Vishal Sood

Facebook Connect for Drupal (FConnect) Beta 4 available for download

vishalsood — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:44:28 +0000

After Beta 1, Beta 2 and Beta3, time for yet another update. Beta 4 of fconnect is now available for download.

This release has a few new major features and a lot of bug fixes:

New Features

Users now have the option to use their facebook profile picture with their Drupal account. Picture size is configurable.
This module now uses Drupal’s default registration process to enable single workflow for some Drupal sites.
The fconnect block now allows linking friend pictures to either Drupal or Facebook profile.

Here are some snapshots:

Bug Fixes

There are several bug fixes in this release. Here is a list of issues fixed in this release (click image below to see a larger image):

Tracking Issues and Discussions

Many users have expressed difficulties in reporting issues and having discussions around this module. I am in the process of hosting this module on a site and have setup a bug database (Bugzilla) and Forum on the new site. As I go through this process please feel free to use the Bugzilla DB and Forum to discuss and report issues.

The next release of this module will be available on the new site: http://hukode.com. I will keep you all posted on that.

Installation Instructions

Installation instructions are available at the Beta 1 page.

Note: If you are upgrading an earlier version, you would need to uninstall the module and install again. You may also run the <siteroot>/update.php.

To uninstall and install again, do this:

Go to Modules in your Administration theme
De-select FConnect and Save. This step uninstalls
Select and save again. This re-installs

Download

The module can be downloaded by clicking the attachment below.

Note: You need to be logged in to view and download the module.

Composite Manifest Support for Rough Cut Editing scenarios

vishalsood — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:42:35 +0000

We released the Beta 2 for the IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit (SSPDK) that contains the SmoothStreamingMediaElement (SSME) interface. With this release we added a fun new feature. We refer to this as Composite Manifest Support for Rough Cut Editing. The idea is simple:

I have many clips but want to create a composite clip taking relevant portions from these clips.
I have a large clip from an NBA game, I want to create a highlight for this game.

Now, let’s expand this simple idea. Not only do I want the above, I also want the ability to present this as a single stream to the user. This means the user can fast forward, rewind across the entire highlights and seek to any points in the highlight. In addition, I can add markers and present useful information to the user watching the stream. Well, this is exactly what we enabled with the Beta 2 release of SSPDK.

Composite Manifest

At the heart of this feature are small updates to the existing IIS Smooth Streaming Client manifest structure and we this new manifest a composite stream manifest (.csm). If you have used Smooth Streaming, you might already be familiar with the client manifest structure. Here is what it looks like before this feature:

Code Snippet

          <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16" ?>

          <!--

           Created with Expression Encoder version 3.0.1332.0

          -->

          <SmoothStreamingMedia MajorVersion="2" MinorVersion="0" Duration="300000000">

           <StreamIndex Type="video" Chunks="15" QualityLevels="8" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" DisplayWidth="640" DisplayHeight="480" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(video={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Index="0" Bitrate="1644000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBF213F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081B22B6457400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="1" Bitrate="1241000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBE613F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081A5DECBBE400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="2" Bitrate="937000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBDC13F0EF8A13F83BE80C90811C97F260C00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="3" Bitrate="708000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD60D509F8A0D5827E80C9081159AD66CC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="4" Bitrate="534000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD00D509F8A0D5827E80C9081104B412F400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="5" Bitrate="403000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBCC0D509F8A0D5827E80C90808C4BE263400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="6" Bitrate="305000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C80B50878A0B5821E80C9080894E4A76400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="7" Bitrate="230000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C60B50878A0B5821E80C90800704704DC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22350000" />

           <c t="42370000" />

           <c t="62390000" />

           <c t="82410000" />

           <c t="102430000" />

           <c t="122450000" />

           <c t="142470000" />

           <c t="162490000" />

           <c t="182510000" />

           <c t="202530000" />

           <c t="222550000" />

           <c t="242570000" />

           <c t="262590000" />

           <c t="282610000" d="17350001" />

           </StreamIndex>

           <StreamIndex Type="audio" Index="0" FourCC="WMAP" Chunks="15" QualityLevels="1" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(audio={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Bitrate="192000" SamplingRate="44100" Channels="2" BitsPerSample="16" PacketSize="8917" AudioTag="354" CodecPrivateData="1000030000000000000000000000E0000000" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22291156" />

           <c t="40867120" />

           <c t="60371882" />

           <c t="84056235" />

           <c t="100774603" />

           <c t="121208163" />

           <c t="143034920" />

           <c t="160682086" />

           <c t="181580045" />

           <c t="202013605" />

           <c t="221518367" />

           <c t="242880725" />

           <c t="260789115" />

           <c t="282354648" d="17993650" />

           </StreamIndex>

          </

          SmoothStreamingMedia

          >

To explain the structure in simpler terms, we have the following relationship: SmoothStreamingMedia contains StreamIndex that contains QualityLevel and ‘c’ elements.

Clip Element

Let’s say, I only want the first 10 seconds of the clip above as one of the clips in the RCE manifest. In the new RCE structure I would represent this as below:

Note: <<source to original manifest>> actually points to the URL for the manifest from which we need to play first 10 seconds.

