Rather than everyone throwing their own half-correct answer into this thread, just read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system
401 karma · joined July 10, 2010
Clarification: When I say build hardware, I mean design a usable hardware interface for mixing 4 stems. I don't have to guess what audio is on what track. Imagine what a nightmare it would be if every stem had a different number of tracks and you were trying to DJ live with them.
Links to some counterfactual regret minimization code is on his site here: http://www.jeskola.net/cfr/
My guess is that if they do pivot towards being a streaming company, they'll target EDM fans (consumers) instead of EDM DJs (prosumers).
Look at the top 10 apps in the Mac App Store. That list is always dominated by Apple's applications like Logic and iWork because of this pricing strategy. Nobody else can afford to sell a DAW for $200 and make money. IMHO it's some kind of anti-competitiveness but I don't know if there's a term for it. Maybe it's just a fact of life when Apple owns and controls the entire software/hardware ecosystem.
Perhaps maybe we could boil most our comments down to just a simple suggestion that maybe the new design could be nudged just a bit more in the direction of "minimalistic / retro / edgy / avant-garde / anarchist". The right design could have both the accessibility you (rightly) are seeking, but still preserve a little bit of the minimalistic feel that (we felt) sets the Neocities image apart. Of course, finding the right balance is going to be challenging, but that's what makes a good designer good.
Two more quick points:
- We (the peanut gallery) could all be totally wrong. We're all rooting for you though. :)
- For every success like Tegan and Sara, everyone knows a band who tried to switch it up and just started sucking. There's nothing wrong with staying in a niche. On the other hand, we know you're ambitious and have a great vision. I think we all like that about Neocities too!
It's a great webdesign, but I thought the part of the appeal of your site was the ghetto-fabulousness? The redesigned front page makes it look like a Wix competitor. I thought you wanted something that looked plain and boring, but accessible to everyone (like the blog).
With a super modern fancy web design, you make the site look like Tumblr, Twitter, and all those sites that you're trying to rebel against. You might risk losing your audience by sending the wrong message.
How long have you been working on it for?
There's going to be loads of "big brand" companies looking for crazy audio doodads for their websites after this Jam thing. Probably lots of contract work to found be there... :)
It deals with latency by ensuring that it's rounded to measures, so in a free form jam, everyone always stays in sync. It's an ingenious solution and it really works. Being in a jam where real musicians with different instruments just join in and play together is incredibly cool. (That's the achilles heel of these web experiments unfortunately - Cool tech demo aside, they're not really aimed at musicians...)
Some tech notes from a pro-audio software developer:
- All the samples are OGG ( http://chrome-jam-static.commondatastorage.googleapis.com/xm... )
- They're using some "DMAF" engine for the audio, though I can't figure out who made it: http://www.jamwithchrome.com/js/compiled/dmaf_all.js
It's pretty serious stuff from the looks of it - It's got a node graph with different DSP modules (envelope follower, delay, ADSR, distortion, LFO, chorus, compressor, phaser, equalizer, biquad filters), it plays MIDI files, and more.
It's all written in JavaScript too, and there's no way you'd write this just for one Chrome experiment. I don't see any outside party acknowledged on the website, but I'd guess that this DMAF JS audio engine is licensed from someone.
It's interesting to see what they've been able to do with the Web Audio API and JavaScript, but I think the Web Audio API is going to be forever limited to toys like this unfortunately. You just can't do real-time audio with a garbage collector waiting to pounce.
I developed a similar application for Chrome (which coincidentally had the codename "Jam"), but instead, it uses Native Client for audio instead of the Web Audio API. It's called SongStarter, and you can jam with it here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jbkilbgofafobojkif...
(NaCl apps must be installed from the Chrome Web Store for the time being, otherwise they won't work. Google's choice...)
One minor gripe would be higher precision DACs (only 8-bit?), though the ADCs look great. The DACs would be a problem for audio, though the ADCs would be good for the lab.
I find the gAnalytics app is really good. It's easier to navigate to relevant stats than the actual Analytics website. Curious to see how the official app stands up.
(I got ripped off once by a seller that had 99% positive feedback, and only recently had they started screwing over every single customer. I wish I had read the _recent_ feedback posts...)
Specifically, there's issues with FFMPEG, libmad, and GStreamer, and there was no good alternative that did what we wanted. So we wrote one!
Let's innovate people...
First, the Adobe developer explicitly said they're tracking the bug internally and that they've only closed it in their external bug tracker. They said they could reproduce it, so your job as a bug reporter is done.
Second, Adobe has limited resources like any organization and so they have to set priorities. Flash runs on 99% of internet enabled PCs [1], which could very well be hundreds of millions of Windows and Mac OS X desktops. I don't see how _any_ Linux bug could be anything other than low priority in the face of that.
Maybe 5 years ago, when Linux appeared to be gaining significant momentum on the desktop because Ubuntu, priorities could have been different. However, it's now clear that Mac OS X is and will be the alternative OS of choice for most people who don't use Windows for the foreseeable future.
[1] http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/
*edit: spelling