July 8, 2008
Flash Job In Flashlog
This wins for the most creative job posting I've ever seen, certainly better than my Brightcove top ten list a year ago. (Although Brightcove is where you should apply of course.) If you view a blip.tv player, you'll see this:
Showplayer initializing...
__---__
_- _--______
__--( / \)XXXXXXXXXXXXX_
--XXX( O O )XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-
/XXX( U ) XXXXXXX\
/XXXXX( )--_ XXXXXXXXXXX\
/XXXXX/ ( O ) XXXXXX \XXXX\
XXXXX/ / XXXXXX \_ \XXXX----
XXXXXX__/ XXXXXX \_---- -
---___ XXX__/ XXXXXX \_ ---
-- --__/ ___/\ XXXXXX / ___---=
-_ ___/ XXXXXX '--- XXXXXX
--\XXX\XXXXXX /XXXXX
\XXXXXXXX /XXXXX/
\XXXXX _/XXXXX/
\XXXX--__/ __-- XXXX/
--XXXXXXX--------------- XXXXX--
\XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-
--XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-
(128)
Hello there, Flash cowboy!
If you can read this message, you should apply for a job at blip.tv.
Send an email to careers@blip.tv with your resume and make sure to
let us know that you saw this message.
Love,
The blip.tv dev team
Very amusing. Flash video players seem to have a habit of leaving amusing messages.
Posted by Brian at 7:07 PM
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June 17, 2008
A Shiny New Brightcove
Brightcove announced today the beta of a new set of tools and features. Most interesting for the readers here is the article on Techcrunch, where you can see a tiny picture of one of the Flex applications. As I mentioned here in a previous post, there's a lot of interesting AS and Flex working going on here. And someday soon you'll be able to see more than a little image of it!
June 9, 2008
Please Ignore the Blog Mess (aka Want a Freelance Job?)
So I haven't played around with the design of this site in a long time, and while it's a pain to do in Movable Type, I figured it was time to do some damage. Apparently I did a little too much damage while watching the Celtics game tonight, as I managed to completely mess up my setup.
I had a backup, but Movable Type's odd linking structure has left me with a few missing files. So now I'm stuck with an odd-looking blog until I find the time to fix things. It's better than the default look, as long as you don't look at the bottom of the front page. (You looked, didn't you?)
On the subject, if you have or know someone with the following four characteristics:
- CSS knowledge
- know Movable Type or are willing to put up with a wacky templating system
- a good knack for design
- free time
Send me an email at bdeitte at gmail dot com with your rates. Obviously I can't spend a fortune on a free blog, but with my lack of time, I'm more than happy to pay for someone else to clean up my mess (and then make it much better).
May 29, 2008
The Making of a Platform with Adobe Technology
Brightcove is using Flex and Flash in many significant ways to make a video platform, and I thought it'd be interesting to some people to share some of the uses. I can't share a lot, but I can take the information from a keynote presentation by Ashley Streb at Webmaniacs 2008. You can also see the full presentation embedded at the end of this post.
The scale of things at Brightcove is something that drives a lot of what happens with Flex and Flash at Brightcove. From the slides:
135 Million Unique Users/month (as of 6 - 9 months ago) 1.5 Petabytes (1,500,000 GBs) of media delivered/month Thousands of platform users, hundreds of major media brands, 50 television networks, newspaper and magazine publishers, and all the major record labels in the US.
All of these users and media go through the Brightcove players, which have AS1, AS2, and AS3 versions in hundreds of different permutations. Some of the data on the AS3 versions from the slides:
ActionScript 3, AVM2 AMF3 as client/server communication protocol ~70K LOC written
There's nothing too surprising in there, but there's some more interesting size information in the slides. Keeping down the size helps the performance, and there's been a lot of work by Todd Yard (and others) on making the players faster and faster for the 135 million (or whatever the current number is) users.
