Kinberg made the Google Video and Youtube greasemonkey scripts:
http://www.joshkinberg.com/blog/files/google_video_getter.user.js
http://www.joshkinberg.com/blog/files/youtube_to_me.user.js
And Andreas made this for Sciencentral News (by request):
http://www.solitude.dk/stuff/sciencentral_video_getter.user.js
I want a script like these that runs on every site I visit.
Maybe it scrubs the page for all the .mov, .wmv, and .mp4 files and presents a list of links to them?
Possible?
I'll start taking up a collection if somebody's willing to build it.
On 2/15/06, Michael Meiser <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Feb 13, 2006, at 9:48 AM, Peter Van Dijck wrote:
> I just see a list of videos that pop up in a window that embeds WMV.
> No blog, no permalinks, no RSS...
>
> Peter
http://nbcolympics.com
This just pisses me off.. it's utter crap. Complete and utter CRAP. I
don't know why it was even pointed out... it's the same damn crap
you'd find on any major news site.
Normally I would just ignore such B.S. but what the hell today I feel
like bitching. You've been forewarned. You might say I'm bitching
because this needs to be said... because I'm doing under the heading
"NBC Olympic Blog Is Awesome" when clearly it is anything but. I mean
to slay it, and I don't intend to play nice or fair. Again, you've
been forewarned.
Disclaimer: my general discussed are in no way shaped at any
individual here, they are in fact aimed at the loathsome entity that
is NBC, established media at large, and those that would propagate
such travesties on humanity as this video interface. aka. please
don't take this personally.
This site (nbcolympics.com) and it's "video interface" are full of
needless and endless hoops which as usual make it needlessly
inaccessible and all but unusable... and don't tell me it's not.
People who don't get accessibility always say... "I can watch a video
on it"... yeah, maybe you can even watch two or three... given 30
minutes and a whole lot of frustration... but the experience is
needlessly for shit.
I always respond to such people... "yeah you should check out that on
video of (insert celebrity name here)... yeah, it's really awesome..
you've got to see it... go ahead... it's there on the website...
don't mind me... I've got all the time in the world... just let me
know when you've checked it out and i'll be happy to discuss how much
said website rocks."
One of the many reasons why I LOVE videoblogging, blogging and
podcastings is I like to think one of the things that it does is
changes the expectation of what media is, how it should be consumed
and who should have access to it in a very deep and profound way...
that there is a better way.
Over time people will come to understand how shitty such websites as
this NBC olympic website are and start to go elsewhere.... an
elsewhere besides the P2P networks... which btw, do have extensive
video coverage of the olympics... but I'd like to see such media on
the open web where it belongs... where it can benefit society at
large instead of just an elite few.
So, yeah, not only is it a pain in the ass to watch videos in NBC's
crappy interface, but you cannot reference a video and therefore not
send a url to your friends or discuss a video. It's a for shit
interface.
When I see crap like this, as mentioned, most of the time I ignore
it. But every once in a while I'm incited to take action.. to hack
it apart and put it back together so people can actually USE the
content... or perhaps just to bitch about it in the hopes that people
will start to get what accessibility is really all about. ;)
Case in point.
Have any of you ever thought about just scrapping such a website's
data and recompiling it into a vlog format with RSS feeds and
comments? Which is to say, turning it back into a real live vlog,
with actual comments and permalinks so people can enjoy it and talk
about it and reference it?
I'm not sure this can be done with this NBC website... while someone
said it was in Quicktime I don't see any QT videos... just all
streaming windows media crap. There's to much material I think for
one person to do it alone... but I think it'd be tremendously
popular.... and in a media-hacker kind of way really give them a big
positive slap in the face... like the bot that hacks your system only
to apply security patches... sort of like "heh! idiots! clue in!
here's a tremendous amount of traffic and attention... please take it
and learn something from it."
Of course they could and probably would threaten legal action,
because how dare someone hot link to their videos or talk about
them... Indeed the olympic committee has a tremendous history of
suing anyone who mentions them... trademark and copyright law gone
completely foul of it's intended purpose in the marketplace... beyond
simply protecting such entities from malicious harm... to the point
of suppressing free speech.
But there's nothing the olympic committee can sue about as long as
you say "unofficial" clearly in the title... because enclosing a
video is no less legal than linking directly to a video... and
quoting short descriptive captions about the videos is perfectly
legal too. These things are the very foundation of the blogging
world, basic re-blogging in fact. I repeat, the foundations of
blogging. Anyone trying to suppress such basic freedoms would stir a
hornets nest of controversy.
See Streisand effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_Effect
Anyway, this is my idea of media hacking...
...bringing media rich culture back out onto the open web kicking and
screaming... where it should be in the first place... for the benefit
of all.
