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SXSW 2010: Fun with HTML5 video
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Editorial, Features, Internet,
RealAudio and ultimately Real Video was the original, old school audio and video compression used on the Internet during the early Web 1.0 days. No doubt that Web 2.0’s rise in popularity was caused in part by YouTube and the ability for its users to easily send video up to a server and have it transcoded and streamed on the fly - without the need for expensive programs like the RealMedia server set.
YouTube leveraged the Adobe Flash technology, which in its infancy, would show only cartoon like video, then incorporated codec, or software decoding support for television like motion video. This has been the standard for video distribution on the Internet, but requires support for software, and only lately has incorporated decoding within hardware. Notably the iPad and iPhone are two such media devices that do not have flash media decoding support due to a long feud between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Adobe. Jobs calls flash a CPU hog, and a claims it would cut battery life on his devices from 10’s of hours to just an hour if it was supported. Instead, he and many others hope to see HTML5 take a rise to prominence.
In this SXSW 2010 session, Christopher Blizzard, director of developer relations with Mozilla, and Michael Dale, lead developer of the MetaVid project and WikiMedia foundation, go in depth on what HTML5 has to offer as it pertains to video on the web.
Click to continue reading SXSW 2010: Fun with HTML5 video
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Adobe answers Steve Jobs and his thoughts on Flash on iPad and iPhone
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Handhelds, Software, Videos,
Our pal Robert Scoble sat down with Anup Murarka, the Director of Technology Strategy and Partner Development for the Flash platform, and asked him about his thoughts on the perception that Steve Jobs has been giving to the press and consumers regarding Flash. You know, thinks like that it is a battery killer, crashes all the time, etc. Anup talks about Flash being implemented on mobile devices, their public bug tracker, and the significant enhancements in Flash 10.1 that seem to be overlooked.
It all sounds good, but still, don’t expect to see Flash running on your iPad anytime soon.
Apple releases Family Travel iPhone ad
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Handhelds, Software, Videos,
Apple recently changed directions just a bit with the iPhone commercials, which now feature voices of people in different roles talking about the apps they use during certain experiences. Case in point, the latest ad, titled ‘Family Travel.’ It’s got a mom talking about using various apps to check flight status, check in right on the iPHone 3GS, watch movies, and even turn off the lights at home, remotely. Good approach, wouldn’t you say?
YouTube kills IE6 support on March 13
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Google, Internet,
Internet Explorer 6 needs to die, and anyone sensible will agree with that statement. That’s why we are big fans of the major web publishers that are doing their part to hasten that demise, like that Google is doing with YouTube on March 13th. According to them:
Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won’t work in older browsers.
In the image above, you see that YouTube now features instructions on how to upgrade to a more modern (and more competent) web browser when they detect you are using an older browser, like IE6. Also, it’s not just YouTube that Google is doing this with, as IE6 support for Google Docs and Google Sites ends on March 1 as well.
Read More 
| YouTube Support via Ars
What is Google Voice? A video explanation
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Google, Internet, Videos,
Google Voice, formerly GrandCentral before Google acquired it, has been around for a few years, but the company is really just now starting to push the product hard. They’ve put together a great channel on YouTube that describes each major feature (like voicemail transcription, personalized greetings, SMS to email, the mobile app, and more) individually, but we figured we’d throw the Google Voice overview up there so give you a taste of what we mean. Hit up the Google Voice YouTube channel to check out the rest of the video series, and to request an invite to the service.
Hulu coming to the iPad?
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Internet, Rumors,
When Apple introduced the world to the original iPhone, YouTube wasn’t part of the equation, but in the weeks leading up to launch, Steve Jobs revealed that YouTube would in fact have a dedicated app built right in to the iPhone and that the company had started the task of re-encoding their videos to H.264 format, which plays nice with the device. Fast-forward to today, and we are hearing similar rumblings as it pertains to Hulu and the iPad.
The biggest complaint we are hearing about the iPad is that it lacks Flash support, which means that a device that seems to be perfect for watching videos on Hulu, has no way to actually accomplish that task. However, it seems that Hulu is already hard at work on an iPad-compatable version of the site. Now, we don’t know if this is actually going to be a Hulu app, similar to what YouTube has on the iPhone, or if Hulu is simply switching up it’s Flash player and adding support for HTML5. The nice thing here is that Hulu has been using H.264 compression in their videos since the beginning, so the only real change that needs to be made to be iPad-compatable is to allow videos to be played outside of the Flash player, and HTML5 solves that perfectly.
At this point, we wouldn’t be surprised if a week or two prior to the launch of the iPad, Apple let’s us know that USA-based iPads will ship with Hulu supported from day one.
Read More | TechCrunch
Vote on Your Favorite Super Bowl Commercials
Posted by K.C. Morgan Categories: Specials, Sports, Commercials, Video,
It’s hard to sit through an entire Super Bowl - and the commercials - without taking a break or making a kitchen run. If you missed any of the commercials, or want to see them again, YouTube is offering a channel where you can catch all the in-between game highlights.
Viewers can vote on their favorite advertising spots and share the videos on the social network of their choice.
Read More | You Tube
How awesome is the iPad?
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Handhelds, Videos,
In case you didn’t watch that iPad introduction keynote, someone’s gone through the trouble of condensing the entire 93-minute event event into 180 seconds. It does a great job at explaining what Steve Jobs and company think of their latest creation. Check out the iPad announcement video above to see what me mean.
A little excessive?
First iPad Apple tablet review
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Handhelds, Rumors, Videos,
Oh, we knew the Apple tablet / iPad / iSlate would be good, but we didn’t think it’d be this good. Walt Mosspuppetberg got his hands on an iSlate, and has been using one for a couple of years as it’s gone through its various development cycles. He finally breaks his silence with this review, stating that “this is probably the most completely perfect product to ever be released.”
Wednesday’s Apple tablet event can’t come soon enough!
YouTube launches opt-in HTML5 video player
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Internet, Software,
YouTube has just launched a new experimental HTML5 video player, which would replace their Flash player for supported videos. Flash has long been seen (with good reason) as a resource hog, so switching to the HTML5 browser should show a dramatic performance increase. One user reported a resource drop of over 50% when using the HTML5 player when compared to the Flash version. You can get in on the action, as long as you are using either Google Chrome or Safari 4.0 or above (although we’ve heard that it also works with recent versions of Firefox.) The only catch here is that videos with ads, annotations, and captions will still play in the older Flash player, and you won’t get fullscreen support. Of course you can try it out, and if you don’t like it, you can just turn it off.
Read More | YouTube HTML5 Video Player
