Streamload Blog

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

New blog address

This blog has moved! Please update your links; the new URL for the Streamload blog is:

http://blog.streamload.com

Thanks!

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Video blogging with Streamload

Some people call it v-logging, vlogging, or vblogging. Video blogging can be called many different things, but I call it one of the hottest new trends on the web. The number of online journals and web logs (or "blogs" for short) have grown exponentially in the past couple of years. Thanks to video blogs, you don’t have to limit your blog to just words – you can incorporate video clips and other forms of media to enrich your blog's content. Video blogging is the natural next step in this blogging craze, and Streamload can help you do it.

Video blogs can range from slickly produced video shorts to crude, unedited clips of someone talking directly into the camera – not unlike the "confessional" clips on MTV's The Real World. But whatever the content, video blogs are always about the individual: his or her thoughts, ideas, and opinions. (And if the individual isn’t all that deep, it's about his or her funny faces or lunch plates!)

Are you ready to share your video blog with the world? Here’s how to do it, and how Streamload can help make it happen.

Step 1: Creating Your Blog

There are tons of choices when it comes to publishing a blog on the Internet. The quickest and easiest option would be to use a blogging site like Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/), LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com/), or MSN Spaces (http://spaces.msn.com/). Blogging sites don’t require you to download any special software, and most offer free accounts; the only thing you need to do to get started is to pick out a template for your blog’s look, and then type in your text. Easy peasy!

If you already have a website, you can download blogging software like Moveable Type or WordPress, which will enable you to create your own text blogs and upload them to any web host.

Once you’ve got your blog, the next step is making a video.

Step 2: Recording Your Video

To shoot some video, you can use a camcorder or web cam. You can simply shoot a straightforward clip of you talking right into the camera. Or, if you prefer, you can transfer a camcorder video into your computer and create an edited masterpiece complete with subtitles, captions, video effects, music, still images, etc – you’re only limited by your creativity. The secret is to keep it relatively short and concise; only your mother will want to see you discoursing on a topic for 20 minutes!

Once you have your video edited, you’ll need to compress it to a web-friendly format like Apple QuickTime, Windows Media, RealVideo, DivX, or even Flash Video. Compression is extremely important. For example, video straight out of a digital video camcorder is about 3.5 MB per second. This means that a short ten-second video clip would run 35 MB in size and could take hours to download! Luckily, most video editing programs – even free ones like Windows XP Movie Maker and Apple’s iMovie – include powerful compression abilities. The simpler your movie, the easier it will be to compress and the better it will look. A straight shot of someone talking, flat lit with a static background, works the best – at least, from a compression standpoint. Once you have the video compressed and in a web format, you can then upload it to your Streamload account.

Step 3: Blogging Your Video

Using your paid Streamload membership, you can upload videos to your account, and then put them into your Hosted Files directory in order to link the files to your new video blog. When you move your video into Hosted Files, the file can easily be accessed using a link like http://www.streamload.com/yourusername/myvideo.mpg.

Once you’ve got your file’s Streamload link, you can post that link to your blog so that people can download or stream your video. Congratulations, you’re a star! A star on your very own video blog, that is! Don't forget, when someone accesses your video using the link, your account's download MBs are used.

If you need more guidance, you can find a couple of truly exceptional and easy-to-understand tutorials on how to create and post your own video blogs at http://www.freevlog.org/ and http://videoblogging.info/. If you’d like more information on hosting files from your Streamload account, send an email to our support staff at support@streamload.com. Our legion of Streamloadphiles will be happy to assist you with any questions.

Related links:
http://www.vidblogs.com/
http://www.bloglines.com/
http://tinyurl.com/7powy - A recent video blog entry from the actor Zach Braff, on his Garden State Blog.

Happy vlogging!
Maxine

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Streamload's DigitalLife Experience

We just returned from three jam-packed days of demonstrating our new service, Streamload MediaMax, at Ziff-Davis' DigitalLife show in New York City. First and foremost, thank you to all our current Streamload users who came by to see us at the show. It was incredibly fun to meet you and to give you a preview of the MediaMax beta release.