The players and videos are managed by manager applications that were created with Flex. When some of your customers have thousands of videos and thousands of playlists of videos, the management becomes... tricky. The slides touch on some of the ways this happens:
AVM2 Structure server API; initial view, lazy load, different types of DTOs Make clients intelligent about their needs Datagrid presentation strategies
I'm sure there's some questions on some of the above, like the datagrid presentation strategies, but I'll have to expand on them another day. These business applications have some other data points on them that I can share:
Flex 2, AVM2 Flex vs. ActionScript vs. DHTML AMF3 as client/server communication protocol Cairngorm as micro-architecture ~100K LOC written, 150 Commands FlexBuilder as IDE/Developer Tool FlexUnit for unit testing Homegrown integration tool
There's a lot more in the slides below, including info about Brightcove as a service, code layout, the use of Scrum, our Java setup, etc. If you'd like to hear more about any of this, just comment or send me an email.
March 3, 2008
The Brightcove Office Invasion
It doesn't have the Golden Girls like the Flex behind the scenes videos, but Boston.com came by the Brightcove office a few weeks ago for a video about development hell and Paris Hilton.
In other Brightcove news, check out a new use of Aftermix, with pages to create and view mashups on snow.com. It's the first off-site use of the application.
I haven't been working on Aftermix lately, but there's a lot of other interesting Flex work going on here... just nothing I can blog about yet.
Posted by Brian at 8:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackNovember 28, 2007
Links on the Brightcove.tv Upload Shutdown
Since I am a part of the Scrum team that is making the changes to brightcove.tv upload, it's been very interesting to read all the blog posts about it. I'll leave the comments on the changes to those at a higher payscale, but here's some links:
Ryan Stewart asks about Aftermix, and I really wish I could comment on this one.
Mashable wins for most hyperbolic title. Company to follow? Huh?
Jeremy Allaire clarified the changes, making sure it's clear that this only affects consumer uploads on brightcove.tv.
And just posted is a thoughtful article from Jeremy Allaire and Adam Berrey talking about the changes in Internet video.
November 24, 2007
Mashup Culture
I noticed a new talk by Lawrence Lessig about mashup culture (found on nwebb.co.uk).
Considering how often I mention Aftermix here, it's impossible not to mention Lessig at some point. He's writen a lot about remixing, with perhaps the most well-known commentary in an article in the Washington Post on Star Wars and Eyespot.
Lessig isn't the only person talking about remixing, of course. There's even videos on the subject, such as A Fair(y) Use Tale. And there's people talking about Lessig as well, such as the always-interesting Convergence Culture blog. My own opinion on all of this? It's definitely something I like reading about... how's that for a non-answer? :) A lot of people enjoyed making Avril remixes, and I certainly didn't feel like a sharecropper making my mix, and so I'll leave it at that.
November 18, 2007
The Future of Brightcove and Aftermix
There's a interview on videonuze.com with Jeremy Allaire. It has a lot of interesting information about Brightcove's positioning and future.
Also, as perhaps a few of you have noticed, Aftermix has ended it beta run on brightcove.tv. To quote, "While the beta program has officially ended, you'll soon be able to use Aftermix on many sites throughout the web." So you'll have to wait a little bit, but I'll let you all know where you can next mash things up.
October 13, 2007
I'm doing Javascript work now
It's been a bit too long since my last update, but blogging keeps getting pushed down on the TODO list. I have a long post on components in the works, but I wanted to post something else in the meantime to get myself back on the blogging horse.
So it's true that I'm doing Javascript right now, although it's just for a week before I head back to Flex-land. But it makes for a great headline, no? This past week, I delved into innerHTML and the rest of the Ajaxy world that I've never been in before. I did this to help create some HTML pages for work, and in the sprit of Scrum, this was a task that I volunteered for. I wanted to learn the basics, and it's been pretty easy to do so. One thing I've enjoyed in my scripting is the instantaneous nature of the changes- there's a noticeable difference between waiting less than a second and waiting up to five seconds to see a change. One thing I haven't enjoyed is, well, Javascript. I've been spoiled by AS3.
