We’re launching a news series on the VMIX Blog that profiles VMIXers, the talented folks who plan, build and deliver our video platform and the services we offer.

On staff, we have musicians and actors, tri-athletes and eco-crafters, local-foodies and all manner of intellectual and social activists. We thought you should meet them.
 
First up? VP of Marketing Bill Curci, who just got back from a two-and-a-half week surf odyssey among the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia. Before he disappeared under a mountain of meetings and new projects at the office, we sat down and asked about his journey.

Bill, what possessed you to travel 32 hours around the globe to throw your body and board into unknown waters?

Ha! The promise of warm, uncrowded, perfect waves. In Southern California, we do have access to Spring and Fall surf, but summertime surf is generally dismal and we’re lucky if the water gets up to 70 degrees.

Also, it’s rare to share a good break in SoCal with fewer than 30 to 50 other surfers. Indonesia is blessed with 82-degree water year round and June through August is their peak surf season, with plenty of opportunity to have waves all to yourself.

Planes, trains and automobiles—tell us briefly about the journey and your gear.

Traveling to Indonesia to surf—especially when you’re staying on a boat—requires that you bring everything you could possibly need. There’s no way to buy equipment or any necessities once you’re on the boat.  Boards—two to three minimum, leashes and fins are key pieces of equipment. Everything else is what you would expect— boardshorts, reef booties and plenty of Betadine for reef cuts.

Getting to the Mentawais from San Diego takes time and patience, the longest leg being 18-hour flight from LA to Singapore. Once in Singapore, you jump on a short flight to Jakarta and then another flight to Padang. All told, it was somewhere around 32 hours of travel. From Padang, the tour operators had arranged transportation for all 12 surfers and our gear to the harbor about 30 miles away. And arriving at 5:00 PM, we had the pleasure of driving through a strange city at rush hour, surrounded by mopeds, motorcycles and cars, careening around streets with no lights or discernible lines on the roads. So yes, planes, boats and automobiles!

We want to know about that first surf in the Mentawais. How did that go?

The trip started out big with an 8-12 foot swell hitting the islands as we arrived. As a newbie to surfing over coral reef, I was eager to get advice from the captain, Eric Foraker, who is also a surfer with over seven years’ experience in the Mentawais. His advice: “Don’t ride the waves too far; it gets really shallow,” and “don’t ride the small ones, they tend to be really shallow.” So, in general, just go drop into some bombs and hope for the best!

The first day paddling out at Lances Left, into double-overhead surf, was intense. We were the only boat out there, wind was off-shore and perfect, and the bigger set waves were doubling up on the reef and throwing out pretty square. On my first wave, I didn’t pick the right line and the wave closed out on me. That taught me two things: How to better judge where to be on the wave and, as I subsequently took the remaining set waves on the head, the perils of taking the first wave of a set!

You lived for two weeks aboard the MV Addiction with a bunch of other surfers. Fun times?

Yes! Traveling solo, I had the opportunity to meet 11 surfers from four different countries and we had a blast. On our boat, half of the surfers were from Australia—those guys are not only blessed with world-class surf in their own country but they’re only six hours from Indo. We also had surfers from France, Italy and other Americans like myself. And we all came from different walks of life—tech, construction and even one guy who runs a family winery.

What’s it like to be boated to a break rather than paddle out to it?

When you’re used to checking a surf break from the shore, it’s quite a change to only be able to check a break from behind the wave, or from the side of the wave, or just having to paddle out into it. What I learned is that waves always look smaller and easier from the boat. That, and to ask the captain for any advice he might have on where to sit or what to look out for when starting at a new break.

Surfing San Diego, CA, to surfing in the Mentawais?
What was it like knowing there would be risks and obstacles you hadn’t faced before?

The biggest worry for the trip, honestly, was whether my surfboards would get lost or destroyed in transit! It seemed everyone I talked to who’d done a similar trip either knew someone or they themselves had problems getting their boards to the destination.