But, I just don't have the time to go fuscking around with messed up
organizations like NBC or the olympic comity for their benefit and no
profit of my own... I'm to busy to keep up with the olympics let
alone compile all their videos into a tried and true video blog
format... TRUE this would save thousands of people COUNTLESS time,
create bountiful and endless publicity and enjoyment... get the NBC
olympic website endless exposure... but I just don't have the time to
spend bitch slapping clueless web sites... If any of you do, let me
know, I have all the skilz and offer my contributions, I just cannot
afford to run the show. BTW, pardon the language, but I warned you :)
Anyway, this reminds me of two things... 1) the sundance film
festivals pathetic attempt at promoting their website by putting
short films online and 2) the guys who during the very recent
superbowl put every single superbowl ad online in mp4 and m4v format
in a subscribe-able RSS format.... and that without anyone's
permission at all.
First, To address sundance... Have any of you seen any really cool
film shorts floating around online from the sundance film festival?
No? Well have you seen their site? No again? While perhaps that's
because while every year they try to put out tremendous amounts of PR
B.S. about 'sundance online' the clueless idiots BURY all the content
in a completely inaccessible monstrous flash website... which makes
it impossible to find or bookmark or watch or share any videos at all.
Year after year no buzz and no talk happens about their short
films... except by clueless wonders that just regurgitate their PR
hype no one sees them... no one talks about them. No one being of
course a relative thing... But you compare this to the now standard
movie trailer releases which over the years have become much more
accessible (most commonly in downloadable quicktime formats) and you
get the idea that sundance is missing out on 99.99% of potential word
of mouth marketing. They are clueless as hell much to the detriment
of not only themselves... but all those independent filmographers and
would be masses of fans that just never materialize.
Second, the superbowl commercials...
http://www.devlib.org/blog/2006/01/30/2006-super-bowl-commercials/
Because of the guys at devlob.com I have like 40 or so superbowl
commercials on my ipod and could watch them without all that
distracting football in between. :) LOL.
All I had to do was pop an RSS feed into iTunes. Total time spent by
me 30 seconds to pop the feed into iTunes and 30-35 minutes to watch
all the commercials.. that's it. Amazing cultural insights and
endless, enjoyment both about how good some are and how bad most
are... all that a side this was a tremendous benefit to EVERYONE
involved, so called "consumers" and advertisers a like, and yet I'm
surprised these guys at devlib.org didn't get sued by either the
advertisers, the NFL or other some such.
I just want to point out the irony here... It's a stupid advertising
industry... where businesses will pay millions to have their message
heard in 30-60second spots... while simultaneously suing people who
would talk about, share it or discuss it for free.
This is the huge disconnect between the traditional advertising world
and what's known as viral marketing. Viral marketers while not always
well behaved get that buying eyeballs and airtime is now not the only
way to get out your message... there's a new way... that way is
ACCESSIBILITY... to craft a great message and put it out on the open
web in a simple and accessible format and help your would be audience
to find it and share it.
This is in fact the slow revolution in the movie industry... the slow
shift from solely TV advertising to increasingly putting more and
more movie trailers on line... longer, much longer... higher
resolution... even multiple trailers and other promotional pieces,
out-takes, bloopers... almost all of which are now downloadable and
able to be "hot-linked" to from any web page. This is the future of
advertising and media... this slow progression of accessibility.
Pushing the legal envelope... bending it not breaking it...
Anyway, I have no doubt that the olympic committee would try to use
legal threats to stop anyone who put their videos into a vlog-able
format... (if in fact their are any videos worth doing this with)
after all they've sued many for even mentioning their name in the
past... we're talking well beyond all sane trademark law... but you
know what... fuck em... there's nothing illegal about what I'm
talking about...
Unlike the guys who posted the superbowl commercials I'm not talking
about redistributing content... just relinking all the content
together in a vlog-able format. Simple reorganization for
accessibility.. No redistribution involved.
No court is going to rule that you can't "hot link" to a video no
matter what sort of ridiculous terms of service the NBC olympic
website has. Even if NBC is to mount a legal assault I think posting
a cease and desist from such as NBC might in fact evoke the Streisand
Effect (url cited above).
The point is... video blogging, podcasting and blogging are like the
ebb of the ocean tide... the slow sands of time... we're not breaking
laws like p2p darknets... we're functioning legally and applying
constant pressure... bending and pushing and challenging the legal
system already in place.... increasing pressure... changing
expectations on a very grass roots and yet global scale.
We're slowly changing the expectation that media is for
"professionals" and "spectators"... breaking down the so called
"consumer culture" and turning the world into a much more human and
participatory place. A "participatory culture" if you'd like to call
it that.
You might say... we're now out in cyberspace beyond the surf... we're
now beyond the crashing waves.. the .com hype... we're now into the
tides, the tides of change... these changes are deep, deep water, and
increasingly they're just going to keep coming, endlessly ebbing and
progressing... they will not crash like the cheap surf of the .com
boom... but these changes also won't be always as obvious as previous
changes. Perhaps only in retrospect will we be able to see their
tremendous impact on shaping the landscape in which we live.
