Favre

The end of an era. Brett Favre retired yesterday kicking the American sports media into a frenzy. Despite the media overkill and the threat of damaging my reputation (we Americans love our illusions of independent thinking and non-conformity) I feel it necessary to add a bit of commentary, emotive though it may be.

Thank you Brett. It’s extremely corny, but you are my hero. It may sound trite to applaud the the way you played a game, but still I do; if only because you made me remember the sheer joy of sport. I’ve witnessed the majesty of Jordan, the dominance of Tiger and the unmatched will of Armstrong, but you transcended them all–you made it personal.

It was the small things that I and so many others took pleasure in, the jokes in the huddle, pinching teammates arms (and getting pinched), good natured smack talk, and improv celebrations (the multiple hand slaps with a referee come to mind). Watching Favre I was reminded of the joy of competition and the esprit de corps of team. Tis a rare gift to have such a special athlete remind us of the exuberance of childhood and the import of camaraderie while competing at the highest levels of professional sport. Favre was capable of showing us how special life is when you both revel and despair in the moment and have others to share the experience with you.

Some things just make you smile, here are a few on my list:

• The heat seeking missiles he threw his first couple of years in Green Bay. I remember laughing out loud the first time I saw Favre throw a 5 yard heater to Sterling Sharpe. I fell head over heels for the guy at that very moment.
• The stones Favre had throwing into coverage. I loved watching him throw into the “Tampa” cover two. He would challenge bracketed sideline coverage with zero margin for error that no other quarterback in the league would dream of throwing into and win the majority of the time. It’s comparable to a MLB pitcher being around for 15 years and telling the hitters the location of every fastball that was about to be thrown.
• Having a rub in constantly on the sideline and during press conferences.
• Taking on lineman and linebackers in the open field on reverses. This alone says volumes about his consecutive starts streak.
• Owning all of the major quarterback passing records despite playing outdoors in Lambeau his entire career.
• Loyalty. Name another superstar in today’s age that would of embraced playing in Green Bay, much less stayed for 16 years.
• His relationship with Frank “bag o’ donuts” Winters. You got to love a quarterback whose friends are lineman.

YouTube / Rich Media Market Research

The PEW Internet & American Life Project has released some interesting market research lately surrounding the use of video sharing sites such as YouTube and the rising tide of rich media. I’ve provided links back to the full dataset, but wanted to highlight a few items that stood out for me with some gut reactions.

Home broadband penetration among adults in the US continues to grow.

If anyone has it, I’d love to know what relationship there is between this number and the overall yearly sales of web services and products–specifically software sales.

Half of all internet users have been to video sharing sites–this totally blows me away.

It will be very interesting to see where this number levels out at and how it will be impacted by the arrival of IPTV as the physical infrastructure of the network is upgraded. If you take a look a look at the wording of this question its safe to assume YouTube has been visited by 50% of all adults.

Damn – YouTube is an 800 lbs gorilla. The level of mindshare here gets me thinking monetization; especially ad-based models. So far YouTube’s monetization efforts seem to have focused purely on advertising revenue and Brightcove just recently announced incorporation of Google AdSense sense for video. I wonder how effective video advertising is, especially in the context of user generated content on social sites, and whether the same concerns that surround social network advertising are relevant?

It’s also interesting to note that teens are actively producing as opposed to just consuming rich media.

I’ve always believed the conversations that are spawned and surround rich media are often more interesting / important than is the actual media and this belief seems to have been affirmed, for teens at least, by PEW.

There are a number reasons why:

• Comments reflect an emotional investment in a topic and give important psychological weight to future potential readers / viewers.
• Effective video search and deep tagging is still a long ways off, but comments are easily accessible to the search bots.
• In many aspects of life, it’s the journey that reveals the most useful information and from which we take the most pleasure. Comments reflect ‘the journey’ – the rich media is just the starting point.

In sum, if one can sum up a rambling stream of consciousness, 2007 was a monster year for video and rich media on the web and it looks to be just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re one of the three readers that actually stops by feel free to add your two cents. :)

The Silver Tongue and Lifeless Corpse of Microsoft Silverlight

I work in a predominantly Windows oriented development shop focused around video and there’s been lots of discussion surrounding Microsoft Silverlight and VC-1 over the last year or so. We’ve looked at the technical specs, analyzed the possibilities and engaged in seemingly endless discussions comparing the technology to the Adobe Flash platform. Microsoft has come knocking on our door repeatedly pitching the technology and as a Flash developer I’m surrounded by marketing hype and blogosphere rants, experiments, and outright paranoia at times. I’m always amazed at some of the claims that I see on the web and hear during meetings with their reps–claims which seemingly go unchallenged (maybe it’s just my ignorance that’s holding me back).

