Apple Applies for Patent on 'Audio Hyperlinking' to Facilitate Accessing Supplementary Podcast Content

Anyone not disturbed by this isn't paying attention!

The freaking movie companies tried something similar to this, as I understood it, with 'flagging' which would stop people from taping shows on their TeeVees...

It's getting serious as far as the spooky stuff going down...

iRadio will become more marketable through this patent. I believe Apple went back to the drawing board a little with iTunes due to the power & prowess of Spotify being an iTunes killer.

The record player was a breakthrough... then the cassettes came, then we even got CDs. The iPod came, and iTunes followed shortly thereafter in 2003.

Even though Napster jumped into the market right around/before the iPod, Apple has absolutely taken the music industry by storm since the 21st century. Pandora made a little bleap... Now Spotify came into play, and especially came into play 2 summers ago in '11 debuting in U.S - Apple is not as big of a global hitter with iTunes like in the past. Streaming music is a legit utility. Spotify is amazing at it.

Apple knows this... and Apple is going back to the drawing board to make iRadio more marketable with more functionality, so they can gain back their market presence in the music industry of today.

Streaming music/video will never go away... Data speeds are only evermore increasing.

reden said:

Apple lately seems to be spending most of its time patenting rather than innovating.

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What?

This has got iTunes Radio to purchase of song written all over it!

Jodles said:

This isn't a new idea. This is very much inline with cutting-edge research being done everywhere on music information retrieval (MIR), whose primary research goal is to enable all kinds of music content, recordings, MIDI, sheet music, anything to be able to link together with no metadata at all.

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1) this goes far beyond music
2) thinking of it isn't the same as actually doing it.

Patents should never be granted for just thinking of something... there should be a requirement that the applicant has a working implementation.

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danielowenuk said:

This has got iTunes Radio to purchase of song written all over it!

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In-line show notes.
In-line footnotes.

This applies to all companies, from tech to pharmaceutical:

Instead of patenting everything from shapes to DNA just to keep innovation out of another's hands [and most aren't "innovative"], why not make use of the plethora of patents? I understand some patents have a basis for legitimacy, yet so many file patents [sometimes for the rather mundane] and then sit on them.

It's similar to online "real estate", many buy domain names in hopes xxx company will need it, sit on it, then sell it for a good profit if xxx company needs it. This has been an old idea and companies with a great deal of cash will throw $1-3 million to a random guy in North Carolina who is sitting on it. When brand names are involved, it is sometimes crucial to have a domain name that is representative for such product.

I had thought before 1 week ago when I was listening FM radio, there should be somethings to note down phone no or address whatever they speak in Ad, you can capture it.

GQB said:

1) this goes far beyond music
2) thinking of it isn't the same as actually doing it.

Patents should never be granted for just thinking of something... there should be a requirement that the applicant has a working implementation.

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In-line show notes.
In-line footnotes.

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Which is exactly the idea of the research - to go far beyond music. It's not just thinking of something; researchers are coming up with exact algorithms on how to do it. They're just not after monetary gain and see no point in patenting it; they rather want other researchers to add to what they've done and take it further.

Oh, and how does Apple have a working implementation? This is just Apple thinking of something.

Typical Apple...

This is so obvious - why can it be patentable? I'm going to patent breathing blah blah blah...

Isn't that how it usually goes?

Upside/downside

On the upside this shows me Apple is still actively working on podcasts, trying to strengthen their use and adoption and all that.
This is great, because Podcasts, although awesome, have a lot to catch up on compared to how actively Google maintains Youtube.
What I don't like about Youtube is that (officially) everything's on their servers and I get to watch it in a browser or app but can't (officially) store it, the comments (which sometimes add a great amount of information and intersting tidbits to the video's topic), the stats etc...
I hate that, because I want media I really like to be on my HDD (which is my legal right provided it's offered to me in a legal form here in Germany (we call that personal copy)).
I hate depending on servers and any funny "This video has been taken down" or even if the user gets blocked, all their content, TOS infringing or not, gets taken down as well. MEH

