However, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for NAB 2010 in Las Vegas and the events surrounding it.

Although I have attended NAB for many years, I have always been the person asking the questions of the person in the booth. I was never the person in the booth. This year FORscene had a booth in the show, a pod featuring FORscene at the Chyron booth and another demo location set up at the BIM booth, all staffed by the creators of FORscene – our good colleagues from UK – based Forbidden Technologies plc; the two gentlemen on the ground in Los Angeles, California and our small contingent from here in Canada.

This was the first time I had met any of the people from the UK office and the first time both Lucy (La Grassa) and I met the California-based gentlemen. We all got along splendidly I am happy to say, which is good, because it was like a Monty Python adventure gone awry.

We had a small booth. How big a booth do you need to demo the world’s leading web-based video editing and management tool? All you need is a laptop, and an internet connection… maybe a big monitor so more than one person can watch at a time, right? We needed a bigger a booth! We were packed most of the time, usually with more than one demo and/or meeting going on at once. The second day we brought in more laptops. Word of mouth was spreading: if you want to “edit anywhere, anytime…now,” you had to see FORscene. I’m not complaining; it was wonderful!

Yes, it was wonderful being surrounded by all these heavily-accented fine gentlemen. Oddly, there were no two English accents alike. They were smart, they were funny, and they were very understanding. Day two of the show looked to be busier than day one. My first appointment of the day was at 9:30 am. There I sat with my laptop, proudly showing off what a powerful tool FORscene is when it hit. Hard, fast and violent. FOOD POISONING! Did I mention how understanding my colleagues were? By the time I left the show around 2:00 pm (never to return to NAB 2010) they had all pitched in, talking to people and covering appointments for me. Not one of them made me feel guilty for abandoning them so completely. When next I got to see them it was my last night in Vegas. They all came to our hotel for a farewell meal (did I mention how brave they were?) They had many tales from the remainder of the show to share with me and I appreciated every one of them. Most of all I appreciated my new FORscene family.

You probably have all heard about the nasty volcano in Iceland…and the nasty volcanic ash that grounded more than a few planes. Well, my little Monty Python troupe has yet to make it home. They were stranded for several days in Las Vegas. They are currently holed up in California. We don’t really know when they will make it home to the UK. That is up to Mother Nature and her motley crew. The Brits continue to work hard from their rooms with massive amounts of follow-up calls and emails and thanks to SKYPE I can talk to them when I need them.

Here’s the thing. All we need is a laptop and an internet connection and each other.

How was your NAB experience?

How My NAB 2010 Began

Forbidden partners with Brightcove

10th Feb, 2010

Forbidden Technologies today announced that it has partnered with Brightcove, the leading online video platform. The partnership will enable Forbidden Technologies to integrate FORscene, the Company’s Cloud-based video editing platform, into the Brightcove platform, enabling organizations to tap into the full suite of video publishing and distribution capabilities from Brightcove and video editing features from Forbidden.

FORscene enables video, audio and still images to be uploaded into the Cloud from either a PC or Mac and includes frame-accurate logging and editing tools. The simple to learn, yet powerful, platform gives users the benefits of Cloud computing. Searchable metadata enables targeted advertising – published content is directed automatically as H.264 to the Brightcove platform for multi-resolution compression and hosting in the user’s channel.

Metadata added in FORscene can be published with the video. This material can be used to direct targeted advertising throughout the video. By increasing the accuracy of targeted advertising, this provides added value to video content.

Cameron Church, Technical Channel Director of EMEA, Brightcove said:

“We are always looking to bolster our Brightcove Alliance partner program with value-added technology and services that complement the Brightcove platform. FORscene will give our users the tools to create engaging video content that can be easily distributed through the Cloud”.

Pete Burns, Project Manager at Forbidden Technologies said:

“The world of Cloud computing is rapidly growing with the Cloud now providing centralised productivity tools. We are pleased to partner with Brightcove, as the unique combination of FORscene and Brightcove will help to bring online video monetization to a new level”.

