Earlier this morning for a brief moment, Google posted the specs on Chrome OS, as well as some download links. Like most new Google stuff, it had a clear BETA label, and since the page has now been pulled I thought I’d re-post what I saw here:

Chrome OS is a brand new free operating system built around the revolutionary Google Chrome browser.

The project aim is to provide a lightweight Linux distribution for the best web browsing experience.

Featured software in Chrome OS:
GNOME 2.24 desktop environment
Google Chrome 4.0.223 web browser
Google Picasa 2.7 photo manager New!
OpenOffice.org 3.0 office suite
GIMP 2.6 image editor
Flash Player 10.0 plugin
and much more!

System requirements of Chrome OS:
Processor: Intel Pentium, Xeon or newer; AMD Duron, Athlon, Sempron, Opteron or newer
RAM: min. 256 MB
Hard disk: min. 1 GB
Graphics card: supports most modern graphics cards

Those details came from this page, so if you’re interested keep checking back there!


UPDATE: Don’t get too excited; I’m told this is simply a fan-built Linux distro with Chrome bolted on created using SUSE Studio.

The latest and greatest from the folks over at the Fedora Project Fedora 12 has just hit the beta stage (download link at the bottom of the post).

I’ve decided to write a post for the occasion because quite simply, I’m darned impressed with what they hope to accomplish for the new release, which is due out November 17th (of 2009 of course).

This post is going to focus on some of the highlights of the new release that I really think are great, but you can find the full lengthy feature list over on their wiki.

I’ll preface this list by saying, I’m not sure I am 100% on board with everything below, and I’ll go into detail on next week’s Computer Action Show. But that said it’s a strong list with a ton of great stuff.


OK kids, buckle up… Here we go:

* Optimized performance – All software packages on 32-bit (x86_32)
architecture have been compiled for i686 systems with special
optimization for Intel Atom processors used in many netbooks but without
losing compatibility with the overwhelming majority of CPUs. There is a
list of the rare CPUs which will no longer be supported.


* Smaller and faster updates – In Fedora 11, the optional yum-presto
plugin, developed by Fedora contributor Jonathan Dieter, reduced update
size by transmitting only the changes in the updated packages. Now, the
plugin is installed by default. Also, RPMs now use XZ rather than gzip
for compression, providing smaller package sizes without the memory and
CPU penalties associated with bzip2. This lets us fit more software into
each Fedora image, and uses less space on mirrors, making their
administrators’ lives a little easier. Thanks to the Fedora
infrastructure team for their work in generating delta RPMs.


* NetworkManager broadband and other enhancements – NetworkManager,
originally developed by Red Hat’s Dan Williams, was introduced in Fedora
7 and has become the de facto network configuration solution for
distributions everywhere. Enhancements to NetworkManager make both
system-wide connections and mobile broadband connections easier than
ever. Signal strength and network selection are available for choosing
the best mobile broadband connection when you’re on the road. Bluetooth
PAN support offers a simple click through process to access the Internet
from your mobile phone. NetworkManager can now configure always-on and
static address connections directly from the desktop. PolicyKit
integration has been added so configuration management can be done via
central policy where needed. IPv6 support has also been improved.


* Next-generation (Ogg) Theora video – For several years, Theora, the
open and free format not encumbered by known patents has provided a way
for freedom-loving users to share video. Fedora 12 includes the new
Theora 1.1, which achieves near-H.264 quality, meeting the expectations
of demanding users with crisp, vibrant media in both streaming and
downloadable form. Thanks to the work of the Xiph.Org Foundation’s
Christopher “Monty” Montgomery, sponsored by Red Hat, other Xiph
developers, and the contribution of Mozilla.org, Firefox 3.5 can deliver
free media on the web out of the box, using the Theora video and Vorbis
audio formats even better than the previous release of Fedora.


* Graphics support improvements – Fedora 12 introduces experimental 3D
support for AMD Radeon HD 2400 and later graphics cards. To try it out,
install the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package. On many cards, this
support should allow desktop effects to be used. Kernel mode setting
(KMS) support, which was introduced on AMD hardware in Fedora 10 and
extended to Intel hardware in Fedora 11, is now extended to NVIDIA
hardware as well, meaning the great majority of systems now benefit from
the smooth, fully-graphical startup sequence made possible by KMS. The
Fedora graphical startup sequence now works better on systems with
multiple monitors. Also on multiple monitor systems, the desktop will
now automatically be spread across all monitors by default, rather than
having all monitors display the same output, including on NVIDIA chips
(where multiple monitor spanning was not possible without manual
configuration changes in Fedora 11). Systems with NVIDIA graphics chips
also gain initial support for suspend and resume functionality via the
default Nouveau driver. Initial support for the new DisplayPort display
connector has been added for Intel graphics chips. Support for Nvidia
and ATI systems is already under rapid development and will be included
in the next release of Fedora. Thanks to the Red Hat Xorg team including
Adam Jackson (X server), Kristian Høgsberg (Intel driver), Dave Airlie
and Jerome Glisse (Radeon driver for AMD), and Ben Skeggs (Nouveau
driver for NVIDIA).


