MeBeam

No added MSG

Next time your eating fast food, and your dish, suspiciously tastes just a bit too good, it's probably laced with the flavor enhance MSG - you can thank Professor Ikeda, of the University of Tokyo for this wonderful invention. It might be interesting to note, the Japanese also invented the drug 'speed'.

Several weeks ago, and to be honest, I don't remember how we got in touch with each other, but I made contact with a gentleman by the name of Marc Eisenstadt, who is the principle of a web-based Instant messaging client called MSG.

MSG is the complete opposite of our friend the flavor enhancer, because this MSG, is sweet just the way it is.

Recently, the MSG client has adopted the MeBeam browser specification, and to be honest, my initial reaction was, simple, easy to use web IM, but , you know, theres plenty of others out there; such as our good friends at Meebo.

A few weeks had passed, and I was looking around for an existing web-based IM, to add some new mebeam features, that I've had in mind for a while.

I was quiet suprised to find a whole range of solutions, but they all had issues, which for whatever reason, wasn't suitable for what I wanted to do.

MSG, came to mind, and I started playing around with it again - and since then, I have done a complete 180 on this cool IM.

MSG is in my opinion, the most straight forward, bloat free, web based IM front end, I have had an opportunity to try out.

The most impressive feature for me, was that it run in Opera 9.10, where every single web IM I have tried has not.

Recently, I have discovered that MSG, is supporting OpenId. I haven't done enough research into OpenId to say if I am for or against it.

If you would like to learn more about MSG, here is an interview with Alex Little, one of the developers of MSG.

Red5 is red hot

In the world of online video, specifically flash based video, there are very few choices when it comes to serving. On one hand you have the Adobe Flash Media Server with a pricing model which makes you think "yeah, whatever" , then we have the Wowza Media Server which still relatively new has a better pricing model, but still far too expensive in todays age of free and open source software. Finally you have the Red5 Media Server which is completely free.

Generally I stay away from open source products, only because I usually find them buggy, and there are so many people working on it, its hard to maintain a stable version.. For MeBeam the majority of our network is built on proprietary technology, consisting of several types of servers, working together..

For my friends who know me, I am first an assembler programmer and then C; so I'm very much into pushing the speed limits of what the technology of a given day can do - this is the curse of guys who had their start in development, making games in the day of the commodore 64 - never being satisfied, forever tweaking code, trying to squeeze every last possible cycle from their processors..

I've always considered, Java a toy - a proto-typing language at best - but recently, some people who I have been working with, especially Steven Gong who is one of the guys from the Red5 development team, has really impressed me, with what they are achieving using Java.

Red5 is an open-source alternative to the Flash Media Server, and can do pretty much was FMS can do, but it's completely free.. Recently the guys from Red5, have been working on clustering technology, which is a fancy word for joining several servers together to act as one super server..

If you are a developer, and interested in getting into online video, I give the Red5 boys, two thumbs up;

CamTrack by DigitalPeers

CamTrack by digitalpeers.com is a very cool app which I have been using for the last couple of weeks. Basically, it allows you to apply all sorts of very funky digital effects to your webcam video. The possibilities are endless, you have the choice of three basic filters, such as edge detection, but these filters can be used in any combination and can be further enhanced by adjusting your camera controls - such as saturation, brightness, contrast etc. On top of this, you can add overlay graphics such as fire, clouds, reflections etc.. Unlike other video enhancement applications, CamTrack, makes every effect count, and each effect has it's own cool little quirk.. All in all, a great product, well worth a look..