Evoca helps Adobromedia

Just reading Mike Arrington's blurb on Evoca. Here's my thrupenny bit : (it was going to be a comment, but it got long enough for a blog post I think 😉 )…

I think they've done another great job with Flash Media Server. The socapp stuff and pips are nice and what you'd expect these days.

You've been able to do this stuff for a while with Flash Communication Server (they changed the name recently) – record audio. And you can do alot with videos too (see Stickam.com : another group of FMS widgets manifested).

Now we're seeing the FLV format break into the mainstream, thanks to the great On2 codecs (and the great work from the WildForm Flix team) and YouTube and GoogleVideo etc. It lowers the barrier to entry for web video, as there are so many Flash players out there granted: for web use, though.

Adobromedia must be feeling quite happy the way things are panning out, what with Flash video and also the slowly solidifying mobile platform they have.

What we now need are Flash apps like this, that enable easy media recording and publishing on devices like the Origami. Then, we will see some incredible things happen. It will be so easy to create and share multimedia, that we'll need better ways to store, organise and share that which we will all consume and create so readily, in the future.

WordPress updates WYSIWYG

I noticed before the weekend that WordPress seemed to hav updated
the WYSIWYG textarea to 'do' the popups in the same window in a 'div',
rather than popup a new window. Nice.

The trouble is, things like linebreaks seem to be going screwy here. Even though I delete them and
don't see them in the source viewer, they still stay there!! Argh!!!
Away, damn tags!!

I'm building a blogging /podcasting system over here for our blogs and podcasts over on podcast.com (yes yes,
coming soon!) and was looking around at WYSIWYG editors. I noticed that
Wordpress uses TinyMCE from MoxiCode, which is the best I have seen so far. Very nice. Also I have been
looking at Flash versions, as I do alot of the rest of the posting procedure using Flash ie: uploading (though I did find a very
interesting Pecl module for progress bars etc) I've started using one
called FlashTextEditor which is nice and also supports image insertion, as well as the usual
styling stuff. but it's still not as nice as TinyMCE.

I think we might get in touch with MoxiCode to see if we can use it
on
podcast.com. Scanning the licence, we should be able to do so. And also
that will fall nicely in line with some of the other stuff which I have
built for the system which I woul like to get out in the open (source) if we make some mods and sods.

Back to Boston

Off back to Boston tomorrow to see the gang. Also for some more
important meetings which I hope can help us gain a bit more traction
here (and over there —mm.. transatlantic…). Still finalising
things. Need to sign things. Show me the money! Heh.

Hope fully
we'll also get a chance to pop down to New York to see someone there
who has been interested in what's brewing over at podcast.com 😉 

Future of The Web : Sir Tim Berners-Lee

This is a webcast of Sir Tim in Oxford recently (we were supposed to be going – but ultimately coudn't make it) talking about the Future of The Web. 

Abstract:
The development of Web technology has
been an exciting ride, a series of socially motivated technical
innovations some languishing, others catching on in a viral way. As
each development has suggested many new ones, and much of the original
vision is still unfulfilled, there is a lot to do. This talk will
discuss new challenges and hopes for weblike systems on the net.

Retro Skype Handset

Just found this cool old-fashioned Skype phone via Jaanus. I use a Hulger at my desktop (and sometimes out in the garden
on the laptop) . I like the old school style. But unlike this Bakelite
styled phone from Digital Cowboy, the Hulger doesn't have a cradle
'body'.

Whereas the Hulger P*PHONES are actual audio devices which you hook
up as you would any microphone or headphone, in an audio jack, the Digital Cowboy 'USB Classic Telephone' is a USB (1.1) mic. (site in Japanese)

I've
been after an old-style phone for while now (there's place up the road
from here that sells them in Islington), but what i really want is a
Batphone that lights up too! Maybe Digital Cowboy will make one? I think they would sell like holy batcakes, Robin! 🙂

Off to Zummerzett

We’re off now for a well-earned break back home in the countryside with the folks. Hurrah! They now have broadband and wifi! Time to teach my parents about podcasting. Yay! 😉

Origami is childsplay

Now, I’m not in the habit of posting links to videos of young girls playing with toys, but this time I’ll make an exception. WhatIsNew’s Lora has posted a video interview she made with her 12 year old, after spending the day playing with the TabletKiosk Origami mini-tablet PC.

This is great! And this is why I think this device is going to make a huge impact to alot of people. Not just kids. There are ‘executive’ models on the way and the one in the video is one of the prototypes.

Very impressed with the corner-placed thumb keyboards for input without the stylus while holding it in both hands.

Also, I can’t wait to try some of my fullscreen Flash kiosk applictions on that device! Cool!

Bonus: Hop on over to channel9 and watch Otto Berkes, who is the architect (now general manager) behind the Ultra-Mobile PC team, code-named Origami, give Scoble all the nifty details.
Excuse all the double-entendres! 😉 Heh.

Hey check out the metachannel9guy!

“Woke Up, Fell out of bed, Dragged a comb across my head”

..said The Beatles. This article about How To Become an Early Riser is pretty good. Although I’m hardly the earliest riser, I totally agree with the feeling of goodness and productivity when I do. I get alot done in the evenings too (currently pulling about 14 hour working days – at least) and as I am in London, and the rest if the guys are (mostly) in Boston, I find myself living an odd timezone. But it’s OK. When it gets warmer here, I’ll sit outside on the wifi in the sun 🙂

Google River Of News

Google Reader’s ‘feed-splicing’. Why don’t they call it a Reading List anywhere? Nice though, that they have a JavaScript snippet to be able to pump a mini-rivulet through your blog template – mmm : expect to see alot more of this soon. Microformats.

Calendars and OPML

Cool! I just got something I think is pretty cool working here. Based on a blogging system I started a long time ago – which I then just used to store links (pre del.icio.us) [we use them and their simple urls on the Bluggcast – as simple urls are easier to say on a podcast than the whole kaboodle] – I have been looking at building a calendar to browse the links (or blog/podcast posts if I switch a database table – as they both work the same way). Archive lists are OK on blogs, but I rather like calendars.

I mulled over the idea of whether if was worth learning to build a calendar and eventually decided it was. And boy, was it. At least three other applications for it just appeared out of thin air. Not only that, but as I had first created it in HTML, with higlighted days of activity and the like, I was then able to reeeeally easily evolve that script again to provide the data sets back and forth to a Flash interface, using OPML! Hurrah for OPML! The whole client takes OPML. It eats OPML for breakfast.
THEREFORE, ladies and gentlemen, an(other) API contender has emerged too. Double-hurrah! OPML based too. As Herr Viner vould say: bingk!

Time based feed grazing anyone? 😉