Vidize Blog

If you’ve never seen the Argument Clinic sketch, brace yourself. Monty Python have decided to wage war on low-quality versions of their sketches and they are creating a whole new channel with high-quality versions!

Yes, the original song title is “Radio killed the radio star”. Without going into a deep philosophical discussion, here’s the video.
It’s certainly ironic that MTV launches their music video site sooo late. Anyway, enjoy the song.

Now that the Vidize is in beta, I plan to go over the list of recommended equipment.
I start with the absolute must-have - a Web camera.
A while back, there was a discussion about USB 1.1 vs USB 2.0 web cams. This discussion is mostly obsolete now as the majority of new web cameras are all [...]

Nicolas Kayser-Bril has done a review of the Vidize beta (in French).
You can read it here although if French isn’t your first language, you can read a loose translation from Google.

Adobe has scheduled the beta test of the new Flash player 10 (codename Astro) for today.
There doesn’t seem to be any substantial improvements in the video department but here’s the feature list:
3D Effects - Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity. Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects [...]

ITV has started blogging recently. You can find the individual blogs here.
Here’s a sample of the video blogging from Afghanistan:

Another special delivery from Ask a Ninja:

According to Associated Press (as of a few hours ago):
Hollywood directors (DGA) reached a tentative contract deal Thursday with studios, a development that could turn up the pressure on striking writers to settle their 2-month-old walkout that has crippled the entertainment industry.
“Two words describe this agreement — groundbreaking and substantial,” said Gil Cates, chair of [...]

Finally, Adobe has realized that the high price of the Flash Media Server was hindering its more wide adoption. I hope the open source alternative, Red 5, will still keep its momentum.
Here’s the summary:
The latest version of Flash Media Sever, which will ship in January 2008, will be come in three versions, ranging from free [...]

If you’ve expected ANY bad news from Paris, you can relax for at least a day. The Paris bureau of Reuters voted yesterday in favor of a 24-hour strike.
The strike is in protest at a ‘deliberate policy’ of staff reductions (see also BBC staff reduction).
‘The decision (to strike) demonstrates the concern of the [...]