We are very proud to return from the show with the honor of being selected as "Best of Show" in the category of digital life services. PC Magazine did a really nice article on all of the "Best in Show" companies.

Here were some of our favorite products from the digital life show:

XBox 360 - We are about a month away from the launch of Xbox360. I can honestly say that I was completely blown away by the graphics and performace of the games at the Microsoft XBox 360 demo. I will be pre-ordering mine ASAP.

Robopet - Our booth neighbors and friends at WowWee were demonstrating my favorite technologies, robots for home use. The makers of RoboSapien and RoboRaptor were previewing my favorite new robot, RoboPet, and a very realistic-looking chimpanzee head that is coming out soon called Live Chimpanzee. I love dogs and I love robots. So why wouldn't this be one of my favorite technologies at the show? In fact, I have had RoboPet on pre-order since July, so I was very excited to finally see it in person, now I am just a little sad that the shipping backorder at Amazon has been so prolonged.

Creative Zen Vision - Forget Apple's video iPod. Creative's new 30 GB device is decently priced, has a nice sized screen (640x480 resolution) that's perfect for exporting the signal to any standard definition TV. It supports many video formats, such as AVI, DivX™ 4 & 53, XviD4, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG4-SP, WMV9 and Motion-JPEG, which simply means more choice and less restrictions. It is also Windows Plays-For-Sure compatible. So you can buy your digital music or you can use a music subscription service like Real Rhapsody, Napster, or Yahoo! Music Unlimited to fill up your player with all the music you want from just $4.95 a month.

I will be posting photos from the show as soon as I have a chance to upload them.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Streamload and your Online Auctions

Online auction sites like eBay are all the rage these days, and if you’re anything like me you love the ability to turn all of the random junk you’ve collected over the years (Salad Shooter, anyone?) into extra cash. However, many auction sites place additional fees on hosting pictures through their site. If you have a paid Streamload membership, you can keep your auction listing fees down by hosting images from your Streamload account. Hosting allows anyone to access your file using a simple URL, such as

www.streamload.com/yourname/saladshooter4sale.jpg

You can link this URL to your auction so that visitors to your listing can view images of the item that you’re selling. If your preferred auction site imposes size restrictions on the images they host for you, you can create links in your auction to the large, full-quality sized shots in your Streamload account so that visitors can get a detailed look at your item.

In addition, you can use our Quality Conversion feature to change the size of your image file. This means that you can take your full-quality, 5 Megapixel image file and reduce it in size so that people with slower Internet connections will have an easier time of looking at your picture.

In order to host files using your Streamload account, move the file into your Hosted Files folder. Next, you'll need to link the file using a Streamload Hosting URL. In order to get the URL for your hosted file, go into your Hosted Files folder, then mark the checkbox next to the file. Click on Edit > Basic Edit from the Streamload toolbar. There, you’ll see the Hosting URL near the middle of the screen. Copy the Hosting URL (it’s easier if you right click the URL and select Copy Link Location), and paste into your auction. Remember, the correct URL will be the one that looks like the example URL above! It's important to get the right URL linked.

If you’d like to change the size of your file, mark the checkbox next to the file and click on Edit > Convert from the Streamload Toolbar. The following screen will allow you to choose from a list of formats and sizes available for your file. Here’s a tip: the Quality Conversion feature can only decrease the size of your image file, so it’s always best to upload the largest, best quality picture that you have and then proceed from there.

With a little creativity, you can use your Streamload account to help you create great-looking auctions. Now, if only I could figure out how to stop buying items as quickly as I’m selling them… :)

For more information regarding hosting your files on Streamload, please see our website’s documentation here. Of course, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact one of our support representatives at support@streamload.com. Our crack team is available 24-7 to help you with any questions.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Podcasting with Streamload

Greetings! I’m Mark from Streamload Support, and this is my first post to the Streamload Blog.