Sometimes these changes are going to be so slow as to be
imperceptible by all but the trained eye... and while sometimes
they'll get hyped up in all "web 2.0" fashion... most times the truly
profound changes will simply get misunderstood or missed all
together, such as is my constant trying B.S. :)
All hail deviant media hacker behavior.
One of these days I'm going find the right deviant project like this
and put my money where my mouth is... and push the issue to the
edge... the headlines would hopefully reflect the irony... "huge
success... threatened by legal action". One thing I notice is
corporations love to sue the hand that feeds them... ahem.. RIAA. :P
BTW, as an example I colluded with Jon Udell in typical blog manner,
which is to say, despite his knowing anything about it... to crack
open one of the "iTunes U" podcasts (aka. iTunes University podcasts)
from Stanford and make it available on the open web instead of just
the iTunes directory.
Accessible podcast: http://odeo.com/channel/59954/view
Now anyone can listen to it... almost.. except that it's still in m4a
format instead of mp3... fucking Apple. But at least it now has
permalinks, and you can comment, and click on and download on the
media links... and reference it and blog about it. Hell, you can
download it and transcode it to mp3 if you like. I'd recommend it.
And this is the how and why...
http://mmeiser.com/blog/2006/01/stanford-and-apples-itunes-taking.html
Liberating media......
If I had endless time I'd love to do nothing but go around the
internet and "liberate" media from sucky misguided, needlessly
inaccessible web interfaces. I just tend to have no tolerance for
such backward thinking. Perhaps we should declare the independence
of the blogosphere / vlogosphere / podcast-o-sphere and annex it from
the internet. Simply cut loose of all such bullshit. Have ourselves a
little boston tea party of media and throw out all this sucky DRM,
TPM and streaming media crap back into the depths of the cyberspace
where it belongs. Perhaps every vlog, every podcast, and every blog
created are just that... a rejection of the tax on innovation,
progress, and above all humanity by the powers that be in media and
in politics.
We hold these truths to be self evident... that all media as it is
representative of the voices of all people is created equal... that
all media is endowed by the people with certain unalienable rights,
that among these are the right to be quoted, discussed, referenced,
to be known, studied and accessible by all and for the benefit of all
people as is in accordance with it's central place as the language
and the voices that shape our culture and the great debate.
Media is now and forever will be from this point forward if not
already the very language of our culture and as such all are entitled
to have access to it, not only as a means of literacy, but also as a
means of _expression_. As the printing press was to mass literacy of
the written and spoken language... so to will the internet be to mass
literacy of the language of media.
We are all only so equal as our voices are equal and in so far as we
use them.
This is clearly visible in open source, blogging, podcasting, and now
video blogging. It's only through our active PARTICIPATION in all
aspects of the great debate that we maintain equality. The moment we
let ourselves be put on the couch is the moment we loose that
control. The extent to which we participate... to the extent we
create code, or podcast, vlog or otherwise speak our mind and do is
to the extent that we maintain and preserve our power and the
equality of our society and the world at large.
That... or of course you could go read Joe Trippi's book. I think he
did a pretty good job of summing up the spirit of it... of course
it's more than just politics, but just understanding what it means to
politics is a start.
Peace,
-Mike
Michael Meiser
http://mmeiser.com/blog - fun stuff
http://mmeiser.com/backchannel - del.icio.us link blog
http://evilvlog.com - Serious lunacy has a new domain.
On Feb 13, 2006, at 9:48 AM, Peter Van Dijck wrote:
I just see a list of videos that pop up in a window that embeds WMV.
No blog, no permalinks, no RSS...
Peter
On 2/13/06, David Howell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Uhh...I dont see any vlogs. I see videos of the events but no vlogs.
>
> Could you give me a link to a vlog post there.
>
> David
> http://www.taoofdavid.com
>
> --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Kunga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> You guys. NBC really is doing video blogging all over that website!!!
>> It's incredible and it's native QuickTime too. You can even save as
>> quicktime movies to your hard drive. Outstanding quality. 6-8 mb/
>> minute
>>
>> <http://nbcolympics.com>
>> --
>> Taylor Barcroft
>> New Media Publisher, Editor, Video Journalist, Podcaster,
>> Futurecaster
>> Santa Cruz CA, Beach of the Silicon Valley
>> URL http://FutureMedia.org
>> RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/FutureMedia
>> iTunes http://tinyurl.com/8ql87
>> barcroft (gizmo)
>> kungax (Skype)
>> kungag5 (iChat-AIM)
>>
>>
>> On Feb 13, 2006, at 2:05 AM, Kunga wrote:
>>
>>> You turn on your television and tune into one of the NBC
>>> broadcast or
>>> satellite television channels. It's very lifelike if your set is HD.
>>>
>>> But if you must use the internet it's here:
>>>
>>> <http://nbcolympics.com>
>>
>
>
>
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>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
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>
>
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