And this brings me to my next point, the downside:
I want my media to be self-contained and archivable and not depend on external links and dependencies to be complete and the context to be clear.
(One reason I also hate Youtube annotations)

I wish Podcasts had a bit of Youtube and Youtube a bit of Podcasts.
I definitely think Podcasts have more to catch up on, because with Youtube I mainly just want an official desktop client or iTunes integration (I know, the cloudy dreamy Google won't let this happen anytime soon) and official downloads (including meta data, annotations and comments)
Podcasts though can use pretty much a lot of Youtube's core features like comments (and I don't mean iTunes reviews), better social sharing (maybe even with position markers), a website to make Podcasts more prominent and easier to access, Apple provided hosting maybe (it can be quite a pain in the you know where to find affordable, reliable and durable media hosting, although it definitely raises the quality bar, because people are more dedicated. Still needs a website though imho)

Glassed Silver:mac

Looks like another iAd avenue

intersticial ads based on what the podcast content is? A way for Apple to allow 3rd parties to make money from their podcasts?

This is most definitely going to be used for advertisements.

Look at high end disk based recording systems or, computer based recording systems like ProTools and Cakewalk.

They already allow tagged, non destructive playback of audio and midi, etc.
ADR (Automatic Dialog Replacement) already does things like this.

Unless they cite these prior works in their patent, then they are fooling themselves. Also they have a computer system and say and I paraphrase; a computer system running software could do the following...

They don't give details about how they would do it. Once again, trying to patent an idea.

What happened to the patent Apple filed long ago for allowing users to set volume levels for Safari browsing?

Ah, here it is:

Apple patent hints at volume controls in Safari

Apple Insider has spotted a a newly released patent filed by Apple back in late 2007 that shows volume controls that can be integrated into various Web browsers. Described as a way to control "audio signals which may or may not be welcomed by the user" the patent depicts a new panel that sits in the top, right-hand corner of a user's browser and allows per-site controls over incoming audio signals. There's also a mute button that can cut out just the sounds from the browser entirely while leaving sound from other desktop applications untouched.

According to the patent, the key goal is to add a volume control overlay over sites that do not provide it, as well as a system that will remember the user's preferences between browsing sessions.... It would also let users create custom sound profiles, so you could have YouTube videos on your computer at work always start out at a low volume level, or your Internet alarm clock site always play at 100 percent.

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In 2007 Apple filed a patent (for what I consider a much needed feature) and hasn't implemented it. I haven't seen any plugin's addressing the matter; ClicktoFlash and adblockers don't seem to work all the time and I wouldn't mind flash cropping up if I could preset/adjust browser volume without having it effect system volume.

wow another far reaching patent.

The main problem is the time approach. I think that's a valid backup for simple audio files, but the primary approach should be "link to Audio Stream at URL X in location Y where Y is something like "iPhone 6s Review" rather than "0:10:46.045".

Then, you need a file or header in Audio Stream at URL X which translates "iPhone 6s Review" to "0:10:46.045". You could take an HTML-analogous approach and just put that link target identifier inline in Audio Stream X, but unlike HTML where scanning for a link target is simple, scanning through a multi-hour audio file looking for a target means a lot of extra download bits and a lot of processing time.

The reason these need to be separate is that Audio Stream X should be able to be updated without having to change all links into it. For instance, if the "Samsung CopyCat 10 Review" piece needs to be modified, and it now takes 30 seconds more than it did before, then "iPhone 6s Review" is at "0:11:16.045" instead, and you don't want to go to the links to update all of them; you want to make that update in one place.

As defined above, the only possible use would be where each linked audio stream has exactly one subject. That is, the Samsung review is one audio stream, and the iPhone review is another separate audio stream. Maybe that was the intent, although I think that's a missed opportunity (it stops "table of contents" and "listen straight through" on the same audio stream).

great

Oh, that's not ripe for exploitation at all...

That's a security nightmare just waiting to happen right there. Holy crap. And you thought hyperlinks and ad servers on web sites were bad enough - you'll never be able to watch or listen to an unadulterated video or audio stream ever again.

