All posts by Andrew Bennett

Not so smooth change over?

On Wednesday the Australian reported that Airline Virgin Blue’s new $10 million dollar reservation and ticketing system change over went smoothly. I’m sure that this is not what customers were thinking today when the Airline’s check in system went down due to an IT error. While the downtime was small, it still caused a large back log of checkins and delayed flights.

The Australia – June 16 2010

There is a lot of talk from annoyed customers on twitter at the moment: Twitter Search

iPad AirVideo [Apps]

Dying to watch some videos on your shiny new iPad? Well so was I…until I hit the file format wall.

The theory behind watching a video on an iPad is easy right, connect your iPad to your computer with iTunes, grab the video file and drag it into the movies section in iTunes and let it sync…Well apparently I’m wrong, because iTunes returned an error of:

"Video.mp4" was not copied to the iPad "andrew's iPad" because it cannot be played on this iPad.

Well now that’s annoying.

I was faced with two options: convert any video files that I wanted on my iPad, then copy them (hard way) or find a better way (easy way).

Well it turns out that the guys over at www.inmethod.com have a huge time saving solution for us: AirVideo (both free and paid versions)

How it works. (Short Version)

1) Install “Air Video Server” on the computer that has the videos that you want to watch, and configure the folder that the files are in.

2) Install the AirVideo app on the iPad (or iPhone)

3) Run the App, locate the server, find the file, press play and Enjoy.

How it works. (Extended version)

The Air Video server is a pretty graphical front end to the FFMpeg software that converts the video files on the fly, then streams it to the client app on the iPad/iPhone. If the file is already in the correct format all it needs to do is stream it. This works similar to how YouTube works.

The benefits:

The benefits of this solution is that you don’t have to waste time converting video files, then coping them onto your iPad before watching them. It’s snappy and it’s fast.

The downside to this method is that it only works within the local network of where the server is. (I’m pretty sure you could port forward your firewall/router to allow external access, but then there is the added cost of bandwidth)

The free version and the paid version are identical with their basic feature set, but the free version does have the limitation of  only being able to show 3-5 files/folders from the server at a time. (Which can make finding that particular video hard, on the positive side it means that you can add some random spice into what you watch)

For more information check out the Air Video site: [Air Video] or in the iTunes App Store [Free] or [Paid]

VentraIP 1 Day Webhosting Sale

VentraIP is an Australian based web host that look after their own servers and their customers.

Today only they have a 75% selected shared hosting and reseller hosting plans.

It’s time to rally the troops and help us rescue all of the stranded people who are not happy with their current web hosting providers as we go commando and launch an all-out 48-hour assault against bad service.

If you know of anyone who may be in this position (it may even be you), you can throw them a lifeline by letting them know that they do have a choice, and that they can have all of the following and more:

  • Our famous market-leading customer service
  • Access to all of the features in VIPControl which they won’t find anywhere else in the world
  • Low cost, high quality cPanel web hosting services hosted from Melbourne, Sydney or Los Angeles
  • A range of additional services such as AtMail 6 Premium Webmail, Secondary MX Hosting and more (free on all Business plans, or for a small additional fee on Economy or Reseller plans).

And if that isn’t enough to get them over, how does a MASSIVE 75% off their first invoice (on selected plans) sound?

This offer will be available only between 0:01 AEST Wednesday June 16 through to 23:59 AEST Thursday June 17.
(Extract from [VentraIP Forums ])

More information at the [VentraIP Forums ]

We have personally used VentraIP for a number of our customers and found that they provide a great service, and also have great service when things go funny.

I took the opportunity today to order another account for a new project that I will be working on in the coming months.

Have you got a favourite host? Or have you used VentraIP? Let us know in the comments section.

https://forums.ventraip.com.au/showthread.php?t=3

AV Mag Issue 11 is here

AV Issue 11 CoverOur copy of AV’s (the magazine for audiovisual professionals) Issue 11 arrived today in our letter box.
Articles of interest included:

  • Eye Opener – The Expo 2010 Shanghai Opening Ceremony.
  • Icy Reception – The Icehouse: Melborune’s coolest new venue.
  • Microsoft World – A new “Customer Briefing Centre” full of new Microsoft toys.
  • Nobo Kapture Digital Flipchart
  • & The Audio Coverage Uniformity Standard.

Check out the AV site for some PDF downloads

Also if your interested in AV check out the Integrate Expo site for the trade show in August 2010