Today, AOL announced that the company is launching AOL HD, a suite of apps designed to take AOL’s high-quality video content and deliver it in the living room, and we’re excited to announce that their solution utilizes Castfire. Through Castfire’s API, all content appearing in the apps is transcoded appropriately for each platform, and utilizing our feed system, AOL’s apps for Boxee, Roku, Divx and Yahoo!’s connected TV platform pull and display the content on the big screen.

While the web delivery of video is still handled by a variety of OVP’s, Castfire powers all of the AOL HD experiences. Our unique digital asset management, feeds and API’s provide the infrastructure for AOL to develop the living room apps.

This isn’t the first AOL launch utilizing Castfire, earlier this month, AOL launched Play, a music app for both Android and iOS, which also relies solely on the Castfire infrastructure.

CES is one of our favorite times of year. The seemingly endless rush of gadgetry during the first week of January has become an annual ritual for the geek faithful, and the goto source for CES coverage is Engadget. Now, Castfire is playing a small part in Engadget’s CES coverage by powering the underlying workflow for the team on the ground.

What are we talking about specifically? Rather than worry about adding branding to videos, instead the team can focus on getting the content and getting it out quickly. AOL built a tool (in less than a day) to upload videos to Castfire. Once the videos are sent to Castfire, our technology automatically adds bumpers to their content, and sends the final result on its merry way to Viddler, where readers catch the embedded video on Engadget’s site.

This quick workflow solution means the Engadget team doesn’t have to have copies of the graphical bumper on any of their machines, nor do they need to know which specific formats need to be delivered to Viddler. And, on top of that, it means Engadget will have access to this content in the future, and will be able to deliver it to any platform, including mobile apps and the like.

It’s another instance where Castfire can power a solution which fits into the content producer’s workflow, rather than the other way around. Happy gadget finding guys!

We are HUGE fans of bringing video to the living room using IP. We talk to existing and potential clients about this each and every day. We have dozens of devices, from the original Apple TVs to new ones, from old Roku’s to the newest ones (which are pretty awesome), Boxee, and most recently, the Google TV. An amazing assortment of devices, each with its strengths and weaknesses.

In experiencing the different plays on “interactive television,” the one thing that I am certain of is that bringing social streams (twitter, flickr, facebook) onto the big screen – especially while watching video with others – is broken. It’s out of place. It distracts from the social experience of television.

As my wife and I watch some of our favorite shows, we each have some sort of computing device open. Perhaps we each have our own laptop open. Or iPad. Or mobile phones [Yeah, our house is sort of crazy like that]. Regardless, each of us is able to interact with a variety of services while we watch the “big screen” together. This is key – my wife would get very frustrated watching my twitter or facebook stream on screen. She would go insane trying to follow my ADHD brain as I bounce through IMDB and Wikipedia trying to track each actor.

If interactive television, however, is to connect my personal device, be it an iPhone, iPad, Android or laptop, together with the programming on screen, than we have a HUGE WINNER. I can follow my own whims while my wife can have her own interactions. However, the social aspect of us watching Glee together remains. We can both sing along. We can laugh. We can pause the video and comment. It is an experience that has been with us for our entire life and is comforting.

A couple of Castfire clients are about to launch products that will incorporate behind the scenes footage and additional video on iPads, iPhones and Android at the same time as it is airing on broadcast. The audience can be fully immersed with not only the broadcast, but can explore additional streams in conjunction. An amazing first step.

The future however, will utilize IP delivery and the processing power of the set top device (or directly in the television) to enable audience members to move content from the “big screen” to their personal device. It will keep “companion” apps in sync with the big screen, pushing relevant information to those who display interest. Want to learn more about that Lexus advertisement? How about being able to open a driving simulator on your own device. Want to purchase that same shirt that the star is wearing? What if the Gap store opened in conjunction on your laptop? Want to find out Tim Lincecum’s stats for pitching to left handed batters? Want to know how your fantasy football league is doing in real time? And on and on and on…

In the near future, the majority of people will carry a touch device with an internet connection. These devices should be leveraged to provide the interactive in interactive television. These devices should be the connection between both the content creators and the advertisers with the audience. These devices will allow us to enjoy the television experience together while connecting to our different circles online.

Television is social; social media is personal. Don’t confuse the two.

The notion of enhanced E Books has been around for years, but it is the proliferation of E Book readers, and more specifically tablet devices like the iPad and the unreleased Samsung Galaxy Tab that will truly transform the way some people view, consume and read books.  Many may ask what the heck an enhanced E Book is.  The definition is still being worked out in the publishing industry, and the formats are certainly far from being defined.  But the premise is simple:  include additional links, data, video, audio, or even software to “enhance” a book above and beyond the typical text you would see on the screen.