I knew from experience that the surf itself, while challenging, was something I’d been preparing for. What I didn’t want to do was have to surf unfamiliar waves on borrowed equipment that would likely be very different from what I was used to riding. Fortunately, 30 feet of bubble wrap around my boards, inside a good board bag, and some good luck with Singapore Airlines kept that worry from becoming reality.

At what point did you let go of any conceptual thinking and really start enjoying yourself?

Once we started surfing all worries disappeared.  Surfing, when you are riding a wave, is 100 percent experienced in the moment. And the beautiful thing about the trip is that we were able to surf between four to six hours every day. So the enjoyment was both instant and constant once we arrived at the islands.

Did you get to savor much of the local cuisine?

The crew of the MV Addiction cooked four meals a day for us and kept us well fed with a wide range of global and Indonesian inspired dishes. Lots of curries, as well as more traditional foods with American, French and Italian influences. It’s hard to know how authentic the Indonesian dishes were for the region but our cook and sous chef were from Nias (one of the local Mentawai islands), so it was definitely highly influenced by the region. What I did experience, was delicious.

Can you pick a soundtrack – a single song or album – that captures your experience?

(Laughing) No songs, but while I was fortunate to have avoided having to be stitched up, four of the other surfers had some pretty serious injuries. That, along with having more than half a dozen broken or badly damaged boards on some of the heavier days, led our captain to nickname our group “The Hurt Locker.”

And finally, what did you bring away with you? Anything you carried back to your life, family and work that you learned on this trip?

In the water, it was critical to focus on where you wanted to go, not on the obstacles … like the dry, razor-sharp reef in front of you … that you want to avoid.  In surfing, as in life, it reminded me to keep my eyes on the goal and not give too much thought to the challenges that lie beneath the waters.

And we leave you with this video montage of Bill and his fellow surfers’ experience. We’d like to give a special shout out to Jason Torbert of Goddamn Electric Bill, who agreed to the use of his music for Bill’s video. Check out Jason’s website and consider supporting his next album if you like what you hear.
 

This month, we decided to focus on bringing parity to the Android side of things, and to solve a challenge many developers that we’ve talked to are facing: video quality vs. streaming.
 

Android Video Upload

Last month, we introduced capabilities for our iOS SDK that make it easy to allow iPhone users to capture and upload videos directly from their phones to your media libraries. This month, we ported that same functionality over to our Android SDK.

While we weren’t able to squeeze in some of the niceties, like upload-progress bars, the core functionality is there. We’ve seen a lot of interest in Android development over the months and, while many of you have deployed an iOS application or two, you’ve been stumped when it comes to porting your apps over to Android.

This month, we felt your pain by walking in your shoes! The devices out there running Android are varied and come in different sizes, resolutions and versions of the software. And those versions tripped us up in a few spots. Specifically, we ran into instability when rotating our demo application in Android 2.2 (Froyo). The solution to these issues was simple: lock the device in portrait mode. While this isn’t the ideal solution, it did allow us to get a much more stable product out for this month and stay on schedule. Application rotation is important in some contexts, but for many (likely, most) applications, users will be content to use the application in portrait mode.
 

Do I Choose Quality or File Size? The Answer? You Can Have Both!

For the second piece of this release, we tackled a persistent challenge developers face: finding a middle ground between quality and small file size for mobile video delivery.

With Apple and AT&T setting strict standards for how much data can go over the cellular network (and the speculation that other carriers will likely follow AT&T’s lead) developers are fretting a lot more about how to conform to manufacturer and carrier requirements so that their apps are not yanked from stores or censured in any way.

To solve this, we employed the same KISS strategy we did with the Android rotation issues. Our solution is to serve different quality video formats depending on the type of data network the device is using at time of play.

VMIX can encode to a wide variety of bitrates, dimensions and formats without breaking a sweat. And the SDK now includes two format IDs in the configuration files (for both iOS and Android).

So when a device is using a Wi-Fi network at time of play, we serve a higher-quality file; if the device only has cellular network connectivity, we serve an appropriate, lower-end format.

Benefits? Two biggies:

1. Mobile users are guaranteed to get the best playback experience for their connection.
2. And developers can be sure their applications will use Wi-Fi whenever possible. At the same time, developers can stop worrying about consuming too much bandwidth when their apps play video on cellular networks.