What else have I been up to, technology-wise? Well, MAX was not one of those things, although I really wish I could have gone. I didn't keep up with the mountain of blog postings last week, but I did read a lot of the great posts on Thermo. I'm waiting to see the code generation before I know how excited to get.
Aftermix is still going strong, and in time I'll be able to talk about some very interesting changes ahead. And Brightcove is going strong, with lots of big deals and news lately. Brightcove is a great place to work, and if you're a Flex/Java developer/QA looking for a job, send me an email at bdeitte at brightcove dot com.
September 13, 2007
Invite-free Aftermix on Brightcove.TV
You can now play with Aftermix without an invite by going to the welcome page. It's still in beta, but let me know what you think. The welcome page will take you to the contests for Avril Lavinge, Mashers of Horror, and Big and Rich.
You may also notice that this is a link to brightcove.tv and not brightcove.com. You can read more about Brightcove.TV on the Brightcove blog or on Mashable.
Posted by Brian at 10:15 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBackAugust 21, 2007
The Future of Flash Video
Adobe just announced support for H.264 in the Flash Player.
What does this mean? For a short primer on H.264, see Apple's page on the subject. For the technical overview, check out Tinic's extremely detailed post. Now I'm not going to be able to sleep, as it's time to go read Tinic's post closely and salivate over the details.
August 19, 2007
My Slides From 360Flex
The slides from my presentation on Aftermix and Video at 360Flex:
You can also download the PPT from slideshare.com by going to their site and clicking on "Download file". The slides have a lot of notes in them, as I tried to keep the slides themselves concise.
Thanks to John and Tom for putting together a great conference. Thanks to effectiveui for the boxers that made me laugh when I finally saw the joke ("don't just focus on the backend"). Thanks to Jeff Tapper and Mike Nimer for getting a bunch of interesting folks together for dinner on the last night. And thanks to all the people who stuck it out for the last session on the last day to see my talk.
Junk Comments
I was just trying to catch up on this blog by answer comments in Using Resource Bundles in Flex and Embedding HTML in a Flex application when I had my new comment show up as a Junk Comment in Movable Type. Err, that's not good.
If anybody has posted on this site and didn't see their comment show up, please email me at brian @theurlyouseeabove.com or try to repost it. Sorry about that.
Also, if you're looking for the slides from my presentation at 360Flex, I should have them up here by the end of the day.
August 9, 2007
Aftermix on Mashable
Things have been very quiet on the Aftermix front lately, but if you have access to the beta, you should notice a few bug fixes today. On the news front, there was a lot of interest on Mashable for getting invites.
Want to hear more about Aftermix or about video in general? There's still space at 360Flex in Seattle next week. I'll be speaking at 4pm on Wednesday.
July 27, 2007
The Best Aftermixes So Far
Two Brightcove interns, Rene Dongo and Oliver Anderson, have put together a list of their favorite Aftermixes and favorite Avril Aftermixes. Here's some highlights for your Friday clicking:
A Buzzword QuickDemo. There's something very meta about this use of Aftermix.
concaf lionel richie. Just wait a bit with this one... someone had way too much fun with audio commentary.
LOLCATS Supermix. The meme may be over, but the cats live on.
Avril Aftermix. The main bug mentioned in the comment in this video is fixed.
CSS' Birds RMX. I just like the flying dogs.
Intern War. This epic was created by another Brightcove intern, Max Gold. This will also be the basis of some upcoming Aftermix tutorial videos we're releasing.
July 25, 2007
Remixing and Complexity
Here's two articles I've been thinking about lately, especially in how they relate to Aftermix:
Posted by Brian at 12:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackJuly 8, 2007
Brightcove On HBO
I was just watching Entourage and saw the Brightcove player in a fake TMZ video. Watching it on a tiny TV, I was squinting to see if the icons were the Brightcove ones. It was was, uh, an interesting video to have Brightcove showcased.
Update: And here's a clip of the show, now on TMZ.
June 26, 2007
Aftermix, Invites, and Remixer
Ryan Stewart, who keeps growing on his uncanny ability to find stories, posted a link to the Aftermix invite form in a blog post last week.
