All of power of "David vs. Goliath".. but like a reverse "Fountainhead" of sorts.. Power/music to the people! Depending on how this all goes, the movie rights to this story wouldn't be some bad rights to have... ;-) I wonder if Monty and Jack would be interested in those rights? ..always curious... [ducking for cover..;-] Tom ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jack Moffitt" <jack@icecast.org> To: <vorbis@xiph.org> Cc: <vorbis-dev@xiph.org> Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 2:59 PM Subject: [vorbis] more vorbis press!> > http://news.webnoize.com/item.rs?ID=11136 > > or > > Quietly Slipping into Audio Software, Vorbis Wants to Dethrone MP3 > by Mark Lewis >--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
http://news.webnoize.com/item.rs?ID=11136
or
Quietly Slipping into Audio Software, Vorbis Wants to Dethrone MP3
by Mark Lewis
Confident they can oust the MP3 format from dominance,
developers of Ogg Vorbis, an
open-source, royalty-free audio encoding format, say they are
making headway, getting their
technology into software players, portable devices and game
software.
When Ogg Vorbis developers first released a beta version of
their encoder/decoder software in
July, the Internet audio community seemed skeptical. The MP3
format was a de facto standard
among consumers, and other high-quality formats such as Windows
Media and Advanced Audio
Coding were either mainly used for promotional content or
couldn't be used by consumers to
encode their CDs.
But German audio research lab Fraunhofer, which holds 12 patents
on underlying MP3
processes, said it would start charging royalties on MP3
encoders and even MP3 files. That
sounded a wake-up call to an industry that widely believed the
MP3 format was a free
technology. Vorbis developers declared that new businesses and
developing artists need open
standards for Internet media because they reduce licensing costs
and create more progressive
technology.
"The music revolution was getting off to a good start, but got
clamped down when all this
proprietary crap came long," said San Francisco Vorbis developer
Jack Moffitt.
Formerly employed by iCast, CMGI's soon-to-close entertainment
portal, Moffitt and Vorbis
creator Chris "Monty" Montgomery recently regrouped their
open-source projects under the
name Xiphophorus. Having refined Ogg Vorbis software through
three beta versions, they plan to
release their first official version on January 10, Moffitt
said. More than 100,000 people have
downloaded source code of the beta versions.
Vorbis' dissemination strategy is two-fold: get developers to
support Vorbis in software and
hardware, and encourage artists to use it as a higher-quality,
ultimately cheaper format than
MP3. Software players Sonique, XMMS and Unsanity Echo for the
Mac now come with built-in
Vorbis support; America Online's Winamp player doesn't
officially support it, but Vorbis
programmers distribute a free plug-in. Several freeware and
shareware ripper/encoding programs
support Vorbis.
On the hardware side, Iomega built a prototype of its new HipZip
portable device that supports
Vorbis, and Moffitt expects one will reach the market next
year. One player is far cry from what
the format needs to achieve ubiquity, but Moffitt is
confident. "It took Microsoft two years to get
into hardware, and we did it in less than six months since our
initial release."
Vorbis isn't aiming only at consumer audio. Game developers are
a large potential market
because they may not want to pay "up to $2.50 a box" to use
Fraunhofer's MP3 encoding for the
small amount of music included with each game, Moffitt
said. Several game engines already
support Vorbis, and Maxis, a division of major game publisher
Electronic Arts, is evaluating the
technology.
Vorbis Promoter Brian Zisk has additionally set his sights on
Internet radio. "I'm hoping that
Fraunhofer will charge for the streaming MP3 format," he
said. "Then, [Internet radio company]
Live365 will switch over [to Vorbis]. I predict Vorbis will
surpass MP3 next year."
A shift of that magnitude will require major change among more
than 150,000 unsigned artists
who distribute their music in the MP3 format. MP3 tools are
widely distributed, and major
independent artists sites such as IUMA.com, MP3.com and
Riffage.com use the MP3 format.
Moffitt believes artists will be lured by Vorbis' higher
fidelity -- since the technology is based on
more advanced math than is used in MP3. And like game
developers, artists may feel economic
pressure to use Vorbis should Fraunhofer proceed with a plan to
charge them one cent for every
file they distribute. But so far, artist adoption is slow: a few
artists are distributing sample Vorbis
tracks on the Vorbis site, and a small digital record label,
Vorbisonic, is exclusively distributing
Vorbis tracks.
