Lizenzen bringen Probleme

Allerdings soll es bei diesem Codec in Zukunft einige lizenzrechtliche Probleme geben und die Suche nach Alternativen ist die einzig vernünftige Lösung.

Die Zukunft

Bei modernen Browsern der neuen Generation wie Google Chrome, Firefox 4, IE9, etc. ist ein Audio- und Videoplayer bereits integriert, um das Video-Tag einzubinden. Das Format WebM mit dem VP8 Codec ist bereits gut unterstützt.

Google ist sogar einen Schritt weitergegangen und hat H.264 direkt rausgeworfen und setzt nur noch auf VP8. Bei Youtube wird ebenfalls alles dahin codiert und abgelegt. Somit ist der Trend scheinbar festgelegt.

Press play on tape

Das Abspielen innerhalb der oben genannten Browser funktioniert bereits. Einfach die Videodatei mit dem Browser entweder über das Menu öffnen oder per Drag und Drop reinwerfen. Auch andere Wiedergabeprogramme wie VLC zeigen die Inhalte einwandfrei.

Encodieren

Leider gibt es auf dem Mac mit OS X 10.6.6 noch keine native Unterstützung, doch es gibt eine sehr bequeme Methode für Quicktime 7 Pro. Einfach das Paket WebM Component Installer.pkg installieren und schon kann man im WebM-Format exportieren.

Ein kurzer Test mit dem VP8 Codec hat sogar noch kleinere Dateien als mit H.264 Codec erzeugt – allerdings muss ich das erst noch genauer unter die Lupe nehmen.

Der beste Lohn für einen guten Artikel sind jedoch immer noch Kommentare, Verweise und Zitate. Von alldem habe ich hier für meine Erwartungen viel zu wenig geerntet. Da mein Blog sich überwiegend mit technischen Dingen beschäftigt, hatte ich einen Grund mehr auf Englisch zu schreiben. Nerds, Geeks, Fanboys gibt es auch jede Menge in Deutschland, von daher schreibe ich nun auf Deutsch, da es mir auch wesentlich leichter fällt und weniger Zeit kostet.

Die Übersetzungshilfe bleibt euch erhalten und hoffentlich leistet Google auch bei der Übersetzung von Deutsch in alle anderen Sprachen gute Arbeit.

Screencasts, Videos, et cetera werde ich künftig auch auf Deutsch aufnehmen und mit englischen Untertiteln an den wichtigsten Stellen versehen – genauso wie in meinem letzten Artikel.

In a former article I wrote some words about Google Wave, a service to do live and interactive co-laboration. It was highly coveted at the beginning, because people could only get in with a private invitation. Those invites were quite rare and everyone wanted to be in.

After about two or three months, Google allowed lots of invitations and then it began to get very slow and went to a very very very very …. slow performance and people lost interest.

At the end there is an end

Google said, it is going to die, because not enough people are interested in, but I don’t think it is the missing interest. My opinion is, that lots of people tried that in an early beta status where the performance was terribly bad and of course a lot of unacceptable bugs, with that you can not live – especially the malfunctioning gallery for my meaning.

That bad experience leads people to say no, that sucks and never try again, even if it is free. Also I think, that many people can not deal with that huge power of functionality.

I am really sad to see that great product dying, but I am happy about being a part of that, collecting good experiences, made some new friends and that Google will continue to use that technology in further projects.

Bye, bye, good old Wave!

Last chance

As long as it is still online, you could check out, what you would be missing. If you have no invite, I have got still some left. Leave a comment if you want to get invited.

As a Webkit lover, of course I love the Safari browser. It is fast, reliable, powerful and easy to use. I wish Firefox would use its engine, but there are lot of discussions in the Mozilla forums, that it will remain using the Gecko engine.

From a technical perspective, Gecko is now very solid and no longer lags behind WebKit.

