Posted by rae in science, video at 1:12 pm on Tuesday, 31 October 2006
We could have made a video like this up in Algonquin if we had the equipment.
We all watched the International Space Station fly overhead nice and bright until it disappeared in Earth’s shadow.
In this Web2.0 world, it isn’t often that a site impresses me.
But
Jamendo
does.
Jamendo is basically a site for free music, shared under
Creative Commons
licenses.
i.e. legal free music.
album mouseover
However, not only is the licensing forward-looking, but the implementation of the site itself is impressive.
I was first struck by the registration, which instead of bringing up a new page, threw up a translucent dialog over the web page.
Very slick.
Then, when I was browsing the site, I noticed a decided low number of page refreshes, which indicates a large amount of
Ajax
at work.
Moving your mouse over an album displays a nice popup of available options.
Also, and more remarkably, the number of albums displayed in a row changes
(e.g. before and
after)
as you make your window wider and narrower.
You expect this kind of UI from a desktop app, but not from a web app.
Makes for a very smooth experience.
The music player embedded in the page is *not* done with flash.
Indeed, the lack of Flash shows how you can make an impressive site without resorting to proprietary code.
Very cool.
They also have
an API
for getting at all the data stored on the site, including “recent” information.
There are both simple URLs you can use that return text, and XML-RPC calls you can make.
e.g. All albums by Ehma.
Oh, and did I mention that all downloads are done with BitTorrent (or eMule, another p2p thing)?
Look at how many people are torrenting (click for current list)
Wow, I figured that with the season 3 premiere of Battlestar Galactica, there would be a lot of BitTorrent activity, especially since here in Toronto
Space
isn’t showing it until tonight, but over 25,000 people?
Egad.
I have a Mac, and I find The Space Channel’s use of Windows media very frustrating.
However, the flip side is that, with
Flip4Mac
installed, I can actually save online content that Windows users cannot.
For instance, this link
to Space’s HypaSpace Battlestar Galactica season 3 promo opens up in a QuickTime window, and after the download is finished, I can save that movie to my disk, to be played whenever I want.
I don’t think Windows users can do that with streaming wmv content, so it takes away a little bit of the pain of browsing in a Windows website.
Space is showing the Season 3 premiere on Saturday, one day behind the SciFi channel in the US.
The one-day lag means most people will watch the BitTorrent version.
Especially since Space isn’t HD yet.
I would expect HR versions to be online by around midnight, with
HD720p
versions within a week, as is typical.
I’ve heard that because BCE
bought
Chum
(which owns
CityTV
and
Space),
it’s unlike that Space will be in HD any time soon.
Not sure why the latter follows from the former, but oh well.
