CC Mixter got Slashdotted today. CC Mixter is a place for 'mixversation', a kind of conversational flow of remixes. The music is all under the Creative Commons sampling license. My contribution to this project was to create the base code and proof of concept.

XSPF version 0, a playlist format that I and others have been working on for about a year, is frozen and finalized. I have reformatted the specification as an internet draft and posted the first draft of XSPF version 1. My contribution to XSPF is to lead the project.

While I was adding MusicBrainz metadata to the playlist format survey yesterday I realized that it was the only playlist format to follow best practices. It invents a minimum of new names (though there's a bit of overlap with the RSS 1.0 audio namespace). It uses very precise definitions of data elements. It doesn't abuse external namespaces. The documentation is clear and unambiguous.

Given what a disaster music metadata formats as a whole are, this is a pretty big accomplishment.

I am happy to say that my Creative Commons SMIL module seems to have gained consensus acceptance. Several playlist authors are using it, Oyez.org is applying it to all their SMIL presentations, and Creative Commons recommends it on their how-to page.

My main interest these days is playlists, particularly playlists with URLs instead of local paths in them. I realize this is a hopelessly obscure interest.

It struck me that my loose notes on different playlist formats might be useful to people who work with playlists, so I made them into a formally structured document. The results are at http://gonze.com/playlists/playlist-format-survey.html.

I spent the weekend looking at WASTE. I am afraid that this will be yet another instrument for whipping up anti-computer hysteria.