Imagine a wiki for collaborative musical composition
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
There is one lingua franca that is understood around the world by most musicians, disregarding their origin, mother language or style : the musical notation.
Let’s create a wiki (read & write pages), that would be able to display musical notation, for example using a combination of special musical typefaces and flash similar to sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement). To edit the pages you could write using keyboard keys (A, B, C, …) a piano scale, or click in a rich interface to draw notes on scales, like in early musical composition softwares.
Music is by essence the collaborative effort of composers and musicians to achieve a common piece of art. Now imagine what musician around the world could do with a wiki web based platform to share their compositions, collaborate across space and time to create global symphonies, improve each other compositions, rework existing pieces, …
This idea is now free for anyone to pickup. Please mention me in the credits, so my kids can be proud of me 
Being Brice Le Blevennec
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
For those of you who toughs that Spike Jonze’ Being John Malkovitch was a fiction, I must now confess that this cult movie is a ripoff of my biography. Many years ago a belgian puppeteer took control of me. This is why often during brainstorm at Emakina I seems to behave like if I was completely insane, pretending to invent mad concepts, sometimes even pitching them to very conservative customers at the risks of loosing all my hard earned credibility.
The truth is that there is somebody in my head, seeing reality through my eyes, manipulating my body, makes me behave strangely, … this is not really me. I’m actually a very boring person, with little imagination. My favorite past time is Solitaire on Windows 95 and I hate burgers. But nobody believe me when I tell the truth!
Sometime, he leave my mind, usually during football competitions or Formula 1 races. During one of those relief periods, I could do some research, and look what I found now…
This puppeteer is actually an digital creative, frustrated by miserable studies, who use me to seek revenge by achieving a successful career as digital creative. According to my sources, he found a portal to my mind between floor 2 and 3 in the Belgacom Proximus building around 2001. During a few years he just spied my boring life, trying to emulate me, but since 2005 he took control of me and use his talent to fool the world !
I know it’s hard to believe this story, but after an gigantic mistake, probably due to his sizable ego, I could finally locate his secret blog… On which I found this picture as an indisputable proof. I hope it’s convincing enough for the doctors to let me go now. I want to go try Solitaire on Windows Vista… and eat a salad.
I want an Apple Media Server
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
I think it’s about time that Apple give us a decent Home Media Server. Have a look at the Windows Home Server offering (currently buggy), and you’ll immediately understand how an Apple quality copycat could enhance your digital lifestyle.
The principle : Instead of filling up your Mac hard drive with music, photos and video, then sync it with your iPhones, iPods, Apple TVs and laptops, you could store all your media on a wifi enabled NAS (Network Attached Storage) running an iTunes server.
For appealing to windows users, it could also run a DLNA (Digital Living Network Association) server for devices that conform to Universal Plug and Play Audio/Video standard (Windows Media Center, Xbox 360, PS3 and most Media Streamers).
There are already numerous products that answer that definition, like the Synology, the QNAP, the Thecus or Netgear ReadyNAS.
But beside looking ugly and making a lots of noise, they are too complex to setup, their interfaces have very low usability (or none), and are designed and marketed to Windows geeks. They probably does not sell much. However they demonstrate the concept, just like the Creative Nomad Jukebox, demonstrated the feasibility of an Hard Drive based personal music player… before Apple created the iPod.
There is a strong need in the market, demonstrated by lot’s of discussion about iTunes Server NAS solutions or guides to build your own geek solution… Clumsy and too expensive but that give an idea of how much money and time some are ready to spend for such a product… still imperfect. Album covers are missing when accessed from an iTunes server, they are incompatible with iPhone Apple Remote, Apple TV, video can’t be accessed using that protocol, so you must switch to UPnP protocol compatible Media Streamer with another crappy interface, etc. A real techno mess.
So why would an Apple product succeed ? Of course it would be a beautiful object, affordable, easy to setup, with good software, … Of course it would integrate with your Mac and PC running iTunes and FrontRow, your iPod Touches, iPhones and Apple TVs. But Apple has other uniques technologies that combined, can turn a good geek idea in a great mass market product.
