.PLAY Your Stuff (April 14, 2008)

Nope, that’s not a typo. “.play” is the new file extension for Freepath’s portable playlists. You version 1.0 Players will recognize the idea, but we called it a “GoFile” back then. Here’s how it works.

Playlists in Freepath are really a bunch of links to the actual files on your hard drive or URL’s from the web. When you make a cue (usually done by dragging the files into Freepath, or by using the “Import” button on the toolbar), those thumbnail images in your open playlist “point” to the actual file. When you think about it, just sending pointers to another person wouldn’t help much if the file still lives on your PC.

The Freepath 2.0 Export function packs up all those items in your playlist into a .play. Freepath will give the file the same name as the original playlist, for example if your playlist is named “History101″, the exported file will be “History101.play".

There are three ways to export. Use the File:Export menu. Right click on the playlist in the Library, choose “Export". Click the “Export” button over the preview window.

We have always felt that in this world of social computing, there has been a fairly large gap in the area of presentations. That’s what Freepath’s playlist-centric world view aims to facilitate. It’s all about sharing. (Back in kindergarten, you did it through show and tell, now that you’re all grown up, you can show, tell and pass your files around.)

Ideas that stick. When it gets right down to it we’re, all of us, trying to influence or inspire, sometimes outright change our audiences; right? When you press your ideas into this thing commonly known as a “presentation", you run the risk of becoming a matter of history as soon as you leave the building. Those who .play their presentations have the added ability to leave behind any of their assets as an easy to transport file. Since Freepath 2.0 is a free download, anybody in the audience with a Windows PC can open and relive the magic of your playlist. We think that’s the way it should be.

Of course, you’ll want to abide by all rules governing the use of copyrighted materials. But that’s all pretty simple: find out what the work’s author or artist wants, (usually attribution, or cash) and give it to him or her. And it goes without saying, if they don’t want you to spread their stuff around, well… don’t.

Next time I’ll tell you about how Freepath makes it easy to stream lists of online videos without having to download and convert them.