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October 17, 2005
Labor of Love or Fool's Errand
For the last three and a half years, I have been helping architect and market a series of XML specifications called MusicPhotoVideo(tm) or MPV for short. The specifications are designed to enable the exchange and interoperability of collections of personal media. Devices that capture and create digital media automatically add certain metadata and consumers add personalized metadata on top of this. They assemble subsets of their collections into playlists or slideshows. Yet when transfering these collections from device to device or to a services, the metadata or collection information is lost. MPV has been trying to solve this.
As a consultant, deciding how much time to dedicate to these industry standard bodies is a tricky game to play. On the one hand, you are regarded as an expert in the field and have the opportunity to engage with experts from large corporations. However, a lot of the committee work is done for free (OSTA, the trade association creating MPV, does pay me for some specific marketing projects). And what is there to show after more than three years -- a total of six companies have released products and all in the camera arena. So much for an über metadata standard.
MPV was hit early on by two setbacks -- a competing standard (HighMat) and the iPod with its playlist XML. HighMat brought the usual fear, uncertainty and doubt to the photo and disc burning causing them to delay activity (on either spec) and the iPod focused software companies on hacking the plist1.0 spec or into pushing their own proprietary format (WMP, RealPlayer both have their own playlist formats). OSTA plowed on crispening our position of open and extensible vs. HighMat and has seen successes in the photo arena but the MPV Music Profile has gone nowhere and is now just an ancilliary to photo.
Perhaps it was too ambitious and lofty a goal and the industry has other pressing problems to solve (file format interoperability, piracy). In the photo industry, the notion of albums or collections has a valid place and solves many issues. Adios, über metadata standard.
Posted by raza at October 17, 2005 10:41 AM
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