June 14, 2010

Cloud storage without bandwidth costs

"We need to store on the cloud but be able to control our bandwidth costs"

Our client generates around 100 GB of video for the web every month so looking for cloud storage was a no-brainer.

We needed an "unlimited" size hard drive but didn't need a CDN service, and it was specially important to control our costs, at least initially.

Here is how we achieved the goal.
Continue reading Cloud storage without bandwidth costs.

By fernando on 9:41 PM | 4 Comments | No TrackBacks

May 5, 2010

Kevin Rose and the flash player

I'm a diggnation fan. I try to watch it every wednesday night. Today i watched episode 253 in where Kevin Rose (digg's, wefollow's, etc. founder and web entrepreneur) talks about his experience with the flash player on mac and his thoughts on Steve Jobs' letter regarding the same topic.

I thought it would be a good idea to share his thoughts with the flash community that doesn't follow diggnation and try to contribute to his opinions.

NOTE!!

I haven't transcribe every word but just resumed the idea to introduce my comment so don't punch me in the face about that. Comments in bold are Kevin's and the rest is mine, sorry about the confusion.


flash - at least on a mac - has sucked ass for years. ... flash crashes at least 3 times a day on google's chrome browser

I'm a mac user and could not agree more. I didn't find the same "flash experience" under osx that i used to find on my old pc. Chrome crashes a lot because of flash. I don't remember firefox crashing but it's been a while since i used it so i could be wrong. I don't think we are in a position where we could blame flash though. We don't know the inner workings of the integration between the plugin, the browser and the os. (Will try to get a comment from Tinic Uro on this)


there is no hover state on touch interfaces

There actually is a hover state. It's not the best or most clever state but there is. Web apps are still not designed for touch interfaces by default yet. html/css/js (standard stuff) lacks on this too. As Steve Jobs says, we need to rewrite our apps with touch interfaces in mind. This is not a flash thing is just how technology is innovating.


open standards can do pretty much whatever you wanna do now

html5 has a long way to go. We need not only a definition of a standard but a good implementation of it. If i could take the decision i would make webkit the "de facto" for all browsers. html5 capable browsers doesn't have much penetration yet and please lets not get into the "best viewed under XX browser" era again.

Regarding video streaming, there is no multibitrate streaming in html5 nor DRM. We can't control a "buffering" state in html5. Although "live streaming" is possible with h264 (the proposed video codec by google, apple and microsoft) it's more of a hack than a true streaming.


h264 is hardware accelerated for the device

I suggest everyone under mac osx 10.6.3+ to download flash player 'gala'. It has hardware acceleration for h264 decoding. Why adobe just implemented it? because apple didn't gave the necessary api to do so. Flash player under osx has a lot of restrictions not because adobe doesn't care about removing them but because they don't have the right tools for it. Not all h264 content can be viewed on the iphone os.


flash is a cpu hog

It is (see my comment above). Sometimes is not flash player's fault but the developer's. The thing that fascinates me about programming languages is that there is more than one way to make smth. In flash, some developers abuse of components and behavior panels and they end having cpu hog applications. Same thing happens with .net and the same thing will happen to html5 soon.


iphone apps built by flash not allowed on the iphone OS

The common thing about true coders is that we want to take advantage of the latest API available. If flash lags on the implementation of new apis i'm sure developers will move over to another platform. I think we have the right to chose. Flash is not the one using a compatibility layer for this effect.


As an interactive developer i welcome html5, silverlight, etc. only good things come out of competition. We should be in an open environment where technology could compete and get better.

Thoughts?

--fernando

By fernando on 10:32 PM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

October 4, 2009

How to install: flvtool2, flvtool++ and yamdi under Centos

Last week we had the need to test out flvtool2, flvtool++ and yamdi to see which one suited best for us. Today i thought it would be cool to show you a step by step on how to install them under Centos (the OS we use and recommend for servers).

Continue reading How to install: flvtool2, flvtool++ and yamdi under Centos.

By fernando on 10:38 AM

September 18, 2009

Timer with a pause and resume

I needed the ability to pause the Timer class we have in ActionScript3 so i created my own TimerAdv class which extends it. I tested it on the environment i needed so i'm posting it here for everyone to test it out. Hopefully if i get the chance to properly test it out it will be part of the inca framework.

UPDATE I found via a comment on this post that theres a solution for this same thing done with a very similar logic and older than mine. You can find it here . I didn't base my logic on that post but what a coincidence. I guess great minds think alike, huh?

Continue reading Timer with a pause and resume.

By fernando on 7:31 AM | 7 Comments

September 8, 2009

Updated: Get current week of the year

I'm a nerd and so i like to play with code on my free time. Two days ago i went thru this post where there is a discussion on how to calculate the current week of the year. Here is my try:

Continue reading Updated: Get current week of the year.

By fernando on 7:22 PM | 3 Comments

August 25, 2009

Dear Apple

Dear Apple, i'm your sincere fan. I own a couple of ipods, some laptops, spend sometimes too much on your app store on both of my iphones (1st gen and 2nd gen), scroll fast to the next story when i read someone blaiming your app store app approval process and recommend your products to the people i care most (family, friends and clients).

I'm writing you this post, cause i'm really sorry that one of your new partners are making me desire to go back in time and buy that nice black blackberry they offered me instead of your newly 3g white 16GB iphone.

Continue reading Dear Apple.

By fernando on 7:38 AM | 1 Comment

August 21, 2009

Online Interview with Dominic Sagolla

Dom helped create Twitter and the Obama '08 iPhone App. He is also founder of DollarApp, co-founder of iPhoneDevCamp, and author of 140 Characters in San Francisco.
Continue reading Online Interview with Dominic Sagolla.

By fernando on 8:44 AM | 2 Comments

July 29, 2009

Postbox email client

I've been looking for the perfect email client for me since ever! One of the email clients that i have tried is Postbox .

Continue reading Postbox email client.

By fernando on 7:38 AM

July 24, 2009

Tiny UID Algorithm generation

There are lots of web services that offer link shortening. The tiny uid they create is what fascinates me. A google search didn't throw any good info so here it is an algorithm for you to use.

Continue reading Tiny UID Algorithm generation.

By fernando on 5:27 AM | 7 Comments

July 22, 2009

Attention conditional playback

It always happens to me that while i'm watching a movie on netflix i get distracted by something else on my screen. I thought it would be cool if the movie only played back if i had my attention on it. Here is a quick test of how this could be implemented.

Continue reading Attention conditional playback.

By fernando on 12:56 PM | 1 Comment