RE: [kDev] Beginning development

["Scott Switzer" <scott@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Daniel (et al.),

I have been following the Kendra Initiative for over a year now, from
the sidelines.  It is interesting to me because I have been working on
some of the very technical issues that Kendra has been working on (or at
least talking about).  I read the newsgroup letter about future Kendra
development, and I have a number of thoughts.  I will list them below
(no specific order), and separately put them in a better format so that
they can be tracked like any other project:

Overall:

Overall Development Plan:  Does a development plan exist?  What about
functionality specs, and architecture documents?  What is the status of
Kendra development?  Where can I find this information?  (Kendra.org.uk
does not have this information)

Development web site:  If development is going to be open source, should
we develop a PHP web site, and hook it into SourceForge (or has this
been done already?)  We can leverage the source code control, forums,
and bandwidth resources of SourceForge this way.  (and, perhaps, attract
some developers)

Specific Functionality:

Generalised Redirect System:  There are two companies that I know of
which map IP address to physical location, with a >99% accuracy rate:
Digital Envoy, and another business that starts with Q.  We used this
technology to determine where requests were coming from, for Digital
Rights Management, and eCommerce (e.g.  if we only had rights for a
video in the UK, for example).  We looked into implementing a mini-CDN,
where this technology would determine whether to stream from our
European Server, our US Server, or our Asian Server.

Metadata:  I have implemented systems which store customised metadata,
based on file type.  Depending on the type of metadata, it can either be
saved inside the metadata file (e.g. RAM file for Real, or ASX file for
Microsoft), or put directly into the file.  If the metadata is going to
live directly inside the file, I have found that this is best done on
the fly, so that the metadata is always up to date.

Streaming Server:  Is Kendra going to build their own Streaming
(MMS/RTSP/HTTP) server, or use existing streaming servers?  I have found
limitations with existing streaming servers, especially in a distributed
environment.  Specifically, they are not auto-updatable, so that your
network is not really homogeneous (read: dependable).  Also, it is very
difficult to do any real-time integration, so that files can be built
and streamed at the same time (important for DRM and up-to-date
metadata).  In addition, if you want to implement another protocol (e.g.
HTTP for downloading files as well), a lot of integration work needs to
be done.

Squid:  I have had success using the open-source Squid proxy server as a
cache for files on a CDN.  It may be worth using in place of a
home-grown LRU cache.

Integration:  Depending on the high level goals of this project,
defining which products to integrate with at the start of the project is
key (I have been burned by this before).  Is the goal of Kendra to be as
horizontal as possible, or are there products which can be targeted for
integration first?  Some initial thoughts that come to mind are Digital
Asset Management systems on the corporate side, and P2P systems on the
consumer side.

Searching for Content:  Are there any ideas on how to find content on
the Kendra system?  Perhaps using some sort of searching interface, or
partnering with a searching portal would be useful.  I am sure that
there are quite a few sites which allow searching for audio and video
files.  Is part of the Kendra initiative to sponsor an 'open directory'
for content?

Scott Switzer
scott@xxxxxxxxxxx