Does anyone else think it is kinda funny that Microsoft chose to build the video player for MSNBC in Flash, when they are pitching their Silverlight applet as their new multimedia platform?

Don’t get me wrong, Flash is definitely the way to go for video on the web right now. It’s cross-platform and YouTube helped establish it as the defacto standard. Of course, they didn’t have much choice since there wasn’t really anything out there to compete except a few clunky Java-applet implementations and old-school embedding Windows Media or Quicktime on a page (which never really worked right). But why wouldn’t they go with Silverlight and help with the adoption rate?

Oh well, thanks MSNBC. You’re just leaving the door open for us to be the first major media company to rollout a Silverlight player. And if you think we’re stupid to roll out Silverlight when all the people with it installed in their browser could probably fit in a Yaris, I ask you: do you want to reencode 20,000 videos from Windows Media? I thought so

In the next in my series of Media websites using the crappy Maven player, comes the CBC’s new episodic video player. *sigh* How are these players everywhere all-of-a-sudden? They must be significantly cheaper than their competitors (Brightcove and The Feedroom) or something, because I can’t see any other reason they would go with this as a platform. It has all the front-end functionality of something whipped up by an average Flash designer (no offense to the real Flash developers out there). I guess just having something that will play video is all they are looking for

In the advertising-space race to get full episodes online, Global TV (one of the bigger media companies in Canada) just launched their new video player with a series of promotional bumpers on TV. From the URLs of the RSS feeds (e.g. http://canwest.a.mms.mavenapps.net:80/feeds/) it looks like they purchased Media Services from Maven Networks.

Positive aspects of the player

the 4 last episodes of “Heroes” and “Survivor” online

everything is Flash Video so it actually runs on my Mac

RSS feeds of almost everything

one pre-roll ad before every clip (8 min segment) is reasonable

Negative aspects of the player

shows like “House” and “Prison Break” just have recaps online

buggy (see screenshot below – it froze that way)

no full screen (just 2X)

Flash animation effects just make it hard to navigate

I’ve seen way worse players, so I guess that makes it okay. It can deliver video at a reasonable quality, so all they really need is some more content. They have some high-profile U.S. shows I wouldn’t mind catching up on if I’m too lazy to download the torrents. But I still don’t think a TV station has nailed the episodes-on-the-web experience. Hopefully we’ll have some better offerings from the other big broadcasters in the next few months

Thanks for laying down the gauntlet, Global. I’ll see you soon

As you may have noticed, I released my first Facebook Application into the wild yesterday. Since then, a bunch of people have asked me how the Facebook platform works and what it can do. Unless I’m missing them, the Facebook developer area is lacking some of the fundamentals of building an application, so I thought I’d give a brief overview here.

Basically, there are three main areas inside Facebook that your application can play with:

1. Facebook Canvas pages which let you embed your content on a page inside Facebook accessible from the left-navigation
2. A Profile Box which sits on your profile page and is visible by all your friends
3. Your news feed which appears on your profile page, and is visible by your friends on their home page

You can build a Facebook Application using just Canvas pages without ever touching the API. All you need are basic HTML skills and a server. Using the API requires some programming knowledge and the handling (and storing) of a session key on your side.

Continue Reading…

Without getting into the exact details of why I’ve been debating this point, this article about “U.S. newspapers debate unfettered online reader comment(ing)” has been a sticking point in my efforts to bring commenting to a news organization’s website.

Faced with declining circulation, many U.S. newspapers are trying to engage readers by allowing them to respond to news stories online. But the anonymity of the Internet lets readers post obscenities and racist hate speech that would never be allowed in the printed paper.

For commenting to succeed, it has to be an honest exchange of ideas. Moderating out everything controversial betrays the contributors, and the spirit of discussion. A news organizations’ biggest mistake can be their lack of interest and/or fear in what the public actually thinks. The public’s views may be upsetting, but giving others a place to dispute them is why the web is so powerful.

I’ve been looking for an easy way to add uploading to WhyYouShould for a while now. My main problem is that I built the site completely in ASP.NET, and without buying some expensive Control (or spending months writing it myself ), it’s hard to do uploading with a progress bar. Also, it seemed next to impossible to get away from the ugly “Browse…” button.

I came across SWFUpload on Ajaxian today. The author has solved this problem (for all frameworks, not just ASP.NET) by combining the easy-of-use of Flash 8 for image uploading, with some tie-ins to Javascript. When you click your “browse” button (which can be skinned however you like), Javascript launches the file browser built into a hidden Flash file to select a file (or multiple files at once). Then, when you are ready, the hidden Flash file starts the upload and displays the upload progress. The file upload itself is done via a POST, so it will work for any web framework.

Pretty slick, eh! I know Jay is going to say, “Yah, Flash is awesome for file uploading. Didn’t you know that?”

SWFUpload

I’m been using the Zipcar car-sharing service for almost a year now and still love it. It’s great for someone like me that lives downtown, doesn’t own a car, and needs a car every-now-and-again to run out to Ikea or somewhere. Not to mention, it’s great to show a history of car insurance so my rates are lower when I do get a car

Anyhow, today Zipcar emailed all their customers with a link to a demo of their new interface that launches tomorrow. Firstly, I’m really impressed that they are organized enough to put together a whole walkthrough of their new interface (though I’m sure it’ll probably find its way onto the new site somewhere). But secondly, I think the interface is a substantial upgrade to an interface that was already “okay,” and miles above their competition.

Old interface:
The old interface was basically just a calendar “scrubber”/timeline that showed you when the cars in your area were free, after which you would use somewhat-annoying drop-down boxes to select the specific time you would like to book.

New interface:
The new interface is built around a search that let’s you browse a map of the cars in your area during the time you specify, then reserve the car right from inside the (Google) map.

You can also browse the listings of all the cars available, with the time you specified highlighted (the green bar in the screenshot below). Then, you can drag the time-window forward-and-back, and expand it to cover more time, via an Ajaxy scrubber that displays how much the trip will cost.

The improvements they’ve made look great, and I wish them luck in their roll-out This is a great example of how to roll out a major upgrade. Let your customers know ahead of time, make them excited about it, and convince them that it’s an improvement. It’s also a sign of how “Web 2.0″ can significantly improve the online user-experience with very simple enhancements. You have to wonder if Zipcar is growing faster than Hertz and Enterprise precisely because their online interface is so much better