We won't be allowing everyone into Aftermix for the short term as we still work like mad on the beta version. But I hope everyone still fills out the form to check this out, and I'll also be posting a way to make sure your request is selected. (And sorry but it won't be a Flex quiz.) There's also the invites at 360Flex.
Last but not least, a very late congrats to the team at Adobe for the Remixer app on YouTube.
May 23, 2007
Buzzword, FlexBox, and Transformers
Too much work and too little blogging. Here's a catch-all post to catch up on Flex things.
I've seen Buzzword, and... wow. Congrats to the Flex team there. I'm most impressed by the details, the way that little things just work.
The news is old, but I'll still point out that FlexBox has been updated. It's an excellent way to find new Flex components.
And related to FlexBox, since the IFrame component is on there, is that I've finally responded to the last month of comments on Embedding HTML.
And Transformers. What does Transformers have to do with Flex? I could make up a metaphor here about the versatility of Flex. Or make an awful joke about Flash being more than meets the eye. But really, I just wanted to be a geek and embed this:
The movie looks a lot like all the rest of the Hollywood action films in recent years, but it's Transformers. The ten year-old kid in me is very excited.
Lastly, as a non-Flex update, there was an update to brightcove.com last night, but I'll wait to post more on this, as I can't yet talk about any video mixing part of this update.
May 8, 2007
Details Leaking Out on Aftermix
Details on Aftermix have been slowly emerging, and Anthropomedia points to two of them in a post on Brightcove's Aftermix. For the MediaPost video mentioned, go to the 35 minute point to see Jeremy Allaire's demo of Aftermix. Or you can check out the early support video.
I can't comment on the blog post's questions on the underlying business model, but I can briefly comment on the blog post's suggestion that Aftermix is half-baked right now. We have a team here that includes people who previously worked on Flex, which is the development technology for Aftermix. This Flex group includes me, and you can also see that I went to Brightcove seven months ago. Hopefully I've been doing something since then. :) I wish I could say more, but that's for another day. In time, on this blog, you'll hear more about the fully-baked version.
As for the version of Aftermix shown in the videos, a lot has changed (and is better) in our local builds. To let out one detail, the tab navigator is gone. Those of us who have seen too many Flex applications that look alike will appreciate this.
May 2, 2007
Looking for More Flex or Flash QA (and Developers)
Do you want to test or develop a video player that's viewed millions of times a month? How about working on a brand-new video editor? Brightcove is looking for more Flex and Flash people to work on brightcove.com. We're looking for both QA and developers to work on Aftermix, the site's video player, and more.
Check out my previous post, Top 10 Reasons to Work at With Flex Brightcove, for some Aftermix-focused reasons to check things out.
You can ask questions or email your resume to work AT brightcove DOT com. And you can always ask me questions at bdeitte AT brightcove DOT com.
Brightcove Widgets From Yourminis
If you look at the bottom of the right-hand column on this site, you'll now see this yourminis widget:
It's displaying the top videos on Brightcove.com, but you can change it to display videos from different categories. You can also change other properties, as I changed mine to fit into the column's width.
See the original Brightcove widget here.
On a side note, since most people are still coming here for Flex information, I wanted to point out again that I have RSS feeds for both the Flex and video categories. But I'm happy if you keep reading all my ramblings.
April 22, 2007
Snacking with Henry Jenkins
Henry Jenkins wrote a contrarian post about the conventional wisdom on the video snacking culture. While I agree that snacks can be good for you, I found it hard to swallow (if you'll excuse the pun) that we only have more snacks now because "the menu itself has gotten longer". The menu may be longer, but I don't see it expanding at a uniform rate, as the shorter form has taken over the Web.
On the subject of Henry Jenkins, if you're interested in online media, you really should be reading his blog. I don't find the time to read most of his posts, and I found it amusing that he joked about their length in his latest post. But his blog posts, which take a lot more brain cells to read than the average item in my aggregator, are worth a read.
