?
Also, could you integrate it with your twit.am audio stream, and send out text links? I know that Windows Media server has a command for sending out text inside a WMA stream, which custom-written receivers can interpret as needed (ie use as a url of a slide in a presentation, or use as a text command to trigger a function in an app or webpage.) You could have a floating window (or better yet, an HTML application running in it's own sandbox) which has a UI to recieve the TWIT.am stream, and display the text underneath.
some applications i would like to see with this river, in a way, correspond to my thoughts a decade ago about incorporating a feed that streams directly to an led ticker. back then, perl or python seemed like it was doable -yet very restrictive. i've searched all over the internet and ebay but either the components of a finished product aren't there or you have to deal with an expensive product relegated to talking with a salesperson in addition to figuring out what you had to deal with -ie. serial port/usb port/comm port/ethernet and if you had the necessary drivers to do it. lots of guesswork and gamble for me at the time.
other thoughts:
i think it would be great to have an adobe air application as well as an iphone application.
in all these implementations, i agree that having it versatile in accessibility is key. as long as there is a way for any device to pull data from the internet would make it really great.
and as you have stated, refining and tailoring the data for each user in realtime would help make it very viable.
I also think a possible problem will also be spam and spam bots on an open client with no 24/7 mods. Many music channel over here in the uk run txt to screen services, despite some very good filters they have all had to opt for 24/7 mods but i'm told this is outsourced to indian for cost.
Is there any way to get that feed into the tricaster? If the Tricaster could act on what sort of content it was seeing from the feed and put up the appropriate CG up, and possibly link to that story or ad page which is then clickable (we're streaming in Flash so IT SHOULD be relativly easy but then again, I have no experience with the Tricaster).
Is this possible within the current Tricaster system?
So if in the XMPP feed (for shownotes), we might have an audible ad for http://www.audible.com/twit, the tricaster would then see this as an ad and put the relavent audible CG up. If the content was a link to a story or a website you're discussing, it would put up a CG that is predefined (let's say the general TWiT one) with a clickable link to that story.
Just my ideas on the XMPP, it sounds good to me.
Ex:
~davemora , I am @ work. where you @ ?
Leo, if you can add a feature where people on phone device can txt me with out being a member and I can reply back to their phone device I am willing to pay $$ a month for that feature. You can assigned Virtual Numbers like VN8188188180@twit.im the idea I can give people who wont join another social network still have the ability to send me a message (DM) make me happy.
If you will ever have a focus group count me in :) I love the idea of a constant stream of information. But, with more information comes the need to try and police it and keep it relevant.
Here's a link for a beta Wiffiti screen tagged @River that you could try.
http://tinyurl.com/leoriver
You can txt a message by sending @River <message> to 87884 or any Tweet with @River (or any other word we/you choose to tag) would get displayed on the @river Wiffiti screen.
This is a "lean in" and chat or "lean back" and watch experience.
Leo, Regarding your comment on TWiT #197, where you mention doing real time reactions to an Apple Event with silhouettes of you and your panelists a la Mystery Science Theater 3000.
This sounds very interesting! What if you did record an audio version of this which could be listened to with the video once Apple releases the Keynote to the podcast feed?
This would be a really fun idea!