Ok, I'm not a gillznfinz kind of guy ... but I am an America's Cup kind of guy. This would be perfect for that environment ... switch back and forth between the boats, cameras above and below decks, get text messages from the strategists and course plotters and the viewing would be truly compelling.

It would be great to see this applied to star parties, where you see live video of celestial objects from cameras fitted to various amateur telescopes.

Having all that much information on the current situation is bound to lead to information overload and complete parallelization of the decision making. There is a reason that Wendy's only has 20 items on their menu.

Actually, I think application downloading is the problem. The applications need to stay on the server where the data can be managed.

This argument seems to be based on video. But how will the tag in HTML 5 affect this?

http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/05/support-for-html-video-element-in.html

Who the heck needs to spend a weekend driving to all kinds of Open Houses. Realtors could set up LIVE TOURS of listings. Anyone out there want to help me launch it?

Ok, so Java is (once again) threatened on the desktop by (this time) FLASH and it's future version(s). Wait? What's the news here? I thought applets died back in the 90's and last time I checked they were still dead. It's a whole different ball game when one talks about Java desktop applications - these are alive and very well.
Anyway, back to Flash 9: It's great that Flash finally supports H.264 but what does that have to do with Java? Last time I checked H.264 is a codec and if Sun has the desire to add it to its distribution it will certainly do so. I think the bigger licensing battle is over Divx vs. H.264 - there is a somewhat uneven split between these two codecs. While H.264 is mostly Apple and Sony supported (iPods, iPhone , PSP, PS3 and yes: quicktime), Divx is almost everywhere else (let's not count Microsoft - it's not really a competitor in this field). Interestingly this is like VHS vs. BETAMAX or HD DVD vs. Blue ray. Anyway, just some random thoughts...

Hardly a 'huge kick in the head' to Quicktime, considering it has supported h.264 for years now and Apple has pushed it fairly heavily. In fact, I'd say Apple's refusal to support flash video on the ipod/iphone is part of the driving force behind Adobe switching to h.264. Flv has little or no support on portable devices - and it's becoming increasingly important to support playback beyond the web browser. Since h.264 is supported on iPod/iPhone, AppleTV, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, even satellite and digital cable - and it forms the basis of the AVCHD standard that most consumer video cameras are moving towards now - it only makes sense from a market-survival standpoint to switch to h.264 in the flash player. This will help to minimize the need to encode multiple versions for multiple platforms, and because of that it's really only a kick in the head to one player - Windows Media. Now by encoding to h.264 you can cover probably 90%+ of the market - so why waste time also making wmv versions?

adobe air is what has to do with java.but yes, applets are dead.

Hey, the military already has all this real-time tracking stuff. Don't you know anything? How do you think we kicked our way into Baghdad with too few troops and made it all seem like a cake walk.

Bob S

It will be interesting to see if the FISHIN' Channel is successful. My god that sounds dull! If they can make it work I'll crap myself.

java applets are just one technology of the java ecosystem. since no one really uses them now i really can't see much impact on java and its dominance in the development of large, scalable web services and portable applications. flash is going to dominate light weight, presentation level applications which are backed by scalable server based business logic apps ... which is exactly how it is now.

flash will hopefully crush the crud that is ajax with a technology that isn't a hack.

_ I just checked my browser's plugins (about:plugins) and it lists "Flash 9.0 r31" as one of the plugins installed. So the new version of Flash will probably be 9.1.


_ Also, keep in mind that the use of the Flash plugin for ads can result in a substantial performance hit. How ? Take FireFox 2.x, five InfoWorld pages with an average of two Flash ads per page and one gets ten instances of Flash running. This will turn your browser into one hell of a cycle hog. That's why I'm thinking of building a dummy plugin that will take the place of Flash for my regular browser and have a quarantined browser for those rare occasions when I want to run Flash.

I know I don't know what I am talking about, but there is another product called Silverlight, but I don't know what I am talking about.

Hmmm, military, pervasive remote video devices?

Have you read this:

">http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/

It's a comic, kind of.

It's a bit hard to navigate at points, but I think there's 24 pages, a good read.

My favorite quote:

"Eventually, the tears of all the children formed a mighty river...

of pure, clean water...

Which washed away all the blood, all the corpses.

Over the roar of water, I heard a woman's voice, singing.

I didn't understand the words, but it was the oldest of all songs, a song as old as
mothers:

"Everything's going to be all right""

Silverlight is from MS iirc.

Silverlight is from MS, and though it can talk to the graphics hardware directly too, it only has WMV & VC-1 codec support, and roughly 0% market penetration.

H.264 rocks! Viva Quicktime AND Flash!

Ted, use the Flsahblock plugin for FireFox. It will do just what you want. Honestly I think that advertisement is the problem with Flash. I block all Flash content because 90% of it is annonying and extremely distracting animated ads. It makes it much less likely that I'll hit flashblock's play button to watch real flash content. Websites built on on lots of little pices of flash are much less likely to get my business because they make me chose between using their site and being barraged with silly ads all the time.

Evan Donn's comment is bang on correct. This is a huge kick in the head to Microsoft and Real, and a win for Apple. H.264 is the vodec preferred for QuickTime 7, and is the format used by the iPod, and Apple TV.

This is certainly great for Adobe, and for Flash developers. But is helps standardize QuickTime content (in MP4 files) even more than it is already, and marginalizes the MS and Real formats.

There is more to video playback than simply following the spec. Implementation matters. Given how unbelievably crappy previous versions of flash video have been (REALLY CPU hungry, no use of the GPU for performance and quality improvements, really bad AV sync) I won't hold my breath waiting for Flash 9.

