You may have noticed if you logged into facebook recently a message telling you about some up-coming features. From my brief reading, it sounded like something I had mentioned many times that should be there by default.

Groups

Facebook is great to share infomation, pictures and the like but you have to be careful of who you add. You might have read the stories of people writing how much they hate there job only to find they forgot they added there boss to the list and loose there job as a result. Facebook introduced groups a while back and this lets you put people in whatever list you seem fit – such as Work, Friends & Family. As of now, I saw nothing you could do with these lists.

The master plan

It sprang to my mind that it woul dbe great if you could post something and choose what group see this infomation, then only my family get to see the pictures of the cat while my friends get to see the dunken nights out and so forth. This is what Facebook are indeed planning from what I gather and if this comes in – i can see facebook not only been used a lot more but adding more people to the mix.

Thoughts

Will this new move along with Google Wave dampen Twitter which has limited ability to get a message across and no way to put people into groups?

The streaming service that is Justin.TV has made some changes since I wrote my review and as they are quite good features over the rival service of Ustream, I thought I would write a quick update on what to expect.

Longer Recordings

One of the problems before was when you made a recording, it broke it up into 15 Minute segments, this meant that you had clips such as Tech News 1 of 7, Tech News 2 of 7 and so forth. Now they break it up to 2 Hours long which is better then it was.

Watch Later

While strictly not a new feature, while watching a live show, if you need to leave but want to carry on watching the show were you left off, the end user can click the button and they get a link which they can save and watch the show from that point in time much later (I think it stores it for 7 days).

Last Show

Justin.TV now automatically store the last 24 hours worth of each show so that anybody can re-watch this show without worrying about if the host made a recording. If for example you did a 4 hour show 6 days a week, then the full week will be on offer. If you do a 24 hour stream then this will be of no use to you or your viewers (they will probably only get to watch an empty chair anyhow).

Making Recording’s

While the web broadcaster still has the record feature to record in the old fashioned way, this is not there when you use FME or Wirecast and you may wonder how to make recordings? Well the answer lies in Making a Clip instead. What this means is let us imagine you just completed a 4 hour show and in that said show you talked about Windows 7, Google Wave, Wirecast along with general news and banter. You could use the clip feature to find the correct segment for each part and create a clip just from them while missing out all the boring chatter and news (as they will get old).

  Note: Ignore the 15 minutes thing written above – this was the old system.

Copyrighted Content

They have signed a deal with Fox Network (and others) to run a system where they scan the recorded clips and any copyrighted material found (say you re-broadcast The Simpsons) is met with your account and channel getting deleted. While this sounds harsh – they have to protect there own backs over copyright material.

The perfect system?

Justin.TV has almost as many shows online live as Ustream and offers pretty much the same stuff but there is one stumbling block as far as I can see and that we shall say is the Chat. They run a “Twisted IRC” Server which is unlike the normal IRC type servers., You have to be on a WhiteList to connect via IRC and go through hoops to find the server address (you type /SERVER in your room) and even then you cannot jump around rooms.

You could for example disable the chat and tell people to go to a Live page which can them embed a decent irc server on there (Such as WyldRyde). The problem with this method is people do not like to jump to a dedicated page if they are just looking around, it is like looking in a shop window only to be told the entrance is located in a different street.

Ustream has a feature were I can follow people and then watch via my dashboard and they have a half decent irc chat while Justin provide the above. The system listed here would be perfect for me to watch the USA based shows as they are all on too late for me and it may even save people having to play the same crap over the over.

I am afraid it has come to that time of my life again when I need to re-think various aspects and change things around a bit. This serves as weeding out the crap by the sheer fact not everyone follow me everywhere (such as reading this blog). So you asking what has changed? keep reading for the full shimmy.

Twitter

I am no longer going to use L1QUIDSILVER, in fact I have deleted this account, so if your wondering why I have not tweeted out or I am missing from your list – this is why. I have reverted to the much simpler TOM_MAC, Easier to type and more in line with my name. I also still have Mauldor active just for good measure.

Streaming

I don’t think you will see me on any of the current Tech Streams, either in chat or on Air via Skype, I have burned myself out in this respect and managed to upset or fall out with most. As the majority of the stream operate in USA time, this in itself is one of the key reasons for giving this up as a bad job.

Skype

On my original Friends & Family login, none of them are ever on so I stopped using that name some time back and I looked my current Skype Account and I am shocked at how few people I have left on there. All of the people on that account were from Streaming so it stands to reason as I fall out – they get blocked and removed.

The Future

All this bad karma might make people wonder if I am indeed Insane? I am seriously considering I am at this point in time. A lot of my problem’s have to do with pure timezone issue’s and once I get annoyed with myself for staying up late, this has a knock on effect. The best solution for me personally is to drop off the radar and eventually come back under a different name. I think I will put more time into this blog for example and many other IT type exploits.

Regular viewers of UStream.TV may have noticed yet more changes under the hood that effects how people find shows. I thought I would show how it had changed and my thoughts on this very move.

Previously….

We started with a flash strip of live shows and the only way to find people was to go through this strip and see if any of the show names or picture’s matched what you wanted to watch. This eventually evolved through various things till we arrived at people been able to put themselves into a section (such as technology) and people been able to drill down to the type of Live shows they wanted.

The good thing about this method was that shows which you may have missed in the past now show up in that section, there was still no policing of the sections though and you would find a church broadcast inside technology.

Out with the old, in with the new.

 I have taken a screenshot of the page and will describe how it works:

No more bar along the top with Technology and other types but now a drop down, which sorts ALL the shows ever created, so instead of seeing 4 pages with Technology for example, you now see there is 11 plus. The next drop down can further drill into the group, so in this example we have gone to Computers and the number of shows change but still many pages and finally the sort method, in this instance we have chosen Most Viewers.