Code Snippet

          <Clip Url="<<source to original manifest>>" ClipBegin="0" ClipEnd="100000000">

           <StreamIndex Type="video" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="8" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" DisplayWidth="640" DisplayHeight="480" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(video={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Index="0" Bitrate="1644000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBF213F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081B22B6457400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="1" Bitrate="1241000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBE613F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081A5DECBBE400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="2" Bitrate="937000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBDC13F0EF8A13F83BE80C90811C97F260C00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="3" Bitrate="708000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD60D509F8A0D5827E80C9081159AD66CC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="4" Bitrate="534000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD00D509F8A0D5827E80C9081104B412F400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="5" Bitrate="403000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBCC0D509F8A0D5827E80C90808C4BE263400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="6" Bitrate="305000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C80B50878A0B5821E80C9080894E4A76400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="7" Bitrate="230000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C60B50878A0B5821E80C90800704704DC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22350000" />

           <c t="42370000" />

           <c t="62390000" />

           <c t="82410000" d="20020000" />

           </StreamIndex>

           <StreamIndex Type="audio" Index="0" FourCC="WMAP" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="1" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(audio={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Bitrate="192000" SamplingRate="44100" Channels="2" BitsPerSample="16" PacketSize="8917" AudioTag="354" CodecPrivateData="1000030000000000000000000000E0000000" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22291156" />

           <c t="40867120" />

           <c t="60371882" />

           <c t="84056235" d="16718368" />

           </StreamIndex>

          </

          Clip

          >

If you notice carefully, all we have done is changed the relationship above to: SmoothStreamingMedia contains Clip and Clip contains StreamIndex. Finally StreamIndex contains QualityLevel and ‘c’ elements.

While doing this we defined a new element called Clip which has attributes called Url, ClipBegin and ClipEnd.

Url – this specifies the Url to the original source manifest from which these clips were cut. The value is exactly as you would set on the SmoothStreamingSource property in SSME (e.g., http://abcxyz.com/sample.ism/Manifest).
ClipBegin – This specifies the time in nanoseconds where to begin the playback for the clip.
ClipEnd – This specifies time in nanoseconds where to end to end the playback for the clip.

You will also notice that ‘c’ elements are still present in this composite manifest. This is done so that this manifest is self sufficient and you don’t need to download the source manifest. ‘c’ elements are essentially chunk timestamps for the FMP4 chunks the client will download.

Note: Not all ‘c’ elements are included in this manifest. The idea is to include only the ones needed to represent the section of the clip. In this case times are close to the ClipBegin and ClipEnd. They may not exactly match in timestamps as chunks are 2 seconds apart typically while the Clip is cut at finer granularity.

Multiple Clip Elements

In the section above, we saw how to compose a single clip. However, composite manifest promises to have multiple such clips stitched together. All you need to do is to have multiple such Clip elements and that takes care of that. Here is how an example of composite manifest with two clips will will look like:

Code Snippet

          <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>

          <SmoothStreamingMedia MajorVersion="2" MinorVersion="0" Duration="200000000">

           <Clip Url="http://abcxyz.com/sample.ism/Manifest" ClipBegin="0" ClipEnd="100000000">

           <StreamIndex Type="video" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="8" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" DisplayWidth="640" DisplayHeight="480" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(video={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Index="0" Bitrate="1644000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBF213F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081B22B6457400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="1" Bitrate="1241000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBE613F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081A5DECBBE400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="2" Bitrate="937000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBDC13F0EF8A13F83BE80C90811C97F260C00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="3" Bitrate="708000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD60D509F8A0D5827E80C9081159AD66CC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="4" Bitrate="534000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD00D509F8A0D5827E80C9081104B412F400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="5" Bitrate="403000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBCC0D509F8A0D5827E80C90808C4BE263400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="6" Bitrate="305000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C80B50878A0B5821E80C9080894E4A76400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="7" Bitrate="230000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C60B50878A0B5821E80C90800704704DC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22350000" />

           <c t="42370000" />

           <c t="62390000" />

           <c t="82410000" d="20020000" />

           </StreamIndex>

           <StreamIndex Type="audio" Index="0" FourCC="WMAP" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="1" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(audio={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Bitrate="192000" SamplingRate="44100" Channels="2" BitsPerSample="16" PacketSize="8917" AudioTag="354" CodecPrivateData="1000030000000000000000000000E0000000" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22291156" />

           <c t="40867120" />

           <c t="60371882" />

           <c t="84056235" d="16718368" />

           </StreamIndex>

           </Clip>

           <Clip Url="http://abcxyz.com/sample2.ism/Manifest" ClipBegin="60000000" ClipEnd="160000000">

           <StreamIndex Type="video" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="8" MaxWidth="848" MaxHeight="476" DisplayWidth="848" DisplayHeight="476" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(video={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Index="0" Bitrate="1644000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="848" MaxHeight="476" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBB21A70ED8A1A783B68045081B22B6457400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="1" Bitrate="1241000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="848" MaxHeight="476" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBA61A70ED8A1A783B68045081A5DECBBE400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="2" Bitrate="937000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="848" MaxHeight="476" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB9C1A70ED8A1A783B680450811C97F260C00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="3" Bitrate="708000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="568" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB9611B09F8A11B827E8045081159AD66CC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="4" Bitrate="534000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="568" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB9011B09F8A11B827E8045081104B412F400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="5" Bitrate="403000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="568" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB8C11B09F8A11B827E80450808C4BE263400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="6" Bitrate="305000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="480" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB880EF0878A0EF821E8045080894E4A76400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="7" Bitrate="230000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="480" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB860EF0878A0EF821E80450800704704DC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <c t="60000000" />

           <c t="80000000" />

           <c t="100000000" />

           <c t="120000000" />

           <c t="140000000" d="20000000"/>

           </StreamIndex>

           <StreamIndex Type="audio" Index="0" FourCC="WMAP" Chunks="6" QualityLevels="1" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(audio={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Bitrate="192000" SamplingRate="44100" Channels="2" BitsPerSample="16" PacketSize="8917" AudioTag="354" CodecPrivateData="1000030000000000000000000000E0000000" />

           <c t="42724716" />

           <c t="61082992" />

           <c t="80341043" />

           <c t="103096598" />

           <c t="120279365" />

           <c t="142570521" d="21362358" />

           </StreamIndex>

           </Clip>

          </

          SmoothStreamingMedia

          >

With this, you can now upload this manifest along with the original manifests and content used by them to a HTTP accessible location. Next, set the SmoothStreamingSource property to the URL to this composite manifest and SSME should take care of the rest. Here is how it will look like in XAML:

Code Snippet

          <

          UserControl

           x

          :

          Class

          ="SilverlightApplication6.MainPage"

           xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

           xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

           xmlns:SSME="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming;assembly=Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming"

           xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

           mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480">

           <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">

           <SSME:SmoothStreamingMediaElement SmoothStreamingSource="http://abcxyz.com/SampleRCEManifest.csm" x:Name="SmoothPlayer" />

           </Grid>

          </

          UserControl

          >

We will have more detailed documentation up on iis.net very soon.In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions.

IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit Beta 2 released

vishalsood — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:14:00 +0000

Today, we are very both excited and pleased to announce and release a Beta 2 of IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit (SSPDK) 1.0. With this release are adding support for Fast Forward/Rewind and Rough Cut Editing scenarios in addition to other features. Please see details below.

SSPDK is intended to aid the development of rich Smooth Streaming players and experiences. This Kit enables you to build players for both On Demand and Live playback with full DVR capabilities, Live Ad Insertion, Multiple Camera Angles and many more such rich functionalities. This Kit is available for download here – Download IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 2.

The kit includes:

Smooth Streaming Player SDK – This enables developers and designers to build rich Smooth Streaming player experiences. We are providing a .net (Silverlight) based SDK with full XAML support. The core part of this infrastructure is Smooth Streaming Media Element that is similar to Silverlight Media Element if you are already familiar with Silverlight development platform.

Push Encoder – This tool allows you to simulate a live stream for testing purposes.

Sample Smooth Streaming Player (built on Smooth Streaming Player SDK) – This is a sample that uses Smooth Streaming Player SDK and enables you to test the IIS Media Services 3.0.

In the meantime here is a high level overview of features that SSME supports today:

Basic Playback controls

APIs such as Play, Pause, Stop, etc.

Events for Playback and Diagnostics

Properties to track position, etc.

Advanced Playback support

DVR support for Live Smooth Streaming

Support for keeping track of Live event while in DVR (*new in Beta 2*)

Trick Play: Slow Motion

Trick Play: Fast Forward / Rewind (*new in Beta 2*)

H.264 / AAC support (*new in Beta 2*)

Monetization

Ad Playback integration – scheduling capabilities, tracking Ad progress

Live Ad Insertion with Live Smooth Streaming

Rich Analytics with IIS Advanced Logging

Support for specifying markers/Ad ingestion point outside the main manifest (*new in Beta 2*)

Content Protection – PlayReady integration for VC1 content

Composite Manifest Support for scenarios like Rough Cut Editing (*new in Beta 2*)

Selecting Tracks for playback (e.g., restrict the bit-rates available, support multiple camera angles in a single stream, etc.)

Support for progressive download Ads/content

SSME is used in Silverlight Media Framework(SMF) and the partnership helps facilitate faster player development

BREAKING CHANGES:

As the Beta evolved we have had to make some changes to some of our APIs. Here is a list of breaking changes:

Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming.SmoothStreamingMediaElementState replaces System.Web.Media.MediaElementState as type for CurrentState

ManifestDownloaded event is now called ManifestReady.

SmoothStreaming.IsClipPlaying property is deprecated. There is a new state SmoothStreamingMediaElementState.ClipPlaying for the same purpose.

Resources

Download IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 2

More Information on Smooth Player Development

API documentation for Smooth Streaming Player SDK

More Information on Smooth Streaming

More Information on Live Smooth Streaming

Supporting documentation on getting started

Smooth Streaming for IIS 7.0 - Getting Started

Live Smooth Streaming for IIS 7.0 - Getting Started

Smooth Streaming Deployment Guide

Building your first Smooth Streaming Player using SSME

If you are using this kit already to build rich experiences, do let us know. Send me the URL to your player or just add comments below. We are looking forward to customers building really rich experiences.

Facebook Connect for Drupal (FConnect) Beta 3 available for download

vishalsood — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:23:27 +0000

NOTE: A newer version of this module is available here.

After Beta 1 and Beta 2, here we go with another update. Beta 3 for FConnect is now available for download.

If you are the kinds who just want the bits, skip everything below and just download the module at the end of this article and get going. Good Luck!

(Note: You need to be logged in to get the download link)

Beta 3 is about a lot of “mores”:

More options around the Facebook Share button
- Control which kind of content shows this button
- Configure Button look-n-feel
More control over the login button options (now you can use either the Drupal login form or the FConnect block to show the Facebook login button)
More stability
Fixes for Facebook API updates

In addition, you still enjoy all existing features:

Login using Facebook Credentials (also in Beta 1)
Configure the Facebook Connect Block (also in Beta 1)
Recent Status Update (from Beta 2)
Allow existing users to associate their site account with Facebook (from Beta 2)
Facebook Share button (from Beta 2)

Here are little more details on the new feature.

Facebook Share Button

There are following new options to play with around the facebook share button:

Optionally, show button in teaser views (think front page)
Optionally, choose the button style from many available styles from Facebook for the teaser/full/both views
Optionally, choose to display a big share button with share count in Full content view

You can configure these options from the settings page for the FConnect module:

In addition you can also control, what content types should show the share button. Simply go to Content types, click to edit the content type and then select/de-select the check-box “Show Facebook Share button on this type of node” under Workflow Settings.

FConnect Block

As I suggested above, there are more control options for the FConnect block. You can now additionally show a login button in the block. This will help those who don’t use the Drupal login form.

Installation Instructions

Installation instructions are available at the Beta 1 page.