I first heard about Henry Jenkins six months ago when I was starting out at Brightcove. I was trying to find books and blogs on new media, and I picked up Convergence Culture. I really liked the book and highly recommend it. I hope to write some longer thoughts on the book some day and how some of the ideas apply to Aftermix.
April 16, 2007
Brightcove's Planned Support of Silverlight
Brightcove is now planning to support Silverlight in addition to Flash video.
I'm just posting this to give Ted Patrick and Scott Barnes the opportunity to have a "discussion" on the matter. :)
Back to Aftermix work, which yes, is still in Flex 2.
April 15, 2007
CBS and More from Brightcove
I don't usually publish details on the content deals from Brightcove, as it would bore almost all of the geeks reading this blog. And writing the daily posts would put me to sleep as well. But as a wide-ranging deal, the CBS deal is pretty interesting. Brightcove also provided some interesting hints of future possibility in the press release:
Brightcove will feature ad-supported CBS video channels on its popular consumer destination, Brightcove.com. Fans of hit CBS programs will be able to post comments and interact with other viewers, remix content through interactive editing tools, and share videos through personal channels on Brightcove.com. For long-form CBS content, Brightcove will also provide a full-screen theater-mode viewing experience.
March 28, 2007
A Major Brightcove.com Update
Now you can tell the world what you think about the latest TMZ video on brightcove.com. (If you admit to watching TMZ videos, of course). As of early this morning, Brightcove entered the world of spam and "first post!" with a commenting system on video pages. I already see a lot of amusing comments (and user thumbnails) on the site.
A lot of other changes were included in the update to brightcove.com, including a major performance increase, more ways to browse for new content, a fix for view counts, and a list of the newest videos. Sorry, but no Aftermix yet.
Posted by Brian at 8:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBackMarch 12, 2007
Brightcove is Now Twittering
You can get video diversions here.
Posted by Brian at 10:37 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBackMarch 2, 2007
Random dog videos- dailydogvideo.com
After watching a bunch of cat videos at a meeting today (don't ask), I figured it was time to create a post about a little project I've helping with, http://www.dailydogvideo.com
It's simply one embedded dog video each day. I had the idea for the site after watching way too many pet videos on brightcove.com and other sites. It has only taken a few hours to set up, and my girlfriend Betsy is running with the site, selecting the videos and making sure everything goes smoothly.
The site features videos from any video site, although I nudge Betsy into selecting more of the Brightcove videos. You can subscribe through email or RSS, which is updated, you guessed it, once a day.
February 27, 2007
Aftermixing at Brightcove
Today at the Adobe Engage event, Jeremy Allaire showed a little bit of Aftermix, an unreleased video mixing application from Brightcove. I'm very excited to see all of the posts and discussion on Aftermix and its possibilities, especially since I have my hand in the making of this Flex 2 application. Here's a roundup of what others are writing about Aftermix:
A GooTube lookout from David Berlind.
Jeff Barr writes about Aftermix, consumers, and the video-snacking culture.
Kristen Nicole suggests that Brightcove keeps quality first.
Everyone's favorite prolific blogger Ryan Stewart has a post.
Mashable has a post with a title we can all agree as hyperbolic, Brightcove Launching AfterMix - Pulls Ahead of YouTube?
James Governor's post asks Brightcove to remember the 'roots.
February 21, 2007
YouTube's Hidden Anger for the Play Button
This was too amusing not to post* and a reminder to make sure no traces show up in a production SWF. Below is the trace output from an embedded YouTube video. In the middle of the output: "showing the goddamn play button".
