Matt’s Surfing » Additions to Orb

I recently got an e-mail from the Chief Operating Officer of Orb Networks (probably a form e-mail) talking about a new feature that they have just released. It is an API to allow developers to create was for ORB to stream other information other than just the Videos, music, and pictures that is currently supported.
Matthew

Thank you for writing about Orb in the past on your blog. Thought I’d follow up with you and tell you about the latest exciting thing in Orb — we have published a programming extension to Orb to allow developers to build their own add-ons…

http://www.orb.com/api

The idea is to allow developers to leverage the transcoding, transmission, and presentation frameworks inside the Orb server to give user’s access to any applications or content that is on (or accessible from) the home machine!

So what does all this mean? I am not really sure yet, I am still working through the documentation. The first thing that comes to mind is a way to view RAW files. I shoot with my Nikon D100 in RAW mode, which produces non-standard images. Through this API, I might be able to find a way to view my RAW files located on my server at home…

So that is one way, but I am sirtting here trying to think what else would be good to implement in this interface. Looking at the ORB forums, there is a simple add-on that allows the creating of to-do lists. The important part is that this demonstrates using Orb in a two way communication method. Up till now, it has been a one way passing of data to the client, but if a client can pass things back, that would be great… Here is that forum discussion.

I am going to start thinking about this more and more, and see what makes sense to use in this interface…

-Matt

Ted Shelton Says:
August 9th, 2005 at 7:13 pm

Not a form letter! A real email from a real person! Thanks for thinking about the API. I am asking Luc, our CTO about RAW files… Other things I know about that people are working on — control of a TiVo, X10, interface to MS Outlook for contacts, grabbing info out of Yahoo calendars… Best, Ted Shelton (Orb)

Matt Says:
August 10th, 2005 at 10:38 am

See, now I am just impressed, It is not often that you find companies really reading what people are saying, let along the CEO… I think that it says something really great about Orb, they you are out there reading what people are saying and that will help in the long run with getting features that people want…

Ted Shelton Says:
August 10th, 2005 at 8:06 pm

Matt - Thanks for the promotion, but actually I am just the COO By the way, one of our beta developers has published the first addon — a TiVo control tool that lets you program your TiVo and watch TiVo To Go programming through Orb… which means from your cell phone… yep. Program your TiVo from your cell phone.