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Ok.. so the title infers that Wowza has not yet arrived there.. but they have indeed.

I have recently been working on a project to extend a current media server offing. We looked into 3 main offerings, Flash Media Server, Wowza Media Server, and Red5 Media Server. As you may well assume we settled on Wowza.

We have many reasons for choosing Wowza from price to stability to innovations coming out of that talented group. But one item stands out in my eyes as a make or break for a product, that being support.

Some time after I wrote the origional article about Flex 3 SDK and Eclipse working together I came across a build process that I prefer to the one I wrote about with using ant for compiling. I will quickly run through how I build a project using this new method. I will be borrowing code from my last article seeing as it is closely the same with a few differences for building the project.

Yesterday I was determined to get lighttpd configured for python. When I did a search I got results that talked about hooking it through fastcgi and having a script start up the python process on a certain port etc...

I ended up looking around for hours and could not get it to work.

I finally consulted a well configured server for a client and discovered how they do it.. and if I had known ahead of time.. I could have had it done in about 10 seconds.

I thought I'd share so others could avoid the endless searching which brought me frustration.

I wrote a short tidbit on how to install FMS 2 and 3 on Ubuntu.. I may as well continue the pattern.

FMS3.5

I picked up the patch file here: http://www.joeterranova.net/2009/01/30/flash-media-server-35-on-ubuntu/

So to layout the process:

# install dependencies
sudo apt-get install libnspr4-dev

*NOTE
If you're going to let the Flash Media Server installer install Apache at the same time you'll need to run a few other commands.

Make sure you have the libexpat library installed:
sudo apt-get install libexpat1

Without much fanfare Adobe has released the new versions of Flash Media Server 3.5 and the Flash Media Encoder 3.0 today.

Let me quote a good friend of mine, Flashcomguru.com on what he summed up for Flash Media Server 3.5 and Flash Media Encoder 3.0:

I had done a demo application at the Adobe Max conference I spoke at dealing with a video chat application on Facebook. I decided to go ahead and flush it out implementing RTMFP and posting it officially on Facebook for usage. It can be found here: http://apps.facebook.com/eye__to__eye

It's an application that allows you to video chat with anyone one of your friends. Both friends need to have application loaded at the same time and they'll be able to video chat with one another.

I just ran across this method of how to be able to apply "normal" effects like transparency to dynamic text in flash 9. Of course using flash 10 this isn't an issue but for those of us that have to use flash 9 for some cases this really is a life saver.

http://www.rabidgadfly.com/index.php/2008/10/14/making-alpha-work-on-as3-dynamic-text-fields/

The meat of it is essentially setting the BlendMode of the textField to something other than NORMAL.

A little late on this post but hey.. better late than never!

So I was asked this year to speak at Max! I was pretty excited. The process to get ready for speaking felt much like a college course from getting outlines together, turning in rough drafts, etc. All in all it went well and because of that I think it improved the quality of the presentation.. (go figure :) )

I was asked to speak on.. ready for this? "User-Generated Content and Social Media APIs"

Just like everyone else on tech side of the web I too was waiting the availability of chrome, Googles new browser. I did install it and it worked wonderfully like they had touted. From the minimalistic approach to design to the new way tabs are handled in their own process.. it was great. I was pretty excited about it and planned to use it on my mac and linux boxes when it came available.

I just stumbled across these today.. and after reading over them find them quite insightful.. I thought I'd post them here. You can also find them on his blog here: http://bp.bobparsons.com/gdshop/bp/gear.asp?ci=8283

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone.
I believe that not much happens of any significance when we're in our comfort zone. I hear people say, "But I'm concerned about security." My response to that is simple: "Security is for cadavers."

2. Never give up.