As you look down the list, it will get to the point were the shows listed are not live and this night not make any sense at first but this is similar to LiveStream for example were as people pop into your show, it racks up the numbers so even a show that is not online all the time gets moved up the ratings.

Will it change anything?

The question is, will more people find the show they need, your show if you went live or totally miss you? Most people will not have any idea about how the above works and the to listed shows will continue to get numbers while the little guys will sit there with a brilliant show but sub 10 people watching.

How can it be made better?

The first thing that needs to happen is better policing of shows and sections, more tools for the end user to flag a wrong section for example. The next thing is to maybe have a rule that says if the show is not in the live castings section and they broadcast 24/7 (Repeats) – they get moved. Lastly, Offline shows needs not to be listed unless searched for, give the little guys a chance basically.  

Ustream is a WEB 2.0 Site which allows anybody with a webcam and microphone to have a live video for others to watch and it does this this by means of you sending your Audio / Video to a central server and others connect to that server thus allowing a person with a normal home broadband connection to broadcast a show to many.

There has been a lot of changes at Ustream of late, so I will be using this post to review what it does, how it does it and the pro’s and con’s of the chosen path – this will allow you to see if it suits your needs.

The Stream as other see it

The page is broken down into The show Title and the person who is hosting – the title can change to highlight what the show is about (like Twitter). The Video itself has various controls such as “Refresh”, Pause, Menu, Volume Control and Full Screen mode. There used to be “Detach” which broke the video into a separate small browser window – this seems to have gone. On the right of the video can be Chat, Twitter (as Ustream feel people might want to chat via Twitter instead) or if the host chooses – none of these. We shall talk more about the Chat in one second though…

We now see there is adverts for current live shows along with Adverts by the bucket load. The adverts are placed on the video stream and on the Ustream page and get very annoying but you better get used to them as they need to make money somehow.

Your Own Stream – Design

You can design the page layout but they have cut back from before, there is no “Banner” – they have restricted you to a show Logo (small Square), the section you ant your show to appear in, tags in case people search by keyword and a description box which as you can see can include HTML Code – many people use this to embed a alternative chat instead of the Ustream Version.

Design – Advanced

The advanced Section allows you to disable chat, put a password ont he stream (if you wanted it to be private), the Twitter part and you will see there a XML file you can download if you wanted a higher quality streaming via FME.

Broadcasting – Using the Web Browser

When you press the big BROADCAST Button – a pop out smaller web page comes up and this is the broadcasting console. You can choose to broadcast Video, what Device to use and the Video quality – the higher the better picture BUT uses more upload bandwidth. The Audio setting much the same and if you press advanced you have the choice up the “Frames per second” to a max it seems of 23. I personally found that changing the FPS made no difference to the stream – even when I set it down to 2 it was still doing 25 FPS.

There is a a Broadcast Button (go Live) and Start Recording if you wish to store the show you are making. You can choose to monitor Local (what you see), Server (what your Viewers are seeing) or none – your choice. There WILL be some delay between what you do and say and what your Viewers are seeing – this makes sense as it has to send the video to the main server and get re-transmitted back to your viewers but they will not be aware of this lag too much. It can happen quite often somebody says something in chat though and takes a while for the host to make mention of this – chat is in real time, video is not.

Recordings

When you record what you have been streaming, it takes a while for it to come up in your page for other people to view and ustream have now added a feature for people to make “highlights” of your recordings – say when you swore like a trooper for example. You can send the recording to YouTube but you will notice the Quality will be very bad – much worse then you remember it been. The best solution if you wanted to also post your videos on Youtube is to record separate from Ustream and send it that way, makes for a better quality video.

There is no way to upload your own media or from Youtube and it does not play now when the channel is off-line – so when you are off-line – the channel does nothing unlike before were it at least played your old recordings

Chat Server

Ustream run a cut down version of a IRC Server which means you can connect via any IRC client to the chat server and chat that way instead of having to chat via the browser rather limited chat and also have more control over the channel (kicking, Banning and so forth). Before Ustream used to allow you to switch the inbuilt chat to a different irc server of choice which gave you the host better control such as WyldRyde and many others. Ustream have now restricted there in-built chat to there own IRC Server – this means if you want another – you will have to disable the in-built chat, Embed another web page one (Such as Mibbit) or instruct your viewers were to go such as a “Live” page. Many people are not happy with this move and moved to different services all because of this – I agree fully, I hate Web based chat clients.

Higher Quality streaming

When you broadcast via the web page – you stream at 320×240 with a low (200-300) upload but you can choose to use “Flash Media Encoder” which allows you to stream at 640×480 with 500 or higher – depending on your upload. Streams who go this route have a much better picture due to the increased data rate and resolution but can be demanding on your connection. Remember most ISP’s will throttle your connection if you upload too much and streaming at 500K will soon eat this up.

Categories

One of the complaints I had before was that unless you were listed in the Top slots – nobody would ever now you were every streaming and was hard to get included in the right sections – I did make a post about this on there forum. They now have the option for you to best choose your own section and now people can find you if you are live. This very method in fact allowed me to find streams which have been going for some time yet had no viewers. My thoughts now are that the more established show will feel left out and if they dont have the content, the smaller shows can rise to the top as long as they do a good job.

I tested this theory out (people finding shows) by broadcasting briefly and sure enough – had people in chat in next to no time – so I am happy they have chosen this method.

Conclusion and thoughts

I am not happy with the high amount of adverts both on there page and on the stream and the lack of ability for me to specify my own chat server and how technology is a sub section.No restrictions for Bandwidth (such as limited to 500K) or how many times you record something. I am not sure how long they can run on pure adverts and they bring in more restrivtive / paid for services soon.