Arstechnica

Alternatives

The only alternative I know what uses Webkit is the Google’s Chrome. Unfortunately, they say, a Mac version is not available, yet. But there is! You can download the developer edition, which is a completely compiled and ready-to-use application. Install it by just dragging the icon to the Application folder like any other program.

After the first start it asks for importing bookmarks. So I did, and it works very well. The passwords are taken from OS X‘s Keychain Access and you do not need to enter all your identifications, again.

At the first look, compared to Safari

• it looks a bit more stylish,
• the preferences are easier to use,
• performance feels better on loading pages, working on sites containing Flash objects,
• the developer menu can be found at View, instead of a own menu column,
• no need for an extra search bar, just type into the address field.

Unfortunately I am missing two features, but I can shortly live without:

• Syncing the bookmarks with MobileMe or back to Safari,
• the option to merge all windows together

What Safari does not have is

• the function “New incognito window”.

Pages you view in this window won’t appear in your browser history or search history, and they won’t leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window.

• opening every tab or window as a own thread
  • if one crashes, not all of the browser activity is lost,
  • if one gets unresponsive, you can work with all the others.
• jumping through search results initiated with CMD+F.

Conclusion

I am using it now for a several time. It works very stable and fast. The workflow is great, everything works fine so far. This my new default browser!

Since I got an invite (special thanks to Leuk and Jack Brendon Smoke) I really like it. Sometimes it is quite slow and some things are not working fully, but hey, it is beta and Google stated it.

The Wave is a powerful tool which I think will be a future kind of team collaboration. You can see in realtime what the other participants are typing or changing. A playback function shows you all changes step by step.

Many public Waves are available, where everybody can join and take part. Also, you can make your Waves public by inviting a special email address.

There are a lot of things to do until it matches a fluently workflow, but even in this state it is quite useful.

If you want to join, I am still having some invites left. Just leave a comment below with your email you want the invite to be sent to.

Take the following settings, to enable it:

Incoming mail server: imap.gmail.com
Outgoing mail server: smtp.gmail.com

Username: yourmail@gmail.com
Password: yourpassword

You also may take these settings, even if you own a googlemail.com address.

On OS X’s mail.app you will find an extra area on the left hand pane for your Google mail account.

Sometimes, when a friend needs technical help or a good tip and I wrote about it, then I advise them to read the appropriate article. But the answer often is:

Hey, your blog is English and I do not understand any word.

It also happens more often, that an article got commented in a language that I do not understand and even can not read because of non-latin letters.

I really tried some WordPress-plugins to make by blog multilingual, but that all did not satisfy me. First of all, I could only provide German and English texts. Secondly it takes so much time, to write everything twice.

Today I found the Google AJAX Translation plugin which is now implemented here with some modifications. As you can see, every article, page and even the comments have now a “Translate” button. Click it, select the language and the content will be replaced instantly with a translation and without reloading the whole page.

Hopefully you like it and the communication barrier is gone!

A browser is one of the most important tools nowadays and so it is important that it behaves fast, easy to use and recource saving.

On Youtube they introduced “Google Chrome Frame” which is a plugin for the Internet Explorer. This makes it possible to render websites with the Chrome engine with all its advantages on speed and quality inside Internet Explorer.

I am not sure, if that is good, because I absolutely dislike the Internet Explorer because of all those uncomfortable differences compared to the other browsers. Any further existing options on testing websites makes it harder for a web developer to test it out. My web dream is without beeing Internet Explorer.

Credits: Logo was re-created by myself from their respective owners Google and Microsoft.

Skype

Yes, I do have an account on almost every important protocol and I was managing them with the Adium client. That is really a great and superb tool with an awesome tight interface. But, I have made a hard and ultimate decision.

I decided to take just only one messenger and one protocol, since now: Skype.

Why Skype?