* Virtualization improvements – Not content with all the improvements in
Fedora 11, we’ve kicked virtualization based on KVM up another notch in
Fedora 12. There are extensive improvements in performance, management,
resource sharing, and still more security enhancements. A new library
(libguestfs) and an interactive tool (guestfish) are now available for
directly accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images.


* Automatic reporting of crashes and SELinux issues – Abrt, a tool to
help non-power users report crashes to Bugzilla with a few mouse clicks,
is now enabled by default. Abrt collects detailed information
automatically and helps developers identify and resolve issues faster,
improving the quality of individual upstream components and Fedora. The
SELinux alert monitoring tool has also added the ability to report
SELinux issues to Bugzilla quickly and easily with just a couple of
clicks.


* New Dracut initrd generation tool – Up until Fedora 11, the boot
system (initial ram disk or initrd) used to boot Fedora was monolithic,
very distribution specific and didn’t provide much flexibility. This has
been replaced with Dracut, an initial ram disk generation tool with an
event-based framework designed to be distribution-independent thanks to
the Dracut team including Harald Hoyer, Jeremy Katz, Dave Jones and many
others. It has been also adopted by OLPC which uses Fedora; OLPC modules
for Dracut are available in the Fedora repository.


* PackageKit plugins – PackageKit now has a plugin which can install an
appropriate package when a user tries to run a command from a missing
package. Another new plugin allows installation of software packages
from a web browser. Thanks to Red Hat’s Richard Hughes and the
PackageKit team.


* Bluetooth on-demand – Bluetooth services are automatically started
when needed and stopped 30 seconds after last device use, reducing
initial startup time and resource use when Bluetooth is not in active
use. Thanks to Red Hat’s Bastien Nocera.


* Moblin graphical interface for netbooks – The Moblin graphical
interface and applications are fully integrated thanks to Peter
Robinson, a Fedora Project volunteer, and others. To use it, just
install the Moblin Desktop Environment package group using yum or the
graphical software management tools, and choose Moblin from the login
manager. A F12 Moblin Fedora Remix (installable Live CD) will also be
available.


* PulseAudio enhancements – Red Hat’s Lennart Poettering and several
others have made significant improvements to the PulseAudio system.
Improved mixer logic makes volume control more fine-grained and
reliable. Integration with the Rygel UPnP media server means you can
stream audio directly from your system to any UPnP / DLNA client, such
as a Playstation 3. Hotplug support has been made more intelligent, so
if you configure a device as the default output for a stream, unplug
that device — causing the stream(s) to be moved to another output
device — and later replug it, the stream is moved back to the preferred
device. Finally, Bluetooth audio support means pairing with any
Bluetooth audio device makes it available for use through PulseAudio.


* Lower process privileges – In order to mitigate the impact of security
vulnerabilities, permissions have been hardened for many files and
system directories and process privileges have been lowered for a number
of core components that require super user privileges. Red Hat’s Steve
Grubb has developed a new library, libcap-ng, and integrated it into
many core system components to improve the security of Fedora.


* SELinux sandbox – It is now possible to confine applications’ access
to the system and run them in a secure sandbox that takes advantage of
the sophisticated capabilities of SELinux. Dan Walsh, SELinux developer
at Red Hat, explains the details at

http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/31146.html

* Open Broadcom firmware – The openfwwf open source Broadcom firmware is
included by default. This means wireless networking will be available
out of the box on some Broadcom chipsets.


* Hybrid live images – The Live images provided in this release can be
directly imaged onto a USB stick using dd (or any equivalent tool) to
create bootable Live USB keys. The Fedora Live USB Creator for Windows
and the livecd-tools for Fedora are still recommended for data
persistence and non-destructive writes. Thanks to Jeremy Katz.


* Better webcam support – While Fedora 11 improved webcam support, in
Fedora 12 you can expect even better video quality, especially for less
expensive webcams. Red Hat’s Hans de Goede, developer of the libv4l
library, has more details on his continuous upstream webcam support
enhancements at http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/6989.html.