First, the Apple Media Server would be easy to access from any Internet connection. It would simply register to your Back To My Mac account like your home computers.
Secondly, it would run on 802.11n wifi providing enough bandwidth for streaming video to your Apple TV. It would register itself using Bonjour and appear auto-magically on your iTunes Mac, PC, iPhones, iPod Touches and Apple TV. Maybe even on your iCar. It would mount on your desktop in AFS, just like the Time Capsule or an hard-drive shared using an Airport Extreme.
But now, the killing feature… Your media storage needs will keep growing more and more, years after years. Until then most of us managed our storages need by buying bigger and bigger hard drives. Actually a thousand times bigger every 10 years. Ideally the Apple Media Server should have no drive size limits.
As recently announed, Apple is working at integrating Sun’ ZFS file system in Snow Leopard Server, the next iteration of it’s server grade Operating System. ZFS allow storage pooling and dynamic volume expansion.
Now imagine the Apple Media Server, a NAS (nearly) infinitely upgradable using Firewire or USB hot-swappable drive that you could plug on your Apple Home Media Server running a stripped down version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server with ZFS support on a slightly upgraded version of the motherboard of the Apple TV with the server grade hard drive in the Time Capsule.
Your personal cloud… of unlimited size.
While searching Google for links to enrich this post, I discovered the Mac predictions website. It seems that I am not the only one having the same idea. I think the Apple Media Server should not sit in your living room but in your attic, basement or in a closet, but we basically agree on the product features.
Let’s hope that Apple agree too
How Apple will takeover the living room
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
About two year ago, in my living room, I swaped my noisy MythTV Linux based XPC by a MacMini running EyeTV with an EPG subscription and connected to analog cable TV with an Elgato TV Tuner Stick. The MacMini was connected using DVI to an 51″ Plasma screen. EyeTV integrated with FrontRow and the Apple Remote. I could browse my music library, play live TV, see the Movie trailers fromt the Apple site. It was great.
Then I couldn’t resist buying an Apple TV. It synced over-the-air with my iMac, so I could play podcast, photos, videos in HD Ready over the component connection of my plasma screen. My Apple TV was connected with the optical connection to a Yamaha Natural Sound 7.1 Home Theatre Receiver. I could play my music in full digital from the MP3 or AAC file to the speakers.
Then, with a US voucher, I managed to setup my Apple TV with a US account and started renting HD movies with 5.1 sound, complete TV Series, and more music. All from my couch. It was still great… However to program TV show recording, I had to switch from the Apple TV to the Mac Mini : from my DVI input to my component input on the Plasma, from one input to another on my amplifier, from one Apple Remote to another, and from the Apple TV interface to FrontRow, to EyeTV… that was silly. I quickly realized that I could record a show on the MacMini, let eyeTV compress it to H264 and upload it to my iTunes Library. As my Apple TV was syncing videos with iTunes Library, I could watch my recording from my Apple TV, offering a somehow integrated experience. But I missed the high quality of the original recording. On the good side, I could also watch my recording with my iPod Video and iPhone. Still, the whole experience was a bit clumsy and I had to maintain and update two devices for what should obviously be integrated in one, like does Windows Media Center on the dark side.
Now let observe the Apple TV back panel. You’ll notice an mysterious unused USB connector… So here is my prediction :
Apple will release a USB Stick Tuner, compatible with DVB-T SD and HD (which require no re-compression) for it’s Apple TV and will add an EPG to the interface.
Why the delay ? Apple is probably waiting for DVB-T/DVB-C to become mainstream as they’ll probably want the experience to be qualitative and recorded digital broadcast (Mpeg 2 or Mpeg 4) are identical to the live signal. The codec in Mpeg 4 can even be H264, just like Apple Movies.