Note: If you are upgrading an earlier version, you would need to uninstall the module and install again. You may also run the <siteroot>/update.php.

To uninstall and install again, do this:

Go to Modules in your Administration theme
De-select FConnect and Save. This step uninstalls
Select and save again. This re-installs

Support

If you like this effort, please consider supporting it in the form of donations. Click below to donate.

Download

The module can be downloaded by clicking the attachment below.

Note: You need to be logged in to download the module.

FarmVille: Enhancements and new Monetization Ideas

vishalsood — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:45:15 +0000

I must admit that I have spent a lot of time on my online farm growing grapes and coffee. I have also grown many a vegetables and even grown flowers. The best part is I have made a boat load money doing this, more than I have made in real life. In case you are not following me, I am talking about FarmVille, a Facebook game by Zynga. Recently I find my interest in this game fading and this has gotten me thinking. What could Zynga do to keep me engaged and also monetize FarmVille while doing the same?

Zynga has a creative team and they are making a lot of money already. There are all kinds of revenue estimates floating around. They vary from 50 million to 200 million USD depending on the source. They have close to 130 million users (with 50 million daily active users) hooked on their games. FarmVille is just one of their games, they have Poker, Mafia Wars, FishVille, YoVille, Cafe World and list keeps growing. Great work by Mark Pincus and his team. While these ideas are specific to FarmVille the spirit could be applied to most other similar games.

Here is how my farm looks like:

Now back to my topic. What kind of features / enhancements would I like to see in FarmVille that also help Zynga increase their revenue without upsetting the spirit of the game. What will help make these suggestions valuable is how much you are able to keep it real while executing on them.

FarmVille Economy

Today, the economy is kind of non evolving. You buy seeds, plant them, they grow and you sell them for a fixed amount. Now, this is quite simple to understand. The question is can we expand this model to add some excitement:

Integrated Sponsorships – Engage sponsors in a more integrated manner. Let’s take an example. I grow flowers. Often these flowers have been fertilized by my friends. What if we could sell premium (fertilized) flowers to a sponsor (say 1-800-Flowers). This could earn me more than just normal selling and also gives an image boost for the sponsor that they buy premium flowers. These are subtle messages and at the same time add another dimension to the game for people like me who are playing.
Sponsor Marketplace – As an extension to the idea above, make a marketplace infrastructure for sponsors to participate. Think of the example above and now imagine that both 1-800-Flowers and Flower.com offer different rates for different flowers w/ varying incentives. These incentives could be more money or better seeds for your next crop for example. The idea is to allow these sponsors to be able to participate
In Game Advertising - In addition to the above, the buyers may ask you to put a sign in your farm visible to your friends that says something like – “I sell my flowers to Flowers.com”. This makes FarmVille an in game advertising platform. Another example here is that Chevron could sponsor a refill if you put their sign board on your farm.

FarmVille Technology

One of the most boring part of the games is waiting for the “little me” to go Plow and then Plant Seeds. It seems to take forever. Some of the times I use a trick to lock the “little me” in some corner and close down exits so that I (the farmer) cannot move any more. This helps me get over the process faster

Upgrading Farm Technology – FarmVille is already doing some things here. You have tractor, harvester and seeder. They are useful tools. However, as you grow in levels, there should be a way for you to upgrade other aspects of farm technology. Can I buy an irrigation/ sprinkler system for my plants? Can I setup a seed research farm? These might be great ways to pull in sponsors. For example, I could buy sprinkler system from Home Depot in virtual reality of course.

FarmVille Social

This is one area where this games does quite a bit already. I can’t think of any major changes here but some minor ones might help increase community participation. One of the things that drives users playing this game is “healthy” competition. This means that you always want to do better than your friends. This keeps you going. The question is how can this be enriched even further. Here are some thoughts:

Farm Parties – There should be a way to host Farm parties. In terms of the people playing, it allows for some more creativity and fun with your friends on FarmVille. For these parties you can make arrangements with various sponsors. Buy beverages and other party items from sponsors and so on. These parties will allow you to invite neighbors and friends. This will be help increase the social interaction and each of your friends would like to host similar parties if not better. This idea needs to be executed well to be really effective but could prove to be a powerful concept.

Overall, these are just some of the ideas I had but you get the overall concept. There needs to be more if you want to increase the life of the game. At some point, this will still become mundane once people have tried out all available options but till the time you are hooked on, it could be made more fun. If you have other great ideas or would like to discuss the ones above, please share your thoughts through the comments.

In case you want to hear Mark’s (Zynga’s CEO) point of view on app economy. You can listen to his Web 2.0 Summit ‘09 address here.

Facebook Connect for Drupal (FConnect) Beta 2 available for download

vishalsood — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:50:17 +0000

NOTE: A newer version of this module is available here.

I hope you have enjoyed the Beta 1 version of the module. It’s time to upgrade both the module and the Facebook experience for your Drupal site.

This release builds on the previous one and provides some exciting new features in addition to ones you have already tried. Here is a quick feature overview:

Login using Facebook Credentials (also in Beta 1)
Configure the Facebook Connect Block (also in Beta 1)
Recent Status Update (*new*)
Allow existing users to associate their site account with Facebook (*new*)
Facebook Share button (*new*)

Recent Status Update

Now, recent update from Facebook will show up in the FConnect Block area on your site like below:

Allow existing users to associate their site accounts.

There is a new Facebook tab in your account settings, where you can now manage your Facebook association. Here is how it looks like:

Facebook Sharing

This version, shows a button for your users to share your articles on Facebook and keeps a track of how many shares have been done so far. Look at the pretty button below. Facebook enabled this feature this week.

Installation Instructions

Installation Instructions are available in my previous post regarding Beta 1 available here.

