[As Apple sees it the] biggest issue with RTSP is that the protocol or its necessary ports may be blocked by routers or firewall settings, preventing a device from accessing the stream. As the standard protocol for the Web, though, HTTP is generally accessible. Furthermore, no special server is required other than a standard HTTP server, which is more widely supported in content distribution networks, and more expertise in optimizing HTTP delivery is generally available than for RTSP.

Enter HTTP Live Streaming. The basic mechanics involve using software on the server to break an MPEG-2 transport stream into small chunks saved as separate files, and an extension to the .m3u playlist specification (.m3u8) to tell the client where to get the files that make up the complete stream. The media player client merely downloads and plays the small chunks in the order specified in the playlist, and in the case of a live stream, periodically refreshes the playlist to see if there have been any new chunks added to the stream.

This is in contrast to real-time streaming, as there would necessarily be a minimum latency of whatever duration the server slices the stream into (Apple refers to 10 seconds as an example). As the server encodes the video and slices it into 10 second clips, for instance, it creates or updates a playlist for the stream with the URL of the next clip. The client begins by downloading one or more of the clips, playing them in order. As one clip plays, the client begins downloading the next specified clip until it reaches a tag in the playlist that signals the end of the stream.null

This idea sits poorly with me. The whole HTTP as the new TCP/IP has lot of ramifications people often don't discuss . Given the 33% to 66% failure rate of WAFs we as an industry obviously fail at deep packet inspection. Not to mention the resource overhead of delivering audio and video on an IP/TCP/HTTP/Video stack instead of IP/UDP/RTSP stack. I'd love to see a comparison given various network conditions of latency and loss. On AT&T like the iPhone is? You know those dropped or spotty calls? Thats AT&T consistently failing to deliver you the *compressed* equivalent of a POTS line (8 bits at 8000Hz).

Good luck with that.

Apple proposes HTTP streaming feature as protocol standard - Ars Technica

Scott Jehl has released jQuery Visualize, the plugin that groks HTML tables and generates lovely charts from it, all from a simple $('table').visualize(); (lot's of options for you to twiddle too if you want).

This is damn cool!

On a side note, when will Firefox get a "right click open in Excel" for HTML tables? That is one of the only reasons I open IE anymore.

Ajaxian » jQuery Visualize: Updated accessible charts and graphs

Screenjelly is not as bad of a company name as "Goojet" but it still sounds pretty sketchy...

Screenjelly - Home

Many of the people over at BarCamp are working on/struggling with the transition from programmer to entrepreneur. WSo here’s a few observations:

-Code is 5% of your business
-Design is everything, relative to the competition
-Get used to thinking long term
-Admit that you don’t understand the end user and rectify that
-Love your customers
-Remember to design for ease of use. Even advanced users like easy.
-Remember to bounce your ideas off people who aren’t working on the project
-Don’t be afraid to pull things out
-Patience is a virtue
-Treat it like you are learning to program all over

10 Tips for Moving From Programmer to Entrepreneur

Someone (incorrectly) sent an email to a huge distribution list inside of HP software asking a question (where huge is defined as > 600 employees). Now *everyone* is using "reply to all" to tell everyone to either:

1) Take them off the mailing list
2) Stop using "reply to all"

Outlooks has been hanging for 20 minutes trying to download all the messages...

This is Bretarded!

Update: The pain has ended after 163 "Reply to All"'s

Update 2: Crap. Just got 13 emails from people in EMEA who are just getting into the office, seeing this, and... REPLYING TO ALL!. You'd think 170 messages in their mailboxes would be a hint... I think whats happening is they are opening Outlook, and only a few messages download before they decide to reply.

I am so not opening Outlook in the morning...

More Using 'Reply to All' To tell people to Stop replying to all

Q. What is this research about?

We studied the assignment scheme of Social Security numbers (SSNs) and discovered that individual SSNs can be predicted entirely from public data. Specifically, we found that it is possible to combine information from government sources with simple demographic data (such as an individual's state and date of birth, widely available from commercial databases, voter registration lists, or online social networks) to predict narrow ranges of values wherein individual SSNs are likely to fall.

Reminds me of the great work Partner in Crime Virgil Griffith did back in 2005 on deriving mother's maiden name from public records.

Predicting PII

XPath is like the mustard to Regex's sexy ketchup.

Someone (incorrectly) sent an email to a huge distribution list inside of HP software asking a question (where huge is defined as > 600 employees). Now *everyone* is using "reply to all" to tell everyone to either:

1) Take them off the mailing list
2) Stop using "reply to all"

Outlooks has been hanging for 20 minutes trying to download all the messages...

This is Bretarded!

Update: The pain has ended after 163 "Reply to All"'s

Update 2: Crap. Just got 13 emails from people in EMEA who are just getting into the office, seeing this, and... REPLYING TO ALL!. You'd think 170 messages in their mailboxes would be a hint... I think whats happening is they are opening Outlook, and only a few messages download before they decide to reply.

I am so not opening Outlook in the morning...

(continuing past mantras...)

Opinions are bullshit unless they are customer opinions.

“I think Sarah Palin is on the verge of becoming the Miami Vice of American politics: Something a lot of people once thought was cool and then 20 years later look back, shake their heads and just kind of laugh,” quipped Republican media consultant Todd Harris.nullnull

HA! Miami Vice...

Sarah Palin resignation splits Republicans - Jonathan Martin - POLITICO.com