If your account isn’t already set up to encode to different formats, let your Client Services Manager know and they’ll help you set this up. Once your account is set to encode a couple different formats, your app built on the VMIX SDK will automatically switch users to a lower-quality video as they move from Wi-Fi to the cell network.

And, of course, it goes without saying that our powerful encoders still keep that lower-quality video very watchable!

To find out more about the latest version
of our SDK, read on.

Today we’re releasing the third version of the VMIX Mobile Video SDK. Our baby is practically a teenager! The release in a nutshell … We’ve added a switching capability that allows applications built on our SDK to automatically serve the best video formats for Wi-Fi or cellular-network connections. Why is this a big deal? It delivers higher-quality video to users on Wi-Fi and saves bandwidth usage for users on cellular networks. The upload capabilities we added for iPhone in the last release? We’ve extended that to the Android environment, enabling developers to build capture and ingestion into their applications very easily.

For details on these exciting new features, please read on below.

VMIX Adds Wi-Fi Switching Capability to Mobile Video SDK

Helps Developers Meet Requirements for Usage on Cellular Networks

 
SAN DIEGO, Calif. – August 31, 2010 – VMIX (www.vmix.com), a leading online video platform provider, today announced the addition of Wi-Fi switching to its mobile video SDK for iPad, iPhone and Android devices.

This new capability will enable video apps built on the VMIX platform to use faster Wi-Fi connections when available to deliver higher-quality video, reverting to cellular delivery when users move out of the Wi-Fi network area.

“We see this as a simple way to optimize the everyday video experience for mobile users,” said Greg Kostello, Co-Founder and CTO at VMIX. “The video application automatically detects whether the mobile device is using a cellular or Wi-Fi connection at play time and serves the appropriate video format, reducing usage on users’ cellular networks.”

Kostello added that the Wi-Fi switching built into VMIX’s mobile video SDK also helps developers comply with device-manufacturer and carrier requirements for media usage on cellular networks.

“Mobile developers can be sure their applications will use Wi-Fi whenever available, and play video at the highest possible resolution and quality. At the same time, developers don’t need to worry about consuming monthly bandwidth if a user isn’t near Wi-Fi.”

Today’s release, part of the company’s ongoing updates to its mobile development kit, also adds a video-upload capability for Android devices—upload for iOS-based devices is already available in the VMIX SDK.

“We’re making it as easy to add upload and sharing to mobile apps as it is has been to include delivery and playback,” said Kostello, adding that VMIX is the choice for developers building carrier-class video apps.

“Our capacity to manage over twenty million video files, with more than a million new videos uploaded through our system every month, demonstrates our capacity to scale to meet the needs of mobile developers.”

For more information on VMIX’s Mobile Video SDK and the company’s Android, iPad and iPhone demo applications, visit: http://www.vmix.com/mobile-sdk.php

About VMIX

VMIX Media Inc., (www.vmix.com) is a leading provider of online video and media management solutions. The company is the trusted partner of news, entertainment and enterprise companies including NASA, ESPN, Raycom Media, Penguin Books, The McClatchy Company, Toyota-Scion, ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, and Post Newsweek Television Stations.

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For more information, contact:

VMIX
Bill Curci, 858-792-8649 x169
bill@vmix.com 

The San Diego summer sunshine refused to come out, but we didn’t let grey skies dampen our fun. Good times were had by all, including my dog Charger!

We even had a relay race that had us hoop-jumping, egg-balancing, toilet-paper mummifying and balloon-popping for some good-old team-building silliness.

I edited a video montage of some of the highlights we managed to capture using a Flip cam, along with my trusty slow-mo digi-cam. The video features the amazing sounds of VMIX Web Developer, Jason, aka Goddamn Electric Bill! Enjoy!

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a really great event called Startup Weekend San Diego.

The Startup Weekend concept has been around a few years and happens in many cities around the world.