Very soon I will be releasing the final v 1.0 of this module so let me know if you have any feedback for me. Happy Facebooking with Drupal.

Download

The download link should appear below.

Note: You would need to login to be able to download the module.

If you like this module, please do consider donating to keep the effort going:

Building your first Smooth Streaming Player using SSME

vishalsood — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:24:00 +0000

In this post I plan to cover building a very basic Smooth Streaming Player using Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME) part of Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit. In other words, building a “Hello World” equivalent for Smooth Streaming Client (“Hello Smooth Streaming”). This post is split into two parts. In the first part, I will be covering how to get basic playback working in a browser window for Smooth Streaming content. This should be really easy as you will see. In the second part, we would add some basic playback controls like Play, Pause, Stop and Volume controls.

Prerequisites

You should either have Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio installed along with Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio. You can get more information on this here.

Install the Smooth Streaming Developer Kit available here.

This is not a XAML overview session so basic XAML knowledge is required.

Building a Simple Smooth Streaming Player for Playback

The very first thing I wanted to cover here was just basic playback. There are no controls. All you get is a browser window that shows the video playing.

The below outlines steps to achieve this:

Open Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio.

Go to: File –> New Project.

Chose Visual C# as project Type and then select Silverlight. Choose Silverlight Application, name it SimplePlayer.

In your project go to references and add a reference to Microsoft.Web.Media.Smoothstreaming.dll (available as a part of Player development Kit)

Modify MainPage.xaml as under. Set the SmoothStreamingSource property in XAML to the location of the Smooth Streaming content. Replace <> with the URL of the content (E.g., it will look something like http://example.com/a.isml/Manifest)

Code Snippet

<UserControl x:Class="SimplePlayer.MainPage"

    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 

    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

    xmlns:SSME="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming;assembly=Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming"

    mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480">

  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">

    <SSME:SmoothStreamingMediaElement AutoPlay="True" x:Name="SmoothPlayer" SmoothStreamingSource="<>" Grid.Row="0" />

  Grid>

UserControl>

This is all you need to get a basic playback working with Smooth Streaming Media Element.

Adding Playback Controls to your Player

Next, once you have the basic playback working, you may want to add some basic controls like Play/Pause button, Stop Button and Volume Control.

Here is what you will see after completing the steps below:

The UI layout

Here are the pieces we need for this in terms of the layout.

Have portion of the screen, which will display the slider control for volume and Play/Pause and Stop buttons

We need a portion for the Video to display

We need to hook these buttons/slider to SSME

For the overall layout, we are using XAML constructs of Stack Panels. here is how we do it in this example:

Code Snippet

<UserControl x:Class="SimplePlayer.MainPage"

    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 

    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

    xmlns:SSME="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming;assembly=Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming"

    mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480">

  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">

        <Grid.RowDefinitions>

            <RowDefinition Height="0.95*">RowDefinition>

            <RowDefinition Height="0.05*">RowDefinition>

        Grid.RowDefinitions>

        <SSME:SmoothStreamingMediaElement AutoPlay="True" x:Name="SmoothPlayer" SmoothStreamingSource="<>" Grid.Row="0" />

        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Grid.Row="1">

            <TextBlock x:Name="Volume" VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Volume" Width="50" />

            <Slider x:Name="VolumeBar" Width="60" Value="{Binding Path=Volume, ElementName=SmoothPlayer, Mode=TwoWay}" />

            <Button x:Name="PlayButton" Width="50" Click="PlayButton_Click" Loaded="PlayButton_Loaded"/>

            <Button x:Name="StopButton" Content="Stop" Width="50" Click="StopButton_Click" />

        StackPanel>

    Grid>

UserControl>

We have a Grid with two rows: the first row is SSME and second is a horizontal Stack Panel that has volume slide and Pause / Stop buttons. This is all we need to get the basic layout.

Linking UI to SSME

The next step after getting the UI is to link it back to SSME. We already know how to play the video in SSME. In this section I would cover how to hook up the buttons and the slider.

Silverlight has a concept of template binding that can be used here. In the case of slider, we have a slider volume UI control and a volume property on SSME. All we need to do here is to tell Silverlight via the XAML to bind the slider value to the volume property on SSME. Here is how we do it:

Code Snippet

<Slider x:Name="VolumeBar" Width="60" Value="{Binding Path=Volume, ElementName=SmoothPlayer, Mode=TwoWay}" />

If you see, all we are doing here is saying that bind the Slider Value to the SmoothPlayer’s Volume Path (or property).

For the Play / Pause and Stop buttons, we take a slightly different approach here:

Code Snippet

<Button x:Name="PlayButton" Width="50" Click="PlayButton_Click" Loaded="PlayButton_Loaded"/>

<Button x:Name="StopButton" Content="Stop" Width="50" Click="StopButton_Click" />

Here we want the following to happen:

For the Play/Pause button, we want to do some actions when the button is loaded and then a different action when it is clicked. For this, we hook these actions to PlayButton_Click and PlayButton_Loaded methods in the MainPage.xaml.cs file

For the Stop button we just need to handle the click so we hook up Click with StopButton_Click method.

