Peter Winer

Flip Channels

2009-06-15T19:57:54-07:00

I admit it. I've been seriously remiss keeping up with things here. Life has been incredibly busy and that partly explains it.

Hard to believe but it's been almost a year since I joined Pure Digital Technologies as Chief Web Architect. So far it's been an amazing, fun and often wild ride.

In March this year, we were acquired by Cisco Systems. We're now part of Cisco's Consumer Business Unit.

And today, the new FlipShare software is being announced, including Flip Channels, the video-sharing Web application I helped develop. Decades after my first product, it still takes coffee, all-nighters and lots of crazy passion to ship a product.

Widgets

2008-08-26T13:21:32-07:00

Blog Post

A couple of weeks ago, we rolled out new Web-based widgets on Video Breakouts. These widgets are portable chunks of code that can be embedded in any Web page or Blog.

The Video Breakouts widgets allow anyone to embed any Video Breakouts list anywhere. They also have a variety of layouts so you can control how much space they occupy and how many videos are displayed.

To make a customized widget, just click through the three-step wizard. Video Breakouts widgets are a great way to energize any Web site or Blog by adding cool breaking videos. Contact us if you’d like to learn more.

Last week we modified the code so it can make Photobucket-compatible widgets. These widgets use the Photobucket API and you can make widgets displaying pictures from any public Photobucket album.

The widgets to the right are just two examples. Check out the Photobucket widget wizard and Video Breakouts widget wizard to see other widget varieties.

Grady

2008-08-26T11:45:31-07:00

Welcome to Grady, the newest member of our family. We brought him home on Friday last week and he is already in complete control of the house.

Grady is an Australian Labradoodle. That's a mix of Australian Labrador Retriever and Miniature Poodle. You can see more picture's of Grady in Alice's Album. We love Grady!

Video Breakouts

2008-06-14T15:29:30-07:00

Video Breakouts went live yesterday. Check it out. This is what I did after the ski season ended.

I developed software that finds, selects and monitors all the hottest videos on the most popular Web sites. It's fun for finding out what the world's watching right now. Also you can be the first on your block to find and share the latest new videos.

On the serious side, it's all driven by an business-worthy analytics engine that reveals valuable phenomena and trends in Internet video. Call or email me if you want to know more about it.

Summer Travel

2008-06-14T15:16:40-07:00

School is out and summer travel has started. Emma and my Mom just got back from a sail on a tall ship off the coast of Southern California. Lots of swimming, snorkeling, swabbing the deck and cleaning the loos. Avast ye hearties!

Resuming

2008-04-21T20:09:29-07:00

Six months since the last post. When I’m going full-throttle, there’s no time for this blog. Work and life’s responsibilities consume all available time.

My gig at Visible Measures ended in mid-February. Enough said. Right after that, Alice twisted my arm – not very hard – and we rented a ski house in Kirkwood, CA.

And that’s where I’ve been all this time. I spent 36 days on the snow this winter – my best ski winter in 25 years and second-best ever. I feel like I’m starting to know Kirkwood reasonably well. Suffice to say it goes beyond the runs on the map. My personal favorites were hiking The Wave and dropping in North of Larry’s Lip.

Too bad the season is over. Never can get enough. It was a great season for Alice and the children as well. Emma got better. Sophie mastered snowboarding. Harry really got skiing for the first time and he can now ski the easier blacks.

Where I am Right Now

2007-10-23T04:01:13-07:00

Fifty-five percent of all new cell phones are GPS-enabled. If you have one of these phones, ask yourself: Do you want your friends, family and colleagues to know where you are right now? Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You asks that question and more.

Reminds me of something that happened more than once at university. I was biking to class and I bumped into my girlfriend and one of her friends. My girlfriend asked me why I was biking in from that side of town. Her friend just kept walking saying "you don't want to know", or something like that. A GPS-enabled phone with Social Mapping could severely hinder that type of behavior. Or maybe encourage it. Good or bad?

Generally I'd like to use Social Mapping services like Loopt and iPling to find my friends - some of the time. Would I like my friends to map me? Probably not so much.

Google and Yahoo Maps: Feature Requests

2007-08-12T03:35:31-07:00

Look at the Caples Lake satellite view in the previous post. If you look closely, you can see that the Kirkwood ski runs in the lower left corner have some snow on them. Also, there is a snowy area in the center of the icture.

The snow is probably from an early winter storm. True, the snowy bits make the picture more interesting, but it wasn't like that yesterday when we were there. In mid-August after a very light snow season, there was no snow at all, even on Kirkwood's summits.

In my case, the snow difference isn't really important. If I was contributing to a serious hiking site like trails.com or everytrail.com it would be important. If I was tracking the impact of new home construction in Kirkwood Meadows, this map would be far from sufficient.

To really improve these types of applications, it would be great to add a time/date or historical perspective to the map satellite views. This would include:

At a minimum, display the date the images were captured.
Offer seasonal views.
Implement some kind of slider or slide show view that shows the landscape as it changes through a complete year.
Compare wet years vs. dry years. Same for hot and cold years or seasons.
List significant natural events such as earthquakes, forest fires or volcanic eruptions. Let users see before and after views.
Before and after views for human-related events such as dam and highway construction, new baseball stadiums, terrorist attacks or air pollution.

Also, implement topographic view.

Caples Lake, Kirkwood CA

2007-08-11T21:43:30-07:00

Alice and I are enjoying the weekend at Kirkwood, hiking, hanging out and visiting friends. Since Kirkwood is primarily a skiing resort, summer weekends are very quiet and uncrowded. The air is cool, the skies completely clear and the scenery is spectacular. This afternoon, we hiked the shore of Caples Lake and attempted to reach Emigrant Lake. It got too late so we turned back and headed for the Kirkwood Inn. The map above shows our hike and where we took pictures. The white lines are the ski runs at Kirkwood. They weren't snow-covered today. This satellite shot must have been from a snowy winter. Click the picture to see my geocoded pictures from the hike.

Mr Met: Hall of Fame Mascot

2007-08-11T07:56:16-07:00

Thank you to Ian Hsu for sending this pointer: Mr. Met has been nominated to the Mascot Hall of Fame this year. I just cast my vote for Mr. Met and you can vote as well.

I'm not sure there's anything I can add to this. I admit it's quite silly. Let's go Mets!