Clarifying dabble
So Dave Winer wrote up something which misunderstood dabble, calling it similar to Flickr. Then Mary Hodder corrected him and Susan Mernit chimed in.
Now its my turn!
In her conslusion Mary wanted everyone to know that dabble was about Video search. I gotta tell yah that surprised me. I have thought of dabble as a new kind of aggregator. A way for one to go out and create their own collection fo video pointer items.
The fact that one can then search for items within the filtered world of dabble is coolio and I’m sure it plays well in the press and investors minds - but to me dabble is a new kind of aggregator.
I agree with Dave that the difference between Flickr and images and time based media - is that the moment you see an image, you get all the inforation you need about that image, while time based media takes ‘time’ to grok it all. That’s true.
But that’s why sites like dabble strive to collect tags, connect media to people and in general - solve the ’search’ issue. But I still think dabble is really a new kind of aggregator.
nuf said.
November 17th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Marc - check out Democracy Player. Its an open source media aggregator that works with rss, youtube, blip and even bittorrent. It supports mp3, mov, wmv, mpeg, and theora.
I have been using the .90 version for a while now, and with the exception of a few bugs, it rocks. If I remember correctly, Dabble has rss so it would work with Democracy player too.
November 17th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Hi Sean,
Dabble does have RSS feeds for tags, personal collections and playlists. And actually, we are a data partner with you at Democracy Player. We also have data partnerships with FireAnt and several other players, either in the browser, or in a divice.
mary
November 17th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Marc,
Thanks for the plug. I agree, Dabble is a new kind of agregator that can get both about search and about aggregation, organization and most importantly, discovery and filters.
The thing is, most folks understand the difference between search and hosting.. so i wanted to make the very clear point that we are in search, as well as discovery and aggregation and tools to help people organize what they like. Regardless, it’s just very different than hosting, and so I wanted to be as simple and clear as possible.
But I think the future of search is more complex, especially around rich media. And so the aggregation thing is more complex and interesting. I really appreciate that you’re excited about it.
Thanks!
mary