In the MainPage.xaml.cs file we need to have these methods and do the needful there. Here is what we are doing in this example:

Note: There are other (better) ways of coding this but for simplicity I have tried to keep it very basic for this example

PlayButton_Loaded

Code Snippet

private void PlayButton_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    //We need to prepopulate the value of Play/Pause button content, we need to check AutoPlay

    switch (SmoothPlayer.AutoPlay)

    {

        case false:

            PlayButton.Content = "Play";

            break;

        case true:

            PlayButton.Content = "Pause";

            break;

    }

}

PlayButton_Click

Code Snippet

private void PlayButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    //Monitor the state of the content to determine the right action to take on this button being clicked

    //and then change the text to reflect the next action

    switch (SmoothPlayer.CurrentState)

    {

        case MediaElementState.Playing:

            SmoothPlayer.Pause();

            PlayButton.Content = "Play";

            break;

        case MediaElementState.Stopped:

        case MediaElementState.Paused:

            SmoothPlayer.Play();

            PlayButton.Content = "Pause";

            break;

    }

}

StopButton_Click

Code Snippet

private void StopButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    //This should simply stop the playback

    SmoothPlayer.Stop();

    //We should also reflect the chang on the play button

    PlayButton.Content = "Play";

}

Summary

In this post, we looked at creating a basic player with common controls for playback of Smooth Streaming Content. Let me know if you have issues or need further help. In subsequent posts I would be diving into adding more features into this player.

The project sample for this example is availble here(SimplePlayer.zip).

Note: These are just samples meant for educational purposes and there is no guarantee conferred on the quality of code

IIS Advanced Logging 1.0 Released

vishalsood — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:11:00 +0000

We proudly announce the release of IIS Advanced Logging 1.0.

IIS Advanced Logging 1.0 includes the following features:

Client-side logging. Advanced Logging builds capabilities into IIS to accept client-side consumption metrics. This provides relevant and important user engagement metrics that your customers will love.

Centralized logging. Advanced Logging provides capabilities to set up a central log farm that collects and logs client-side metrics. This reduces the effort required to collect distributed logs, and consolidated log collection results in more efficient post-processing. I wanted to clarify that this is not for all logging. Note: This is for client-side logging.

Multiple Logs per request. Advanced Logging provides capabilities to filter information relevant to specific purposes by creating multiple logs per request, with each log containing data relevant to the log's purpose. For example, Quality of Service (QoS) data in one log and Analytics data in another. All the post-processing required to distill the information using today's solutions is no longer needed.

Real-time logging. Advanced Logging can extend the platform to support real-time analytics, helping you to provide real-time reports to customers or work with partners to do the same.

Rich/Flexible logging. Advanced Logging does not assume what is important to you. Instead, it provides enough control to specify what fields are important to you, add additional fields with ease, and provide policies around log rollover and request filtering. These capabilities do not exist today. Now you can log any of the HTTP request/response headers, IIS server variables, and client-side fields with simple configuration through the management console.

Application Logging. Making use of the IIS configuration system, Advanced Logging provides capabilities to generate separate logs for sites, applications and so on.

Module Specific Log fields. If you are developing modules for IIS, you can specify custom fields that can be collected in logs.

Log Filtering. Logging now has the ability to filter requests to be logged based on the values in the log fields

You can learn more about the feature by reading the walkthroughs:

Getting started with Advanced Logging

Real-Time Logging

Client Logging

Learn more about the feature on - http://www.iis.net/extensions/AdvancedLogging

We eagerly await your feedback and comments on the Advanced Logging Discussion Forum.

IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 1 Released

vishalsood — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:08:00 +0000

Today, we released IIS Media Services 3.0 that supports both On Demand, Live Smooth Streaming and IIS Advanced Logging. Please refer to the announcement of this release in Chris Knowlton’s blog post for details. As a part of this release, we are very both excited and pleased to announce and release a Beta of IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0. This is intended to aid the development of rich Smooth Streaming players and experiences. This Kit allows you to build players for both On Demand and Live playback with full DVR capabilities, Live Ad Insertion, Multiple Camera Angles and many more such rich functionalities. This Kit is available for download here – Download IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 1.

The kit includes:

Smooth Streaming Player SDK – This enables developers and designers to build rich Smooth Streaming player experiences. We are providing a .net (Silverlight) based SDK with full XAML support. The core part of this infrastructure is Smooth Streaming Media Element that is similar to Silverlight Media Element if you are already familiar with Silverlight development platform. There is initial documentation of the APIs are available on MSDN.

Push Encoder – This tool allows you to simulate a live stream for testing purposes.

Sample Smooth Streaming Player (built on Smooth Streaming Player SDK) – This is a sample that uses Smooth Streaming Player SDK and enables you to test the IIS Media Services 3.0.

More instructions on using the Sample player and Push Encoder to test Live Smooth Streaming in your environment are available in the walkthrough here.

As I mentioned earlier, the Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME) APIs provide an easy interface for developers and designers to create rich Smooth Streaming experiences using the Silverlight platform. These APIs provide support for simple operations like Play, Pause and Stop and also more complex ones like scheduling Ads, selecting and tracking bit-rates for Smooth Streaming playback and many more. Please stay tuned on this blog for samples on how to use these APIs to build experiences. I will start with basic playback and progress on to building richer player applications.

In the meantime here is a high level overview of features that SSME supports today:

Basic Playback controls
- APIs like Play, Pause, Stop, etc.
- Events for Playback and Diagnostics
- Properties to track position, etc.

Advanced Playback support
- DVR support for Live Smooth Streaming
- Trick Play: Slow Motion

Monetization
- Ad Playback integration – scheduling capabilities, tracking Ad progress
- Live Ad Insertion w/ Live Smooth Streaming
- Rich Analytics w/ IIS Advanced Logging

Content Protection – PlayReady integration

XAML support for designers

Selecting Tracks for playback (e.g., restrict the bit-rates available, support multiple camera angles in a single stream, etc.)

Support for progressive download Ads/content

Almost all of the Silverlight Media Element APIs are available for Smooth Streaming w/ SSME

Resources

Download IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 1

API documentation for Smooth Streaming Player SDK

More Information on Smooth Streaming

More Information on Live Smooth Streaming

Hope you have fun using this SDK, the same way we did developing it.

Happy Smooth Streaming.