So curling up with a good book in bed can also include all kinds of extras if and when you want: an audio track of the author reading the prose, movie trailers, videos of book critics or additional explanations, links to related articles, games or contests, or even promotions for book signings or giveaways.  Some might find it sad that we as a society want to merge a good book with mass media, but I find it very exciting.  And I do believe that it will eventually lead to more book sales, can actually spur people to read more by making it a little more fun, and will certainly assist with the dissemination of information.

Devices like the Kindle and Nook do enable some enhanced features to be added to E Books, but the real game changers are the highly successful Apple iPad and all of the new tablets based on the Android platform set to be hitting retailers over the next 12 months.  These devices can really bring all of these other enhancements to life and provide a broadband connection for the ease of serving media elements.

The current trend is for the publishers to develop an app for the enhanced E Book, and the app will be device specific (iPhone, iPad, Galaxy Tab, etc).  Of course this adds to the complexity and cost for publishers.  As more and more of these devices hit the market, decisions will have to be made to determine what apps they will provide and what devices they will support.  Standardization will be difficult as each device will have it’s own specs and SDK.

Enhanced E Book apps can be very large in size as well if a great deal of video or audio is embedded in the app.  The market will trend in the future to try to limit the size of the apps for both magazine and E Book apps.  The hard drives on tablets are not very large and really are not designed to hold vast amounts of data.  Some of the apps for magazines and E Books I have seen recently are over 1GB in size.  Think about it….that means that if I have a 16GB iPad, I could only have 16 books or magazines on it at a time!  It will be imperative that publishers think about this as they are developing their E Book Apps.  Embedding large video or audio files in the apps will not be sustainable over time.  Utilizing a media publishing platform like Castfire can enable these apps to serve media content to the Enhanced E Books and can publish audio or video to the multiple different devices you are targeting. These apps should be designed so that as much data as possible is coming from the cloud so that the file size is minimized.

Publishers really seem to be rushing to develop and nurture the enhanced E Book market right now.  I don’t think anyone knows what they will look like even in the next 12 months, but I know that I’m excited to read, listen and watch them as they rapidly come to market.

So I’m the new guy around here. My name is Randall Bennett, and if you’re a Castfire customer, you’ve probably seen my face before.

It’s not that I’m famous, or some sort of megalomaniacal egotist, it’s just that for the past few years a much younger Randall in an uncomfortable looking suit has showed many people the basic power of Castfire. Early 20s Randall, as we’ll call him, helped the Castfire team prototype the original video product all those years ago, and now late-20s more experienced Randall has joined the Castfire team to help run the show.

I’m a video producer by trade, technology journalist by passion, and I’m really looking forward to helping shape Castfire, and helping change web video for the better. On a day-to-day basis, I’ll be primarily responsible for managing our relationships with customers after they start using the product. In short, that means customer support, but it also means I’ll be dealing with feature ideas to fix problems, building internal systems to minimize support issues in the first place, and managing external communication.

Since I’ve been around the product from its early days, I’ve had some in-depth insight into the product and seen it evolve. Now, we’re going to make sure that all of our customers know what’s happening inside Castfire.

For starters, take a peek at http://status.castfire.com/, our newly minted status blog. Our goal is to give you some insight into the inner workings of the company to get a sense of where we’re going. On the Status Blog, you’ll see what our development team is working on day-to-day. From major things like upcoming scheduled maintenance and outages, to minor things like code pushing to the backend, we’ll peel back the curtain and show you (briefly) where we’re going. Also, when major issues come up and are resolved, we’ll keep you in the loop on the Status Blog. And should an act of God strike our data centers, the Status Blog will remain standing since we’re using our friends at Tumblr to host it.

Aside from the status blog, you’ll notice us popping up on this blog more often. This is the place where we take some of the knowledge we gain by doing this stuff all day every day, and share it with you. We’ll share things we’re excited about, things we find interesting, and generally keep you up-to-date with video-related trends we’re paying attention to.

All of these changes are in place simply because we want you to know what we know: Video is a complex ecosystem that’s on the verge of many major evolutions as it moves from signal to bistreams. We’re excited about the shift, and here to help you make sense of it all.

As for me, I’ll be manning the support desk, so if you’d like to get in touch, that’s a good place to find me. Let’s stay in-touch, m’kay?