Yesterday I asked the question, “Random House DRM-free a hoax?“ The question was based on Cory Doctorow’s post announcing a big move by Random House towards DRM-free MP3 audiobooks. The PDF on his site links to a letter by Madeline McIntosh detailing the move to Random House’s partners.
Since my post both Cory and Madeline have confirmed the validity of the letter. Thank you to both for following up and answering the question.
Dave Winer has been asking in Twitter for a way to incorporate specific twitters/tweets in to his blog over at scripting.com. My suggestion is to use the starred items feature (Favorites) on Twitter.
I too would like to integrate Twitter more selectively in to my blog. Twitter’s API, under “Favorite Methods” allows you to set specific tweets to be starred, or favorites.
If you want to want to have a set of targeted tweets which you’ll highlight in your blog, star your own tweets and pull the feed (here’s their RESTful documentation for how to do that):
favorites
Returns the 20 most recent favorite statuses for the authenticating user or user specified by the ID parameter in the requested format.
URL: http://twitter.com/favorites.format
Formats: xml, json, rss, atom
Parameters:
In other words, with the above documentation, you would just pull the RSS feed for your favorites and have it rendered on your blog. This method works best for me since it allows after-the-fact selection, addition, and removal.
While it seems many are rejoicing over the supposed announcement of Random House going DRM-free, it also seems this could be hoax. BoingBoing, care of Cory Doctorow, brought the story to light. But something doesn’t smell right…
Don’t get me wrong – this would be groundbreaking and very fast for an industry that doesn’t usually take big risks. But there’s a lot bordering on the edge of too-good-to-be-true and not sitting right.
Cory Doctorow broke the story on BoingBoing.net, where he claims to have gotten hold of an announcement. The announcement isn’t available anywhere else on the net.
The content of the letter is downright mouth watering for folks looking forward to DRM-free content.
“The results: we have not yet found a single instance of the eMusic watermarked titles being distributed illegally.”
Seriously? Not a single one? Were there no sales? There will be piracy with any content. Everyone expects this. The issue is not whether it will happen or not, but whether DRM-free content leads to increased sales, increased profits, and increased customer love. The statement that not a single instance occurring is hard to swallow.
I’m not saying it’s a hoax – only that I’m looking forward to getting more facts and seeing how this plays out. I’ve written to Random House for comment but have not yet received a response.
UPDATE: Madeline McIntosh, Random House publisher and author of the letter, confirmed this morning via email that the letter is not a hoax (also confirmed in the comments below). This is exciting and game changing news in the audiobook industry.
As promised (but late as a post), we released iofy’s RESTful documentation. This is extremely exciting for both our development and management teams. We now have an open account management API enabling others to offer iofy’s account management and access to a customer’s digital libraries of downloaded audiobooks.
I’m proud of this accomplishment.
The iofy RESTful API covers the features for partner or reseller to offer downloadable audiobooks. These RESTful web services use standard REST calls, are language agnostic, retrieve RSS 2.0 feeds and enable:
One can receive dynamic product feeds from ws.iofy.com/product/, where search parameters can include title, author, publisher, narrator, ISBN, and more. These feeds come complete with thumbnail image enclosures, MP3 audio sample enclosures, and all the metadata.
Via account management, described last week, customer accounts can be created, modified, password reset, and most importantly the customer’s prior purchases become available in a library. One can offer this digital library and account management solution without building it (or maintaining it). Just harness it.
The fulfillment API allows assignment of a digital download in a single call. We included PHP sample source code, but it could just as easily be harnessed in any other language.
JavaScript and PHP sample code is available which allows complete harnessing of both APIs. To learn more, email developer@iofy.com.
Philip Greenspun, a CompSci professor at MIT, wrote a nice post. Something most twenty and thirty somethings don’t want to hear, but should anyway…
http://philip.greenspun.com/business/internet-software-patents
Actually, I feel challenged to prove him wrong.