Fantasy Project “feedr.com” ….. Peter Szijarto ………. Data Cultures

“feedr.com” is an online social network that’s a mix between the photo storage and social site “flickr.com”, the graphic generating multi-user program Electric Sheep, and Facebook. The premise of the site is for people to upload high definition video streams throughout the day wherever they are using the wireless and video-capturing capabilities of their cell phones, digital camcorders, digital cameras, or any other device capable of capturing video. Currently, wireless technology is not built into many of these video-capturing devices, but I’m basing this on the fact that they eventually will have Internet connections for wireless uploading or streaming. You may do so now, but the setup of a camera, laptop, and mobile broadband card is too bulky for this idea to catch on in the present.

To begin, a user would need to sign up for an account on the feedr.com website. There you can fill out a profile, add images of yourself, create albums of feeds, sign up for other people feeds, instant message one another, send feeds to friends, send email, and even edit feeds together using the future standard web 3.0 based tools which allow non-linear editing of live / non-live video into a live feed. You may also save favorite snapshots into photo albums that could be sent off for printing through a feedr.com partner. You can also have your edited stream, your favorite stream segment, the last 2 hours of a certain stream, or a random assortment of streams chosen for you and burned to a fully customized and navigable high definition disc. The discs themselves can be customized through the social network aspect of feedr.com, as members may sell their DVD menu creations and cover / disc art that is all easily viewed through an online shop either before or after you create a feedr.com disc. Lastly you are able to tag yourself on the global feedr.com map which gives you a beacon that others from around the world are able to simply click on when viewing the map to easily view your stream. This also is beneficial because a user from Denmark could search for all streams in Florida and find the one closest to a beach if he/she wanted to.

After the profile a user is able to register their devices, the size video they are streaming, the resolution with a minimum of 720p being allowed, and what gear they are using to do so. From then on it’s just a matter of using the built in streaming functions in each device. Some devices may require a firmware or application update via USB, micro-memory card, or wirelessly.

As the video is uploaded to the main servers, it is displayed in the new feeds window on the feedr.com site. There is also a top feeds section window which seamlessly stitches video feeds together as one replaces another. Video feeds are shown in a 3x3 array. This array is synchronized to a variety of devices using RSS technology which automatically updates what feeds are getting the most votes. Users designate which feeds they like the most by simply touching the feed using the touch screen on their viewing device. The feeds vote is then sent to the server where it keeps track of the total votes of all feeds in the feedr.com database. As mentioned before the top feeds window will seamlessly morph into other feeds creating a dazzling visual effect that can be used as a screensaver, background, or be incorporated into applications such as VJ software. Users are able to slow down the feed rate allowing real-time viewing of the current feed, as well as record, pause, rewind, and fast forwarding capabilities. They are also able to search by a variety of criteria such as date, time, weather, location, etc etc.

This fantasy project is combining ideas from current applications such as flickr, Facebook, Electric Sheep, and You Tube, but into a seamless and integrated application for socializing and sharing of the moving and static image. Allowing people to communicate ideas through artwork is extremely empowering. However, this system could be abused. Guerilla advertising could be thrown into the feedr system, though eventually voted out of existence. If such a system were to come into existence, it would solely rely on the user base to cleanse the database of bad feeds, keeping to the true philosophy behind the site, and maintaining a democratic online social environment.