scottpersinger/livinghistory — Issue #2: Product Intro
Author: scottpersinger
Created: 2012-02-13 17:59:19+00:00
State: open

I am a great fan of Wikipedia. Sometimes I will just go browse Wikipedia and read stories, usually various history pieces.

But, Wikipedia was really created before the damn of Youtube. Today, there is TONS and TONS of audio/visual media available on the internet. Incredible archival footage up on Youtube, images in image libraries, sound files from various historical archives that have been digitized and put online.

So for a while I've been yearning for a "multimedia Wikipedia" - a site that offered "Stories" that combined text, audio, and video, and images into compelling narratives.

My particular interests are:
-History. I love history, and feel there are tons of lesser known events that aren't really covered except by text articles.
-Book companions. Whenever I read a non-fiction book (or magazine article) I always wish I could go watch first-hand an event that is mentioned. For example if you read about the Nixon-Kennedy debates, you really want to be able to go watch a clip of the real thing.

So what I have envisioned is the following:

A system for declaratively defining a "Story". A Story has an author and title, and it's made up of 1 or more Pages. Each Page contains a timeline, and contains Items that appear according to the timeline. The items are any kind of media including: text, images, audio, and video.

A Story is defined in a single structured text file. Most media items will often be defined in terms of a source URL. So the media is not contained inside the Story, but referenced outside. (One implication is that you need an internet connection to play the storty).

A user can "play" a story on a computer (or tablet). When playing a story, the user moves through each page of the story in sequence (not sure if pages transitions are automatic or triggered by the user). When a page is active, its "timeline" runs and items of the page appear according to the timeline.

Initially the system consists only of a Javascript Player which knows how to render a story. Eventually I hope to have an Editor which allows you to easily compose a Story via drag and drop in the browser.