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December 10, 2006
YouTube, FLV to SWF
YouTube, FLV to SWF: Reports this weekend are that YouTube will grow from just delivering FLVs in a SWF skin, to taking deeper advantage of the SWF format itself... Jacqui Cheng reported at Ars Technica yesterday that a new YouTube page (members only) now offers webcam capture... in effect, we're moving from just casual video viewing, to also casual video creation. (Sidenote: I particularly appreciate this phrasing from Jacqui: "The Quick Capture tool uses an Adobe Flash Player API to connect to the user's webcam. The user must first grant the Flash Player permission to use the camera and microphone -- and must do so every time -- before using the service.") Last year the world took sudden sharp notice of FLV... now we're starting to see that focus shift to the rest of the format's capability, already available on the world's installed base of computers. Check out the TechMeme commentary, above, for some ohmygod moments... Pete Cashmore points to another new YouTube preview, where viewers can chat in realtime while watching a video. When the focus shifts from FLV to SWF, the world moves from merely viewing, to actually doing.
Posted by JohnDowdell at December 10, 2006 07:09 AM
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Comments
Mike Downey brought the news into AXNA first, and Abdul Qabiz has a list of features.
Posted by: John Dowdell at December 10, 2006 08:28 AM
Vince Veneziani at TechCrunch also describes the underlying technology accurately: "Just visit the URL, fill out your description, tags, and other information, and then allow the Adobe Flash applet to access your webcam."
(It's important to use that capitalized "Adobe Flash" when an article first refers to the technology -- people try to clone the engine, but without the same actual capabilities -- it risks harm to universal runtimes when articles use generics like "flash". Formal publications need to use trademarks and such, but for informal weblog work, the full brand name is a minimum. Anyway, I was just reading, and appreciated how Vince handled it.)
Posted by: John Dowdell at December 10, 2006 11:32 AM
Interesting... :)
I've done something similar half years ago at my last job and one of the subset can be seen at the YouCaster site... Thought that I'd share the URL... ;)
CyanBlue
Posted by: CyanBlue at December 18, 2006 06:49 AM