This, however, was San Diego’s first Startup Weekend. The event took place at the HIVE, which has become San Diego’s co-working headquarters, and the flow of the event went like this: Friday night, attendees came together and pitches were made (by attendees) for about 18 different projects. After the pitches, idea-owners were given cups and everyone was given two tickets. Attendees then voted for the ideas they liked best by putting tickets in the cups.

The top 6 ideas went on to form teams, which were completely self-selected, so some teams were larger than others, some with more tech resources, others with more business minds. Then, over the next two days, teams worked furiously on their projects–the hope being they’d have a clean enough product and presentation by end-of-day Sunday that when they presented to the panel of angels and VC representatives, they would win! The prize for the event was free incorporation services provided by a local law firm–a value of up to $2,000.

Though I didn’t stay the entire weekend, I was there for most of the day Saturday and the judging on Sunday. I found it exciting to start from scratch with an enthusiastic team and have something concrete by the end of the weekend. The project I chose to work on selected the name HootOnU.com. The basic premise of HootOnU was to provide a platform for people to complain, easily and in a structured fashion. The platform would have the ability to generate detailed reports about who had complained about an issue, where and why they were annoyed, and what, if anything, they’d like to see changed.

HootOnU ended up winning the competition and the team has now gone on to incorporate and pursue the idea further.

Events like this are exactly what San Diego needs to prove the entrepreneurial spirit is thriving here. While Silicon Valley continues to be the hub when it comes to startups, there are entrepreneurs in every city. Events like this helps us all realize how many ideas are out there, and how quickly you can pull together a team to work on an idea. It also offers a way to network with the angels and venture capitalists offering funding for startups here.

I look forward to more events like Startup Weekend, as well as the chance to engage with entrepreneurs on their ideas. If you have new idea you’re working on–especially if you’re considering video for that preoject–be sure to let me know.  I love to hear business ideas and would be happy to provide feedback and spin up a VMIX trial account so you can experiment with the VMIX Platform. 

Psst! Pass it on! Our new iPad app, developed for the fashion, beauty and lifestyle site Modelinia, is now available in the Apple App Store.

The video-gallery app delivers rich content, including interviews with supermodels, unique runway footage and personalized beauty advice. Modelinia fans can learn how to stay “bikini fit” all year round, glean beauty tips from Molly Sims, and get a tour of Heidi Klum’s childhood photo album—from Heidi Klum!

What we find exciting about the app is that it was built using the VMIX Mobile Video SDK. Meaning that you, too, have the tools to extend your brand quickly and easily by adding video for your mobile audience.

That, and the fact that Modelinia’s content is great and it looks even better on the iPad!

We’ll be talking more about the Modelinia app in weeks to come. In the mean time, for more information on downloading and building apps using our mobile video SDK visit: http://www.vmix.com/mobile-sdk.php.

I attended college in Colorado, which meant winter time, which meant snow. And for me, snow meant fun times in empty parking lots, burning up first gear in my front-wheel-drive student econobox.

As soon as the snow hit the ground, I’d head to the field-house parking lot with a bunch of buddies and start doing donuts or racing around an imaginary track. We’d end up with “parking-brake elbow” after a couple of hours of what is now known as drifting.

Scion has devoted an entire area of their Racing site to drifting, and it is truly amazing how drivers there are able to throw out the tails of their vehicles on a dry road. The snow in Colorado made it more than easy for us to drift but I wouldn’t have attempted anything like it in the summer months. I would have thought it pretty much impossible.

Not so. Scion’s Drift section does a great job detailing the ins and outs of drifting. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift may not be your favorite movie but you can’t help but be at least a bit intrigued watching Tanner Foust leaving a black-drift tattoo all the way up Mulholland Drive—he burns a set of tires, I’m sure, within the two-mile course.
 

The site features drift drivers, their cars and the competitions they enter. You can even ask questions using the Ask the Driver feature:  Hey Tanner, how do I drift my family minivan when the parking brake’s a pedal on the floor?

And of course, the video on the site is incredible—there really is no other way to demonstrate how intense the sport has become.

Check out the rest of the Scion Racing site as well: http://www.scionracing.com

Drive safely! 

Similar to the mobile development kit for iPad and iPhone, released a couple months back, the goal for this release was to provide the core set of objects and components required to power video applications on the Android platform, and to make it easy for developers to use by decoupling the presentation layer from the data services.

