Get ready for a wild ride of words and wackiness at the Spelling Extravaganza – it’s gonna be a spelling bee like no other!
We are putting on a Spelling Extravaganza on June 30. Please see EventBrite to learn more.
Looking forward to it!
I am creating a speedtest tool that is more reflective of reality for our customers.
To do this, I need to create a series of unique images that are approximately 1.5-2MB in size, as that is the average size of our HDS fragments.
Here is the Python script to generate a single image:
x = 300
y = 200
import png
import numpy
l = []
for i in range(0, y):
l.append(random.randint(0,255,x * 3).tolist())
(png.from_array(l, "RGB")).save('image.png')
After this, tweak and repeat.
Here is what an individual image looks like:
(Cross-posted to the Mediafly Blog)
A salesperson and client walk into a conference room. On the wall is a TV with Chromecast. The client switches the TV to Chromecast. The salesperson opens their Chromecast-enabled app, and instantly pairs with their tablet. The meeting starts, and the salesperson presents from their tablet. No wires, no fuss. It just works.
People who run meetings and present are used to wires. HDMI and VGA, along with their adapters for their iPad or Mac. All to connect to a grainy, washed out, off-color projector. Wires have to be passed around between participants. Oftentimes the adapter is mistakenly left behind and needs to be repurchased.
Chromecast has the potential to change all this, and become THE replacement for cables in the conference room.
Chromecast is a $35, 3″ device made and sold by Google that simply plugs into an open HDMI port in your TV. It connects to your Wifi and is controlled by phones, tablets, and PCs. Most technologists think of Chromecast as the cheap HDMI dongle that lets people more easily stream Netflix and a limited, though growing, list of apps. Even with only a few interesting use cases available today, and even though it launched only halfway through 2013, Chromecast has already become the #1 selling connected TV device in 2013 in the US.
But to-date Chromecast is of limited use in the office. There are three main reasons:
1. Corporate networks require additional setup
The Chromecast setup phase is challenging for most corporate networks. Chromecast devices broadcast to a specific port to discover available Chromecasts, and they respond back to the broadcaster with “hey, I’m a Chromecast and look like this.” While this works really well on home networks, it breaks down on corporate networks. Cicso has a lengthy technical note dedicated to how to overcome this with their gear, and it summarizes into the following steps:
Without these steps, Chromecast cannot even complete the initial setup phase. And few IT admins will bother to go through these steps to allow the device to function on their network.
2. Guest usage is often impossible
For guests to use it (think: salespeople, customers), the corporate network a.) must allow guests, and b.) those guests must be on the same network as the Chromecast so they can discover the device. This leads to another series of challenges that IT admins would have to solve.
3. Business-focused Chromecast app support is limited
As a Chrome Mac user, I can cast (mirror) my desktop with some effort. But these are clunky if I simply want to present a deck I prepared. I want my presentation tool to natively support Chromecast.
First, lets start with challenge #2: Guest usage is often impossible.
Google announced last month that an upcoming update to Chromecast will help solve #2. With the update, Chromecast will use ultrasonic sound to determine if a user is in the same room as a Chromecast. Once that pairing happens, the user can control the Chromecast off their mobile/cellular or wifi network from their phone or tablet, just like that.
Next, challenge #3: Business-focused Chromecast app support is limited.
Google has a beachhead into this already. The Chromecast can cast any tab within Chrome, can cast the entire desktop (though this feature is experimental), and can natively cast Google Drive/Google Docs documents. Immediately, this can overcome the vast bulk of objections of using Chromecast, albeit not very smoothly. Google can solve this further by taking the following steps:
Making screen mirroring extremely fluid, possibly with desktop extensions that don’t require Chrome and are braindead simple
Directly asking/providing incentives for enterprise software companies to add support for Chromecast into their business apps.
This still leaves challenge #1: Corporate networks require additional setup as an issue for Google to address. It’s unclear whether Google has a strategy for this, or even cares to try to solve this problem. Historically, Google has not done a good job addressing enterprise needs in what they conceive as consumer products (see their awful support and limited enterprise-focused feature set in Android, as a case study). Moreover, it’s an incredibly hard problem to solve; enterprise networks are often very tightly locked down and often very different from each other.
In a later post, I will lay out where Chromecast sits relative to AppleTV and Roku, its closest competitors with respect to use in the enterprise.
