Pied here refers to two or multiple colors, and that's how that Piper was dressed like. It was initially used to refer to the black-and-white magpie, and later evolved to indicate anything that are colorfully jumbled.
The Pied Piper was original hired by citizens from that town to help them get rid of rats. All his effort was in vain when the town folks refuse to pay. Irritated and furious, the rat-catcher started to play hypnotic notes that lured all the children in Hamlin. They followed Pied Piper out of the town, and never came back.
There are theories that the legend was based on historical events, as BBC observes, a grim truth.
The legend is then adapted into art works, literature, music, film and TV series. The legend is then adapted into art works, literature, music, film and TV series.
Pied Piper in Linguistics: Pied-Piping
In Linguistics, the legendary Pier Piper’s nature of attracting others was borrowed to describe a phenomenon in Syntax: a Wh- word can drag its containing phrase to move along with it, when it is put to the front of the clause.
This phenomenon is called Pied-piping, in a way that metaphorically compares Wh- word to the Pied Piper that lures the phrase away with it.
Pied Piper Interface and Its Mock-Ups
Here is the fictional home page of Pied Piper, to which the official twitter account of Dropbox has offered its congratulations.
Below is the interface of Pied Pieper’s compression tool. The screenshot was originally hosted here, but it is no longer accessible along with nixing of the domain.
The UI/UX design of the compression tool triggered valuable discussions from fans who are UX designers, product managers, developers and people from other related segments.
Most UX designers would agree that the interface will be intimidating for general users, and that the layout and parameters seemed too “engineered” for non-techie persons to proceed. They suggest to keep only the file type and format, the Let’s Go button, and couple of easy-to-understand options, while moving other parameters under an “Advanced” button.
Following these interesting discussions, there are mockups of the official mockups – pun intended.
Above is the reimagined design of Piped Piper by Niteesh Yadav, a London based designer. It adds sidebars to streamline the workflow, with visual signs that better demonstrate the storage saved and the current speed.
You can explore more Pied Piper mockups and see how different designers reconcept the UI/UX of this compression tool.
Data Compression in Pied Pieper and Beyond
The first turning point in Silicon Valley occurred when Hendriks accidentally discovered the importance of data compression. In real life, we can never stress enough the significance of data compression, be it online streaming or for archiving purposes.
Compression in the Story: Middle-Out Algorithm and Weissman Score
Is Middle-Out algorithm real? For anyone having an interest in data compression, this hyper-realistic detail in Silicon Valley is enchanting. However, the algorithm and its high compression rate are yet a reality in everyday life.
The good news is, the Weissman Score depicted in the show moves to reality. This made-for-TV-algorithm was applied to assess the compression performance. It compared the compression ratio and processing time with existing applications, so as to evaluate the performance of the application in question.
Profession Weissman and Doctor Misra are the brains behind Weissman when requested by Silicon Valley’s creator Mike Judge.
Compression in Real World
In real world, data compression in general refers to the process to reduce the bits used in multimedia, such as videos, images, audio and other files according to Wikipedia. For instance, a 4K video may have a bitrate of 36 Mbps, while a 720p SD video merely has 5 Mbps.
With a more efficient encoding algorithm, media file size can be reduced significantly, with or without perceivable quality loss. For instance, HEVC H265 is claimed to save up to 50% compared to H264 compression. The key improvements accounting for the efficiency are related to block size, block partitioning structure, parallel tool, frame prediction, and sample adaptive offset.
Here are some of the popular video compressors:
FFmpeg: It is a command line based, free open-source tool for video and audio compressing, transcoding, and simple editing. Users need to be familiar with FFmpeg commands to get the work done.
Handbrake: It offers a GUI over FFmpeg, so that users unfamiliar with command line tools can feel at home. It uses the RF value for quality control when adjusting the bitrate. There are options to enable 2-Pass encoding and Turbo first pass.
Shutter Encoder: It was the brainchild of passionate video editors to streamline the production. Users can tweak with multiple parameters to achieve desired bitrate. It includes the support for the latest codec such as VP9, AV1, and H265 that are efficient in video compression.
Being a popular TV series, the Pied Piper metaphor is quite popular among tech publications. SaaS and platforms that offer compression services are often compared as the real life Pied Piper. There are also Pied-Piper-inspired projects.
Piper Pied (Discontinued): It is a creative spin of Peter Ma and Nancy Ghaly, the brother and sister team that claims to develop a lossless image compression algorithm. They take it to the Hackathon, and built a site for it. As of 2022, the website is shut down.
Terark’s Pied Piper of Database: The algorithm can save database space by compressing data, while making it still searchable. It is developed by Terark’s CTO Lei Peng, and has won a $1 million contract from Alibaba for its Cloud service.
Related Blog Posts
- ± 3 min read± 3 min readSafe Network is the real-life Pied Piped from “Silicon Valley” coming to life. In this interview with the #SAFENetwork’s team we get to know about the project, what is it, how it’s developed, and more. Have you ever wondered:
- ± 1 min read
- ± 2 min read± 2 min readWelcome Armant’s can’t don’t to the Svelte reference documentation! This is intended as a resource for people who already have some familiarity with Svelte and want to learn more about using it. If that’s not you (yet), you may prefer to visit...