Comments on: Thoughts on OurMedia, Day Two

By: Cameron Corda

Cameron Corda — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mike, I suspect you’ll find some insight to your question at the old Internet Archive FreeCache project.

The idea was to create a free CDN (a la Akamai/Speedera). Problems came from people using it for things they shouldn’t.

OurMedia looks to be a grown up version of the FreeCache concept. Most importantly uploaded files need to be moderated before that are hosted.

It could be a good long-tail solution, however I don’t see the economics for how it supports things when they get popular.

By: Joshua Porter

Joshua Porter — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hey Mike, speaking of podcasts and the Internet Archive (1st comment), check out this podcast: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail400.html

Brewster Kahle, who heads the Internet Archive, has been doing this stuff for years. What’s great about the podcast is that you can tell how excited he is…and it’s contagious.

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Cameron: Very interesting. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. I had never even heard of FreeCache. It looks almost exactly like what most of the commercial caching services look like (including the URL structure), minus the fees of course.

Joshua: Thanks for the link… I’m adding it to my sidebar. Very interesting podcast! Brewster seems a lot more into the “archiving” aspect of all of this, as opposed to the distribution and community aspect, but that’s ok I guess. I think he may also be underestimating how much crap will make its way into the system. He seems to want to archive and distribute “everything that’s fit to archive and distribute”, but I fear that most of what people will upload does not really fit the average person’s definition of this. We’ll see though… exciting stuff!

By: Jonathan Fenocchi

Jonathan Fenocchi — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Has anyone ever looked at stock charts? Have you ever noticed that the price will move up to a certain point, pause, and then make a large move in one direction or the other? Usually, it will go down, then come back up to that same resistance level, and go down again. This happens a few times before the stock breaks out and bursts upward. (Note: this isn’t always the case. Just an observation.) I think this is a lot like that. If OurMedia fails, someone will try again later. If they fail, someone else will try. Eventually, the economy will be forgiving enough for the project to succeed. In short, this idea is going to flourish somewhere along the line, we just don’t know when. OurMedia is headed in the right direction nevertheless, and I intend to assist them by volunteering my programming services (and any other way I can help them).

By: JD Lasica

JD Lasica — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mike, thank you for the most interesting and detailed critique of Ourmedia that I’ve seen.

As for this …

>The state of the UI on OurMedia is nowhere close to some of the other hosted services out there like Blogger, TypePad, and LiveJournal, and Iâ€™m skeptical as to the speed at which it will meaningfully improve.

I absolutely agree. Unless we get funding or an influx of volunteer programmers, our roadmap will continue to be a mile long. We have a lot we want to accomplish, but we need coders to pitch in.

And volunteer moderators, too. (Thanks, Jonathan!) We’re indeed using the Wikipedia model, and we believe that enough safeguards are in place that copyright infringement will be intermittent and rapidly remedied. We just removed a Star Wars video yesterday. :~)