ChrisDevBox

If you are looking to do some video encoding the “cheap” way, then you need to install FFMPEG. If you are a CentOS junkie like me, then this is how you do it:

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/dag.repo

Insert

[dag]
name=Dag RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
baseurl=http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el$releasever/en/$basearch/dag
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1

Now run yum update

After that look for ffmpeg (yum list ffmpeg) and install it… (yum install ffmpeg)

That’s it! On my next post I’ll add some ffmpeg tricks and tips.

So, I’m researching video comments… I ran into Riffly.  They happen to have a plugin for Wordpress.  The only drawback is that little ad at the bottom and the super pixelated output… but is FREE, so who cares. 

TO test, please add a comment.  

http://riffly.com/

Microsoft has just released a new memcached-like application (Or service) which allows for distributed in-memory storage capabilities and can be used within any .NET Framework project (Console, ASP.NET, etc)

In their own words:

“Velocity” is a distributed in-memory application cache platform for developing scalable, available, and high-performance applications. Using “Velocity,” applications can store any serializable CLR object without concern for where the object gets stored because data is cached across multiple computers. “Velocity” allows copies of data to be stored across the cache cluster, protecting data against failures. It can be configured to run as a service accessed over the network or can be run embedded with the distributed application. “Velocity” includes an ASP.NET session provider object enabling storage of ASP.NET session objects in the distributed cache without having to write to databases, which increases the performance and scalability of ASP.NET applications

In the past we’ve had to store data using their native wrappers, custom applications or even memcached with .NET wrappers, but they were all limited to one machine. Even their session state server was limited to one machine and for session data only. This type of innovation is a step forwards towards helping web architects scale their .NET applications.

Here is a link to download the package

And here is the MSDN link for support

I didn’t find a lot of code samples out there, so if you find any please post a comment share it with us.

Chris

The term API (Application Programming Interface) is typically used for when referring to a set of methods that are publicly exposed in order to interact/communicate with another application. Let’s say you write a web application that you would like other people to extend and add more features to. In order to do that you create an API…

Here is an example of a very popular “WEB” API: http://apidoc.digg.com/

Digg created a set of public web methods that are accessible via HTTP (hence why I call them “web” methods) and that allowed me to create my own little app on my server that displays Digg data. Now all APIs are different and their is no standard naming convention that I know of.

Google has them as well http://code.google.com/. When you integrate with external API you call that a mashup. I created my own Google maps mashup and you can see it here

Here is another more in-depth example:

Let’s say you have a contacts database and you would like to expose that via an API. Here are the steps you would need to take. Assuming that you are not a programmer I’m going to keep this light.

1. Write a new page using your programming language (Perl, C#, PHP, Python, Rubi, etc) that talks to your contacts database and call it api.php (Will use PHP for this example)
2. Create a method inside your page that will return contact info and call it GetContacInfoByName(string name).
3. Write the necessary code to take a parameter and call that function, so let’s say if I wanted to invoke the GetContactInfoByName method I need to use <domain>/api.php?invoke=GetContactInfoByName&name=Chris This URL contains two parameters “invoke” and “name”. Invoke is used for selecting the method you wish to trigger and name is used for retrieving the data.

I wrote a page on my wiki and created a some code examples for the client/API and the response. Client being the API.