* GNOME 2.28 – The latest version of the GNOME desktop includes the
lighter Gnote replacement for Tomboy as the default note application,
and Empathy replaces Pidgin as the default instant messenger. The new
volume control application, first seen in Fedora 11, has been improved
to restore some of the popular functionality from earlier releases
without making the interface too complex.


* GNOME Shell preview – Fedora 12 includes an early version of GNOME
Shell, which will become the default interface for GNOME 3.0 and beyond.
To try it, install the gnome-shell package, and use the Desktop Effects
configuration tool to enable it. It will only work correctly from the
GNOME desktop environment, not others such as KDE or Xfce. This is a
preview technology, and some video cards may not be supported.


* KDE 4.3 – The new KDE features an updated “Air” theme and fully
configurable keyboard shortcuts in Plasma, improved performance and new
desktop effects in the window manager, a new bug reporting tool, and a
configuration tool for the LIRC infra-red remote control system.


* Cool new stuff for developers beginning with Eclipse Galileo, which
includes more plugins than ever before. Perl 6 is now included, along
with PHP 5.3. For Haskell developers, the Haskell Platform now provides
a standardized set of libraries and tools. But one of the biggest
changes for developers is that most of the nice new features of Fedora
12, from Bluetooth to WebCams is implemented through underlying
libraries, and many of the improvements will be included simply by
relinking your application. Also available in this release are SystemTap
1.0 for improved instrumenting and debugging of binaries, complete with
Eclipse integration, and the newest NetBeans IDE for Java development.


* Cool new stuff for sysadmins includes added functionality for
clustered Samba services (including active/active configurations) over
GFS2; and the ability to boot a cluster of Fedora systems from a single,
shared root file system.


* Multi-Pointer X – The update to X.Org server 1.7 introduces the X
Input Extension version 2.0 (XI2), with much work contributed by Red
Hat’s Peter Hutterer. This extension provides a new client API for
handling input devices and also Multi-Pointer X (MPX) functionality. MPX
functionality allows X to cope with many inputs of arbitrary types
simultaneously, a prerequisite for (among others) multitouch-based
desktops and multi-user interaction on a single screen. This is
low-level work that applications and desktop environments will
incrementally take advantage of in future releases. More details are
available in the Release Notes and in the XI2 tag of Peter Hutterer’s
blog at http://who-t.blogspot.com/search/label/xi2


Now it should go without saying, but this is a beta release and you should be cautious about loading it on a production system. If you do come across something you think needs attention before the final release, you should probably spend a few minutes letting the Fedora team know about it over at their bug tracker: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/


Now go forth and enjoy, you can grab the latest ISO in your preferred flavor here: http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

Over the last few weeks we’ve heard a lot of feedback regarding the title change of The Linux Action Show to The Computer Action Show as with all of these types of changes, we’ve heard positive feedback, negative feedback, and of course the big one, no feedback. Seems there is always a large portion of the audience base that does not feel the need to chime in too often. But for those who do feel the need, there is typically a lot of passion behind the feedback, and as always our audience and community turns out to be full of some really cool guys and gals.

For the negative feedback, it tends to come in email form, as people don’t want to rattle the cage in a public forum. I appreciate and understand that, but I do like to try and respond out in the open when possible so that other community members can be kept in the loop, and perhaps expand on topic.

So with that in mind, I thought I’d take an email I received this morning, remove any names that might identify the innocent, and post the thread here. Simple because the email from this morning does a great job sort of summarizing the feedback from the negative responses to the title change, and my typical response.

From: Anonymous
Subject: Your Show

It looks like the Computer Action Show is replacing the Linux Action Show.

Your new show looks interesting. But I am specifically interested in supporting a Linux news and reviews podcast as there are so few out there.

I found yours to have the highest signal to noise ratio, i.e., quality content, of all that I had sampled. So I’m sorry to see it go. Good luck with your new show.

From: Chris
Subject: RE: Your Show

You got it right. The Computer Action Show, as of now, replaces the Linux Action Show.

Not sure if you have listened to the last few episodes, but it’s the same show, but with a new name.

Our problem we ran into was Linux in the show title would prevent a lot of people from checking out the show. It also had the effect of drawing a lot of people in. But at a certain point we reached a growth ceiling of people actively looking for Linux podcasts.

It struck us that some of the very people we want to hear our show, are most likely the people who won’t download the show that has “Linux” in the title. Those are the people we need to reach, both from an audience growth standpoint, but also from a standpoint of educating them about OSS and Linux.