One of the oft heard and most annoying claims is that Silverlight will be a ubiquitous runtime quickly. This argument posits that all that it takes to be a ubiquitous runtime is a few killer apps. These killer apps typically are either viral content repositories or social in nature and therefore will quickly reach nearly every web enabled computer on the planet. Microsoft assured us during the Silverlight launch buildup that multiple killer apps would be released with the official 1.0 launch ensuring quick and massive penetration.

This claim that all it takes to become ubiquitous is a couple of killer apps has always struck me as off. Microsoft, and even some folks in the Adobe camp, like to point to YouTube and MySpace as what “made” Flash while conveniently forgetting that Flash Player adoption was at 98% of web enabled computers long before YouTube and MySpace came along.

It’s probably much more accurate to argue that Adobe Flash Player’s high penetration is what enabled the success of MySpace and YouTube. YouTube’s roaring success validated that Flash video had already won on the web despite the fact it supported fewer codecs of lesser quality than did the other embeddable media players.

When Flash MX and Flash Player 6 hit the streets in July of 2002 there were a lot of us who bought into the potential of video when paired with Flash Player’s ubiquity and its strange but wonderful scripting, graphics and animation capabilities. We envisioned a world of custom interfaces embedded seamlessly inside our rich applications and designs. We fought battle after battle just for the opportunity to use the technology. “Back in the day” no one was a believer and video on the web was a bad joke constantly undermined by the big three’s attempts at media player domination.

The point is that 6 years ago we started building the foundation for YouTube and it wasn’t by having a few killer apps, but rather thousands upon thousands of sites with a level of richness and creativity that was unimagined (I’m continually blown away by the creativity and talent that lives and breathes in this community).

Finally, VC-1 seems to be completely dead in the water. It’s my understanding that Microsoft’s strategy of driving adoption from the top down via major media studios and broadcasters has been a major failure. Hell, back in 2002 when Flash Player 6 sported its first video capabilities Windows Media 9 was being hyped like crazy by the softies. Six years later Microsoft has the same codec sporting a new name officially standardized under SMPTE and still can’t find a date to the prom. Instead, industry support has coalesced around h.264. The h.264 tooling and licensing options are available on a variety of different platforms and are an integral part of many media technology stacks.

It’s clear that Apple’s strategy of winning the war by focusing on the content creation tools, dominant portable media playback, cross OS playback / encoding, and media purchasing has soundly beaten Microsoft in the codec / media platform war. Adobe’s decision to include the h.264 codec instead of VC-1 in Flash Player and ditch its proprietary container format should be read as a slap in the face and a clear sign of VC-1′s impotence. In one move they walk away from vendor lock-in strategies and indicate how unappealing Microsoft’s codec offering is.

Microsoft’s track record over the last 10 years lends little comfort. They’ve managed to make a media player that is universally despised and which has progressively gotten worse with each subsequent release. They have a retread codec that’s worn many skirts and names and still can’t get a date. They make a portable media player no one wants and have backed a next generation dvd format that is now officially dead. Let’s see, there’s QuickTime competitor ASF which pales in comparison and has never taken off and it replaced the universally maligned “video for windows” container–AVI. Oh and let’s not forget gems such as Windows Movie Maker and Microsoft Producer. I could go on, but you should be able to connect the dots. I actually feel sorry for the Microsoft employees when I hear them pitch this stuff–it can’t be good for the self-esteem. Note to Microsoft–maybe stop tanking in the media sector and work on making an operating system that people don’t hate.

In the end, perhaps Silverlight will take off, but I doubt it will happen overnight. If it does, it will mean a long, hard, consistent battle in the trenches where winning over the hearts of small shops and individual artists is just as important as pumping up MSDN groupies and stroking ISVs. It will mean building a community of stunning talent and incredible heart (its not a numbers game in my book). It will mean winning over the trust of a massive population trained not to trust new browser installs and increasingly cynical of Microsoft and its aggressive monopolist tendencies as a whole.

If Microsoft is able to overcome all of the hurdles in front of it, Silverlight may become more than a lifeless corpse, but until then it appears they’ll be relying on Jedi mind tricks and their silvery tongue to convince developers and consumers to ignore their repeated missteps and failures in the media sector. Good luck with that MS, you’re going to need it. ;-)

Cutting Cables / Slashdot / Comcast

Sometimes the kids over at Slashdot crack me up–as a Comcast subscriber this rings all too true. ;-)

I went in search of conspiracy theories and left with a smile.

Macports install of Apache 2, MySQL 5 and PHP 5

Stumbled on the best complete walkthrough I’ve ever seen of how to install Apache 2, MySQL 5 and PHP 5 on OSX using macports. If you’re looking to get a local server set up on your macbook this is the ticket.

MS web rebooting really more of a 404 / BSOD

Apparently, despite the cross-platform pr hype, I’m going to be waiting for this whole MS Web reboot for a while…someone should really notify Scoble and Arrington. Flash might be a toy, but at least its not an imaginary friend. :)