This could be useful if I've embedded a player with embed.ly and then want to control it from elsewhere on the page (say, have a big "play" button somewhere).
I haven't decided yet, but I am leaning toward open sourcing it.
Embedly seems like a great service. I haven't started using it yet, but it's definitely on my roadmap of things to do. A service that does a simple but incredibly important thing for you, without you having to worry about it.
From the embedly blog