Annotating rich media

A videoblogger named Robert says, "Imagine how cool it would be to have everyone's annotation of video and audio media in a searchable database."

It should begin happenning by next year.

Exhibit A: The BBC Annotatable Audio project.

The project we undertook was focused on Annotatable Audio (specifically, but not exclusively, of BBC radio programming) - and we decided to look in an unorthodox direction - towards the possibilities of user-created annotation and metadata. We decided that we wanted to develop an interface that might allow the collective articulation of what a programme or speech or piece of music was about and how it could be divided up and described. Our first ideas looked for approaches similar to del.icio.us, Flickr or our own Phonetags - which create collective value by accreting the numerous annotations that individuals make for their own purposes. But after a fascinating discussion with Jimmy Wales, we decided to think about this in a different way - in which (just like Wikipedia) individuals would overtly cooperate to create something greater and more authoritative.

Exhibit B: At the Open Media Developers Summit on Oct. 20, some of the members of NYU's ITP program described their work with "video comments," a system that allows users to add comments to a specific point in a video. They moved from videoblogs, I believe, over to live chats, where a Java applet embedded within a QuickTime player let them attached comments to live chats via a time code.

I think that a non-chat environment will make better use of this technology, however.

Exhibit C: Ourmedia has on its roadmap what we're calling a rich media clipping service (regular people don't use the word "annotation"). It would allow bloggers (or anyone) to link to segments -- clips -- within an audio file or video. We've been in discussions with tech journalist Jon Udell (who has described the idea in his writings) and Doug Kaye about it, and hope to get some momentum going on the project in the coming weeks. (If you're a coder who'd like to help out on this open-source project, contact me.)

It's going to happen.

Later: Related to all this somehow: Interclipper, a real-time video organizer for the PC. Doesn't look like a social media tool, however.