I'm really getting sold on the idea of Rich Internet Applications. The stuff you can do now is remarkable and awesome, and preliminary kudos to Adobe (Macromedia?) for leading a charge of sorts here.

That being said, is it really an Internet Application if it's in a standalone player running in a browser, or on AIR? Duh, what's the difference from a Java VM?

Maybe the pure ease of developing and consistency of platform look and feel?

But it's interesting that Adobe has basically a whole programming/app development playform now. I wonder if limitations of scripting languages is gonna hold it back? Or propel it forward?

What a rambling blog. Due to writing this while watching the 'video in flash' interactive presentation.

Am I doing a third-party video player, worthy of being released into community/open sourcing? I think I have some good UI enhancements over what I see typically available. But this could become a drop in component with Flex. Hmm.

Other things from watching this presentation:

• Adobe's complete dominance in multimedia creation. Premier, Aftereffects, etc. Huh.
• Video in Flex loaded at runtime. No option for embedding in .swf. This is okay, b/c I kinda already decided against that. You can do progressive over HTTP, which is what I'm looking at working with first.
• YouTube is 100% progressive http download. This means you can steal all their videos. It actually means you already have, and they're in your browser cache somewhere.
• I made a dynamic object creation application while watching it.
• Actually, not "watching" it, because there's no video archive of the key parts, you know, where he's actually working with the application. So you hear the guy talking but can't see what he's doing. WHOOPS ADOBE MIGHT WANNA LOOK INTO THAT ONE.
• Usability of h.264?
• http://www.flashvideofaq.com/
• This is somewhat like NicoNicoDou, somewhat like what I'm doing. BUT comments don't actually go into the video. I've got the source for this now, which should prove really useful.
• Man, they really gotta work on these presenter video controls. No precision.
• Premier express?
• Flash Media Server? For free?
• Adobe Media Player? What is?
• KEYBOARD DISABLED?! Only in fullscreen? Need to look into this.
• Oh, and can I change Right-Click menu? Because, like, it's in the design doc.
• http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html
• Play this:
  -4-3-2-3-2-1-2-1-1------
  - - - - - - - - - - 4-4-3-4-3-2-3-2-1- (etc.)
• Add this tail:
  -
  -
  -2-0/2\0---0-
  -----2-
• Profit!

I've filled out requirements enough that perhaps I can start implementing some things? I've got functional requirements for the player, navigation, interactive content and IC actions, and a bunch of other things. I'd like to build out a demo soon so it feels like I'm doing something real. WHY DON'T I JUST DO IT IN YOUTUBE NOW SINCE THEY'VE ALREADY DONE IT ARRGH.

Okay, I just went and looked into Google/YouTube's new Annotations feature. And they scooped me. Which is really depressing.

http://www.youtube.com/t/annotations_about

http://www.youtube.com/t/captions_about

This is, in many ways, EXACTLY what I was looking to do. I still have an advantage in the approach, as an educational tool. Subtitles will include links, popups, etc. Buh. Maybe some other things. Scrolling? Yeah, wouldn't be hard for Google to figure that one out. ugh.

Soon I will be that crotchety old guy, yelling at his grandkids "I had an idea once! Interactive content in videos! But it was stolen from me and blahblahblah" and all my grandkids will be like "whatever, grandpa, take your happy pills," not even looking up from the awesome interactive videos they're playing with on YouTube. Damn it. Really depressing.

At least I still have High-Stakes Asteroids.

Went on a requirements document binge. Functional requirements like crazy, but not nearly done.

Discussion with Evelyn about features and interface. Specifically, how to handle object groupings, linkings, etc., as well as interface with interactive content onscreen. Differing opinions on how this should be done. Not sure what the best way is, but opinions helped. Or maybe made me less sure of what I was doing, and so hurt. Hmm. But harder to do this stuff in a vacuum.

Fruits of discussion can be found mostly in the Ideas section. I think some things about subtilites and objects are more worked out. I just need to start drawing them, getting them solidified and written up in the req doc. At least to such an extent that the underlying data structures become obvious.