Streaming, is this the answer to Piracy?

vishalsood — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:11:10 +0000

As a part of my routine reading exercise, I came across a recent blog post by one of my favorite personalities online – Fred Wilson.

In his blog post Fred discusses how streaming is getting the better of piracy.

I have to agree, once you get good quality content online, in a way that does not take too much time/effort, you are willing to pay. Netflix success is a great example here. Hulu is another testament to this and so are many other online services that deliver online video. It is appalling that sometimes the only way to get certain content online is by actually engaging in piracy. This has to change. It will.

Here’s a quote from the blog post:

Yesterday morning I was talking to my 13 year old son Josh. He's currently obsessed with the TV show Friday Night Lights. He's going back and watching all the old seasons. I asked him how he is doing that, expecting to hear "bit torrent". But instead he said "Netflix Watch Instantly". I was so happy to hear that and asked him why. He said, "bit torrent takes too long.

This is a great example of the fact that if you do streaming right, even 13 year olds would prefer that over their “top secret” torrent client. Doing streaming right involves good quality, great experience, convenience and good ROI for the content owner / distributor among other things.

I own a XBOX and I use it to watch movies with Netflix “Watch Instantly” service. Even though I feel the online catalogue for Netflix could be beefed up, I am still a fan of the service and ease of use is enough for me to continue being a subscriber. It is implicit the quality has to be good, which it is.

One more area that will give online streaming a much needed boost is Live Streaming. There were multiple technologies used recently to stream Michael Jackson memorial live. NewTeeVee (a popular media blog) has a great post summarizing them. The product I work on (Smooth Streaming) was used in one of these broadcasts (see screenshot below). On offer was a live stream of the event in HD. Now imagine all of remote MJ fans who wanted to be a part of the memorial but could not. This gave them a chance to be a part of the event.

Here’s another example. In India we are crazy about cricket. Now, the most common way of watching cricket today (from here in US) is to look for a blog post and then follow links to watch live broadcast through a torrent based client. The quality of these broadcasts is at the best, pathetic. I know a lot of people in my friend circle who actually use paid sites to watch these matches as the experience matters to them. The point is that users are willing to pay for experience.

Fred also links to a related Guardian article that puts numbers to support the title of this post.

Once we have reliable and worthy streaming online, there would be enough avenues enabling monetization of the delivery and production. Here is a recipe:

Always remember, the first important thing is to draw attention on your site. To draw attention, the most important thing is to have good experience and quality.
Once you have that, traffic would follow.
To retain and grow traffic further, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter could then bring social aspects to your site. With these tools, viewers on your site can share with their friends/followers what they are watching, participate in real-time discussions with them and thus increase traffic virally.
Once you have traffic, there are various well researched monetization models but I don’t plan to go into them here.

To summarize in Wall Street terminology I am extremely bullish on online streaming and shorting piracy.

Disclaimer: I work on the Smooth Streaming (part of IIS Media Services) and I love what I do.

Streaming, is this the answer to Piracy?

vishalsood — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:11:10 +0000

As a part of my routine reading exercise, I came across a recent blog post by one of my favorite personalities online – Fred Wilson. In his blog post Fred discusses how streaming is getting the better of piracy.  I have to agree, once you...(read more)

Video: Wine 101 or as the author says ...

vishalsood — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:08:45 +0000

Wine for the confused

If you would like to understand how best to describe the taste for a wine, what are the kinds of the grapes involved, how it is made and everything else you wanted to know but did not know who to ask.

This video really helped me understand.

Video: Windows 7 - Touch

vishalsood — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:37:25 +0000

Windows 7 is coming out better and better everyday. I am excited. If you like this video, I would suggest you read Windwos 7 blog here.

Video: Microsoft Office Labs - Future Montage

vishalsood — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:53:34 +0000

Here is a Microsoft vision for the future of computing. This is super cool. I am both hoping and excited to be a part of it.

What do you think of this? Leave your comments.

Drupal - Facebook Connect Module

vishalsood — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:41:39 +0000

NOTE: A newer version of this module is available here.

Purpose

This module enables users on your site to use their Facebook account and participate as registered users. This is intended for Drupal 6.x sites only. The best way to know more is to install this and try it out.

How this works

When a user comes to your site, they will see a Facebook Connect button in the login block (Figure 1. below). Clicking this button will prompt the Facebook Connect dialog (Figure 2. below) which will ask for permissions to connect. If they choose to go ahead, they will be prompted for an email address which will be used to create an account on your site which is in turn linked to their Facebook accounts. They can always login using their Facebook account there after.

Now on logging in, they will see a new Facebook Connect block which will show them a list of their friends also on your site and enable them to invite other friends. You can see an example in Figure 3. below.

Figure 1: Facebook Connect Login Button

Figure 2: Facebook Connect Login Dialog

Figure 3: Sample Facebook Connect Block

Configuration

You can’t make configuration brain-dead simple. Unfortunately, that is how it is. There are a few steps needed to make this work.

Install the module Fconnect under the directory <SiteRoot>/modules/fconnect
Download the Facebook client library located at http://svn.facebook.com/svnroot/platform/clients/packages/facebook-platform.tar.gz.
Copy the files under the directory <SiteRoot>/modules/fconnect/facebook-platform (Note: For Beta 1 this was <SiteRoot>/modules/fconnect/facebook-client, where <SiteRoot> is the root of the site.
Next you will need to get application key and secret. To get that, create a facebook application. Visit http://www.facebook.com/developers/#/developers/createapp.php and fill up the form. Make sure your callback URL points to the site root (E.g., www.samplesite.com)
Go to the module settings admin page and fill up the key/secret you get from Facebook (see figure 4. below). These settings will be available at <SiteRoot>/admin/settings/fconnect.
Setup the Facebook Connect Block settings. You will see a new “Facebook Connect” block at <SiteRoot>/admin/build/block. Click configure to set properties (see figure 5. below) .
This is the last but the most important part. This module uses facebook markup language. For this to work, we need to update the page.tpl.php file. This is as part of the template engine you are using. Please make the following change: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> to <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">

Figure 4: Facebook Connect Admin Settings

Figure 5: Facebook Connect Block settings

Live Demonstration

This site uses this module. Please feel free to try it out.

