[Thousand-oaks-pm] stimTV / If you want to write rock lyrics, you must learn about where the hobbits dwell.

Paul Jacobs paul at pauljacobs.net
Fri Oct 28 19:08:07 PDT 2005


Perlmongers:

     I showed you the private demo for stimTV. Now a real release  
candidate is online and could use some testing this weekend. Sorry  
for the blatant self promotion here, but I did show it at the last  
meeting, so it seems appropriate to post about. And the backend to  
stimTV is written in perl. So.

     If you haven't been introduced already, stimTV is a kind of  
internet television. You see a bunch of tiny pieces of video (short- 
forms) that represent longer available pieces of video (long-forms),  
from which they are cut.. These short-forms are supposed to be just  
long enough to decide whether you are interested in watching /  
finding out more. They typically range from 7-10 seconds. The longer  
forms will also sometimes show a bunch of related content, after or  
in between pieces of what you clicked on. But they don't do that yet  
- for now they just show what you clicked on.
     We've been working on it night and day (mostly night, speaking  
for myself) for the last few months, and it's finally time to do the  
'limited access' release.

You are hereby on the list. Please keep it private.

We are running this first test through the weekend, and if nothing  
blows up, we hope to make it totally unrestricted early next week,  
probably sometime on Monday. In the meantime, if you're interested,  
please go check it out. I really like it myself.

Our first channel, the subject of this email, is stimTV Music.
Videos, Interviews, Live Performances, etc.. and a bunch of other  
stuff thrown in to keep in interesting.

- First:
You will need a truly fast computer to make it work. Sorry. If your  
computer can't play a 3D game with a decent frame rate, it probably  
can't play stimTV very well. Just know that up front, and try it  
anyway. Be ready to make the window smaller proportionally to your  
computer's ego.
     - It requires flash 8. You'll be prompted to install if necessary.
     - It requires flash to have settings adjusted to allow it to  
contact the server. Flash will ask you to do this when you first use  
stimTV.
     stimTV requires cookies to be enabled.
   The front page says 1.2 Ghz but I am thinking we might need to up  
that. Make the window smaller to make it run smoother. Play with it.  
I like it fullscreen sometimes (F11 toggles in IE), and making the  
window tiny other times. Fullscreen usually only works when you make  
your screen resolution really small though, 800x600 is best.

- Go to:  < http://stimtv.com/ >

- Click on < Launch > or anywhere on the top bar with the bus driver  
guy.

The secret access codes are:
username: stimtvalpha
password: allaccess

- Watch for a bit, play with the window size if you have performance  
problems. It will scale. The native size is the one that it pops open  
to.

- We will be taking band (and probably other video) submissions for  
content to add to stimTV. If you have stuff you'd like to see in our  
player, I can hook you up with people.

- Remember this is a release candidate for a first public alpha  
release. But I am very excited. Feedback is appreciated. (especially  
positive ;)

- If your feedback is a straight bug report, please put [BUG] in the  
subject line. That will make it much easier for me to forward them to  
our bug tracking system. Thank you.

- Paul


------
PS - the quote in the subject is from a video i am watching on stimtv  
as i write ths - Sugarcube by Yo La Tengo.
If you happen to see a preview for it go by, check it out. It's  
excellent.




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