This decoupling allows the developer to focus on the UI design and interaction of the application, without having to worry about the details of accessing data from web services, document parsing, request optimization, error handling, and so on. We leverage powerful Android components to achieve this decoupling, the most important of which is probably the Android Service.

A Service is an application component that runs in the background. It can be used to perform long-running operations without interacting with the user, or supply functionality of one application to other applications. The SDK introduces 3 services that extend the base Service; GetCollectionsService, GetCollectionMediasService and PlayVideoService. These Services handle their own thread management to provide non-UI blocking interactions with the VMIX APIs, and parse the response into declared VMIX data structures for UI consumption.

When the operation is completed, the Services use Intents, an inter-application message-passing framework, to alert the UI that the data is now available for presentation. The UI — or with Android specifically, the Activity — that wishes to leverage one of these Services would simply start the Service, and filter on the Intent that announces the availability of data or completion of the operation. Receiving the proper Intent would lead to an update of the presentation.

In addition to providing functionality to the Activity that started them, these Services can also be made available to other applications. This is achieved by directly binding Activities to Services using ServiceConnection. Once the binding is established, the public functionality of these Services is available to be accessed by other application Activities.

You can see the inner workings of these Services and how they’re utilized by downloading the source for the Android SDK and VMIX Demo Application (code named Moonlight). We would love to answer questions and hear any feedback you may have!
 

Development on the VMIX Mobile Video SDK continues to steam ahead — today we’re launching the full second version of the SDK! The release in a nutshell … The Mobile Video SDK now supports app development for Google Android-based devices. This includes release of an Android Demo App that developers can use to build on and demonstrate video-powered app development for the Android platform. New upload capabilities have been added for iPhone that allows mobile end users to upload video to a VMIX account and developers to engage audiences more effectively.

For details on the release, please read on below!
 

VMIX Adds Android Support to Mobile Video SDK

Open-source Offering Expedites Android, iPad and iPhone App Development

 
SAN DIEGO, Calif. – July 29, 2010 – VMIX (www.vmix.com), the leading online video platform provider, today announced the extension of its open-source Mobile Video SDK to support application development for Google Android-based devices.

The VMIX Mobile Video SDK speeds development for Android devices, as well as for Apple’s iPad and iPhone, using an open-source library that extends media-framework APIs in the native device SDKs.

VMIX also announced the addition of video-upload functionality for its iPhone development kit, and will extend this new feature to the Android platform by August.

“We continue to add components to our mobile SDK that make it very easy for app developers to harness the power of video quickly,” said Greg Kostello, Co-founder and CTO at VMIX.

“We now offer SDK tools and templates for Android, iPhone and iPad, and we’ll continue rolling out features for each of these device types, based on feedback and needs from our development community.”

Initial Android support in the VMIX SDK includes the ability to pull and display video thumbnails, titles and descriptions, as well as stream video over Wi-Fi and wireless networks. Developers can present videos individually or organized by category in a video-gallery style application.

“As with for iPhone and iPad, we’re including an Android video-gallery sample app, which lets developers substitute their clients’ own videos and preferences in minutes,” said Lei Pan, Senior Director of Engineering at VMIX. “This demonstrates how easily organizations can add dynamic content to the apps they create for the Android user community.”

Pan added that the new video-upload capability for iPhone represents significant value for developers. “Mobile upload functions make managing, publishing and sharing video so much easier and give developers the means to engage audiences more actively with video.”

For more information on VMIX’s Mobile Video SDK and the Android, iPad and iPhone demo applications, visit: http://www.vmix.com/mobile-sdk.php.

About VMIX

VMIX Media Inc., (www.vmix.com) is a leading provider of online video and media management solutions. The company is the trusted partner of news, entertainment and enterprise companies including NASA, ESPN, Raycom Media, Penguin Books, The McClatchy Company, Toyota-Scion, ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, and Post Newsweek Television Stations.

###

For more information, contact:

VMIX
Bill Curci, 858-792-8649 x169
bill@vmix.com