You should care about Miro. For me, it’s become the mainstay of my video playing experience, be it to play TED talks (there’s a whole set of channels for that) Wired Science (yep, a channel for that too) or Timo’s HD Movie Trailers, The Onion News Network or Google Tech Talks they have a lot of great free and fun content. And they make it easy to get.
But even more important to me personally, there are two specific things that make them great. First, they are a non-profit foundation much in the same was as the Mozilla Foundation is. They believe strongly that video on the Internet should be made easily available without false scarcity, and everyone should be able to publish and distribute video.
And second – and even more important in many ways – is the mechanism that they choose to use to do it. They are doing it through direct action. They aren’t lobbying congress or staging protests or talking to the press. Instead they choose to be the change they want to see in the world and build real things that normal people can use. By building a base of users, by encouraging legitimate use of bittorrent to lower the costs of distribution, by helping to organize content and allow normal people to publish, they are changing the way that video on the Internet will work. And they are doing it in a competitive marketplace.
The technology is based on Mozilla’s XULRunner platform and is available on OSX, Windows and Linux
I just donated $100 to Miro to help get them bridge the gap to sustainability. You don’t have to donate that much, of course. They will take donations as low as $10. But you should do your part and help them out. Especially if you heart Miro like I do.
