Brian Brushwood from Scamschool would be proud of this….

Was able to prank Backblaze on Failblog yesterday by submitting a screenshot generated by a modified URL on Backblaze.

Allow me to share how I did this:

I realized when I checked my download status with backblaze they left the variables in the URL to come up with a length

https://secure.backblaze.com/online-backup-speed.htm?os=mac&mb=63264&throttle=50&kbitspersec=4264

For 63GB still have 24  days to complete the backup and it’s all visible in the URL:

So all I did was change the total space to something very high (630 TB) in the URL:

Submitted to failblog, and bam.

It would be cool if Backblaze said something more graceful, like. “WOAH,  you have a ton of stuff.. it’ll be a few years before this is complete.”

Luckily, online tools make it possible to continue sharpening your skills, even from afar. Problem with long podcasts like these, is you can easily waste your time if you aren’t picky with your podcast. If used wisely they are the perfect tools for in-between time (driving, flying, doing laundry, etc).

These are my 3 must-listen to  podcast resources:

• This Week In Tech – For the essential tech news, rockstar Leo Laporte is an incredible host and always brings super intelligent guests.
• This Week In Startups - Jason Calacanus does great job of bringing in incredible entrepreneurs and providing a mix of education/entertainment.
• This Week In Venture Capital -  The venture space is changing every other month. Mark Suster does a great job bringing in the top VCs and Angel investors.

It’s also been a privileged to work with such a great team that’s focused at delivering the best video technology.

The latest hire, Billy Disney, is first full-time hire outside that development/support workflow, and with the Viddler Spotlight series, has begun highlighting the love affair and “privelegedness” we have with our customers:

And with this amazingness, Billy humbly bakes himself as folks to be privileged to work with.

Did a video for it.. the first I have done in a LONG time which is the reason why am so rusty

We do put much of this stuff on the blog and on Twitter but she was referring to the more traditional marketing techniques: Sponsoring events, parties, keynote speaking, press releases, email newsletters, etc.

This brought me to defend staying low key. Allow me to share reasons….

Benefits of Staying Low Key:
- Competition doesn’t pay attention (we have features implemented better then our competitors and they still haven’t caught up)
- You wouldn’t believe the amount of people buying into video hosting that don’t attend big shindig conferences or give two cents about press releases.
- Save time and money. What matters and what sells is usually how good your product is and how fast you are innovating. Also if your not spending a wild amount on marketing you can offer your customers with a more affordable product.
- Other companies do operate like this and succeed. For instance, has anyone seen Getclicky? Two guys building one of the best analytics toolset in the business. They are low key, no mainstream marketing strategy, and after investigating have a outrageous # of customers.

This isn’t to say we aren’t looking to improve our marketing strategy. Just a slight argument for staying under the radar.

And I will keep the company name I work for out of this, cause I know I have google alerts setup on our competition. #stayinglowkey

The focus was around Control, Customization and Branding viddler offers as a video hosting service. What do you think, did those points come across?

The Good:
- Lower CPU requirements
- Open standard
- Works great in mobile environments, keeps power usage low

The Bad
- No support for closed captioning
- Javascript based when you want to design the player
- Javascript is a security risk for hosted environments, like Tumblr, Facebook, WordPress.com, RSS Readers
- No Internet Explorer support (coming in IE9)
- Lack of Security on Stream. tags need open access to streams.
- Ad Serving Not Possible, initial implementations include giving out Javascript tags
- Autoplays randomly when loading pages using default tag
- No Room for Interactive Experiences – Overlays/Sharing functionality/

As of today, support HTML5, it’s great in mobile experiences, but it has a long way to go before coming the default in desktop browsers.

Having aged a few years, and having helped make many of the buying decisions for Viddler, I could never disagree more.

First off must say I have a ton of respect for the Veoh team, Dmitry, and the product itself. It was always incredible seeing the pure amount of technology come out from the Veoh team.

Also, being a co-founder of a video site myself, I can’t imagine how painful it must have been getting stuck in court instead of working on the product and going bankrupt because of that. Not sure I would have handled it as gracefully as Dmitry did.

Allow me to take a step into memory lane…

It is 3 years ago and the race of the video destination. Veoh, Revver, vMix, vSocial and the 800 pound gurilla… All of us competing with features, community and spending a ton of money to do so.