• It runs on important platforms: Linux, Mac, Windows, Mobile phones.
• The interface is free available and really easy. All functions an instant messenger needs to have are there. My favourite is to sort out old and unused contacts.
• Encryption is enabled by default. Other instant messenger do not even encrypt at all or plugins are not easy to install.
• Can run even through firewalls.
• Chat, audio/video possible. Even conferences with multiple users.
• Standing out audio/video quality and reliable.
• Working and fast file transfers, also encrypted.
• Less network traffic by using just only one protocol.
• Available web graphics to show current online status.
• Great directory with search. You can specify by yourself what is visible by anybody and what to your personal contacts.

If you need, you can charge services at fair prices:

• Call from internet to local lines and mobile phones.
• Send SMS to mobile phones.

That list is incomplete, but that points are facing exactly what modern instant messaging in those days should be able to do. There are even LAN/WiFi phones available having Skype implemented. Also, having just one account makes it easier to configure and to handle.

If you have Skype installed and want to get in direct contact with me, click the Skype icon (blue cloud with a “S” inside) on the top right social profile bar to add me to your contact listing.

Safari 4

The new Safari browser is my favourite browser since the the release 3. It is so fast, that no other browser can beat it and the display is really great.

Due to I am developing websites I love Safari, because it supports DOM, CSS and XML so well like really no other does. Safari and Firefox, are cool, but anyhow I am more familar with Safari.

Now, Apple just has released the Safari 4 with innovative features that are really cool. You may have seen some of them as plugins for Firefox, but now it is built in natively and it works so damn fast and reliable. I am absolutely juiced up.

The interesting part is, what’s new? You can read the details on Apple’s website, but let me tell you with my own words.

The tabs and its plus sign are now embedded into the title. That looks weird, but I needed some time to get used to it. In the end, it saves some space on the screen and that is absolutely what I do prefer.

A new overview is embedded as a grid icon into the bookmark bar and clicking on it shows a 3D thumbnail page of the most visited ones. Clicking on a icon zooms into the page with a really nice and fluently transition. It can be customized by nailing favourites or the amount of thumbs to be displayed.

The history search went much faster and you can browse through it using the great cover flow previewing the visited sites. So you fill find back much more easier where you have been before.

Apple did not forget the developers and the tools gained some features and display options like Javascript error detection and more.

If you need to find something, the search eventually inherited a live find feature during typing.

The zoom function is now completely different. Before it just scaled the font, but not the images. Now everything is zoomed in or out. This gives also a nice option to make screenshots of large websites.

It is still beta, but I love it! By the way, there is a version for the PC users available, too.

Have a look at this video and then view the results on the Google maps.

Click to view "Street view party"

See all those happy faces and dance to the music!

Where do you want to go today? - Microsoft

Google Translate

Normally, I do not like translation services, because it is often translated word by word and the sense of content is gone. But sometimes, there is no way out to use them, if you visit a website where you really can not understand anything.

On my recent Article You have the choice I got a comment from Olechka-persik which is completely written in Russian language. I could not understand anything and I decided to ask Google’s translate instead of Yahoo’s Babelfish.

I am absolutely overwhelmed from the results! It was clear and easy understandable.

They seem to analyse now the complete sentences and if you hover over it, you see the original content and can suggest other translations if the terms are not good.

Malware

I am really very confused about some comments on my Blog.

This happened since I wrote an article about Apache2 and Perl. The comments are containing a part copied from the original content and the senders homepage URL is somewhat like http://sun.mygamesok.com/200811/server-error-29.html (do better not click).

Safari 3.2.1 has now a new option in the preferences at the security icon. It is called “Fraudulent sites” and can be checked with the option “Warn when visiting a fraudulent website”.

When getting the details provided by Google, than it looks really horror what virus and trojan trash is on that site. But of course, I could not leave to click.

Then came a well designed site containing senseless summaries of server containing subject matter.

I received many comments and all lead to different URLs but having the same text on it. To protect you (espacially windows guys) I removed them, of course!