We came to this realization when we started thinking about the problem of today’s online tech shows. They are generally ether heavily Windows or Mac focused, even if it is a sublayer of the content… It seems to still influence the hosts, the way they frame ideas, and etc. I can’t think of a big online tech show that treats Linux like an equal citizen. Most of them heavily lean towards Mac coverage, as it’s their platform of choice. Despite Windows probably being the statistically much larger audience base. And in these shows Linux coverage is near non-existent.

The idea behind the name change is two fold, the primary idea being people looking for a general geeky tech podcast will be more likely to check out the Computer Action Show, and thus by the core content of the show, will be exposed to Linux news, ideas, and community insight in a very organic way. Just like listening to TWiT or watching Tekzilla gets you the updates on Microsoft and Apple.

The second idea is to allow us to expand coverage when needed. The simple fact is, some weeks, there is just not a “big” news story that we can wrap an hour and half show around. So this opens us up to things like a little Haiku coverage… Something that ends up not being too far off the beatin path, but is not specifically Linux.

Now earlier I’d said The Computer Action Show replaces The Linux Action Show “for now”. What I meant by that is, there is no direct plan in place to bring The Linux Action Show back into production. However, we’re always willing to try something for a season and re-evaluate after then. Additionally if we ever reached a point where we had more time to dedicate to creating shows, and I mean a fair bit of time, as The Linux Action Show and Computer Action Show require quite a bit of time, it would be first on our list.

I believe once the initial shock of the title change is over, people will find that it’s almost the same show, with some extra content when it fits.

It’s also healthy to step out side the world of Linux podcasts, news, blogs, forums, chat rooms, and so on. The Linux community needs a broader context outside it’s own sandbox in order to meet the requirements and expectations outside of it.

I also believe that the time has passed for  treating Linux like a niche small time grass-roots thing that needs its own fully dedicated show because of the fear it can’t stand up on its own if it might have to compete with other content. Frankly I feel a lot of fear out there is rooted in that, epically from longer time Linux users when that may have been a real problem. But that time has passed, and it’s not a real problem anymore.

Linux needs to be treated (by the community) as part of the computer industry and ecosystem like it really is. We all know that’s where it is today, but yet a large subset of the community tries to treat it like it’s still being developed by a single person and you need to know the super secret handshake to use it.

I really think that integrating Linux content into a broader context, where open source and Linux content is the primary focus, but the entire technology landscape is considered and brought into context will make for a better show, allow for better perspective, and frankly keeps our heads out of the sand and allows us to reach a wider audience that might have been turned away by that scary “Linux” in the title, but is now listening and becoming engaged in a new way with Linux news and content they never expected.

If you have not done so yet, give the last three episodes a listen (http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/?cat=345), and you tell me what you think!

-Chris

Over the years I’ve written several microphone reviews in my ongoing search for the one microphone that combines quality of sound, great features, and does not require very expensive equipment to operate. Those requirements make USB microphones very attractive, they plug right into the computer and show up as a digital sound device, they are powered from the USB bus of the computer.

In the last Microphone review I did in early 2009, the microphone I heard to most feedback on was the Blue Snowball, and rightly so. The Blue Snowball is a classy looking microphone with some great features. USB means you can simply plug it in and start podcasting right away (with some issues under Linux).

With the many advantages to USB and the obvious popularity, I set off to research and try out the absolute best USB podcasting Microphone. If you’d like to see my take on a few fantastic non-USB mics, check out my review on those.

I’ll be comparing what might just be two of the best selling USB Microphones, Blue’s Snowball and the Rode Podcaster.

Watch my In Depth Look video for even more details:

The Blue Snowball:

Starting with the Blue Snowball, it has a few features I love, with it’s exaggerated 1920′s classic look. Some of the great features  include:

• Three operational modes, standard audio level, -10db pad, and a room mode. The room mode is great for using a single mic for a couple people… Though I find the quality takes a noticeable hit (see video for more). Over all I tend to really only find my self using the first main mode, unless I’ve setup a co-host with the Snowball, and he or she needs a little help keeping those levels in check.
• The Blue Snowball is probably one of the most prolific mics on the market, so support is wide spread. This has not led to very solid Linux support, but it is usable out of the box on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Overall I find the Blue Snowball to have a very true sound, if not a bit t00 thin that can’t really be fully restored in post without a lot of extra work. I find the stand the Blue Snowball comes with nearly useless, it’s too short and built cheap, however the hole the stand mounts into is a standard mic pole socket, so you can easily mount the Snowball to any standard mic mount.