For more information visit:

www.forbidden.co.uk/solutions/brightcove/
www.brightcove.com/en/partners/forbidden-technologies

Any video camera will work, even your IPhone

Pictures will be taken at the most inopportune moments, usually with a mouthful of food. Now, more than ever people will be videotaping the parties, gatherings and outings. Let’s face, it all you really need now is a smartphone. I do it all the time. Of course not everyone appreciates it, but they have all come to expect it. After all I am the one with the background in film and television production in the family. It’s a natural instinct for me to try and catch everything on video.
For those of you who like to celebrate, communicate and keep memories, you know you will be shooting video…so, let’s share. I want to see what you can do with your video and FORscene. Simply shoot what you were going to shoot anyway; log on to our website at www.formidabletechnologies.com; click on the “Try It For Free” button; and you are on your way. You can edit, caption, add effects and get the whole family involved. When you have completed your masterpiece extraordinaire you can make an MPEG and send it to everyone you want to share it with… but don’t forget to share it with us and upload it to our YouTube Channel.  We can all have some fun seeing each other’s work.
If the Holidays don’t seem video worthy, try doing a book review, a restaurant review or an event review. First time user Laurinda chose to do a movie review…

“I, a VERY inexperienced editor, managed to shoot (via webcam) upload, edit and get it up on youtube. It was relatively easy. I didn’t even have to read any instructions. And it was fun!!” My DIY Attempt

Let’s see what you can do…
And Happy Holidays from all of us at Formidable Technologies!

Talk soon,

M

Cloud technology…what the heck are you talking about? I asked my “go to” IT type twitter buddy if he could explain it so even I could understand. Peter Giblet CEO of P3 Social Media  put it very succinctly, “Use LinkedIn, Facebook? Then you already use cloud computing. Every business application can have its data on the web instead of having it stored on a corporate server.”

Eric Knorr, Editor in Chief and Galen Gruman, Executive Editor for Features and News, of Info World say, “Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT’s existing capabilities.”

Dave Cleveland, Sr. Director, of wikinvest “Cloud computing allows consumers and businesses to use applications without installation and access their personal files at any computer with internet access. This technology allows for much more efficient computing by centralizing storage, memory, processing and bandwidth”

Jonathan Strickland of http://www.howstuffworks.com/ “Instead of installing a suite of software for each computer, you’d only have to load one application. That application would allow workers to log into a Web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need for his or her job. Remote machines owned by another company would run everything from e-mail to word processing to complex data analysis programs. It’s called cloud computing, and it could change the entire computer industry.”

Macmillan Dictionary defines it as follows “cloud computing is based on the idea that, rather than each company or individual being set up with their own computing devices for data storage and manipulation, computing resources can be pooled and shared via the Internet. The goal of cloud computing is therefore a shared IT infrastructure providing easy access to (powerful) computer resources which are geared towards users’ needs – they can be expanded or scaled down as the user requires.”
Fred Blauer for CA magazine considers cloud computing and SaaS to be one and the same “There has been a lot of press on the new Web 2.0 or cloud computing type of applications also known as software as a service (SaaS). This type of cloud computing delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On the customer side, it means no upfront investment in servers or software licensing; on the provider side, with just one app to maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting.”

You could always just look up the actual definition on Wikipedia.

So basically, cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the internet.

One thing they all talk about is that these cloud computing services are pretty much divided into three broad categories: IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service, PaaS – Platform as a Service and SaaS – Software as a Service. I think I will leave those for another day.

What I will leave you with is Cloud Computing In Plain English by Common Craft  A 3 minute video that seriously demonstrates it in plain English. As for me, I think that it is like many things in life, you can’t see them, but you know they are there. You just have to have a little faith.

Talk soon,
M

Perhaps it would be a good idea to introduce myself.  I am Michelle Gillies and I am the most recent addition to the Formidable Technologies family.  My title is Manager~Business Development, Sales & Marketing.  Over the next little while you will get to know me and the rest of the gang at Formidable.  But, for now what I would really love for you to do is check out our other new family member –  the new website www.formidabletechnologies.com.

It has been a long journey to get our new website live and we would appreciate all the feedback we can get.  So please explore and enjoy and thanks for stopping by.

Talk soon,

M