Support

I wrote this module for personal use and it turned out pretty well. I thought I’d share it out. Give me a shout if you experience issues. I’ll try my best to attend to those. This is currently a Beta version.

Feedback

Please let me know how you feel about this module. There are a lot of feature additions planned but would be glad to hear from you too.

If you feel you like this, please leave a tip.

Download

Note: You will need to be logged in to download the module. Please login and while you are it try the fconnect module in action :).

Video: Mapple Store

vishalsood — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:30:08 +0000

I could not resist re-posting this. This video is hillarious. I still love my IPhone however.

Google won't let me search now.... I am a computer virus

vishalsood — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:36:43 +0000

Today, I was trying to search for twitter desktop clients and I entered the query "twitter desktop clients" in the search bar in IE 7. It was a nasty early morning surprise to see that I am forbidden (HTTP 403). Check out the image below.

(click to see larger image)

Has anyone else seen this … ?

Google, what is going on?

Update: Does anyone know how to fix this problem? They ask me to verify a visual cue but don't seem to have a submit button to go along with it.

The world of Syndication: Atom 1.0 vs. RSS 2.0?

vishalsood — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:23:47 +0000

Syndication has become and inseparable part of the internet. There are two major syndication formats that exist today – RSS 2.0 (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom 1.0 (Atom Syndication Format). While they achieve the same end result, there are differences. This post attempts to enable you to decide which is more suited to your publishing.

RSS 2.0 is a frozen specification copyrighted by Harvard and Atom 1.0 is a specified in RFC4287. Atom came about as a result of pursuit to fix shortcoming of RSS since RSS was a frozen format. The table below lists the differences in the two specifications/standards:

	Atom 1.0	RSS 2.0	Who wins?
Content Model	Allows text, escaped HTML, well-formed XHTML, XML, base-64 encoded binary or pointer to web content outside the feed.	Text or Escaped HTML	This is a major advantage for Atom, writing escaped HTML affects the readability of RSS feeds
Partial Content	Has separate `<summary>` or `<content>` tags.	Has a `<description>` field. This could contain complete content or just synopsis but has no way of identifying what it contains.	This is another win for Atom, helps you have a synopsis and complete view inside a feed reader
Auto Discovery	Uses the MIME Type `application/atom+xml` which is registered with IANA. In addition the feed has a self link to enable auto subscription in readers	The MIME Type `application/rss+xml` is often used but not recognized by IANA	Having a registered MIME Type and auto subscription really helps discovery. Another Atom win.
Format Flexibility	Atom syndication format allows entries linking to the feed or standalone entries	RSS only recognizes a `<rss>` document.	This is also an Atom win, having standalone entries enables scenarios like linking to entries only.
Extensibility	Atom defines a well-defined structure to extend the default namespace and has specific guidelines on readers should interpret these.	RSS has to fixed namespace, however you could include external XML namespaces.	Atom has a slight advantage here as external namespaces extensions in RSS are not easily discoverable. In Atom’s case these extensions have a corresponding namespace tag
Languages	Atom uses xml:lang for language specificity	RSS has a separate `<language>` tag for language specificity	No one.
Encryption	Atom allows the option to encrypt entries using XML Encryption or XML Digital Signature. In addition the feed could be encrypted entire feed using standard web encryption techniques	RSS only allows encrypting using standard web encryption techniques.	Atom has extra level of encryption possible.
Adoption	Most sites that publish both RSS and Atom feeds.	Most sites that publish both RSS and Atom feeds.	RSS has an advantage of being the first mover, the term RSS has become synonymous with syndication.
Modularity	All elements part of Atom’s namespace can be used outside Atom’s context due to way it was designed	RSS elements cannot be used outside the context of RSS	This has proved to be the one of the major factors of Atom’s popularity and its used in data interactions like those enabled by Google GData

As you might have realized that Atom has considerable benefits over RSS. More and more services online are using Atom as more than just a feed format. Google’s GData and Microsoft’s Project Astoria are great examples and testimonies of Atom 1.0’s strengths as a format. They extend its namespace and harness the capabilities of Atom Publishing Protocol to pass data between their services.

While, I was writing, I realized that I was still publishing an RSS 2.0 feed for my blog (default supported by Drupal). I switched it to Atom 1.0. Have you? My recommendation to you would be switch to Atom as your base feed. Having said that, RSS is still very popular and consumed by many, it is good to retain your RSS feed too. Atom preserves most aspects of RSS so a simple transform (e,g, using XSLT) should be able to help you create and RSS feed from the Atom one.

If you know more examples that demonstrate Atom / RSS’s strength please post your comments below. I would love to hear from you.

Additional Reading:

While I was writing this post, I found RSS20AndAtom10Compared very useful
Atom on Wikipedia
RSS on Wikipedia
RFC 4287 – Atom Syndication Format
RFC 5023 – Atom Publishing

Allegis Captial: Bob Ackermen Interview

vishalsood — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:22:01 +0000

This is a great interview by Robert Scoble where Bob Ackerman, founder Allegis Capital talks about what it takes to be successful when presenting to a VC. A must see for anyone heading this way.

Interview source at http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/mr-no

Video: Twitter acquires Summize

vishalsood — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:45:53 +0000

Michael Arrington of TechCrunh talks to Evan Williams of Twitter. This is interesting read about Twitter acquisition of Summize.