The new contestant for my label of “best podcasting microphone” is the Rode Podcaster. It has a more serious look and design, I can tell that Rode was aiming for a pro look and feel, and I think they nailed it. It’s a hefty microphone, nearly 2lbs in weight, with a metal body and it has a really good solid feeling in your hand – though that extra heft can be felt in your laptop bag if you’re traveling and want to record on location.

The Rode Podcaster:

The Rode Podcaster has a few really great features that I feel put this microphone in a category of its own for the consumer market, such as:

• The number one feature is the built in microphone jack. This means you can monitor your audio live, without the delay from USB. Something not possible with nearly all USB microphones and is such a critical way to avoid regretting a horrible recording session that could have been avoided with simply monitoring what was going into your recorder. The headphone jack being built into the mic means no delay, which is critical so your not finding your self getting tripped up by hearing your self on a strange delay. It does odd things to the brain.
• Not content with just acting as headphone jack to monitor your self, the headphone jack also shows up as a USB audio output device on your computer. This means when your doing a Skype call, you can set Skype to send audio to that jack, so you don’t end up picking up the bleed from your desktop speakers on your mic. Direct monitoring and Audio out ability can really improve the quality of your recordings.
• Overall I think the Rode has a great sound, it can be a bit quiet, so be sure you have your levels set right. But it’s always safe to error on the side of quite audio, you can boost that.. You can’t fix your recording if you clip out the entire time and blast the recorder with too much level.
• Last but far from least, the Rode Podcaster is a top fire-end mic, with a very narrow pickup range. What the heck does that mean? It means you talk into the top of it, not the side of it quite simply. The advantage is it’s not awkward to use if you put it on a mic stand or boom.  As for the narrow pickup range (this is better demonstrated in the video) stuff that is not directly in front of the mic, is hardly picked up. This is key if you are recording in a noisy room with PC fans, other background sounds, or have other hosts around you. One of the often missed causes of a bad sounding recording is when your hosts are picked up by the other hosts mics. Because they are not directly in front of the mic next to them that is picking them up, their voice has a poor sound quality, it gets mixed into the overall recording, and BOOM, you have some element in your recording killing your quality that is kind of hard to track down and figure out.

The Rode Podcaster does not come with a stand, so you’ll need something to mount it on. You can go with something simple and cheap, like a desk stand that sits right on your desk or a mic boom that clamps to your desk and lets you adjust the mic around to better fit how you are sitting. The desk stand also tends to transfer any noise on your desk into the mic, the mic boom can do this as well, but when you combine the boom stand with a shock mount, you can almost totally eliminate this issue.

To really get setup right, I’d recommend a boom and shock mount. I contacted the folks over at The DVeStore.com (whom I got my Rode Podcaster from) and told them I was doing this review. They put together a full Rode Podcaster bundle that induces the Mic, boom stand, and shock mount for a great price. I don’t make anything off their sales (unlike the Amazon links above), I just know them and been happy with the service.

The One:

Over all I am giving the crown for the “Best Podcasting Microphone” to the Rode Podcaster, it’s built in headphone monitor, support for Windows, Linux, and Windows (Linux & Vista/Win7 after a firmware update) really make this a fantastic mic. When you factor in it’s high-end sound quality, exceptional build quality, and Rode’s reputation for making great mics -  it’s a clear winner!

In my previous blog post, I talked about my concerned about the fanboi like rapid following of everything OGG, Theora, Vorbis and how it all sounds like just blind following with out any real consideration of the technology.

Even with my concerns with Theora, I wrapped the post saying that we’d be using VIDEO tag with OGG Theora. My feeling is I want the audience to get the content in what ever format they prefer, and I really believe making something like the video tag is very important for online content. While Theora has its limits and issues, the idea is a good one. I also realize that the issues I called out will never improve unless people use Theora today and so with that in mind the last three video on jupiterbroadcasting.com including the latest Linux Action Show episode have been posted with the video tag version of the show.

The results have been positive, especially from those with Firefox 3.5. Internet Explorer users, and older Firefox users get a flash player fallback. Safari users get a QuickTime h.264 fallback automatically.

I’ve had a few reports of people who experienced issues with the videos auto-playing, it would seem Firefox 3.5 has not yet implemented the autoplay=yes|no ability yet, while other browsers have and expect it. It would seem most browsers figure if autoplay= is not declared, the default is NO. While other browsers (think a slim few) seem to assume YES, and begin playing the videos on page load. Not only is that annoying, but when you are on our front page it means the current 3 videos posted using <video> start playing. Just about kills any browser.