From here, I'd like to get away from the req doc and get to work on prototyping something once the Player requirements are fairly well-specified. Important to have working software. Assuming the data structures are designed well then spec'ing and making the Editor shouldn't be too much of a fiasco. HAHAHAAHHAHAHaahaahahahh oh sorry, little bit of insanity there. Carry on.

There seems to be no perfect video delivery mechanism for this project.

• Embedding video, for some reason I can't understand, leads to sync problems. Also this will lead to much less flexibility: each video would have to be embedded in the player or editor software, leading to many copies of said software. So what happens when you need to update the software?

• Progressive download is not ideal, as you can't seek forward until the whole video is loaded.

• Streaming requires Flash Media Streaming Server, which runs about $1000. I can't really do that, and I doubt Villanova csc can either. There may be free content delivery services out there, but that's not really ideal. Also, streaming never caches anything locally, which I hate. I'm not that interested in content protection, so this is not a feature to me.

I think for now I will go down the progressive download path. It's not an ideal solution, but there doesn't seem to be one of those. Plus, it should be done in a way that will allow for different content delivery mechanisms. So I could update to streaming if there was ever a need to.

I've started using Chrome, which Google has conveniently released just in time for me to consider gearing my application to it. The prospect is kind of exciting.

Reading their online comic (illustrated by Scott McCloud!) was actually inspiring. At least somebody is thinking about these things. But also a little sad, as Google flexing their muscles could mean the death of Firefox.

So far I've found Chrome to be useful, small and fast, albeit lightly featured and lacking configurability. But I haven't gotten deeply into it. Hopefully that's the exact featureset that will draw the plebes away from that wretched abomination of pain, ie. IE. Please god let them be drawn away.

I actually got a little excited about ssl and subversion, which is maybe a little messed up.

I'm using Tortoise shell extensions at home now, but don't know how well it works yet. Seems good. I don't know what to do at school yet. In web apps we used Aptana, which had good integration with subversion. It also apparently has an Adobe AIR module. Unfortunately it is supremely bloated and slow and is a visual space hog and I just don't like using it. I'd like to avoid it if possible.

I got more than a little excited about adobe AIR. I don't know if I can (or should) use it for this project, but I definitely have a lot of things I want to use it for. Of course, that might change once I get some experience with it.

I also added Now Soon Nowhere shows to the Calendar for my own convenience. Anybody reading this who is of age should come out and see us play. We'll rock your blocks right out of scope. Or something.

I've changed some things around on the site, making it (hopefully) easier to use and understand. Left-hand projects menu should be a good shortcut to get to relevant infos. TikiWiki is actually pretty cool as it turns out.

But it's about time to focus on the project and not on ways to deliver information on the project. Next will be work on a requirements doc, which will necessitate development of the user experience, as well as some preliminary tests with Flash leading to a proof of concept. Both will require some research. Travel down these development paths will probably take place simultaneously.

I wrote a proposal for my senior project and presented it before class with stirring vigor and confidence.

Dr. Beck asked about expected difficulties. I responded my challenges will be dealing with multimedia, with which I am relatively inexperienced, and working with Flash, with which I am a total n00b.

Stephen Walter asked about difficulties in overlaying regions on top of existing video. I responded that it seems to be possible, as I have seen examples before. One example is Homestar Runner, of all things, which runs a video which sometimes contains invisible clickable regions as easter eggs. Another example is the Japanese site Nico Nico Douga which allows user-created text to run over top of streaming video. The main challenge will be in figuring out how to define these regions and objects on the fly and save them and replay them, etc. But I am pretty sure it is possible, from what I know about Flash. Which is very little.

The proposal can be found in the files section.

It seems I have now become that which I despise the most. A blogger. Luckily for everyone this blog will be relegated solely to development of the software projects I am involved in and will contain a minimal amount of uninformed expert pontification and wretched prose.

First news:

Wiki for projects has obviously been created. Work for the next four months will mostly center on my senior projects project. I may be doing a software project for an independent study in Human Computer Interaction, in which case that will pop up here as well.

After that I'll be graduatified and then I'll complete Asteroids 2053! Ha ha ha ha cry cry cry cry.

Next steps:

Prettify wiki/blog/etc.
Create "Next Steps?" in wiki.

Enjoy!!!!!!?