Oh, and you wanna hack someone's smartphone? Just call them and play a sound clip with auto-activated audio hyperlinks embedded. Presto! Same thing for the desktop, just advertise on the web with hyperlink embedded audio in the ad - the user won't even have to click on your ad to be linked to malicious code somewhere on the internet. Oh goodie.

This is going to be used to sell ads, guaranteed. Unskippable ads that take over your screen and sound.

It would be really nice if audio files for stuff like podcasts finally graduated from the lowly mp3. Besides the obvious need to improve quality and file sizes, audio producers could really use context based payloads. Simply associating links deep into content would go a really long way to help with the stickiness of the media. I think it's inevitable that ads will play some part in this, but the content would really benefit from the interactivity.

Apple tried similar things years ago with Enhanced podcasts, even building the tools into GarageBand, but producers didn't take to it. Perhaps partly due to incompatibilities on non apple devices, but probably also due to the fact that they never really made it an open standard despite stating that that was there initial intention.

YouTube continues to experiment with interactivity, and SoundCloud has pushed the most mainstream adoption of interactive audio due to their influence. But as others have noted, these are silos of consumption, and what's really needed is a better standard that works across services, brands and devices.

I've got a stake in it. We make an iOS podcast recording app called bossjock, and while we feel like mobile production and publishing is an awesome evolution for producers we are still essentially authoring in last century's formats.

It would sure feel great to get a new audio format with interactivity built into its core. Hopefully this time the candidate can be embraced as an open standard. Apple is still in great position to make this happen.

pancakedrawer said:

Another one of those ideas that makes you wonder why nobody has thought of it until now.

This could be a great way for podcasts to link to relevant content such as news articles and for bands to link to their tour page from their album for example.

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Nobody WHO? Doesn't YouTube support this feature?

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ConCat said:

Yes, but guess who patented it first. Funny world we live in.

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Patent first, deny startup businesses to bring innovation and implement it when you consider interesting. An efficient way for making monopolistic practices using the patent system.

This tech....

sounds interesting and promising. I will wait and see how much time until get implemented. Like to know where Apple would put it first....but sounds so promising to give it a try systemwide, as in a future OS.....

Prior art galore. They should be laughed out of court.

As much as I love Apple: There's no way they can or should be rewarded this patent.

If you think of hypertext and hypermedia (and this is what we're talking about here), you're not just talking about the last 24 years (TBL developed the first implementation of the web 1989/1990). Read about Douglas Engelbart (Mother of all demos), Ted Nelson (who coined the terms Hypertext and Hypermedia), and the Aspen Movie Map (1978!).

Hyperlinks are a universal concept. There's more than text node "A" linking to text anchor "B" here.

Of course, you can link from text to video, from video to text, from image maps to text - and from audio to other audio. It is so evident, so basic that Apple should be laughed out of court if they tried to enforce this patent. But with the staqte of the patent laws in the Western world, I wouldn't be surprised.

(E.g., look at the Movie Clips stuff on YouTube. They do very clever, elegant video to video hyperlinks. Doing the same with audio is almost trivial.)

Nothing new.
Just more innovation-suppression against others.
Tiresome.

MacRumors said:

Apple has applied for a patent with the U.S Patent and Trademark Office (via AppleInsider) on methods for using hyperlinks embedded into audio streams that could offer content creators the capability to link to other forms of media or control a device altogether.....

"apple's-audio-hyperlink-tech-can-control-devices-with-inaudible-sonic-pulses"

Article Link: Apple Applies for Patent on 'Audio Hyperlinking' to Facilitate Accessing Supplementary Podcast Content

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Fine with me, as long as they don't mess with the audiostreams of my archival AIFF audio files.

pancakedrawer said:

Another one of those ideas that makes you wonder why nobody has thought of it until now.

This could be a great way for podcasts to link to relevant content such as news articles and for bands to link to their tour page from their album for example.

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It's all obvious in hindsight, and it's sad that the patent system forces an organization to patent such trivial things.