Two subsystems within Castfire that rarely see the light of the day but power some of the amazing solutions for our clients are the feeds and api. Together, they power syndication, distribution, players and integrations. While they can be considered the same in nature, there are some distinct differences.

Feeds

The approach for feeds is to return structured data in a variety of formats. The most popular formats are supported (xspf, rss, mrss) and publicly available. As much as mrss is trying to be a standard, there are unfortunately many “flavors” available, from Truveo to Bebo to VodPod to – too many to list. All of the different “flavors” are available in our mrss feeds. The feeds are not only for your content as a whole or through a hierarchy – channels and content producers – but can also segment by categories, tags and syndication partners.

A fantastic example of this in action on each of the player biography pages Washington Redskins site (example). The flash player is passed a feed with the latest 10 videos tagged with that players name – a process their staff does religiously with each video. It provides a simple solution, to both code and manage, to place relevant videos into a website.

API

We often refer to our API as the leading indicator of traffic for the coming months, as new clients, integrations and solutions will often develop on the API prior to launching. To date, approximately 90% of the functionality available in our CMS is available through the API. Because of this, many of our solutions are built with deep integrations that do not require logging into the Castfire CMS.

From September, 2008 – May, 2009, we have seen a 2193% increase of usage across both the feeds and API. To put that into perspective, the full month of September’s usage was done in just over 32 hours in May! The new solutions currently being developed are all extremely dependent on both the API and feeds, creating immersive experiences for the audience and streamlined workflows for the publishers. We believe that this is key for our clients success.

If you are interested in learning more about our feeds and API’s, let us know.

Developer’s Guide – Google Chart API – Google Code

The Google Chart API is the bee’s knees.  What a great, simple tool for fast web development!  It is so incredibly simple and cool:

50k impressions a day is a limitation that could be challenging, but it is so tempting to incorporate.  My mind is going crazy with the possibilities!

Castfire kicked off October with a bang, completing a hat trick of property launches! First up, Boing Boing launched a new property, Boing Boing TV. Working with DECA, Federated Media and Boing Boing, Castfire provides the infrastructure, management, ad insertion and analytics to power the entire experience. I think I am not alone in saying that Boing Boing was an eye opener for me as to the power of blogs, defining the experience, and understanding the voice of a blog. It has consistently kept my attention and provided countless hours of entertainment. We are beyond thrilled to be working with the talented folks working on this project: Xeni (BB), Mark (BB), Jacob (DECA), Chris (DECA), Nihar (DECA), Jonathan (FM), Ivan (FM), Sam (FM), Bernie (FM), et al.

Next up, the San Diego Chargers launched video content on Castfire, with players on the front page and on individual news sites. Our relationship with the Chargers began many, many months ago when Joel Price contacted us after seeing an interview I was in. We woked with Joel to get the property launched with new content and are beginning the process of adding in their entire catalog. In addition to the videos, we will be working with Joel to bring all of their audio podcasts onto the platform as well. This has a ton of sentimental value for me as I lived in Chula Vista, CA during elementary school. I have such a soft spot for anything San Diego and still love them Bolts! (Though, of course, I have no favorite teams in the NFL…

And to finish out the hat trick, the Indianapolis Colts launched hours later, with a very comprehensive solution to handle audio, video, players, playlists, thumbnails and ad rotation. In a weeks time, we added 500+ episodes of audio and video, designed multiple players, updated meta data, and set up all of the feeds. Working with AJ Macht of the Colts was fantastic — knowledgeable, quick and hard working. It was a great case study for us in launching a site with extensive archives, extensive customization, and high visibility.

Needless to say, we have extremely high expectations for the month of October! Best of all, we are no where close to done launching new, large properties this month. Our dev team (and more than a hat tip; a full on, to the ground bow) is firing on all cylinders and are amazing. As I’ve said before, it takes a team, and I am proud to be part of this one!

UPDATE:
Few weeks ago we were searching for good website to download latest movies, and i found it here: download movies, I recommend to use it for searching films.