Working in Streamload Customer Support, we regularly see trends and changes in the way our customers use Streamload.

Hosting 'Podcasts' via Streamload is one such trend that has recently taken off in a big way. If you're not familiar with podcasting, it's a method of publishing audio programs for download via the Internet. Podcasting is popular with bloggers, and has also been adopted by traditional broadcasters such as NPR and BBC.

Hosting audio for ‘on demand’ access has always been possible at Streamload, but we've seen much more action in this area since podcasting became popular in late 2004. Content creators faced with web host bandwidth limitations can solve the problem by outsourcing their file hosting and delivery requirements to Streamload.

If you're interested in seeing what all the fuss is about, I've included a list of Podcast directories below. These directories link to podcasts from around the internet and feature a wide range of subjects:

Podcast Directories
Podcast Alley
Digital Podcast
Podcast.net

Below is a list of my personal podcast favorites. Please note these are all technology and internet related - if that’s not what floats your boat, the directories above have something for everyone!

Internet/Tech Podcasts
Revision3
this WEEK in TECH
endgadget Podcasts
IT Conversations

Despite the ‘Pod’ reference to Apple’s iPod, any digital audio player or computer with audio-playing software can play podcasts. My most cherished audio device is currently the iriver T10 .

Listening to podcasts is a fun way to learn about new things, and anyone can create their own podcast.

Whether you’re an experienced podcaster or a fledgling newbie, check out Streamload's file storage, hosting and delivery services for fast, reliable digital content distribution.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Streamloading!

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

MediaMax Migration Update

The effort to migrate our current customers to Streamload MediaMax is still in full swing, and tomorrow our engineers will be upgrading one of our database servers to the new MediaMax backend architecture. The small number of members that are affected by the database maintenance will notice that their accounts will be in read-only status between 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, October 5. This status means that a read-only status banner will appear at the top of the account, and you will not be able to upload, edit, move, or copy files and folders during the maintenance period. Having said that, here’s the good news: if your account is affected by the maintenance, downloads will be free for the time that your account is in read-only.

Our systems engineers will be making their best effort to minimize tomorrow’s maintenance period. For additional systems news, please check out our Service News page. If you have any questions at all, feel free to contact our support staff at support@streamload.com. We have a great customer support team that will be happy to answer any questions you might have about the service.

Thanks again for your patience!

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

MediaMax VideoShare

Out of MediaMax’s many useful features, the one that we’re most excited about is our new VideoShare service. VideoShare will allow you to really get the most out of your new digital camcorder by giving you the ability to share the memories you’ve recorded with your friends and family, anytime and anywhere! With just a few mouse-clicks, you’ll be able to send and share video files of any size to anyone you’d like. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays… you won’t have to leave far-away family and friends out of the loop any longer. Harvo, one of our chief programmers, used the service to show us videos of his family just hours after his first baby was born. Congratulations to the proud new papa!

VideoShare also gives you the ability to organize videos into different albums, just like the way you might organize your photo files into albums. If that weren’t cool enough, VideoShare will extract frames from your video file so that you can share still pictures (which might be especially nice if you have a vacation video that has some great shots you’d like to print as photos).

In addition, you’ll be able to assign tags to your files so that you can group files of different types together. For example, clicking the “Baby” tag would allow you to view all of the photos, music, and video you’ve associated with your new bundle of joy. A single click of the Publish button allows you to share all of your “Baby” tagged files – no need to lug that brag book around with you all the time!

As you can tell, we’re pretty amped about it – we can’t wait until you’re able to try it out for yourself! Check out a screen shot here.

Our engineers are working tirelessly as they migrate our current customers over to MediaMax. Although the migration process is taking a little longer than we had originally expected, we wanted to make sure that the new system is absolutely ready for our members so that the switch is as stable and error free as possible. We’ll be sure to keep you updated every step of the way.

Enjoy the rest of your week!