Press Release:
RICHARDSON, Texas – April 12, 2010 – RipCode, Inc., the leader in transactional transcoding, announced today its newest product, the TransAct Transcoder V6 can intercept Adobe Flash-based file or live video requests and convert them to a container, video codec, and audio codec accepted by Apple Inc.’s new iPad – all transparently to the end user device and without the need for any pre-transcoding or device-based client.

The iPad is poised to further accelerate and expand the mobile video device market just as the iPhone has over the last several years. However, one of its noted shortcomings has been Apple’s lack of support for Flash video playback, given the dominant position of Flash in professionally generated entertainment, sports and news content. HTML5 has been purported to address this dilemma by introducing Apple device applications that are simply ‘thin clients’ communicating back to a web site hosting and subsequently delivering Flash files without a device-based player, but HTML5 is not yet widely adopted. RipCode’s Transactional Transcoding platform enables an alternate and immediate solution to this issue, opening up video content to users without requiring the content hoster to move to HTML5 or pre-transcode entire video libraries from Flash to an iPad-accepted container format. By transcoding the content ‘in the cloud’, it is essentially analogous to a network-based Flash to MP4 or MPEG-TS video adaption layer.

“Transcoding is an integral part of any volume-based video preparation and delivery infrastructure. With new codecs, devices, resolutions, delivery protocols, rights management controls, and monetization needs constantly evolving the video delivery landscape, this space will continue to churn for many years,” stated Brendon Mills, CEO of RipCode. “The ‘Flash on iPad’ dilemma is really just the latest in a long line of speed bumps on the road towards ‘any-content, any-time, any-place, any-device’ that we all desire. Fortunately, our technology removes this barrier in a way that is attractive to content hosters, a key device manufacturer, a key video player provider, and the end user alike.”

RipCode’s V6 transcoding appliance is equipped with industry-leading transcoding flexibility (file-to-file, file-to-stream, stream-to-stream, stream-to-file, and RipCode’s On-Demand Transcoding), codec and container flexibility, concurrency, video processing functions, and resolutions ranging from QVGA to 1080i/p. Further, the V6 supports a rich suite of integrated video delivery options including QuickTime, MP4 Progressive Download, Apple’s MPEG-TS Adaptive Progressive Download for file-based and live content, Microsoft Smooth Streaming, and RTSP. It is easily integrated – as hardware or software – into any content hosting/delivery operation given its Linux/Intel processing core. Working in conjunction with RipCode’s Commander and Detector, content requests from an iPad is automatically detected, which launches an intelligent content transcoding workflow that re-encodes a Flash file to one of the aforementioned iPad-accepted formats, and then delivers either via MP4 Progressive Download or Apple’s MPEG-TS Adaptive Progressive Download.

RipCode will be demonstrating this capability for both live and video on demand applications at NAB 2010 this week in Las Vegas. Please access http://www.ripcode.com/nab/ to arrange an appointment to visit our suite at the Hilton, adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center.

RipCode

A new Quick shop has appeared, with the promise to have you up and ready in 60 seconds, it took me a few minutes, but I was distracted.
This to me is ‘like paypal on speed’ a direct quote from RubbishCorp, who was the distraction.
I have to agree with RC, the idea is good for people can’t make your own paypal button quickly, this does it all for you and you can embed on your own site in seconds.
Their revenue model is to charge you 5% of the sale, which can work out costly if your selling high value items, and I think comparable to ebay.

Nathan has just been given a nice credit on creativity-online for knocking up a tribute site for old friends FarFar called FarFarip over the weekend with the help of two mates (Kevin & Tomas), the site saw great success within the first 5 hours of being live it had over 2k visitors. nice work lads of Riot

Color Sensitive Interactive Billboard from milton cj on Vimeo.

I really love this way of engaging with the consumer, here you have an interactive billboard that changes every time a person steps forward and triggers the sensors to pick up the new color they are wearing. This of course would fail if the next person to visit the billboard was wearing the exact same color.

This opens up a ton of ways to give a personal shopping assitant to the consumer, for example you could serve clothes based on the color they are wearing at the time.

Uniqlo have created a nice Twitter type campaign pulling people in to see their tweets visualized.
Hat off again to the guys & girls @ uniglo

Comparison of performance of Flash Player 10.1 and HTML 5 on Mobile Devices from michael chaize on Vimeo.

Wagamama’s free application helps users locate the nearest Wagamama restaurant and then browse the menu to place their order. They can even customize their dishes. Orders are sent straight through to the kitchen, and up-to-the-minute status reports keep customers informed as to pick-up times.
Secure payment options via the app include both debit and credit card.

more here

The cool T-shirt company t-post bring you a t-shirt that you can actually play a game with using your webcam and augmented reality.

Robots, augmented reality stations, huge tactile interface walls, and flowing LED lights. I think I am in heaven.

Full video here

More here

Love this

Advertising of course, a really good article by JP Manninen on how location based services are not just ‘games’ but away to push content to the public such as adverts.
The Full article here

The big weakness of the iPhone when it comes to gaming has been the lack of a social platform. Facebook games are inherently social and so they spread far faster than iPhone games do, and they consequently make a lot more money for developers.

Apple hopes to catch up on that front with Game Center, a social platform for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. The platform, announced today, and due to be released with version 4.0 of the iPhone OS due out this summer

The Real shame here is that Apple are not using existing games on Facebook such as Farmville because of the lack of support with Flash, I am sure Playfish, Zynga etc will create their titles for the iPad / iPhone in the native language, but this still seems a shame that as a game developer you have to start a fresh and also grow your userbase again.

Zynga = 244,783,375 Facebook users.

With the release of the iPhone OS 4 beta SDK Apple have added this snippet to the developer’s agreement:

Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

What does this mean to Adobe…
Well I read this as there CS5 release which exports to iPhone will not be allowed in the store because its not written in one of the above languages

More from the source .