Opinion: You've got about one year before video and other multimedia content is considered a given on the Web. Don't get left behind.While the buzz at MacWorld may have swirled around the new Intel-based iMacs and MacBook, the new iLife software suite might be the real harbinger of things to come.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Apple's "digital lifestyle" suite of products, iLife previously consisted of iPhoto (an image organization and manipulation product), iMovie (a simple, consumer-targeted video editing program), iDVD (a DVD-creation tool), and GarageBand (a music recording and creation program).
Like most Apple products, they work remarkably well together, allowing users to drag, drop, and "publish" in various forms different kinds of media. The new iLife suite (iLife '06) still contains all those programs but now adds iWeb, an elegant template-based tool for building Web sites, blogs, online photo albums, and other Web content.
In addition, iWeb also includes AJAX support for slideshows, RSS functionality for podcasts and blogs, and simple, one-button publishing.
True to the previous iLife philosophy, iWeb allows users to drag and drop content from any of the other programs.
Users who want to publish photos can drag them out of iPhoto and into their new pages.
GarageBand now includes a podcasting creation and editing tool so that budding 'casters can record, edit and embellish their podcasts with sound effects and transitions as well as synchronized photos from iPhoto.
Record a podcast (either via the Mac microphone or through iChat if you're doing an interview), edit it, save it, and click a button to publish it via your .Mac account or via FTP (using a separate client) to your site.
It's pretty impressive stuff, and according to those who've been lucky enough to play with pre-release versions, it even produces clean code and can incorporate user-edited templates.
Sure, blogging's been pretty easy before using any one of a number of third-party apps or online services, but never before has it been so easy to integrate different types of media in your publishing efforts.
And that's precisely why you should be looking at what Apple's doing. Whether you're a Mac aficionado or not, there's no denying that this year seems to be shaping up as the one where "convergence" is really starting to happen.
This year's CES was full of vendors hawking various versions of the "digital living room" where entertainment and information delivered through the Internet finally converge in one box.
While there may still be serious problems getting from the vision to the reality, there's no doubt that the trend vector's direction is starting to become pretty clear.
Video's probably the best place to look if you want to catch a glimpse of what our online future's going to look like.
The big players are starting to get into line with Google announcing its upcoming Video Store, AOL acquiring video search engine Truveo, and Apple managing to sell 1 million videos in only 20 days after the launch of the iTunes video store.
TV players are getting in on the action, too: SkyTV just announced that it's going to start a broadband film download service, and DirecTV has just announced a deal to deliver digital TV via the new Xbox 360.
You've practically gotta be blind to not see the signs of where this is all going if you're in the biz of delivering content online.
So what the heck does this all have to do with Apple?
Simply put, Apple's just raised the bar when it comes to our job as Web professionals.
Between the oncoming glut of video content coming from the commercial players and the DIY homebrew pod and videocasts coming from upcoming iLife users, the Web's about to get a lot louder, a lot more animated, and a lot more integrated when it comes to media.
Whether you believe or not that the "digital livingroom" is going to arrive this year (and I have my doubts whenever I get subjected to Microsoft's Media Center,) the fact is that it is going to arrive in the not-so-distant future.
There's just too much momentum behind it to dismiss it at this point. And as people (read: "clients") get more used to getting video and audio via their computers, they're going to start expecting it everywhere, especially from their Web vendors.
If you're not ramped up for dealing with audio and video, the time to get crackin' is now. Web shops need to get familiar with the tools, get savvy about when to use them, and start to work hard to figure out how to integrate it all.
We need to look at paradigms of publishing that move beyond text and interactivity. We need to understand how our content's going to play in the livingroom.
We need to understand how to integrate our communications across media and how to best use different media to get our messages across. The move from atoms to bits and the integration of media is upon us.
The good news is that we've got time. Not much time, for sure, but it's probably going to be a year before video and audio content is going to be considered a given in any new (or refurbished) Web site.
The future of content—all content—is online. Don't get left behind.
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