MozillaNewsLab

MetaFragments gives to web tools, mobile apps, browser and search engines a simple way to explore, connect and share the inside content of web videos.

Even when liberated from Flash, web videos are data dead-ends. Meta-data for video or audio is mostly non-existent in exposed, usable form.

You know the saying: teach people how to fish… instead of giving them a fish. Because of the web, because of the iPad, and because of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, newsrooms have a cruel choice to make. 

They can hope that someone else will built tools and formats for the digital age, and that the tools and formats will be simple enough for anyone (including a classically trained journalist) to use and apply in their newsroom. Or they can learn to fish, and try to turn the newsroom into a full speed tech company.

If you were to draw a map of videos on the web, you would find that your map is composed mostly of dead-ends. 

HTML 5 started a big change for video, making in it a «first class citizen of the web». We can manipulate videos via Javascript and CSS. Media files are exposed as web resources, referenced natively via URLs.

But there is other dead-ends for web videos. Data dead-ends. Findability dead-ends.

A few years ago, I had a big idea for a new art project involving video interviews.

Ideas can stay ideas for years, and then, they become real project in a few days. I should know, I built events that do exactly that :-)