Looking For Testers
Last month I tested a simple system for collecting video comments. It was fun and all, but from the begining I wanted something more. Now it's time to get a bunch of testers for the next version. My goal was to make as much as possible automatic, and to make it distributed (so that everyone hosts their own comments). I've argued the case for pingbacks more and thus it should come as no surprise that I think a video commenting system should be based on pingbacks. Basing it on existing technology also makes the system more open and flexible.
The client isn't quite done yet, but it'll be easier (and I'll be more motivated) to finish if I have some videoblogs to run tests against. What you can do to help can be summed up in four easy steps below.
- Enable pingbacks on your blog.
- Mark your audio/video entries as such.
- Send pingbacks when you write a new entry.
- Post and comment!
- Extra: A special note for Wordpress users
Enable pingbacks on your blog
The first step is naturally enough to enable pingbacks on your own weblog. In order to recieve comments on your entries you need a pingback server. If you're using Wordpress as your weblog system you already have a pingback server. If you are not using Wordpress I have written a quick-and-dirty pingback server you can use. Your server needs to support PHP. Download the pingback server (zipped; 2.45 kilobytes; instructions are in the .php file). If you can't run this on your server I can offer to host a pingback server for you (if you're a videoblogger). Contact me and we'll talk.
Next you need to advertise that your weblog is supporting pingbacks. Again, if you're using Wordpress this is handled for you. Others have two options: An HTTP header or a <link>-element. If you have the ability to send the HTTP header, do so. It lessens the bandwidth requirements because people commenting on your entries don't need to download your post to find the pingback server. They can do with just fetch the HTTP headers for it.
The header needs to go out with all documents you want to pingback enable. Usually you just want to pingback enable your individual entries. In PHP you would just add the following line to the very top of your template: <?php header("X-Pingback: http://www.yourdomain.com/url/to/server/\r\n");?> where http://www.yourdomain.com/url/to/server/ is the URL of the pingback server.
If you can't use PHP (in this case I'm probably hosting the pingback server for you) you need add a <link>-element manually on all pages you want pingback enabled. You need to add the following in the <head> section: <link rel="pingback" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/url/to/pingback/server/" />. If you're using a blogging system you need to add that to the template for the individual entries.
Mark your audio/video entries as such.
Since you are posting an HTML file that contains your audio/video entry, you will need to mark the entry as an audio or video entry in a way that a computer can read and understand. There are two ways to do this: With a <link>-element or with a normal link (<a>). The <link>-element should go on the page with the individual entry. It would look like this: <link rel="alternate" type="video/quicktime" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/url/of/video.mov" />. The type should of course correspond to the type of audio/video, and the href should point directlyto the audio/video file. The alternative is to place a normal link inside the blog post pointing directly to the audio/video file. It would looks like this: <a rel="alternate" type="video/quicktime" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/url/of/video.mov">Watch my video</a>.
What you are doing is telling anyone who downloads the webpage that this webpage has an alternate version, and that alternate version is an audio or video file. That will allow pingback clients to distinguish between normal links and alternate version, and act accordingly (ie. download the webpage, but then extract the video and add that to a playlist).
The <link>-element is the best solution because it will only show up on the idividual blog entry page, while the <a>-element will also show up on monthly archive pages, front page and the like. At the same time it is most likely a lot of work to configure any blogging software to output these <link>-elements correctly, while adding the <a>-elements are very easy to add (because you add them to each audio/video entry yourself).
Send pingbacks when you write a new entry
You need to send out pingbacks whenever you link to someone else (whether it's video, audio or text). Again this is easy for Wordpress users. Simple include a normal text link to the entries you are commenting on in your entry, and make sure the pingback checkbox is checked. Wordpress will then handle everything for you.
Everyone else must manually send pingbacks. For your convenience I have added the ability to send pingbacks in my pingback client. For now you will have to send each pingback seperately. The target is the permalink of the blog entry you are linking to. The source is the permalink of your blog entry. In the future it'll be possible to pingback several targets in one go, but this'll have to do for now.
Post and comment!
And that's it! It's time to post and comment. Post a lot, and comment on the work of others. You can do text, video and audio comments as long as they're marked correctly (and as long as you remember to send the pingbacks).
A special note for Wordpress users
While Wordpress is the only blogging system to support pingbacks the support isn't perfect. It lacks one crucial feature: The ability for other servers to retrieve a list of pingbacks recorded. Fortunately the Wordpress people are both very nice, and very fast to add features. Only two days passed between my asking about adding the feature on the Wordpress IRC channel to the actual code being written (thank you, Michel_V!).
The code is not yet in any of the stable releases, but I would like to ask all Wordpress users who wants to participate in my little experiment to download a nightly build of Wordpress from September 18th. Grab the xml-rpc.php from the zip file and use that instead of the one that came with your Wordpress installation (remember to do a backup!). You probably have to change line 6 from include('../wp-config.php'); to include('wp-config.php');. That's the price of living on the bleeding edge.
Finally
Finally I would like to hear from you if you want to participate. So shoot me an e-mail or pingback this entry (pingbacks are enabled, you just can't see them here yet). That way I know which sites I can test out.
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This is the personal website of Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen: commentary on media, communication, culture and technology. Read more»
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