It’s not in Apple style to catch up with competition, so now let’s imagine what Apple could add to this product. First they would maybe release not one but several USB Tuner Sticks. One for Freeview (digital terrestrial TV), one for DVB-C (digital cable TV), one for analog, with an hardware H264 chip like the Turbo 264. You could switch them when you move from one channel provider (cable, satellite, Terrestrial) to another, or from SD to HD, or from one standard for encoding to another (still te be invented). Much better than a single build-in interface…
Your Apple TV is in reality a complete, Macintosh computer hidden in a tiny pizza box, running MacOS X (Tiger). When not recording or playing, it could run a background process that would compress the huges Mpeg 2 or Mpeg 4 recording to pristine Quicktime H.264 then sync them with your main iTunes library … which in turn would sync with your iPod Video, iPod Touch, and iPhone over USB. So you wouldn’t even have to do any action to have your favorite recording in your pockets.
As it knows your Apple ID, your Apple TV could also register itself with MobileMe Back To My Mac service and run a QuickTime streaming server. You would be able to stream recordings (those just compressed in H.264) over the Internet from any iTunes client, and even from your iPhone over a Wi-fi connection, just like with the SlingMedia Mobile service or for your music with Simplify Media.
An option would allow the Apple TV (which hard drive is limited to either 40 or 160 gigabytes) to store the QuickTime files ready for streaming to a 1 terabyte Time-Capsule and a firmware update would add iTunes server services to the Time-Capsule.
When watching your recording on your Apple TV, you’ll use the Apple Remote for control, but Apple would add TV show and EPG control in Remote for iPhone (which already control playing Music Videos on your Apple TV when they are in an iTunes synced playlist).
For those without tuner, you could stream your USB webcam video like with Remote Buddy.
Apple would also release an EPG client software for the iPhone that would store your recording settings on MobileMe. Of course your Apple TV would sync with MobileMe too. So it would be possible to program recording from anywhere in the world.
Without recording anything, it would be possible to stream live TV from your Apple TV to any Mac on your home LAN thanks to 802.11n bandwith (like you can do it today with music on Airport Express). From anywhere in the world, you’ll be able to watch a lower resolution, switch channels, start a recording… from your iPhone over wi-fi or any iTunes client on MacOS X or Windows. Just like with Sony’ LocationFree TV and the PSP. In September Sony will launch PlayTV a HD DVB-T tuner with DVR software for the PlayStation 3. They recently launched their HD Movies online store in the US. So you’d better hurry up Apple !
Changed my mind. The next Apple product should be the iCar …
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
… an in-dash car entertainment, communication and navigation system.
I was reading about the beta firmware 2.1 for the iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch and it seems we will be getting turn-by-turn direction in the Google Maps iPhone application.
Now just imagine a standard in-dash unit which at the press of the finger would reveal an touch sensitive LCD screen, controlling what would essentially be the electronic of an iPhone. Add some radio DAB/FM/AM circuitry - similar to the Apple FM iPod remote for the iPod 4G - and optionally a connector for a boot CD changer, and you’ll get the ultimate in-car entertainment (featuring iPod music, video, podcasts, TV series and Movies), communication (with Bluetooth for headphones, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, Wi-fi) and navigation (using Google Maps) solution.
Let’s call it “iCar”, as I couldn’t find a better codename.
With iCar you will be able to drive in town and have restaurants, hotels, museum, night clubs, gas stations, and other points of interest informations pulled from the internet using 3G or Wi-fi internet connection and displayed live on your moving map. Click theirs icons for turn-by-turn driving directions, rating, comments, menus, calling them or send them a message.
Park the car and wait a few seconds for download and watch pictures from MobileMe Galleries and Flickr taken around your car location do a nice slide show. This thanks to your GPS and the localization feature of the iPhone.
When listening a cool song on the DAB or FM radio, a button will trigger Shazam (or an Apple equivalent) and offer you to buy the track, music video or complete album from the iTunes Music Store. After waiting a few seconds to download a track over 3G, you’ll be able to listen to it forever.
When not driving, watch podcasts, videos, tv series, movies, … all on the beautiful LCD screen.
Park your car within Wi-fi distance of your home computer and sync your iTunes media with your iCar automagically, just like with an Apple TV. For those unable to park their computer so close, an iPod connector will permit connecting any iPod or iPhone and syncing media down to the drive or transfer purchases done on the iCar back to your iPod.
