There are, however, numerous options, so how do you decide which one is best for you? In this post, I’ll cover our experiences attending four major European tech conferences (TNW, TechCrunch, WebSummit, LeWeb). Continue reading
In this post I’m going to describe the usual practice of our projects. We utilize Node.JS and MongoDB to prepare prototypes for all new apps we develop. This involves no significant back end development efforts and gives you a ready to use service in several weeks. In fact, usually you get a scalable architecture as well. So, let’s get deeper into demonstrating a real case study from PhotoSuerte app. It is a photo-messaging app for iPhone that connects users at random. So, let’s not waste your time. Read this post and make a prototype for your next big app! Continue reading
December 2, 2013, Moscow, Russia – in the world where photo chat is one of the most popular and exciting forms of communication, a new app gives users a glimpse into another part of the world.
DENIVIP Group, a Moscow-based app development company, has just released their latest creation, PhotoSuerte. PhotoSuerte is a photo-messaging app for iPhone that connects users at random, allowing them to experience different parts of the world through the eyes of people who live there. PhotoSuerte gives users an exclusive look at another country and share with others their passion for photography and creative expression. Continue reading
Hardly any project today can avoid storing of a large amount of media objects (video chunks, photos, music, etc).
In our projects, we often needed our storage system to be highly reliable, as loss of content often results in service interruption (I think this is true for most of the projects). Moreover, as the service capacity grows, such characteristics as performance, scalability, manageability, etc., become of key importance.
To enable content storage, you can use different distributed file systems, however each of them obviously has its own upsides and downsides. So selection of an optimum file system is in no way a trivial task. Recently, we have been solving such a task for our Together project, an innovative mobile video content platform to handle user-generated content just like Netflix handles movies. Then, we have started using the platform in other our services, such as: PhotoSuerte to store photos and Veranda to store short videos. In most of our projects, the platform has proven itself efficient. In this post, we would like to tell you how to create a distributed data storage for a video platform. Continue reading
A major advantage of HTTP Live Streaming, and it is still unbeaten by any other standard, is that you can use any technology to compose multimedia content. You don’t need expensive media servers to handle media streams. You can easily delegate media composition to some simple PHP / Python / Ruby / Node.js modules. As a long-time Flash lover I was somewhat prejudiced against the Apple’s video delivery standard. But as a developer, every day I use it to solve tasks which have been almost unattainable with the previous stack (or required expensive software). Adobe HDS playlists have been really hard to deal with. Just think of binary data in f4m playlists. They require much more time to develop & debug the solution. MPEG DASH is also far from being intuitive.
In this post, we are going to discuss how to make an alternative audio track for your video. Although HTTP Live Streaming can streamline this task, yet there are some limitations, so you need to make certain hacks on the client side. In our Together project, we had to implement alternate sound tracks for user videos. Luckily, we use HTTP Live Streaming throughout the system. Continue reading
In this post, I will tell you the story of our early prerelease growth approach we took with Together Video Camera. Nowadays, there are lots of ways to attract early users. We took our path and I believe, we have our say here. I spent days and weeks studying the best existing practices, and after that spent even more so proceeding my way and applying the newly learned principles. So, let’s start and check some of the steps I took and the outcome I have finally got. Continue reading
We have to deal with funding in every project, sooner or later. Generally speaking, the question is, whether to create a company with your own capital or money borrowed from venture capitalists, business angels or through equity crowdfunding. You can find lots of information on how to approach investors, on the Web. Commonly, investors are very public people highly involved with social media. We have just recently got into attracting investors, so we are just in the middle of the learning curve. But as soon as we have accumulated enough data, surely we will share it. However, what we can share right now, is our solid long-term experience with bootstrapping our business. You have to face funding issues long before you ever contact with a potential investor. To approach investors you have to make something tangible first. A popular idea today is that the “early stage” means the point of profitability in the project. To get to this stage, often you have to start with your own money. But what to do when your money is limited? Well, the answer is in bootstrapping! Continue reading
We are publishing a video player design (PC version) which you could use in your projects. It was done by our designer, Flash and HTML5 sources will be published soon. Design sources in PSD.
Over the last few years, the multimedia technology has been growing exponentially. Twenty years ago, the analog over-the-air broadcast was the top experience available. Now, online video services make an increasing impact on the TV industry. You will find useful DRM technologies overview in this article (I hope). It was published in the latest issue of Russian magazine Telesputnik. Continue reading
