The Digital Age
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of The Digital Age project is to make peoples' lives simpler and more enjoyable by simplifying access to quality digital content, anywhere and everywhere.
Several specific requirements arise:
- handle a broad spectrum of digital content
- quantify the ratings of digital content to a meaningful level, accounting for different personal taste
- maintain content in a central collection
- allow access to content from everywhere via a wide range of clients
- design clients based on client constraints (bandwidth, ui size, etc.)
- every client must always provide ability to rate content
- allow for introduction of new content with the greatest possible signal-to-noise ratio
- allow for safe removal of poorly-rated content
Competition and alternatives include: subsonic itunes exaile orb mediamonkey amarok last.fm pandora
But none of those truly allow you to freely reclaim your culture.
Components
You will find a component diagram on the main web site. Here is the corresponding component list.
- The Digital Age: Share The DJ a server exposing a web services XML API to access media and metadata (derived from ampache)
- The Digital Age: Repository a central repository of media and corresponding metadata (stored in a mysql database)
- clients:
- The Digital Age: Hang The DJ desktop a cross-platform desktop client player written in QT
- The Digital Age: Hang The DJ mediacenter an extension for the xbmc mediacenter
- The Digital Age: Hang The DJ mobile mobile client players for android, iPhone, etc.
The Roadmap
- see the ticket tracker for feature and bug tickets
- The Philanthropy Engine
Other Thoughts
- The Digital Age Software Manifesto
- Metadata design - hasn't metadata structure already been designed and data collected? precanned music companies have this nailed down, I'm sure... what about the last.fm API? also see current HTDJ db schema
- expand to other media? movies, games, books
- mobile - tons of work being done - iphone - see iAmpache or this, android, palm webOS, blog)
- see THE DIGITAL AGE SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN
tdm_cvs_view/ShareTheDJ/docs/The Digital Age business plan diagrams.odg
- these worth anything? palm, mythtv