by randall on January 26, 2011, under Features
We have a little present for you… Campaign Groups! Basically, a campaign group allows you to group ad campaigns together into a group, and serve each campaign based on a weighted percentage. Check out the video below for a five minute explanation.
by clark on October 13, 2010, under Devices, HTML5, Mobile, Uncategorized
One of the greatest areas of technological growth over the last two years has been in the development of apps. The term ‘app’ is short for ‘application program’, the flip side being a systems program. Many vendors like Apple (iPhone, iPad), Google (Android) and now Microsoft (Windows Phone 7) chase developers to create apps in their environments so their devices will have better functionality…and they can in turn sell more devices.
Apple far and away has not only helped create this market, but continued to catapult it along. A recent estimate says there are over 50,000 app publishers and over 200,000 apps in the US App Store alone. Apps built on the Android platform are growing, as are Blackberry and Nokia (Symbian). Microsoft is well behind, but it is reportedly offering some developers revenue guarantees even if the new Windows Phone 7 fails. A completely new market for apps are also being built on the growing number of tablet computers that are or will soon be sold. Though the operating systems are the same (iOS and Android), the apps being developed for tablets can be very different than the apps on their phone counterparts, and are often much more media rich.
A huge ecosystem is building around supporting the App development industry. From app developers, to app exchanges, to app aggregators, and of course app stores; many different businesses are popping up to support the app industry. The growth we see continuing to flourish is in that of publishers of informational or entertainment content. Virtually every show or brand that has any kind of content where they need eyeballs will eventually need an app if they are to remain current– and they will need apps across devices. Granted, they may not think they need an app for every single phone or tablet, but any device that has sold millions, they will want to get there. Anything from news to sports to weather to fantasy football to full length shows are available from many of the apps that have been specifically built by the owners of that content. These apps are generally made available for free, and there is a huge competition amongst networks, brands and content owners to get the most downloads for their apps.
The decision of what apps to provide can be extremely difficult, however. For instance, a network like CBS may want to build apps for CBS Corporate, CBS News and CBS Sports separately. They may even want to provide apps for specific shows like Survivor or 60 Minutes– or for categories of shows. And then for each of these decisions, they must decide if they are making apps for all the devices out there. Costs to develop all these apps and publish content to the devices can really add up, and it is important that the content owners have a way to monetize all of their shows published to apps moving forward. The mobile ad industry is still in its infancy and will continue to grow and hopefully flourish over time. A platform like Castfire enables publishers to monetize and analyze consumption of audio and video across all platforms by integrating with any ad server; even if the ad server is set up to work within Flash. Therefore, publishers can continue to use their same ad system and same ad ops they use for the web and monetize their content no matter what apps they decide to develop and publish content. Another host of companies like Transpera are focusing on the mobile ad market and rich media ads, and provide other ways content producers can monetize their apps.
One thing is certain: apps are here to stay, and they will only grow in numbers in the foreseeable future as more and more smart phones and tablets hit the market. Those publishers that create the apps that are easy to find, fun to use, and can advertise there without being intrusive will be the ones that win over this ever growing consumer base that will demand more and more mobile content moving forward.
by Charlie Killian on September 28, 2010, under API, Development, Features
If you have been following the Castfire status blog then you have recently seen several updates involving backend changes for the Castfire API. I want to share with you how those changes will manifest for Castfire clients.
There are six upcoming API key enhancements that fall into two general categories.
API key management
API keys will be decoupled from a user login allowing for a network to create unlimited API keys. Separate API keys can be created and assigned to a specific task or third-party. For example, if you are working with a digital agency like Digitaria, an API key can be created and shared with just them.
The API key can also be given a name, such as “Digitaria” and if needed the API secret can be changed or the API key can be deleted easily in the Castfire CMS.
API key access restrictions
Keeping third-party integrations in mind, API keys can be restricted to one or more API methods. For example, if Digitaria only needs details about existing shows, the API key can be limited to the shows.getDetail API method. If later on, the ability to set show tags is required then access to shows.setTags can easily be added in the Castfire CMS.
Restrictions also encompass content producers, allowing for API keys to be restricted to one or more. For example, if Digitaria wants the ability to set foreign keys on all shows in the “News” content producer, an API key can be created that only has access to this content producer and the only the shows.setDetail API method
These upcoming API key enhancements will make API key management easier, give control over access restrictions and allow for more flexibility when integrating Castfire with third-party vendors.
by Charlie Killian on September 13, 2010, under Development
One of the features that makes Castfire scalable is the ability for most of our production servers to run any part of our codebase. From acting as the cms, serving videos, joining files or ingesting files over ftp, each of our servers can play any role that is required.
Having a distributed codebase can lead to a difficult release process, especially when pushing code to live production servers. However, utilizing rsync, we wrote custom release scripts that enable code to be pushed to a single production server or all servers. The scripts called cfsync, cfsyndir, and cfsyncfile are used daily and make it easy to push out code quickly.
cfsync --dry-run cms01 www
See which corporate site files would be pushed to cms01.
cfsync --live all www
Push the corporate site to all servers.
cfsyncfile --live all www.castfire.com/index.html
Push the corporate index.html file to all servers.
cfsyncdir --dry-run www.castfire.com/css/
See which files would be pushed to the css dir on the corporate site.
The rsync options that make pushing files to live servers successful are:
--archive --human-readable -P --itemize-changes --delay-updates --dry-run
--delay-updates is the most important option because it copies all transferred files into place at the end of the transfer — if a changed file references another changed file, both files need to be in place at the same time or errors will be thrown. Without this atomic copy, a server would need to be taken out of rotation for the code push.
--dry-run is handy to verify which files will be pushed before actually pushing the files. I always dry-run before a push, to verify that no other files were commited but not pushed.
The other options are standard rsync options for display and permissions.
Using rsync, Castfire stays agile. We are able to push code easily and quickly to all our live production servers.
by robert on January 19, 2010, under Clients
Swimnetwork is the leading website that is dedicated to swimming and provides news, entertainment, an online community and videos from key events.
Digitaria is a top notch interactive agency and once again chose to implement Castfire as the video platform for its client, Swimnetwork – http://www.swimnetwork.com/Multimedia/Media-Center.aspx