Constructing movie
Warning: onStatus is not a function
Ending the movie is :_level0.tube.movie
constructing MovieController:undefined
timer.seek_total_timeundefined
regular:undefined smal._xstart:undefined
constructing EmbedSoundController:undefined
setting movie
setting the movie video_id:1AH9VEM_qC0 base_url:http://www.youtube.com/
DIFFERENT loading :undefined vs http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=1AH9VE
M_qC0&t=OEgsToPDskKQgp5rypS4WQ0olAuex1N1
registering controller to:_level0.tube.movie
registering sound to:_level0.tube.movie
controller movie is:_level0.tube.movie
show v:100
showing the goddamn play button
sw:425 sh:350 rw:450.55 rh:356.1
resizing to:425:350
resizing to:425:318.75 ratio:1.33333333333333
overlay: 425,318.75
end_screen: 425,318.75
actual size of movie is:425:318.9
resize width:425 bg offset30.55
moive_width:425 w:425 mx:0
px:undefined py:undefined
fiting image to:425:318.75 actual:425:318.75
we loaded the image
*Yes YouTube is a competitor in some ways to the company I work for, Brightcove, but it's certainly not meant as a dig at them!
February 18, 2007
Jobs' Thoughts on DRM
Steve Jobs has sparked more conversation on DRM in music with his Thoughts on Music article. I'm sure this article will percolate into the conversations on video DRM (or creators' rights).
Macrovision, a copy prevention company, responded to the article. And daring fireball posted an amusing response to Macrovision's letter.
February 10, 2007
Random Videos Redux
I was just looking at my awstats for deitte.com and noticed that a lot of people are finding the site with the search terms "random videos". If you search Google for random videos, you'll see this post in the top 10! It's the first time I've seen that a lot of people are coming to the site for video info.
Time for a few more random videos:
The YouTube (or Brightcove) Gotcha Game
How to Shotgun a Bottled Beer
Nintendos are Hot
A lot more random Brightcove videos can be found on the Brightcove Video Addict blog.
February 1, 2007
Personal Channels on Brightcove
You can now create your own personal channel on Brightcove and upload your own videos to it. Just register and you can start uploading and marking your favorite videos.
One thing I've noticed is that an uploaded video takes a few minutes to show up on your page, so don't think that your upload failed if you don't see it right away. There's a few quirks, and there's some features that I'd like to see, but it's a good start. I especially like the inline editing.
I'm not sure how this monkey got on the Internet, but check out his page.
Posted by Brian at 3:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBackJanuary 26, 2007
Random Videos
Gus And Chippy A favorite of my mine from the Brightcove Pets channel. I think you'll be able to guess which dog is Chippy.
Cat Opening a Door The first step in global cat domination.
More from Barak Obama Another in the long-line of videos from candidates, but I liked the quality of this one.
A Very... Uh... Interesting Person Fast forward to 7:00. The digg comments about this video are hilarious.
I'm not planning to post a lot of Brightcove videos here, but you may see a few more random videos from time to time. On the topic of Brightcove, PBS and PC Magazine have recent articles about online video and Brightcove.
January 17, 2007
Brightcove Raises $59.5M in Financing
Yesterday, Barak Obama announced his run for the presidency using Brightcove.
Today, Brightcove announced the completion of a major round of private financing for $59.5M.
Tomorrow, I expect to see the announcement of Jeremy Allaire's 100M war chest and presidential run.
Well, perhaps not, but I'm very excited that Brightcove has obtained this financing and that the company can continue to grow. It means we can keep working hard on and investing in the interesting projects you'll see in the year ahead.
December 31, 2006
About This Blog
Hi, I'm Brian Deitte. I currently work at Brightcove, where I develop Flex and AS3 applications. Previously I worked at Adobe (through Macromedia through Allaire). I worked on Flex for more than two years, from Flex 1.0 to Flex 2.01.
You can subscribe to this blog through this RSS feed. There's more feeds (including a Flex-only feed) in the Category Feeds post.
If you'd like to say hi or have an interesting idea to share, please send me an email at brian at deitte.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Are you wondering how you pronounce Deitte? Say "be it", but with a "d" instead of a "b".
Last updated: 6/15/2008
Happy New Year
A Happy New Year to all! Between a trip around the world to a new job to so much else, this has been a very interesting year for me. I hope everyone has a good year ahead.
Posted by Brian at 12:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackDecember 18, 2006
Time Tells the YouTube Story Through Brightcove
I love the fact that the "YouTube: The Early Days" video (as part of the Time Person of the Year feature) uses the Brightcove player.