To embed with the tag and keep the fancy code intact with a wordpress post, I have installed a WordPress plugin called RAW HTML, this lets me put a area in any WordPress post that get’s ignored by the WordPress editor, and is then passed on as raw HTML. I’ve had issues with the WordPress editor eating code before that I stick in the source of a post, so this seems like a great way to get around that.

Here is an example of an embed video:

My embed code was inspired by the Video For Everybody post that Kroc created.

News is out that the W3C won’t mandate what codecs must be supported by a browser as part of the HTML 5 spec.

They state:

Now the bit there about Apple worrying about patents in Theora peaks my interest, but only because I had an actual IP lawyer say the same thing to just a little while ago, but just that he has “concerns”.. I’m starting to think lawyers every where say that about everything just because it leaves the door open for them to make a few extra dollars (hello Mono).

But that aside, I wanted to talk about another aspect of all of this:

One of the things that really bugs us Linux guys is how the fanboi tards of Apple and Microsoft (does MS have fanbois besides guys like Paul Thrott?) is the way they latch on to buzz words from he company, and then regurgitate them when ever they are challenged for details, or are preaching their path to salvation to someone when they really have no idea of the real technology behind that buzzword or if it truly is that great of a implementation.

But here’s the thing everyone, I’m starting to really come to the overall conclusion that OGG is just becoming an OSS buzzword.


Hear me out:

1. OGG is not even a codec. It is a container that can hold a codec… You could put MP3 audio inside an OGG container. But you hear people chant on about OGG and not Vorbis or Theora. When someone talks about Ogg being a “good codec,” it demonstrates the kind of impractical, blind bias for free-sounding buzzword projects.


2. Keeping things focused on the video side, since that’s what the <video> tag has the most potential for, lets discuss the issue of quality.

I look at video codecs in a cost per-bitrate kind of math. As in, if to make video X look decent at say 960×540 I need to have that video in 512kbps in one codec, and 768kbps in another, that codec that requires a higher bitrate is going to cost me more in bandwidth since it will have a large file size, transfer time for my self to upload and my viewer to download, and a higher cost in storage for my self, my server, and my viewer.

The original Theora codec came from On2, and was called VP3. On2 created VP3 in an attempt to compete with H.263 and is a very old design. To make matters worse, Theora has recently seen some really great improvements in it’s bitrate to quality ratio but because these improvements are not official, and not yet shipping in any software encoder that support Theora (without building your own source) we don’t get to see the improvements.

Even with these improvements, after real world tests by people who know how to get the best out of each type of codec Theora still falls flat. It simply is an old codec designed for last generations video.

See these examples comparing the latest Theora to the latest x.264 and VC-1: http://cid-bee3c9ac9541c85b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/BBB|_Compare


3. H.264 video with AAC Audio is a great combination that is here today, and has a fantastic Open Source implementation in x.264.

This is the thing that really stumps me. x.264 is damn good. Amazing file size for quailty. I can put out a 720p (that’s 1028×720) x.264 encoded video with a smaller file size than a Theora 540p (960×540) video. If you follow me there, I am saying I can put out an HD video and a standard deff version in Theora, and the Theora will have a larger file size than the HD version. On top of that, the Theora codec loses more color detail, and won’t play back on a fraction of the systems, when you consider non-Linux desktop machines and devices.


Does h.264, AAC, or the OSS implementation of x.264 have patent issues? Maybe… Who cares? As a viewer of a video, you are not liable for any infringement, it’s possible the producer of that content could be. But even as a producer, I’d have to be a crazy person with a tinfoil hat to think that some coalition that represents dozens of companies worth billions of dollars is going to come after little old Chris Fisher. It’s just not worth it to them. Not to mention by the time they got down my driveway I’ll have already apt-get remove’d my gstreamer-ugly codecs.

The other flip side of the up hill argument that OGG Vorbis and Theora fanbois have to fight is that professional content producers don’t have to worry about the patent issues ether. When you buy Apple’s $2,500 Final Cut studio, or Adobe’s near $3k CS4 suite, they come covered. Apple and Adobe (and all the other makers of those types of software) have bought and paid for the distribution license.

From the angle of the hardware playback manufactures (like say, Popcorn hour, or TiVo), the cost for them to legally have a hardware based chip decoder is well under $1. So they look at the situation and thing, “well… That lawyer guy we pay $475 an hour says he has concerns… Or we pay less that the cost of a cup of coffee and we have a legal contract that says we are covered with h.264!”.

