Monday, September 25

Mobile AV podcast agregation support to be unvieled on the Nokia N95 tomorrow!?

As many know I've blogged time and again about the idea of the fabled "networked ipod"... The idea being "hubless media aggreagation" or "direct to portable device media aggregation"... taking podcasting and videoblogging "beyond the desktop"... and I've put it many other ways.

The ultimate vision is that that one day soon we'll be walking down the street and our portable media device will suddenly beep at us and we'll pull it out and see we have a new video or audio podcast from a friend right there and ready to play.

Ideally this device will transparenly jump on and off any open or trusted network checking all our photo, audio podcast, or videoblog subscriptions downloading any media in the background transparently without needing any attention. We'd then be able to pull it out at any point and be assured that the absolute latest videos, photos or audio podcasts would be right there waiting for us.

Such a device will allow podcasting technology to become untethered.. to go with us out into the world, to be experienced not in realtime, but in web time. Such media will then start to become not just more ubiquitous than traditional broadcasting and entertainment... but also a seemless tool of everday inter-personal communications.

The wifi enabled Sony PSP has been the closest to this vision, but it is not a automatic aggregator... it's simply a browser... and it requires way to much attention to discover, download, and prepare content prior to simple playback. You must be on network to browse media and download individual videos and pieces of audio individually for later playback. In order for such a device to be successful content must come to the device without the need for constant attention and require us only to choose which mp3 or video and press play.

Nokia has been making some major in-roads lately with devices like the n770 and more recently the n93, and now it appears that their latest device the n95 will be out as soon as tomorrow and that it might, just might, finally have full on support for audio and video podcast aggregation!

I'll believe it when I see it! :)

I don't have the exact specs but Steve Garfield just posted about the Nokia N95 which will supposedly be out tomorrow. According to him it will have an audio and video podcast aggregator on the phone.

This is Steve Garfield reporting from the Soho Grand Hotel where Nokia has gathered bloggers from around the world to preview the new Nokia N95, prior to it's public unveiling tomorrow in NYC at the 7th Regiment Armory.

[...]

There was an application called podcasting and I asked about it. It's a media aggregator that will be able to subscribe to audio and video podcasts which you'll then be able to watch on the device. It's really a lot more than just a phone. It's a multimedia computer.


I have lots of questions steve (and nokia)! and I want answers! :)

First, I want specs!

  • video/audio codecs supported -- 3gp, mp4, mp3 ???

  • RSS standards supported -- RSS 2.0, mediaRSS, Atom ??

  • memory -- Onboard memory size, explandability, flash card type?

  • does it aggregate via any open wifi? what about authenticated wifi?

  • does it aggregate over wireless!? i.e 3G

  • can it jump on and off trusted and open networks without my attention

  • can it aggregate media in the background

  • how do i get RSS feeds to the phone? does nokia have an API?


Steve, and Nokia... if you're listening... send me one already for testing!

We over at mefeedia.com have been waiting and prepared to take videoblogging and audio podcasting beyond the desktop computer and "tethered devices" like the ipod... for over a year... just give us basic RSS 2.0 support, some good formats support like mp4 and mp3, a way to get a feed in the device and a simple easy to use aggregator / playback interface we'll do the rest! :)

Steve G's whole post is here: Nokia Test Center Blog: Blogger Preview of the Nokia N95

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7 comments:

Jay Dedman said...

wow..ill finally buy a new phone if this is true.

Michael Meiser said...

Jay, good to here from you.

I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

You know, there's likely to be a million things wrong with it, but it's a start, like a crack in a damn. The torrent of media will flow everywhere. :)

Eventually.

Anonymous said...

Hi Micheal

Does this help answer some of your questions?

The N95 will be generally amazing but there's no need to wait for RSS functionality. RSS readers such as doHeadlines are already available for Symbian devices.

great blog!!

jason

Michael Meiser said...

Jason regretfully I've been looking at looking for specifications deatiling what video codecs are supported and how the podcasting application works. Unfortuneatly I have yet to see ANY specifications that even broach the issue. :(

The article you point to simply says ...

"The faster connection speeds make downloading media (such as podcasts via the in built Podcast application) more palatable and should also improve latency/round trip times"

Which is pretty much nothing. :(

Also... I'm sure doHeadlines is cool, but I'm not talking about Newsreaders.. I'm talking about podcast aggregators. Huge difference.

Thank you for commenting. I'll likely post a new post as soon as I find the specs. I'm sort of disapointed in Nokia's website... it has no searchability and poor accessibility. :(

I could find NOTHIN about the n95 but pictures... they were pretty though. :)

Steve Garfield said...

Hi Michael,
I played with the podcasting application. It's very cool.

Here are the answers to your questions:

* video/audio codecs supported -- 3gp, mp4, mp3 ???
video
3gp, mp4, H.264, real


audio
mp3, aac, m4a, midi, wav, wma

nokia.com check forum nokia.com pages

* RSS standards supported -- RSS 2.0, mediaRSS, Atom ??

rss 2.0, atom

uses atom to post to flickr with integrated flickr upload application


* memory -- Onboard memory size, explandability, flash card type?

up to 160mb , microSD up to 2GB

* does it aggregate via any open wifi? what about authenticated wifi?

works with open and authenticated wifi

* does it aggregate over wireless!? i.e 3G

3g, hsdpa, look online

* can it jump on and off trusted and open networks without my attention

you need to change manually

* can it aggregate media in the background
yes

* how do i get RSS feeds to the phone? does nokia have an API?

rss support in browser
saved in browser

setting to update all the feeds on a schedule

there's a new floating tool bar from which you can select rss feeds


The Nokia Forum has all the specs on the N95:

http://forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/aebdcb37-c28c-4153-9726-9b3c7efe0144/N95.html

I have pictures of the podcasting application too.

Michael Meiser said...

Thanks Steve. I need to do another blog post on it.

Technically it seems to meet all the requirements necissary for being the first "direct to device" media agregator. However the one thing I can't read about is how it works. How useable is it? How simple is it?

Can it jump on and off open and trusted wifi networks without beeping... or needing the attention of the owner?

Can it progressively and automatically aggregate media in the background... or do you have to physically laynch the application every time you want to aggregate media.

And there are various other playback issues... isssues of the api... finding searching useability, etc.

We shall see. I really need to and can't wait to get my hands on one to demo it.

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