_root.jakehilton.com

I was asked by ffdmag to do a write up of the Wowza Media Server for their Sept/Oct issue of their online magazine. This specific issue highlights Flash Media Servers. Anyone interested in a good read of the Adobe Flash Media Server as well as a few articles on the Wowza Media Server, should check it out.

It's a free download and hopefully could clear some cobwebs if you're comparing Flash Media Server (FMS) to Wowza Media Server (WMS)

I came across this link posted by an acquaintance on twitter. It is a video of a presentation done by Seth Godin. He articulates in such a fresh, fun way, how to think differently in a competitive environment where everyone is thinking the same.

It really makes you want to take a step back and look at what you're doing and how you can and should change the way you do business.

It is definitely worth the watch.

I love this video.. it articulates in such a clever way that makes it comically clear how some clients think.. enjoy!

Screensharing with the Flash Media Server (FMS) has been reserved for use by Adobe for some time. They have made the business decision that they want to keep it close to the vest. This has all become increasingly annoying over the years and thankfully some great developers have stepped up to offer this functionality to the masses.

Ok.. so the title infers that Wowza has not yet arrived there.. but they have indeed.

I have recently been working on a project to extend a current media server offing. We looked into 3 main offerings, Flash Media Server, Wowza Media Server, and Red5 Media Server. As you may well assume we settled on Wowza.

We have many reasons for choosing Wowza from price to stability to innovations coming out of that talented group. But one item stands out in my eyes as a make or break for a product, that being support.

Some time after I wrote the origional article about Flex 3 SDK and Eclipse working together I came across a build process that I prefer to the one I wrote about with using ant for compiling. I will quickly run through how I build a project using this new method. I will be borrowing code from my last article seeing as it is closely the same with a few differences for building the project.

Yesterday I was determined to get lighttpd configured for python. When I did a search I got results that talked about hooking it through fastcgi and having a script start up the python process on a certain port etc...

I ended up looking around for hours and could not get it to work.

I finally consulted a well configured server for a client and discovered how they do it.. and if I had known ahead of time.. I could have had it done in about 10 seconds.

I thought I'd share so others could avoid the endless searching which brought me frustration.

UPDATE: If the below instructions don't work or you'd rather just download and run a file to do the work for you.. go here to see an alternative method: http://www.markusbe.com/2009/09/installing-flash-media-server-on-ubuntu-...

I wrote a short tidbit on how to install FMS 2 and 3 on Ubuntu.. I may as well continue the pattern.

FMS3.5

I picked up the patch file here: http://www.joeterranova.net/2009/01/30/flash-media-server-35-on-ubuntu/

So to layout the process:

# install dependencies
sudo apt-get install libnspr4-dev

Without much fanfare Adobe has released the new versions of Flash Media Server 3.5 and the Flash Media Encoder 3.0 today.

Let me quote a good friend of mine, Flashcomguru.com on what he summed up for Flash Media Server 3.5 and Flash Media Encoder 3.0:

I had done a demo application at the Adobe Max conference I spoke at dealing with a video chat application on Facebook. I decided to go ahead and flush it out implementing RTMFP and posting it officially on Facebook for usage. It can be found here: http://apps.facebook.com/eye__to__eye

It's an application that allows you to video chat with anyone one of your friends. Both friends need to have application loaded at the same time and they'll be able to video chat with one another.