I sat with Geoff Bowers, President and CEO of Daemon Internet Consultants, to ask him why they were thinking of changing to a dual license model.

Check out the article on Fusion Authority and see what all the buzz is about.

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The Open Screen Project is dedicated to driving consistent rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. ...

Specifically, this work will include:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees - making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

They have a decent list of technology leaders. I hope to see more companies added to the list soon (like Apple).

You can find more about the project on their Open Screen Project and also a decent writeup at techcrunch.

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The plugin takes advantage of the JW FLV Media Player (a flash-based audio/video player) to offer your website/web-application users playback of your video and audio content (FLV, MP3, H264, SWF, JPG, PNG and GIF).

Examples

Listing Page (teasers)

Example screenshot taken from: http://www.lowellgeneral.org/go/videos

Video Player/Details Page

Example screenshot taken from: http://www.lowellgeneral.org/go/videos/the-birthplace

I wrote the original version of this code about a year ago for another client. As more clients needed the feature (I'm now using it on 3 different FarCry websites) the need for converting it to a reusable plugin was evident. I finished the plugin for mass consumption by January, but never got around to releasing it (due to inadequate documentation :) ).

There are two version of the plugin (v1.0.x for FarCry 4, and v1.1.x for FarCry 5). Both currently have the same functionality (they are just designed for different versions of FarCry).

Find more information and detailed documentation on the docs/wiki page.

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For years I've been backing up my PCs using Acronis True Image Home to my local NAS drives. This works great for local backups, but I moved to a Mac last year and haven't found a backup software I really like yet that does compression as well as Acronis (currently PC-only) and offers something close to a GFS backup solution.

But this blog post is to discuss online backup solutions. While I continue to try different offline backup solutions to backup my data to my NAS drives, I really need an offline backup solution for redundancy.

Here are a list of some solutions I've been researching. I'd be grateful to hear people's thoughts on the products or to hear what other people are using that they might suggest to consider. I need something that can backup my Macs (most important), but if there is a product that can backup my PCs as well, it would be preferred:

• Jungle Disk: Offline storage powered by Amazon S3. Very affordable at only 15 cents per gigabyte per month (and you only pay for what you use).
• CrashPlan: A really cool product that allows you to use either their online storage facilities, or backup to your own servers (online and offline). You can even do redundant backups (backup to multiple devices, both your own devices and their online backup facilities). I really like this option, except it doesn't (yet) have an option to just backup to offline HDDs (like my NAS) without involving another OS (I say "yet" because their site lists that they are working on that option and may be offering it soon). Check out their video for a pretty cool demonstration.
• Mozy: An online-only backup solution. This one has been around for a while. It still doesn't appear to officially support Mac OS 10.5 yet (like CrashPlan), but I've had friends say they're using it without a problem. I believe it deletes your data after 30 days.
• Carbonite: An offline backup solution. This is a very enticing solution... only $49.95 per year with no file storage capacity storage limitation. What's that you say? You heard me correct. The downside is that its Windows-only (and I need a solution for the Mac). Still, it was worthy to list here. I believe it deletes your data after 30 days.
• iDrive: Looks like a pretty cool online backup solution, but their pricing os too high for the amount of data I need to backup and it's Windows-only.
• Drobo and DroboShare: Okay, I know... this product doesn't belong on this list of online backup solutions, but it was too cool not to talk about anyway :). The two devices together act like a NAS (using new technology that may replace standard RAID as we know it (my personal opinion)), but limitations like USB2 between the devices, no redundant gigabit connections, etc. are holding me back. Its been out for a while, so hopefully they will have a new version out soon with many of the missing features people have been asking for.

If you Google "online backup solutions" you'll get a long list of products out there (only a few of which I've looked into). So, what do you use or suggest?

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FarCry 5.0 has a very large feature set. The new installer is great (see image below) and the upgrader does an amazing job (currently only updates from FarCry 4.0).

New FarCry 5.0 Installer

Of the many new features in FarCry, the one I'm really digging is the new skeleton functionality. In essence when you create a skeleton you take a snapshot of your current project (configs, plugin connections,... even data) and you can redeploy it in other installations (this is all managed from an easy user interface).

Another feature that a lot of people will be excited about is that FarCry can now run from the webroot (allowing you to deploy it on a shared hosting environment).

You can find more about FarCry 5.0 in the online wiki.

Here is a list of some of the many of the features being released in FarCry 5.0:

• New Security Model (it's type-based now)
• New Workflow Engine
• New Formtool Enhancements
  • Ability to Create Formtools without a Persistent Object (providing a construct for using formtools without the need for a content type in the background)
• FarCry now Uses Application.cfc
• ExtJs 2.0 Integration (a new tag library that concentrates on panels and accordions)
• New Webskin Security Model
• New Skeleton Functionality (for solution distributions)
• New Skeleton Explorer (allowing you to export your existing project into a skeleton)
• New Webskin Security (example: You can secure any view)
• Type-Based Webskins (the ability to run a new webskin on a collection of objects of the same type)
• New Inline Documentation Functionality in the Webtop
• Categories are Now Content Types (No need to create custom category types anymore)
• The Config has been Normalized (allowing plugins to have their own config)
• New Installer
• And Much More!...

There are so many more features. Even small ones... like date fields for example (Thanks Mat). While editing in a form (in the webtop) and modifying a data field... sure you can use the date icon and click through the dates. But you can also just type into the date box in any format (and the date will automatically be converted to your locale). Example: You can type the string "+ 2 weeks" or "+2 months" and you will instantly see the resulting date.

Daemon has put a lot of work into this release and deserve all the credit we can throw at them :). They are asking for people to beta test and report bugs in the public Bug Tracker and/or in the FarCry-Beta Mailing Lists.

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