Internet video right now is still a pretty crappy experience compared to TV. Ignore content and choice issues; just in terms of the level of manipulation and video quality you have, what's there is far far worse than what you get with a VCR. As long as companies stick with Flash (or other incompetent half-assed codec implementations) this is never going to change.
I have my complaints about Quicktime, but the quality of the codec implementations, the control given to the user, and the general level of thought given to the system are simply incomparable to the competitors.

Thanks for the great article and I just wanted to announce that www.gillznfinz.com has gone completely FREE. Bob Cringley RULES!!!!

Thanks and Tight Lines,
Capt Adam Paul

let me add to my 35-word comment appended to a vote "for" gillznfinz:
that my fishmonger informants explained that the gillznfinz episodes they watched were set off the coast of Alaska, in dangerously violent seas.
sounds like it can be exciting television.
allusions to reruns of paint drying, etc., miss the mark.

I realize too, that Bob Cringely's point is not the virtues of this particular programming, but the model it presents for other realms.

Just to be accurate:

QuickTime is a container format, not a codec itself. You can wrap all sorts of variously encoded videos inside a QT file, indeed I built one today with chunks of h.264, Motion JPEG, and GIF stills, even used QT’s built-in titling features.

And yes, QT is the basis for substantial portions of the MPEG4 architecture. Apple donated it, everyone liked it, it was used.

QT’s greatest flaws are it’s stagnation and awful Windows implementation.

Apple has assiduously ignored QT for years, even abandoning previously ballyhood features like QuicktimeVR. And the Windows player is notoriously bad; slow, clunky, non-accelerated. Indeed it doesn’t even suport Overlay, a mode every other player uses to great advantage.

This malaise even plays over to cellphones.

3GPP & 3GPP2 are the preferred formats on cellphones, ones QT supports natively. But in spite of their being on most cellphones nobody uses ‘em, preferring the same formats they use on bigger devices. Indeed QT on Windows, in spite of being bundled with iTunes, is so moribund few even know they can transcode material with it for their cellphones.

Thus while QT is popular amongst Mac-folk and video creators in the larger market, and the wilds of the internet it’s quickly fading into irrelevance. Real is entirely absent, DIVX is becoming king of piracy, and MS is sewing up deals with big content producers (see BBC.)

But Flash, being the preferred format of YouTube & ilk, as well as on many cellphones (if not the iPhone), is so far ahead in the casual video market that everyone else can only hope it doesn’t come to dominate other segments, which it clearly aims to do.

Indeed with Flash’s scripting ability (anyone remember when SMIL was gonna deliver multimedia streams?) and ever-improving backends it seems poised to become content, player, and application. That’s a triple-play that could really rock the media markets.

Internet TV is global in theory but the broadcasters can limit it geographically. Soccer fans out of Europe for example, are out of luck. This happens in the BBC web page where you have to be located in the UK to receive video feed and in the Spanish sports paper Marca.com. Kind of sucks since there is no equivalent on TV.

"QT on Windows, in spite of being bundled with iTunes, is so moribund few even know they can transcode material with it for their cellphones"

Your comments are reasonable, as far as they go, but the fact is that Windows users don't do much content creation. Windows is little more than a fancy vehicle for selling MS-Office to pointy-haired bosses and secretaries.

I never really enjoyed football on TV even when I
watched the first Superbowl way back when and the World Series never really floated my boat, but along came PGA and I sat down one day and started watching it and still enjoy the game as much as I enjoy the peace and tranquillity of listening to grass grow or watching paint dry.

Everybody likes different things. Viva la difference!!!

What about Microsoft Silverlight?

The paparazzi should use this technology to chase stars.

I think SPEED has already been doing something similar (sans bi-directional interactivity) with Formula 1 racing. There's some web site you can ($) subscribe to that will let you select which car or track camera you want to watch during the race. I record races on TiVo, so all this real-time stuff is meaningless for me.

iTable
http://digg.com/apple/Apple_s_Response_to_Microsoft_s_Surface_Computing_PIC

You should look at www.echostorm.com. They are doing this right now for UAVs and other video streaming assets is Iraq and Afganistan right now. Saw a demo and it was quite impressive.

OK, Cringely, I give up. Where are your scintillating, provocative insights? The latest posts quite frankly seem a poor ghost of themselves compared with the postings you made before your site got a bit fancier in format. Did you get a day job?

Star Parties? Interesting idea. I have a different twist. Put cameras on some celebrities and each week follow them to their Hollywood parties.



Flash vs Java? Through the years there have been many interesting platforms on which to host applications. A few things usually kill them. The first is the desire to add more and more to them. Java is now huge, bloated, slow, ... The other killer is greed. As the tool gets bigger and bigger the perceived value (to the owner) gets greater until it is priced out of business. The final killer is leadership, too much or the lack of it. In Adobe's case they have years of products that have had to stay lean and mean to survive, and they have. They know they have something good in Flash and will probably manage it very well.

Adobe has products that are lean and mean? Have you ever used Photoshop? How about just the simple Acrobat reader? Flash generally does OK, but people don't read this correctly because 99% of "flash apps" are video players that the user already has cached because he has used the site (like YouTube) before.

"Windows Media and its VC-1 codec also have an enduring role in the production of professional content. "

What's your next guess?

VC-1 was already dying due to Apple's dominance in video editing, and with Flash jumping on the H.264 bandwagon VC-1 is beyond resuscitation.