It will be interesting to watch how Chromecast evolves over the coming years, and potentially participate in its evolution. We are considering adding support for Chromecast into our products, and look forward to your feedback!
… this is ridiculous. This is only after four months.
Can you please find a way to self-update your application?
“Chicago, IL, April 03, 2013 –(PR.com)– NAB Show, held April 6-11 in Las Vegas, is the world’s largest electronic media show covering filmed entertainment and the development, management and delivery of content across all mediums. On Monday, April 8, an expert panel will address the remaining pitfalls that cause producers and distributors to resist migrating to the cloud. Placing content on the cloud heightens concerns around the secure exchange of media. This coupled with the need for reliable access to content regardless of whether you are online or offline makes this a key discussion to attend if you want to understand how these obstacles are being overcome. The panel will include the Chief Technology Officer of Mediafly, Jason Shah. Mediafly works with three of the four major broadcast networks and has addressed these issues first hand.Jason joined Mediafly in May 2010 and oversees all product management, engineering, and services. His duties include product management, platform and integration engineering, customer delivery, and product marketing. Jason brings a strong background in client engagement and software product management, with experience from Neuros Technology, Bain & Company, and Trilogy Software.
More information about the event is available at http://bit.ly/Y4wrII.
About NAB Show
NAB show hosts more than 90,000 attendees from 151 countries and 1,600+ exhibitors, NAB Show is the ultimate marketplace for digital media and entertainment. From creation to consumption, across multiple platforms and countless nationalities, NAB Show is home to the solutions that transcend traditional broadcasting and embrace content delivery to new screens in new ways. Complete details are available at www.nabshow.com.
About Mediafly
Mediafly, Inc. creates business media solutions for the Fortune 500. Mediafly joins its cloud-based content management platform with elegant native applications on mobile, tablet, connected TV devices, and PCs. Industry leading customers use Mediafly as a powerful selling tool for face-to-face meetings, as a media screening and review/approve tool for pre- and post-air media, and as a platform to deliver engaging live and on-demand corporate communications to every employee and partner. For more information, visit: www.mediafly.com.”
This post is for those of you who are intrigued by web services infrastructure providers. For the rest of you, apologies.
Amazon is arguably the leading cloud infrastructure provider, through its Amazon Web Services subsidiary. Tens of thousands of companies, from startups to global giants use or have used AWS. In fact, the largest users of AWS include banks, pharmaceutical companies, and technology companies like Netflix (and of course Mediafly). Amazon.com itself makes use of AWS, as a way of eating their own dog food.
But apparently not everything has made that transition. In the process of installing the Amazon App Store onto a new ASUS Transformer Prime tablet, I was sent an email from Amazon with a link to download the App Store application to the tablet. The link is:
https://www.amazon.com/app-email
which redirects to:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get-appstore/android/ref=mas_em_dl?dl=1
which redirects to:
https://amznadsi-a.akamaihd.net/public/Amazon_Appstore-release.apk
Even Amazon App Store, one of Amazon’s most visible new initiatives, is using Akamai’s CDN to distribute media over the web, and not Amazon’s own Cloudfront CDN.
(Cross-posted at Mediafly.com.)
We at Mediafly have a unique perspective on media consumption. We have straddled consumer- and business-targeted media the entire year, and our conversations with customers and peers have given us a unique perspective on what each kind of customer wants. Looking back, our predictions were fairly accurate, though they were made in private.
This year we’d like to change that. Below are Mediafly’s predictions for 2012.
My morning and late day ritual usually consists of checking email then logging into Google Reader and scanning through RSS feeds to which I subscribe. Given my interests, most of these RSS feeds tend to be technology-oriented in nature.
April 1 invariably ruins this ritual. For some unknown reason, tech news sites and blogs simply love posting fake news articles on April 1, mixed in with their normal articles. They seem to think their audience loves this sort of idiotic bantering. I would link to them, but I don’t want to support this endeavor in the least; you can, however, witness the lunacy on TechCrunch, Slashdot, and even reputable news sites like CNET and NPR. Even sites I normally enjoy specifically for their straightforwardness, like Signal vs. Noise, join the fray, with terribly awkward results.
Come on people, stop the madness.
Normally I leave work between 6 and 7 every day. Yesterday I left at 5:30, so I could get a run in before the sun set and it became cold.