What I want to share is how Viddler has lucked out into building built a sustainable business where others have failed:

1. 1/50th Raised in Funding – in total Viddler has raised less then $2M in funds. Not on purpose either.. We really just couldn’t raise more funds then this. Whether it be bad location, crowded space, or me being first time entrepreneur, this is tiny round compared to the sites we were competing with. What it forced us to do is stay small, control our budget, and get profitable based on lower overhead. Today, Viddler is 16 people. Everyone on board are rockstars at what they do and we are hiring at a slow and steady pace keeping the quality high.
2. Market Maturity – video marketing adoption, personal branding, viewers watching video.. all of this has increased to where we are at a point where our product makes sense, and even worth paying for.
3. Bandwidth Costs Affordable - three years ago, the price per GB of bandwidth we were paying was 50x what we are paying for now. If we were paying what we did 3 years ago we wouldn’t have a sustainable business today.
4. Video Advertising with No Ad Sales Team - three years ago you needed to sell directly to advertisers to have a chance at selling preroll/overlay inventory. Now with the many different ad networks and standardization with VAST compliant networks it’s all about optimization. The $250k/year + commission VP of Ad Sales is no longer needed.
5. English Focus – We haven’t had an international “non-english” presence at all. If it’s questionable, we can’t interpret it,  and overseas it’s not allowed on Viddler. This keeps costs down. Veoh was hosting alot of Anime. That content is expensive to delivery.
6. Bethlehem, PA – An hour from Philadelphia and two hours from NYC, we might as well be based in the middle of nowhere. This has helped us focus on the product (instead of the local scene), stay under the radar with competition, and hire extremely talented people (no competition in Bethlehem) at significantly more affordable rates then California, Boston, or NYC.

Again, all the respect to Dmitry. Wish him the best in his next venture, and hope this conveys how we are still around, and going to be around for the long haul.

• Thankful for being able to build Viddler these last 4 years and focus on passion of online video.
• Thankful for family, that keeps on loving me, no matter how far I am, or focused with work I have become.
• Thankful for having worked the amazing Donna DeMarco, co-founder in Viddler, who has helped build a balanced Viddler and and an amazing family of her own at the same time.
• Thankful for Poland engineering and fact that they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving so they will be able to watch over our servers.
• Thankful for an incredible designer.
• Thankful for every Viddler investor, employee, uploader, and viewer.
• Thankful for a great girlfriend, Dana Fish, that understands why this Viddler obsession might be first thing I give thanks for at this point in my life.

Thankful for the few of you, reading this blog, taking the time to follow this adventure.

A few Viddlers have asked me why this can’t be free for everyone, as Youtube does.

This is a good question, giving away everything for free is a very expensive business decision to pursue. We are focused on profitability and are certainly turning a little 37signal’ish.

To give you a little sniffy sniff.. check out what analytics looks like for me:

via MIT takes the wrappers off autonomous, robotic helicopter with intelligent navigation.

Viddler has the man, the myth, the legend – The Todd.

I just gotta burst out and say that intelligent Sys Admins are invaluable in a small startup looking to stay efficient.

Exclusive/secret underground footage of Todd working on his computer, matrix style:

Update – forgot to mention the JAMES.. rockstar lefty that comes in as a closer for Todd.

It’s funny how fundraising is such a widely written about activity when it really has little to do with product or business itself.

This is a little video spoof on just that.

We have had our share of bad relationships that I can look back on and all center around the lack of how “tight nit” that organization is.

The goal of this post isn’t to point out bad instances though, but rather highlight amazing relationships.

Stealing a bit of Gary Vaynerchuks thunder, would say these companies are “crushing it”, with regards to how tight nit they are

Tubemogul

These guys have built an amazing analytics company and someone we work with extensively to power our analytics toolsets. They started out of Cal Berkley and have many incredibly smart people working for them. At around 20+ employees they have been able to rapidly build out the best analytics platform in the online video business.

When working with them, if we have a problem an API here or there, they will work overnight to get us the answer or fix by morning. One evening in particular, we had a problem with our flash player and analytic tracker, with everyone out for the day, and not his responsibility, Jason Lopatecki, Chief Strategy Officer, pulled out flash editor, and put together a fix for us. Who has C level officers that know how to code flash?

Incredibly smart and passionate people that are not afraid to wear multiple hats.

Edgecast

The Content Delivery Network (CDN) business is very competitive right now, and get dozens of vendor emails weekly about new CDN price breaks. Having worked with these guys for over a year now, they listen and deliver. This is extremely important as many larger CDN businesses think they have it figured out, and aren’t invested in innovating and listening to there customer.

We have many business service customers we work with. Each of these customers needs to be tracked individually for bandwidth usage. Edgecast listened to this need and not only delivered reporting functions for us with a UI layer but delivered an API with 20+ functions a few weeks after.

And when someone on the Viddler team may call in because we are having a problem with some reporting tool, or inquiring about new services, the level1 support engineer could be the core architect for all we know because of how well versed he is with the status of features and problems within the company. Transparent organization or talented hire? I would assume all organizations have high level of transparency, just that they find passionate and intelligent people.

To get started over there the man to talk to over there is Duane Sulo.

Google

Due to size of Google don’t want to post anything too confidential here. What I will say is that there account reps and support staff are all on point. When working with individual units of Google, they feel like small startups themselves, proving that you can still be tight nit in one of the largest companies in the world.