I don’t understand why we let these patent concerns in the OSS world cock block us so often, and then other times blatantly ignore them. Especially given our proven track record of being able to re-implement (ACPI, SysV, VFAT), adapt and move on so quickly.


You see it in every mainstream device running Linux today, The Palm Pre, the TiVo, the Android phones, on and on, all of these Linux devices support tons of codecs except for Theora. HELL – The new Popcorn C200 is DROPPING support for Theora from the previous model.

I feel like just shouting out on the top of a mountain MOVE ON everyone. Ogg Vorbis and Theora need to DIE. They just don’t hold up to AAC and X.264. They are practically dead right now anyways. Let them go in peace!

ANDD…. END OF RANT.


Now allllll of that said, I still want to implement Theora video using <video> tag for browsers that support it, with a fallback to flash for those who don’t. WHY after all of that above? Because I want make the content that we produce available in as many ways as those consuming that content want it. Plus I work my ass off to make the Ogg Theora versions, and they get a tiny tiny fraction of the downloads… So… I hope the <video> tag will make my efforts a little more worth while.

Let me know what you think… Am I way off base? Have I given you something to ponder? Or maybe you are way ahead of me, ether way let me know! I’ve started a forum thread to get your input!

(Cross-posted on the Jupiter Broadcasting Forum)

So what the heck is Flowplayer? Well if you ask Wikipedia it sounds like just another dang Flash player:

“Flowplayer is a video player for the World Wide Web. It allows users to embed video streams on their personal web pages. It is an open source project with a GPL 3+ license. Commercial versions are also available. Commercial versions allow users to add their own logos. It can play flash video.”

But let me tell you, it is so much more:

I don’t think I’ve ever been giddy over a video player until I meant my new crush, Flow. On top of being awesome (which I’ll get into in just a sec) it is an open source project with a GPL 3 license.  They also offer a few flavors of a commercial license that let you fully brand the player, and of course, support them with some cash.

Flowplayer’s real power comes in it’s advanced scripting options, their API is object-oriented and not just a flat list of functions. They have what is known as an event model, allowing you to link custom functionality to every player event (such as play, pause, rewind, stop). And if you are a jQuery user you will be delighted by the seamless way in which Flowplayer and jQuery work together.

On top of the incredible power that JavaScript and jQuery give you, they also have built in plugin support to Flowplayer. Some already-existing plugins allow you to, for example, place HTML content over the video when the playback ends, or implement custom playlists using only basic HTML skills, detect the viewers available bandwidth and dynamically select the best bit-rate for them. If you really want to go crazy, you can build (or use their free examples) all of the player’s controls out of HTML.

How am I using Flowplayer:

LIKE A PRO, that’s how! My day job wants to start creating tech help videos for our clients, and the general Internet audience. We kicked around the idea of hosting the flash version of our videos on YouTube, but we are worried that people leaving comments might scare our audience away (these are not computer savvy types), I am a big fan of blip.tv and started going that route with our videos. But in the end I realized that for a commercial company we need to have more control and flexibility… I realized I was going to have to roll my own solution.

My solution (note: files are hosted on Amazon S3):

1.    On initial page load, instead of loading the resource heavy flash player and flash, it loads a place holder image with a play button. This means our pages load FAST, and peeps with slower PC’s don’t take a performance hit on our page (a very common problem on Jupiter Broadcasting with all the flash videos).
2.    Using my mad skills, I got the Flowplayer plugin working that detects your bandwidth, and sends you one of three versions of the video, most appropriate for your connection speed. So we won’t be slamming client’s networks with our videos if they can’t handle them.
3.    Using Flowplayer’s ability to accept JavaScript commands, I have setup a central config file that all the players on our site will read from. So we can change all the players color themes, size, streaming properties, you name it, in one single config, and all the players will update. Even years down the road, with a huge video archive, they will all update. That? That’s called EPIC. HUGE. EPIC.
4.    That central config also means we can change out the pre and post roll ads, or even just turn them all on at any point.. So again, all flash videos on our site will always be able to feature our latest promos. Or if we want, we can override and setup a on-off video that has it’s own config outside the global config.. So a promo ad just for a certain video, or certain color scheme, etc.
5.    Google Analytics integrated into the player. YUP. Those handy action aware contexts in Flowplayer really pay off here. It knows when someone hits play, pause, fast forward, volume up/down, etc (still kinda basic, just getting going with this)… Leveraging Google Analytics, I’m be able to track at what point someone tunes out of the video, or fast forwards, or heck, even rewinds so we know when we needed to make something more clear.

Want to know more?

