Blank (Media) Slate

This may not be a totally revolutionary idea, but it’s something I’d love to see implemented. The end state of the proposed application would be to deploy what I call a “Semantic Servant” that provide guidance for searching and indexing. I’m terming it a “servant” rather than a “server” for the basic reason that I see it as a “helper tool” to existing servers rather than serving up content itself.

Without getting into it too deeply, the concept is that the Semantic Servant (via a new “Semantic Servant Index Protocol”) would reply on a specified port to provide a machine readable summary of the content available from another server. For example, if a web site is available at “http://www.contentsite.com”, the servant would reply on the same URL via something like “ssip://www.contentsite.com”. The results would be an XML packet including rules for leveraging the content on the sister site.

Keep in mind that this is a totally half-baked idea. My goal in this concept would be to empower a website developer with a tool that would, with a few minor configuration clicks, tell spiders/bots/indexers/etc. more about the associated site. In order for this to work, the servant application would have to be incredibly light weight and easy to use out-of-the-box. Assuming the servant defaults to a standard OWL, RDF, etc. standard configuration, the administrator could select from some pre-canned configurations and let it go.

The more time the administrator spends customizing the configuration, of course, the more fine-tuned it could be to the content of the specific site. In this way, though, indexers visiting the site would (a) have more information about the content of the site than is currently (easily) available, and (b) changes to the site would be more forgiving.

This is, of course, assuming that producers of web content want their information to be aggregated more freely. If a site producer wants to force all of it’s users to it’s front gate, this isn’t the solution for them. As I think we’re moving to an “All Content Everywhere” model, though, whereby there are multiple ways to experience the same content, I see something like this as an eventual must-have.

… then again, I’m a dreamer.

I can’t remember how I found out about the Radio Lab show produced by WNYC, but since I’m in Boston I was pleased I could snag the podcasts from the second season (the first season being tied up in rights issues preventing their distribution as MP3s).

What really caught my ear was the “Musical Language” episode. There was a great segment on audio illusions in which they interviewed Diana Deutsch, a professor of the Psychology of Music. Specifically, they were talking to her about an audio clip she’d accidentally created of her speaking which, when heard as a loop, sounded like music. It has to be heard to be believed: WAV | MP3.

NOTE: The track begins with Deutsch speaking the full sentence, followed by a few loops of the “singing words.” Listen to the entire track, then play it again to hear the sentence again.

I was intrigued enough to pick up her two CDs (Musical Illusions and Paradoxes and Phantom Words, and Other Curiosities) to hear more. I’ve only sampled a few of the tracks so far, but they’re incredibly interesting. Especially with my interest in Beispiele paranormaler Tonbandstimmen I was keen on the “Phantom Words” tracks. What they seem to show is the incredible power of our brains to try and sift through apparent randomness in an effort to impose order (in this case turning beeps into words).

… I hear voices.

Up until recently, few people routinely recorded the TV programming they watched. Usually it was reserved for those occaisions when you needed to record shows while you were away. With the growing use of DVRs like TiVo, it’s becoming much more common for viewers to watch all their shows recorded (if only in pass-through mode).

With that as background, I’ve noticed a number of “TiVo Baiting” techniques being used to ensnare DVR users. OK, that’s a term that just popped into my head, but I think it’s relatively descriptive. What I mean by it is the intentional inclusion of single-frame imagery in TV programming. Watching at the normal 29.9 frames per second of standard video, the images flip too fast for the viewer to fully comprehend. Only when pausing playback, and slowly stepping frame-by-frame through the sequence does it become intelligible.

Take, for example, the rapid flicker of images embedded within a second-season episode of Lost in which the audience is shown glimpses of a character’s past within a mysterious cloud. The non-DVR user just sees an interesting flicker of images and take away the concept that something was shown to the character. With remote in hand, however, the DVR user can step through each frame to consider each image and it’s implication within the story line. There are a number of posts that hit the net immediately after the show with fans chatting up their meaning.

Recently (and the reason for this post), I’ve seen a couple more examples of this technique. One is in the GE commercials in which they use the final second of their ad time to display 24 still frames for something they call “GE One Second Theater“. In this particular case, the images are too fast for non-DVR users to have any idea what they are. Only by stepping through frame-by-frame does the micro story become clear. They’re actually pretty amusing; a few give back story to animated characters in the ad, while another is a retelling of a typical fairy tale through the eyes of a frog (which is only tangentially relevant to the ad itself).

