Archive for the 'Techy Stuff' Category

Brightcove Ending Free Service

We just received an email from the people at Brightcove that the free service they were offering is now ending.



Dear FuddyTV,

We’re sending you this email because you created or used at least one free Brightcove Network account during the last two years.

Regretfully, we’ve decided to discontinue the Brightcove Network (the free version of our service). The discontinuation of the free Brightcove Network accounts will not affect Brightcove platform accounts that customers have paid to use.

Please see the FAQ for complete details about this transition.

On December 17, 2008, we will be shutting down Brightcove Network accounts that have not been upgraded to paid Brightcove platform accounts. At the same time, we will be shutting down the Brightcove.TV website (which is separate from the corporate Brightcove website).

Until December 17, 2008, your Brightcove Network account will remain fully functional; the players that you have published will continue to operate; and you can keep using the Brightcove Console as you have been using it to date. At the same time, we are giving you a free trial of Brightcove 3.

Brightcove 3 is the newest version of the Brightcove online video platform. The new release has a completely re-designed user interface and a wide variety of powerful new features. You can learn more about Brightcove 3 on our site.

We’ve automatically upgraded your account to include a free trial of Brightcove 3 Basic. You can begin using the new features in Brightcove 3 today by logging in at studio3.brightcove.com. (Note: Your content will automatically appear in Brightcove 3, but you will need to make new Brightcove 3 players to take advantage of the full functionality.)

We specifically designed Brightcove 3 Basic to meet the needs of Network publishers. It’s affordably priced and provides access to a wide range of third-party ad networks. If you are looking for more than what we offer with Brightcove Basic, we also have Pro and Enterprise editions…

With so many free content hosts, such as BlipTV and YouTube, I think we will move away from Brightcove. In terms of a business move, I think it’s safe to assume that many people will jump ship from Brightcove. In their FAQ section, they do not list prices for this new Brightcove 3 edition, but under the “How much does it cost” question one line will most likely turn away hundreds of producers…

For reference, Brightcove Basic is very affordably priced at several hundred dollars a month.

So now the search begins for a new video content host. It’s certainly understandable that Brightcove would want to charge for its service, however “several hundred dollars a month” doesn’t quite make business sense when there free or cheaper options out there.

Goodbye Brightcove…we hardly knew ya.

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on November 4, 2008

in Brightcove and Techy Stuff

0 Comments

Rollback iTunes 8

I despise, absolutely despise iTunes 8.

Bloated, heavy on resources and introducing the Genius Bar (otherwise known as the Spend More Money Bar).

My biggest pet peeve about iTunes 8 is the inability to play all my songs. All I want in iTunes is a big list of songs of which I can play, but that’s a no go in iTunes 8. I was limited to playing genres and frankly unless I bought the darn song, many of my tunes were not placed in genres.

So? Want to roll back iTunes to the version prior to iTunes 8? Visit FileHippo, and all your nightmares will go away. Download iTunes 7.7 here!

After downloading here are your steps:
1. Uninstall iTunes 8 from the control panel/add-remove programs.
2. You will be asked to restart computer..do.
3. After you’ve restarted, you’ll most likley click on iTunes and be mortified with the “iTunes Library cannot be read because it was created by a newer version”.
4. To get around this, go to your iTunes folder (usually C:\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\) and find the file titled “iTunes Library.itl”. Rename this file “iTunes Library.itl.old”.
5. Start up iTunes and you’ll find that you have nothing there. Uh oh. Click on File, Add Folder to Library and navigate to where your music is.

Cheers,
Ryan for FuddyTV

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on September 25, 2008

in Apple, Music, Random and Techy Stuff

0 Comments

Microsoft Should Change its Name

I feel bad for Microsoft.

The Seinfeld commercial experiment was a bomb (though I thought it was clever), Vista is bashed and the Zune is laughed at. It seems the only thing Microsoft hasn’t been lambasted for is the XBOX, and even then the red circle of death is a black mark on that.

With all these perceived failings, nothing Microsoft does nowadays seems to be praised or met with positive feedback. The Apple fanboys and girls poke fun, shrug off and mock the big company. Though when a gaunt looking Steve Jobs hops on stage to introduce the new iPod it is as if God himself has come down from the heavens to bestow upon the world the greatest gadget ever produced. When really, it’s just a repackaged iPod with some fancy new colors and case.