Top Ten Reasons to Work with Flex at Brightcove
We're still in need of Flex developers and QA for an exciting project at Brightcove. In the spirit of Ted Patrick, here's my top ten list for working at Brightcove:
1. First off, I'd like to stress that you don't have to know Flex. Knowing your UIComponents would be helpful, but we're more interested in your ability and willingness to work on a Flex project. In other words, we're interested in athletes more than experts.
2. It's a new project, which means that you get a lot of say on how things work in the development and testing environments. You'll be on the ground floor of a new project and the first floor of a growing company.
3. Work with Flex 2 every day, all day.
4. Work directly with three former members of the Flex team. This includes Sean Neville, who was writing about Flex more than three years ago and me.
5. Work close to a lot of excellent Flex, Flash and Java developers. This includes one of the authors of the AS 3.0 Cookbook, Keith Peters, Flasher extraordinaire Sam Robbins, and a swath of people who've helped build J2EE servers.
6. It's a project that Jeremy Allaire is excited about. He'll come by occasionally and ask about the project.
7. My HR one-liner: Brightcove has a good set of medical, dental, 401k and other benefits.
8. You won't have to see any more posts on this site about the subject. I can't help but try to get more people on board to the project I'm on. Like the threat in an NPR fund drive, you could make the world a better place and help me get back to more insightful posts by working here.
9. Brightcove is all about video, video, video. The online world is currently abuzz with video. Wouldn't you like to work with video?
10. Have you seen the view out of our office at One Cambridge Center in Kendall Square?
Apply by emailing your resume to resume to work AT brightcove DOT com or finding the job through the career site. And if you have any questions for me, I'd be more than happy to answer them at bdeitte AT brightcove DOT com.
December 17, 2006
An Ajax Look at Flex, New TV, and More
Three groups of links for your Sunday reading:
1. Andy Budd has a fascinating post on going to the Flash on the Beach conference as an Ajax developer: The Lion's Den (found via Aral Balkan) Having lived in Flex-land for too long, I always find it interesting to hear a perspective, positive or not, from someone in the majority group of Web development. To quote: "The thing that excites me the most about FLEX 2.0 is how similar it is to standards based development. You have an declarative XML-based mark-up language to build the UI. You can then add style in the form of CSS and behaviour using the ECMAScript based Actionscript language. Cool huh?"
2. I saw the newwteevee.com blog after a post on Brightcove's user upload feature. I'm now a daily reader, as the blog is the best place I've found to read about everything happening with online video.
3. The folks at Jive Software (founded by fellow University of Iowans) have had a number of good posts about software companies, the latest being about creating an open organization.
December 5, 2006
Ryan Stewart on Brightcove
Ryan Stewart has a glowing blog post about Brightcove on his ZDNet blog. Even if you know about Brightcove already, it's a great article to read to get a few more ideas about it. I also see that Ryan has updated his mugshoot... Ryan, you look much older and balder. :)
Amusing Support Videos
I actually enjoyed watching these support videos. That's scary. The current version includes an interviewing video character, pancakes, and Buddha:
Here's the rest of the support videos.
November 22, 2006
Brightcove Holiday Lights
Take a look at the top floor of One Cambridge Center:
I shall never divulge the names of the conspirators, but there was a number of people here working to get this done yesterday. It may need a video running out of the rest of the windows to make it MIT-worthy, but having the font look like the Brightcove font is a nice touch.
Picture taken by David Adler.
November 19, 2006
Full-Screen mode on Brightcove
Brightcove videos now have a full-screen mode. You can enable this by clicking the maximize box in videos, like in the fish-eating turtle one below:
Here's the video I originally wanted to embed in this post, but apparently I can't get the embed code on all videos on brightcove.com. I assume this is a publisher option, and hopefully more publishers will understand the importance of enabling this.
November 5, 2006
Brightcove in Newsweek
Jeremy Allaire has a excellent interview about Brightcove in Newsweek. Also, as long as I'm in the Brightcove-article-linking mood, I'll mention a lengthy post on what Brightcove is (and isn't).
