Archive for January, 2007

TransFormers

Flash backs of my not to distant childhood came to me last night while checking a blog I found thru digg. Transformers the movie is coming out on July 4th of this year. Growing up it was the show that was on the top of my “to watch” list on a daily basis. Ex-Producer is Spielberg and I am very excited to see how it turns out. I usually like Spielberg films but I was a bit disappointed the way “War of Worlds” turned out. There was so much hype for that file months before its release much like this one but turned out to be a flop in my eyes. Well in any case really looking forward for the film, plus its got Megan Fox and shes supposed to be a real fox.

Internet Explorer for Linux

One of the hardest things when developing and using linux is not being able to test on IE browsers. In the past I had to just go on a backup PC where I have winxp installed and even that can be a hassle at times. Especially if that PC is turned OFF. :) Anywho a few days ago I was installing fedora core 6 and stumbled across something while browsing FC6 tips on google.

A project called IEs4linux. Project is developed by Sérgio Luís Lopes. I found not only can we use IE6 on linux we can also test IE5 and IE5.5 which I couldn’t even do when on my winxp. :)

For those that do a little design with their web development and using a linux OS this might be a very useful tool. You can download the package here. The install was nice and easy.

YouTube+phpFoX=VideoMod (Live Demo Testing)

Got some free time to improve and fix some issues we have with the first VideoMod released. Currently been focusing on having all videos play in a flash player just like youtube.com for example.

You can test this script here
There are somethings I still need to work out but wanted to release this live demo so anyone that plans on using it can test it now and report any issues to me. Plus if you had any issues with the last plug-in I released add it here as well so I can check it out.

This update will give you 3 options when it comes to uploading videos.
1) Youtube Routine, which means your users just upload a video and it will convert it into FLV format and create a thumbnail image as well.

2) Default Routine, which means your users will have to upload a video and an image manually. Then when they view the video it will use the browsers plug-ins and not a flash player.

3) Streaming. Much like option #2 but this one they don’t upload anything to your server. They just stream the video from another server.

If you plan to use option #1 you will have to have the following installed on your server:

Quote:
output_buffering = on
upload_max_filesize = 100M (recommended maximum video upload size in MB) post_max_size = 100M (recommended maximum video upload size in MB)
GD Library 2 or higher
FFmpeg (http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu)
FFmpeg-PHP (http://ffmpeg-php.sourceforge.net)
Mplayer + Mencoder (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html)
flv2tool (http://inlet-media.de/flvtool2)
Libogg + Libvorbis (http://www.xiph.org/downloads)
LAME MP3 Encoder (http://lame.sourceforge.net)

I don’t know of many shared hosts that have these installed. I had to install these on one of my test servers. Though if you can get these installed having this mod will be lots of fun for your members.