Once developers and creators adopt Vorbis, they are supposed to
create a supply-side
transformation that will trickle down to consumers. "If artists
are producing content and encoding it
in Vorbis, and developers are supporting it, [consumers] can get
any content in the world and it
will work," Moffitt said. "The point is we don't want
people to
hunt for the technology."
One new Vorbis area to watch is video compression, an area
stimulated by Project Mayo's work
on a new version of DivX as much as RealNetworks' and Intel's
improvements to streaming video
[see 11.8.00 Preparing New DivX, Project Mayo Faces Commercial
Challenges]. Vorbis
programmers are gradually working on an open-source video codec
called Tarkin, Zisk said.
The compression technology is intended to give the video
industry an alternative to proprietary
video formats, which are often tied to expensive server
software.
Vorbis programmers don't know when they will finish Tarkin, so
it could enter the market too late
to become the next "MP3 of video." But if Montgomery and
Moffitt
get lucrative consulting jobs or
if Xiphophorus gets a new corporate sponsor, programmers could
make rapid progress, Zisk said.
--- >8 ----
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According to Jack Moffitt (sometime around Wed, Nov 22, 2000 at 02:59:21PM -0800): [...]> One new Vorbis area to watch is video compression, an area > stimulated by Project Mayo's work > on a new version of DivX as much as RealNetworks' and Intel's^^^^^ -- should be "DivX ;-)" "DivX" chashed and burned. You mean they're actually _doing_ something??? Or working on hacking yet another MS MPEG-4 release?> improvements to streaming video > [see 11.8.00 Preparing New DivX, Project Mayo Faces Commercial > Challenges]. Vorbis > programmers are gradually working on an open-source video codec > called Tarkin, Zisk said.For the x-bajillion'th time, Where Is Tarkin? Unless I have missed a whole bunch of email (or an entire mailing list), last I heard of it was "I'll put it up soon".> The compression technology is intended to give the video > industry an alternative to proprietary > video formats, which are often tied to expensive server > software. > > Vorbis programmers don't know when they will finish Tarkin, so > it could enter the market too late > to become the next "MP3 of video." But if Montgomery and Moffitt > get lucrative consulting jobs or > if Xiphophorus gets a new corporate sponsor, programmers could > make rapid progress, Zisk said.-- Kenneth Arnold <ken@arnoldnet.net> / kcarnold / Linux user #180115 http://arnoldnet.net/~kcarnold/ <HR NOSHADE> <UL> <LI>application/pgp-signature attachment: stored </UL> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: part Type: application/octet-stream Size: 233 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/vorbis-dev/attachments/20001122/217dd250/part-0001.obj
"Jack Moffitt" <jack@icecast.org> wrote:> Formerly employed by iCast, CMGI's soon-to-close entertainment > portal, Moffitt and Vorbis > creator Chris "Monty" Montgomery recently regrouped theirDoes this mean that Vorbis is no longer sponsored by iCast? Greetings, Aleksandar --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
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Might I suggest setting up an e-gold button on the front page to allow
donations.
It costs nothing to setup with fees of just 1% on the incoming money (half
of that goes to the referrers account if there is one, otherwise e-gold
takes the full 1%)
There are also some small fees on pulling the money out (cost of check
bank transfer)
and they also suck 1% of the balance over the year
Cant hurt by having it as an option, until an easier funding method turns
up, and getting micro payments from many will add up pretty good
(hopefully)
have a look at http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=188428 the last
referrer cookie is the one that gets the slice, 188428 is my account feel
free to click on it ;)
I can not use PayPal because I am in Oz not USA.
good luck in getting some corporate sponsors!
cya , Andrew...
> For a long time I have thought of accepting donations from end users or
> whoever from the xiph.org website. The idea being that we would raise X
> amount of dollars and only accept the donations if the total donation
> amount was reached (you'd get the money back if we never made it). Or
> something similar. Would be quite easy with PayPal. Is this something
> you guys think is a good idea?
>
> jack.
>
Absolutely. I'm a lurker on the list, and I haven't been able to
contribute
in
terms of coding time or corporate sponsorships (I don't own my own company
yet...)
All the same, I'm very interested in what you are producing, and I would
be
very happy to contribute on the scale with a personal donation.
Tell us where to look for how.
- -John Wedoff
.
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