Woopra

Just started using this product on this blog. But the fact the CEO, John Pozadzides,  is talking transparently about business model with his users, just rocks and leads by example on how passionate his company is about his users.

In summary it appears that there are a few key factors in running a tight nit organization:

1. Smart/Passionate People
2. Ability to Listen and Deliver
3. Employees not afraid to wear multiple hats.

Please think of these when building a company or working with other companies as it’ll help foster more tight nit companies.

Also, just a small disclaimer, there are a more companies I want to list, but in order for Viddler to attempt to be a tight company, am going to have to cut this off here.

If you know of a tight nit company, let me know what tight nit company you work with, would love to hear your story via comments, blog post, tweet, viddler, or email rob at viddler.

I never really thought this concept applied to “physical businesses”. Ones that make things physical for people to buy (Google t-shirts do not count).

Well, while obsessing over my favorite new upcoming car, Chevy Volt, ran into a livechat with GM retiring executive Larry Burns.

Toyota recently announced they will not go down GM route as it’s doesn’t make business sense for typical margins. Larry responded very “google-like” to one of my questions with regard to cost of the new lithium-ion batteries.

It’s great to see GM act as Google would.  One more reason to get the Volt!

Viddler is located in Bethlehem, PA and a few of us share our favorite sandwiches that are all less then $5!

Scrappy.

As a product guy, it’s been very apparent Myspace has been on it’s way out for many years, mainly due to it’s inability to innovate, and putting advertising efforts clearly ahead of it’s users.

When Jay Leno, a mainstream comedian, uses Myspace as center of a joke, it really questions the mainstream perspective on them.

Myspace is far from over though, and still has a chance to come back.

If I were over at myspace I would do two things to combat this before it’s too late:
What: Make it clear Myspace is going to change attitude on advertising, putting users first. Scrap all ad units and start over with more engaging campaigns. Reinvent itself.
How: Become socially transparent in this effort. Get feedback from users. Turn it into a conversation as apposed to a one way battle.

Update: NBC has pulled the commercial from it’s site. It used to be here and when you still google “Jay Leno new material” you will find it once existed on the site.  NBC and Myspace have a relationship on many levels, wouldn’t be suprised if someone asked for it to come down due to it hurting the relationship.

With it you can advertise with some of the AMAZING partners that I personally am privileged to work with including HotHardware, Engadget, Joystiq, Tweektown,  iJustine, Phillyd.tv, any many other FANTASTIC partners.

This is just the start. What I hope is that we can spur up small businesses with $500-1000 budgets to find value in this.

Would love your feedback on the guide.

Also to kickstart the program put together my first advertisement I have ever created.

Mapping USB Thinkpad Keyboard Middle Scroll Key to OSX

Originally uploaded by sandieman

I am in love with my IBM Thinkpad keyboard and how much it saves your fingers. When your on your computer 10+ hours a day, efficiency is everything with the mac red nipple, saving moving hands on mac from keyboard to mouse 1000+ times a day.

There is one thing that is missing though when using it with OSX which is very annoying. What I am trying to get to work is the middle scroll key that you press and when pressing it it allows you to scroll up and down a website page or document. This is very important function for keyboard to work for me.

Alternatively a shortcut for scrolling (Ctrl-J) would be acceptable as well.

Apple OSX’s default keyboard mapping function is pretty simple and isn’t apparent howto get this to work.

If you have any ideas on howto get this to work, please let me know in comments below or @sandieman me on Twitter!

Thanks!

UPDATE: Smart Scroll fixed this problem for me. It’s a payed shareware application but worth it.

Recent Mac commercials (which I always love) share Windows guy freezing 2150 many years into the future. It’s making fun of the Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates commercial where Bill hints at next version of Windows. That being said, all this poking and competition has got me thinking on where it will be in 2040 (2150 being too far away).

What are pretty much guarantees:
Dropping prices in hardware
Culture changes at Apple and Windows
Opensource movement to continue to grow
Steve Jobs will die. (sorry folks, everyone does)

Rating past, present, future
Without using any formal metric (market share, revenue generated, etc), I would like to post my prediction of how the market will evolve based on a Wine Spectator point scale. Have made a few notes on why each of the trends.

What do you think?

The pressure is on!

At this moment in time, scrappy is making me and people around us think like a company, one that is going to be around for a very long time.

Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 has launched his blog, louderback.com. Jim is an old-school internet dude, if Jim started this blog only halfway through his internet career he could have registered jim.com.

Seriously though, Jim is great to Viddler and community. If you haven’t done so already make sure and checkout Revision3Beta. If you are looking for another Gary-Vaynerchuk-like “personality” in the video space, make sure to subscribe to his feed!

Now all I gotta do is convince him to get a Viddler.com account and branded player