October 2007 - Posts
I'm looking for a new site to store my videos and photos. I'm currently using Flickr, which I like tremendously. But I also want to host video files. For that in the past I was using PhanFare.com, which I also like. They'll host and show both video and image, BUT (and this is huge .. HUGE) after two years they refuse to add tagging support, stating that other feature rank higher from their customers. With tagging PhanFare.com would be nearly perfect. Without tagging, I simply have too much content to manager in their current folder structure.
So the site I'm looking for will ...
- offer unlimited uploads.
- not be free.
- offer private label hosting with dns -> images.ScottCate.com
- image and video tagging.
- store the full size original media.
- make multiple size/versions of the images available
- offer offline DVD backups
- have an API of some sort, mostly for fetching
- hopefully this is already in use by others, and 3rd party software is available for purchase.
- I don't care if the video is re-encoded, just make the original available for download
- video can have a 1gig, or 10 minute max length
- additional meta data for video's would be nice, so they can be sorted in with images. It's ok if I have to supply this.
- have a nice player, hopefully fully Ajax enabled, so page refreshes aren't bothersome.
- ability to embed images and videos with supplied code snippets.
- comment support (even if I have to moderate them)
- and finally - a nice installable upload utility.
What I'm trying to avoid is simple. I don't want to point family and friends to multiple places. Go here for images, go there for video.
What I haven't seen done yet, that I'm really looking for is having the video's interact with the images. If on my camera I have 10 images, and 3 video's intermingled, it would be nice to upload them, get 13 thumbnails and some indication that 3 are video's. All the tagging should work the same for video's and images.
Do you have any recommendations?
Below is a list of my favorite software and technologies I've used or worked on this week (along with links to the projects, or software where applicable).
I love the idea of good documentation. Especially when it has the answer to what I'm looking for. It's after hours and I'm sitting here with a commerce site (in testing) that isn't posting transactions. We just updated a firewall on our testing network, and started by default with all ports closed.
When you install DotNetCharge you get a very helpful windows help file. A quick search for port along with my processor name, and I find exactly what I'm looking for. I remember something in the past where I had to use the provided help file and it being really easy to find.
I thought it would be nice to throw a kind word out about documentation, instead of the usual "these dox suck" comments which are easier and more common :)
Mr. Steve Smith of http://ASPAlliance.com fame is in PHX (thanks to INETA.org) talking to our asp.net user group ( AZGroups.com ). His subject is asp.net caching. If you're in the area, it would be great to have you out to the meeting.
In addition to INETA sponsorship for Steve Smith as an INETA speaker, the meeting is being sponsored by Robert Haft Technology, who will be supplying our pizza for the break.
Last week I was in Boise, speaking to their .NET User Group, with INETA.org. The group leader, Cory Isakson, was talking about his PayPal Security Key. This is the key chain fob that has a tiny screen and a single button on it. Press the button, get a 6 digit security code. Then when you sign into PayPal (or eBay) you type your password, and append the 6 digit code. If you leave off the 6 digit code, it asks you for it on the next screen. It works great.
It makes sense for PayPal to have this. If every login had a security key that changes every 30 seconds, the success of fishing attacks would drop to almost zero. I had to surf around the PayPal site for a while until I found it, so here's a screen shot of what to look for.
You can get your PayPal security key for $5.00, right on the profile screen.
The best part -- it's a VeriSign device. VeriSign has a new openid provider, that of course uses the security key. This means that for $5, I have a key fob that works with all my openid sites.
<link rel="openid.server" href="https://pip.verisignlabs.com/server" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://scottcate.pip.verisignlabs.com/" />
With the above openid headers on ScottCate.com, I can use the open id of "ScottCate.com" and allow/deny sites with my VeriSign secure key / open id login. Today I feel secure :)
UPDATE :: 2007 Oct 03 14:02
There is a little hiccup in the above process if you don't **first** activate your PayPal key fob. So for $5.00 the key fob is sold and sent to you from PayPal. When you receive it, you must activate it on PayPal, and only after it's activated it, you can link it to your VeriSign OpenID account.
My friend David Sussman (via email) just tipped me off to Sara's VS Tips/Tricks blog.
It's a great blog. I love learning VS tips/tricks, anything to make my job a little faster/easier.
http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/
It's not 100% dedicated to VS tips/tricks but it's very close.
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