So what can Microsoft do? Change its name.

Spin off a new company, call it something hip and cool, hire the same people, use the same technology, but launch it like you’ve never launched it before. The new kid on the block is really just the old pop on the street, but with a fancy new name and no connection on the surface to Microsoft.

As was evident when Microsoft did its Mojave Experiment, people aren’t dissatisfied with Microsoft products, they watched too many Apple ads and read too many blogs from MS haters.

You see, I’ve never had a problem with Vista…not one. I tried the Zune and its pretty cool. The Seinfeld ads were exactly what they were supposed to be…think about it…a commercial about nothing with Jerry Seinfeld. Come on people! Have we lost our Seinfeld mojo already!?

And just as a shot over the bow to my Apple fanboy friends…people gave Microsoft a hard time for its proprietary software, yet Apple is worse, if not THE worst at this. Oh, and if I buy a damn song I want to play it anywhere, not just iTunes and the iPod.

Cheers,
Ryan for FuddyTV

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on September 18, 2008

in Apple, FuddyTV, Microsoft, Random and Techy Stuff

There is 1  Comment

YouTube Facing a Trainwreck

YouTube could be potentially facing a very big trainwreck. The ramifications of which could cost YouTube visitors, content uploaders and most importantly advertisers. The trainwreck is this:

If your user can’t watch the video, why would they go?

I recently ran into a problem where I logged into our FuddyTV.com account on YouTube only to find that the “Car Dance Party Belgium” video looked like this:

The message read, “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.” Obviously this would cause someone a great deal of dismay to a user like us who depend on decent traffic from YouTube. I freaked out, but thought I would look at a completely random video to see if we weren’t the only ones. Indeed, we weren’t. Their video read “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available”. So then I thought perhaps I’ll watch the “Free Hugs” video and lo and behold it too read “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.”

To find a solution I scoured the internet, searching hundreds of different sites. Was there something wrong with my computer? Was my Flash out of date? Was my firewall causing the problem? Was it my browser? Is it YouTube?

However along this long road of obscure websites I discovered that I wasn’t the only one, and it wasn’t coming from people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Thousands of people were having this problem. Thousands is a lot of people, Thousands adds up to a lot of pageviews, Thousands adds up to a lot of money lost for YouTube. In fact one of Fuddy’s own, Erik, mentioned he wasn’t able to view a video and received the same message. I am a web junkie and it took me almost a week and several failed tries to get it to work. (Which by the way, I found my solution by changing the way Firefox handles proxy. Instead of automatic, I changed to No Proxy. I don’t know why this worked, but it did.)

There are many, many fixes out there, but it seems there is no real concrete solution. Many of those solutions are complicated and time intensive. For your average PC/Mac user this may be too difficult. A man wrote YouTube’s support center, wondering how to fix the problem and they could not come to a solution, simply stating there was something wrong with his PC. However, there wasn’t. He had disabled his firewall, had the most recent Flash version, Enabled Javascript, Uninstalled and reinstalled Flash/Shockwave, pressed F5 a hundred times, waited for the video to load, emptied cache, deleted histories, updated java, cleared that cache, wasn’t banned…EVERYTHING. Still, no YouTube videos. Yet the support person would not acknowledge a problem on YouTube’s side.

There are conspiracy theorists out there who think YouTube may be doing this on purpose, specifically to re-gain some of their traffic lost to embedded videos. For every person that watches an embedded video on a blog or other site, YouTube loses an impression of an ad. Are they doing this to drive some of that traffic back to the YouTube site?

There are also people who think YouTube got too big, too fast. That they have reached critical mass, where there are too many videos, too many visitors, not enough server capacity and not enough money to justify paying for it. YouTube isn’t a cash-cow, yet it is one of the most popular sites on the web.

What does this mean for YouTube? Are we beginning to see a crack in that silver lining? If a person cannot utilize a site the way it is intended and the fix is too complicated for your average user, this is a bowl full of disaster.

Cheers,
Ryan for FuddyTV

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on September 3, 2008

in FuddyTV, Techy Stuff and YouTube

0 Comments

Gravatar - Let me show you how.