I’m still new to all of this, so I am probably not the best resource, but here are a few good ones:

• Flowplayer’s fantastic documentation with real work examples.
• Flowplayer also has a active user forum.
• They are also rockin a Flowplayer twitter account which they are very active on.

If you’d like to ask me a question about the stuff I’ve done, send me a tweet and I’d be happy to try my best to answer!

We will be streaming the return of the big show LIVE this Saturday at jupiterbroadcasting.com/live we are not sure exactly what time, but we are aiming for 1:00 PM Pacific. As the event gets closer, will update everyone on our twitter feeds twitter.com/ChrisLAS and twitter.com/BryanLAS

We hope to see you there, and have you join us in the IRC chat room while we stream.
IRC Server: chat1.ustream.tv
IRC Room: #jupiterbroadcasting

Starting back in Jully of 2008 Windows XP started to give Linux quite a run for its money in our web stats, surprisingly that  trend seemed to contiune for a few months straight. It was growing so fast for a while that I suspected it might be an error in the reporting software’s numbers.

Once I dug deeper I also noticed the iTunes RSS client agent was growing at the same rate as Windows XP was in our general web stats. Because I am not the smartest man in the world, it took me a few minutes to put the obvious bits of the puzzle together. July… What happened in July? Ah yes, the iPhone 3G was released! “That must be it” I thought to my self. People bought an iPhone, then fired up Windows XP for iTunes and iPhone sycning and starting using that environment. This was an interesting snapshot in time for us, do we continue down the strictly Linux focused content even though our webstats are quickly trending to Linux being the minority or do we mix it up, and go more of a balance between Windows, Mac and Linux. We spent some time kicking this idea back and forth and never really came to a final decision.

Though through the process of analyzing this type of shift in our viewer/listner base we realized that the best way to reach more people, would be to promote the technologies we felt passionate about through a more realistic approach. We came to the realization that if you want to convince someone that technology X is better than technology Y you need to speak to them like an adult, and not like a religious zealot that only sees things in basic black and white.

If I show you doing something fun or intresting using the technology I’m excited about, like say a Drobo, that is going to be a lot more effective of a message then me just simply ranting about how great a Drobo is.

It’s with this approach that we have focused our new format of shows, like In Depth look and while we have only been at it for just a few months, I am so happy with the results we are seeing. Honestly I think the data speaks for it self. Since the change to the new format 2.4 million people have watched our videos, and we’ve reached entirely new areas of the technology community that we’ve never spoken with before. I get emails daily from people who are being introduced to new technology through our videos, and emails from old pros who just love the content and find it engaging.

On top of that, I’m pleased to see that Linux has again climbed to a comfortable lead in our web statistics, to which I primarily contribute new eyes and ears to our content:

Our new format  understands and appreciates that not everyone uses computers in the same way we do. I have no doubt that this is going to be successful for us, and proves that there is a right approach that encourages audience growth and learning, and a wrong approach that is thick headed and talks down to their audience by not respecting their choices and their reasoning.

I hope everyone continues to enjoy the content we produce at Jupiter Broadcasting and I can’t wait to meet even more of you that are out there!

I’ve been a long time SuSE user, I enjoyed the old boxed sets with the big manuals and CD books full of software. With that view I have always looked forward to every release of the distribution.

openSUSE 11.1 features all of the great new improvements in the Gnome and KDE desktops, combined with many of their own direct innovations.

Having been a user of SuSE, now openSUSE as well as their enterprise offerings such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server I’ve seen this distribution from a lot of different perspectives. The various releases always seems well integrated and have a lot of small touches that give it a polished feel. The enterprise version has key features that fit that role perfect, and the desktop always seems to nail it’s target. I recall when SuSE was the first Linux distribution to ship with the ability to boot off the installer CDs and perform a system recovery that could restore your boot loader or kernel, something that saved my bacon once or twice when I was still learning “the right way” to do things!

These days I’d say the gap between distribution features is starting close up, but did I find something that stood out about openSUSE? Watch the video and find out:

Some major features by category

In some ways openSUSE is a distribution (like others) caught in a transition world between KDE3 and KDE4. As the KDE user base makes it’s switch, the developers must spend a lot of energy in making both KDE3 and KDE 4 work well, on top of Gnome and XFCE. It’s difficult task I am sure, but I think in a year or so it will have paid off, as KDE4 seems to be steadily reaching a point where it will be useable for the everyone. Despite this nether desktop environment seems to lack polish, truly a job well done!

Great job to the openSUSE team, they’ve got a great release on their hands!