Another example is in the show Heroes. They’ve used the technique twice (that I know of) in promotional teasers. Once when hyping the next show by rapidly showing images of the characters while the VO is something like, “One of these heroes will die. No one is safe.” Each image was a few frames, long enough for the non-DVR viewer to guess they were shots of the characters, but it required slower viewing to see who was on the “potential hit list”. Of course… if you’re hip to the scene of story arcs, it was pretty obvious who was on the chopping block.

The second time I noticed this technique was during the show dealing with the character who was killed. In this instance, it was less a matter of frame-by-frame viewing, but really only the ability to slow it down (ie. real-time viewers might’ve missed it). This time the technique was used to heighten tension by flashing a dozen or so frames of the dead character apparently “coming back to life” between the network’s own promotional commercials.

It’s really only now that this is a technique that can have wide-spread utility. Video tape (even the relatively higher-end 4-head versions), just didn’t have the fine-tune control of a DVR (or other nearly frame-accurate device like a DVD). A side benefit is the relatively random access control of a DVR in which viewers can quickly zip around the recorded show looking for stuff like this (rather than having to forward/reverse linearly through a tape).

What I personally like about the use of this technique I have seen is that they don’t require viewer participation. It’s easy enough to trundle along at 29.9fps and still have a good experience. For those interested in being more interactive with the programming, however, there’s an added layer of discovery to enhance the fun… which seems to be just the right level of activity added to a mostly passive experience.

I turned up an interesting video clip while researching the behavior of spiders the other day. I was pleasantly surprised by it, depsite the fact it wasn’t precisely the type of content I was hunting.

This got me thinking about pleasure and surprise. It seems that the two concepts are joined in that pleasure is often derived from surprise. Good jokes, for example, seem to be based on the fact that the punch line is unexpected. On the other end of pleasure, horror movies (primarily of the twitch-flick) also capitalize on pleasing the surprised audience. Then there’s the increased enjoyment of a book or movie about which you had no prior expectations (as opposed to one that’s hyped to the gills and fails to hit the mark… but you would have enjoyed had you found it yourself).

Many marketing campaigns also seem to use the surprise/pleasure combo to grab the interest of customers. A number of TV ads draw the viewer into a story, while the advertised product is only revealed at the end. This balance must be carefully managed, though, to hit the right mode without spoiling the feeling of it’s customers discovering the product themselves (feeling like they’re in on the joke). Since active discovery seems to run counter to genuine surprise, the marketer needs to carefully seed their message with all the pieces while encouraging the consumer to (easily) complete the puzzle. The trick is setting the expectations to preserve the pleasure of surprise, while not making it so difficult as to confuse the audience (like so many ads that leave the viewer wondering what product was on offer).

If this post was a fable, perhaps the moral would be: “Never underestimate the pleasure of surprise… but beware its cousin: confusion.” Then again, perhaps the surprise of this post is that it’s totally devoid of any deeper meaning beyond my random thoughts. Let the audience be the judge.

Over the past year I’ve been focused on designing a system for effectively identifying media content based on personal interests. Throughout multiple discussions over that time, I’ve often stressed the need to embrace (rather than eradicate) the value of serendipity in results. Two comments in the past week have really driven that point home and given this idea a voice I find useful.

The first comes from our executive leadership in recasting the system in terms of a “Discovery Platform.” While it might seem to be a minor semantic variance, the term “discovery” fits nicely within our context. We’ve taken great pains to distance ourselves from the traditional and, IMHO, limiting tradition of finding and delivering the “perfect result” within the specified candidate pool. Rather, I’ve generally used the term “serendipity” to evoke the experiential feeling we hope to provide. I still like the feel of the term, though it’s heavy connotation of “chance” puts it second to a more directed term like “discovery”, and it still embraces the concept of finding hitherto “unknown” matches for your interests.

The second comment came in meetings with a potential product developer who said, “Effective recommendations must be relevant, but not predictable.” It’s possible this is a well-trodden phrase, but it resonated with our solidifying vision around discovery. After all, it’s easy to recommend songs by the same artist you already like (or following other paths similarly codified), it takes something more to uncover less obvious connections to your interests. Further, it’s a lot more gratifying (like the punch line of a good joke) when you’re pleasantly surprised by the result.

As a side note, a common refrain around the office has been, “You don’t discover pocket lint.” I’m still not entirely sure I grok the true meaning from this, but it definitely pops an amusing image in your mind’s eye.