Thanks to MobileMe, iCar will also sync over-the-air with your email, calendar and address book. Great to have a look at your agenda without getting your iPhone out of your pocket. But even better, you’ll have only one finger touch to get your driving direction for a contact in your address book, or the next meeting in your calendar!
With Apple Speech Recognition, and Text to Speech technologies currently included in Mac OS X, you’ll be able to ask verbally your Apple iCar to read your day’s agenda aloud, or your latest emails. You’ll even be able to dictate short messages and emails.
This would be a revolutionary product and an entirely new platform for third party application developers. A specific App Store would allow downloading applications to iCar over-the-air. Facebook will release an app that will locate your friends (those who agree) on the map, thanks to their iPhone and iCars GPS. Trip advisor will release an application that allow sharing reviews and rating for any place around your car. Apple will release Remote, an application that allow locking your car remotely and driving it from a distance for Batman like performance
The next Apple product : a digital camera
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
The current crop of digital camera is great hardware. I have always be a loyal fan of the Canon IXUS range and bought like 5 of them from the first 2 Megs to the latest 10 Megs (accidentally broken). Recently I bought a Panasonic Lumix TZ5 and it’s (mostly) great. It can snap pictures up to 9 Megs and even record video in HD definition. But the interface is just rubbish. I general Camera software is just lame. It almost hasn’t evolved in a decade.
Apple could design a revolutionnary digital camera, the iCamera. First by it’s form factor : a touchscreen, twice the size of an iPhone, slightly thicker. Video resolution would be HD Ready (720p), so the Screen resolution would be 720 x 1320 pixels at the same dpi res as an iPhone.
Then it would also be new hardware combination, built on a simplified version of the electronic of an iPhone (removing the bluetooth, GSM circuitry) and a Casio Exilim (or similar). The rest of the space would be used for batteries and memory storage.
As of course recording would be on solid state memory (Apple bought a lot of memory to manufacturers) or a 1.8 in 4200 rpm hard drive. It will start probably start with something like 64 Gigs of SSD / 160 Gigs of HD, but would quickly evolve to 128 Gigs of SSD or 320 Gigs of HD…
But storage wouldn’t be an issue as Apple iCamera will of course sync over the air (Wifi 802.11n) with a Apple TV, MobileMe Galleries, iPhones and over Firewire / USB 2.0 with Macintoshes and iPods.
But the real revolution would be great Apple software ! Of course the shooting software will allow Photo Booth like live effects, including background replacement, optical and digital zoom, special flash modes, … But the killing feature would be iMovie 08 and Aperture like video and photo software editors, running on the camera device, using the touch screen interface.
This revolutionary product would define an entirely new category of devices that would allow shooting, editing and publishing Hi def still photography and HD quality videos on the field. This will especially makes HD video easy to produce which may leverage the whole HD video economy.
Digital Still and Video Cameras is a category with great hardware waiting for a decent “Apple quality level” software like computers, music players and mobile phones. Please Apple, give the Nikon, Canon, Sony and Panasonic a lesson in software engineering. Millions of families are waiting for a better experience.
Need a Startup Idea ?
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
With Scribd you can publish and embed documents. With SlideShare you can publish and embed presentations. Now what I need is a way to publish SpreadSheets as flash embeds. In exchange of this free Internet Startup Idea(tm), let me know when it’s up and running. I need it badly.
Lastminute creativity
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
It is 14.45 and you’re waiting for check in. Another flight delay is communicated. And you’re waitin, and waiting … Very boring and depressing. Lastminute.com knows everything about flying, including the malfunctions. Therefore… (source Maarten)
The String Theory …
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
I’m reading a lot lately about it. A lot of scientific research try to demonstrate empirically that this theory of physics could explain the whole universe in one complex formula. I think it does, and for a practical demonstration of the String Theory just go to any Brazil beach. After this little joke, I should reveal that this post is my first experiment with Yahoo Shortcuts, a Wordpress plugin that allow you to enrich you blog posts with Yahoo content, maps, photos from flickr and many more Yahoo content…
