Free Live Video Broadcasting

Has free archived video from YouTube et al. opened up your web exploration possibilities just a little? Talk about getting pulled in: sometimes I have to pour ice water over my head to get away from the endless cute puppy videos, old music videos, the wacked-out viral hits … and of course the tutorials on all the areas in which I’m knowledge-deficient because of the video watching.

It looks like I’m going to need a whole lot more ice water. Justin.tv has opened up it’s API and will serve live video for free. Of course, live webcams are old news, and most IM clients have video functionality. But we’re talking broadcast here. Between the price and Justin.tv’s crazy-easy “live broadcasting in one click” model they’ll definitely see accelerated adoption. It’s just another example of a piece of infrastructure whose usage (and market share) will be enhanced by a compelling (ie free) standard and branding. Combine it with Camtweet and you’ve got a distribution method too. All you need now is a message, and you are in business.

Flex and Paypal

Excellent Flex tutorial from Adobe Platform evangelist Miti Pricope on how to combine a Flex application running in Flash Player with PayPal Express Checkout. More than a tutorial, it’s a good little object lesson on things to consider in the planning stages of creating an app, ie security, appropriate architectural solutions and planning the UI. I’ve been looking to post more pointers and tutorials like this which address the trend toward developers making money out of their skills by offering applications for e-commerce sites, especially small-scale ones often run by individuals who need cheap solutions that are easy to implement.