Media and meta-data turning into air
It seems like remixing is getting more granular and sophisticated. Read about TagLoops below.
“TagLoops is an alpha stage Flash “movieâ€? creation tool built by Greek IT consultant Harry Vikatos. Movies are built by pointing to images, audio or RSS feeds hosted elsewhere. Those items are tagged inside TagLoop where they can be reordered and layered over each other. The end result is a multi layered multimedia Flash movie. Those movies can also be remixed by other TagLoop users. It’s really interesting to me that TagLoops works with things as ephemeral as tags, feeds and URLs and ends up letting users create a tangible multimedia presentation.
Just like the application SlideShare that Michael reviewed last night, TagLoops is a relatively easy way to make a very rich online presentation. Neither of these work with video yet, but TagLoops aims to.
Here’s an example of one I built highlighting some of my favorite GapingVoid cartoons. I tagged my favorites in Del.icio.us and pulled the feed into TagLoops. If I tag more cartoons into the same RSS feed, they will automatically be added to my FilmLoops movie. The music is streamed by pointing to a URL where it’s hosted. My “web movie� is very simple, but there’s a great degree of sophistication available in the service. Here’s a TagLoops style demonstration of the site made by Vikatos.
The interface was difficult for me to learn to use, but now that I have I have confidence that I could easily make more movies using the tool. It’s all drag and drop, a deceptively simple way to make a short web movie. There’s a demo account on the site that anyone can use to try it out.
When you put an RSS feed into your account you can either play all the images or audio in that feed automatically, or select just some items to drag and drop into your movie. It’s quite a fluid system.
Audio files can effectively be edited inside TagLoops. Video and Flash animation are next on the agenda for item types to be brought into TagLoops.
The site would benefit greatly from some usability work and clearer instructions, though there is a help wiki available. There’s a lot here and it’s very impressive for a part time project by one man. Remixable drag and drop movies made of multimedia delivered by tags and feeds are about as cutting edge as you can get. Will it work? Only time will tell, but I can say that using it is a lot easier than describing it.”
(via TechCrunch)