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Jul06
The many flavors of H.264 video
H.264 is not a single video codec; it is a family of codecs with some shared shortcuts grouped into 17 sets of profiles and 16 levels of constraints. Video creators and playback software share a mutual understanding of these shortcuts, which are often accelerated by specialized chipsets. This post examines a few of the many flavors of H.264 video and their application in mobile, desktop, and Flash Player environments.
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Feb08
HTML5 video markup, compatibility and playback
The emerging HTML5 specification lifts video playback out of the generic object element and into specialized video handlers. Explicit markup for audio and video places elevates moving pictures to a similar native rendering capacity as img markup we are used to but with more fine-grained details about underlying formats and compression available before loading. In this post I will dive into implementation details of HTML5 video based on currently available consuming agents and outline some of the nuances of preparing media for playback.
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Apr14
Google search referer changes
Google will roll out a change to its search results pages later this week designed to better capture outbound clicks. Google search result pages will link to a gateway URL before delivering the visitor to his final destination. These gateway URLs will replace search result URLs exposed via the Referer HTTP header.
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Apr05
Facebook's photo storage rewrite
This week Facebook will complete its roll-out of a new photo storage system designed to reduce the social network's reliance on expensive proprietary solutions from NetApp and Akamai. The new large blob storage system, named Haystack, is a custom-built file system solution for the over 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month. Jason Sobel, a former NetApp engineer, led Facebook's effort to design a more cost-effective and high-performance storage system for their unique needs.
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Mar29
Facebook's growing infrastructure spend
On Thursday BusinessWeek reported Facebook is seeking new financing for its data center operation growth in 2009. Facebook continues to add new members and their associated content at an extremely fast pace, with most new growth coming from international markets. Facebook needs to expand its abilities to serve these markets by bolstering current infrastructure offerings and cutting latency to its members through new international points of presence. In this post I will take a deeper look at Facebook's current computing infrastructure and related expenses and examine likely new areas of investment in 2009.
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Mar16
Create enhanced results on Yahoo! and Facebook with Share markup
Yahoo! announced support for enhanced search results last week based on Facebook Share and RDFa markup. Website owners can add a few meta tags to their pages to boost click-throughs from a more visual Yahoo! Search result and east the process of sharing a link on Facebook at the same time. In this post I will cover the major categories of enhanced share types -- audio, images, video, news, blogs, games, documents, and multimedia -- and walk through how site owners can stand out on shareable platforms.
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Mar15
Measuring efficiency in the cloud
In the world of cloud computing every action has a cost. Every HTTP request fires off a chain of actions, each uniquely measured on a variety of billable meters. Gone are the days of idle or unused resources on our local servers. Cloud computing charges by the sip (when sips are available) aligning business goals of resource efficiency and its cost. The cloud computing world shares many similarities with the plug-in and go world of electricity, including the need to run green for the sake of resources and cost savings. What can the world of green energy teach us about the future of cloud computing? How can we measure computing resources in the cloud for efficiency, replacement costs, and cost savings?
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Mar14
The anatomy of cloud computing
Cloud computing is changing the way we provision hardware and software for on-demand capacity fulfillment. Lately I have been thinking about the ways on-demand servers, storage, and CDNs are changing the way we develop web applications and make business decisions. In this post I will provide an overview of the cloud hosting landscape with a particular focus on cloud utilization by web companies. I will walk through a managed infrastructure stack and examine a few major business targets.
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Feb13
Google App Engine 1.1.9 boosts capacity and compatibility
Google released App Engine 1.1.9 this week, including new capacity ceilings for developers and better compatibility with existing Python code. The new App Engine supports standard HTTP libraries, larger files, triples the response deadline, and removes limitations on CPU-intensive processes.
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Feb10
Economic anecdotes from SF restaurants
The current economic uncertainties have changed the high-end restaurant industry, but not in the ways you might think. On Friday evening I had drinks with owners of two well-known restaurants in San Francisco. Total diners is up, staff is more committed, and menus have expanded. Web businesses can learn from these service industry adjustments.
Niall Kennedy's Weblog
Tracking how syndication and emerging new businesses are changing life on the Web.
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Niall Kennedy is a web technologist in San Francisco, California in the United States. I am very interested in the world of... MORE »