So you’ll notice that next to everyone’s comments there is an avatar beside your comment! How do you get your little avatar up there? Let me tell you:

Go to Gravatar.com
Pop in your email address that you use often.
You’ll get shot a confirmation email. Confirm.
Choose your desired username and password.
Upload a picture you want to use.
Choose a rating (we accept R and lower).
When you comment on any of our comments, put in the email address you signed up with on Gravatar and bingo, bango, boingo your picture will show up next to your comment.

Neat! Here’s how it looks:

gravatar sample wordpress fuddytv

gravatar sample wordpress fuddytv

Cheers!
Ryan for Fuddy

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on August 15, 2008

in Cool Stuff, Site News and Techy Stuff

There are 2 Comments

An Internet Explorer Issue…[FIXED]

For those of your using Internet Explorer to look at FuddyTV, we’re aware of this:

Internet Explorer cannot open site operation aborted

Meanwhile USE FIREFOX and you won’t have any problems!

We’re trying to find out which code is making it not work…Stay Tuned….

[THE FIX]
Apprently what was causing the crash on Internet Explorer was the “object” tag in the embedded YouTube video in the header. The code was manipulated slightly and now it works like a charm.

However, while I was putzing around the site I came across a plethora of ridiculous Internet Explorer caused errors, which have also been fixed.
Again, I cannot emphasize any more….get FIREFOX! Your computer will love you.

Welcome back IE Users,
Ryan for Fuddy

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on August 8, 2008

in Site News and Techy Stuff

There are 3 Comments

George Takei: A Conversation.

There is something to be said about the addage “Ask and ye shall receive”.

That’s exactly what happened just prior to the Calgary Comicon. I saw on the website that legend George Takei, Lieutenant Sulu on the original Star Trek, was going to be in attendance. The thought crossed my mind, how cool would it be if Chuck Storm interviewed this TV deity? I quickly found George’s official website and shot off an email requesting an interview. Of course I belived there would be no chance in hell that I would hear back, but it was worth a shot.

Ask, and ye shall receive…Enjoy!

Live long and prosper…
Ryan for FuddyTV

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on July 21, 2008

in Chuck Storm, FuddyTV, Interviews, Techy Stuff and Videos

0 Comments

A Scary Moment for FuddyTV…

I sat around last night looking over the computer and wondering what to do with the extra partition on the hard drive I have. I had broken the hard drive into two partitions C:\ and D:\. Primarily I used the D:\ drive to do everything. Neither had much storage…only 80GB total, but I had an external hard drive which in the end saved my butt.

So as I sat there wondering what to do, I thought I would use Norton’s Partition Magic to change some settings, erase the drive I wasn’t using and allocate that space back to the main disk I was using. It all seemed to be going fine and dandy, 25GB of space was going to move to the active drive and all would be well.

Apparently not.

Norton Partition Magic requested I reboot to make all the settings finished. I did…and my CPU never recovered again. Windows wouldn’t boot, wouldn’t even show that I had a hard drive…that was when panic, and I mean ultimate panic, set in. I kept going through my mind, thinking of all the files, data, programs I would lose forever. I cursed Norton Partition Magic and believe me when I say:

DO NOT EVER USE NORTON PARTITION MAGIC!

After spending hour after hour trying to come up with a solution there was nothing left to do. I had exhausted everything. When I woke up this morning, I was calm, but realized that my computing experience would never be the same. I tried a few more solutions, but none would work and my final straw came shortly after I woke up. The computers power supply just crapped out. It had been started and re-started so many times that it was exhausted…and so was I.

So here I am, right at this moment, transferring all of my files from the old hard disk to my brand spankin’ new HP computer. It’s got Vista, and frankly I don’t know if I like that, but I have been pretty successful in having everything transfer and go very smoothly. Thankfully, the external hard drive held all of our videos and website code so it was never in jeopardy…thank god.

Angry LOLcat

Again, the moral of the story is…DON’T USE NORTON PARTITION MAGIC - EVEN BETTER, DON’T USE ANYTHING NORTON!

Cheers,
Ryan Northcott
for FuddyTV.

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on April 19, 2008

in Cats and Techy Stuff

There are 2 Comments