October 30, 2006
A good time waster for today: brightcove.com
Check out brightcove.com for lots of video goodness. The site was consumerized, and you can now view videos through a popularity ranking or microchannels. The Horror Channel is a good one for this week.
There's a lot more to today's launch, including the ability for anyone to launch a Brightcove channel, AdNet, website affiliates, distribution through AOL Video, open APIs, and lots more that you can read about in this article. There's also a barrage of press today.
It's been exciting starting at the company at this time (and quite lucky). It has, however, meant that I haven't gotten to meet everyone yet, as there's a lot of people who have been working around-the-clock to get this all out.
If anybody is wondering, I promise to get back to some technical posts on this blog. Next up will probably be a post about my current experiences with Flex.
October 24, 2006
Brightcove looking for Flex developers and QA
Brightcove is looking for developers and QA for an exciting, new Flex 2 project. This is the project that brought me to Brightcove, so you'll be working with me on creating an application that focuses on video on the Web.
We would love Flex experience, but if you're just starting down the path of Flex and want to keep learning more, we're definitely interested as well.
The positions are based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To apply, please see the links below or send your resume to work AT brightcove DOT com.
Software Engineer: http://tbe.taleo.net/NA4/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=BRIGHTCOVE&cws=1&rid=116
Senior QA Software Engineer: http://tbe.taleo.net/NA4/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=BRIGHTCOVE&cws=1&rid=112
Posted by Brian at 12:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBackOctober 22, 2006
Pay media on Brightcove (but not with Flash)
I noticed that the lastest update to Brightcove's services includes a beta of pay media services for distrubuting your content to everyone for a price.
As I would have guessed, the pay services require the use of Windows Media Video. Hopefully in time Flash video will have a good, non-streaming solution to DRM. It is something that's often discussed and worked on.
Posted by Brian at 6:22 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBackOctober 21, 2006
Category Feeds and Other Updates
This blog went through an overhaul* today, with a new look and new feeds. If you only want to read about Flex now, you can use this feed:
RSS 2.0 (Flex category only)
If you're coming here for video and Brightcove information, then use this feed:
RSS 2.0 (video category only)
And all of the posts are still available on this feed:
RSS 2.0
Also, unrelatedly, I've been asked by a few people if I'll be at MAX this year. I won't be there, as I'll be diving into the new job. I'll just have to drink with everyone another day.
* I updated Movable Type to 3.3, which was surprisingly painless. The snazzy new CSS styling is from Lilia Ahner. The category feeds were figured out from Anders Jacobsen's blog.
Posted by Brian at 5:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackOctober 12, 2006
Heading to Brightcove
I'm leaving the house of Adobe and heading out to sea. I've decided to join Brightcove, where I will be working on a Flex application and helping the push towards Internet TV.
It was not an easy decision- I've worked with many great people during my six year stint in the Boston office, and Adobe is an excellent company to work for. But I've gotten very excited about the job at Brightcove and what the company is doing.
I plan to still stay involved with Flex at some level, as I think it has a very promising future. This blog will now talk about Flex as well as Internet video. Separate RSS feeds will be set up soon.
To end with, here's part of the email I sent out to the people I work with:
It was beer-o-clock on Friday that I finally realized that I'll soon be leaving here for good. More than six years ago I came here, and I couldn't believe that I got to work on JRun, a product I was already using. We put out a few releases, decided dung beetles weren't a good idea for an advertisement, and then scattered. I ended up on ColdFusion, where Damon put Erik and me to work on eeking out performance improvements, and where I got to give a code name to a product (RedSky). From there it was on to Royale, where I saw many parts of Flex. I went from RemoteObject advice from some Scottish voices to arguing web services with Tom Ruggles to SWCs and Flex Compiler Core.
I would mention all the people who stick in my mind over the years here, but that would take up all the time I need to still finish my last feature... but I do want to say thanks to everyone. I very much appreciate all the friends (and products) that have been created in my time here.
Posted by Brian at 5:08 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack