Dmitri’s timeline set to music.

A couple of years ago I began work on a project named SocialCastr. In a nutshell, it’s a piece of software that enables you to broadcast (video/audio) to an unlimited audience over the internet from your computer or device. This differs from something like YouTube or LiveStream in that you don’t need such services to achieve this. There aren’t many services or software titles out there that do this, mostly because it’s kinda complicated, but also presumably because it’s hard to monetize something that is entirely in the users’ control.

Obviously, some people are fine with using third-party services to store and distribute their content. I often use them so I get it. However, as people are increasingly finding, censorship, the silencing of dissent and competition, and a lack of freedom are alive and well on all the major platforms out there. If you believe in individual freedoms, you’re unlikely to find them in the ranks of the media hosting mega-corps.

It’s probable that your cute cat videos, inane content, or asinine replies will be safe — it’s the really important stuff like speaking out against government abuse that might disappear in a digital puff smoke.

With SocialCastr I wanted to side-step some of these issues directly and it was clear to me that the best way to do so was to remove the third-party part of the equation. Luckily, my programming language of choice (ActionScript) has a robust networking system that allowed me to do exactly this.

Unlike something like YouTube where you upload (or stream) your video to them and they take care of distributing it to your audience, SocialCastr broadcasts directly to the audience. In other words, you are communicating directly with peers (audience), no YouTube or LiveStream to potentially block or censor you.

This approach was unthinkable just a few years ago; most computers, even with fast connections, could send video/audio streams to a few people at most. It’s not unlike uploading videos to YouTube — once you’re uploading two or three videos (or any data, really) at the same time, your internet connection is essentially “busy”. Sending video directly to two or three individuals over the internet would similarly clog your connection. YouTube has what in programming parlance is referred to as “fat pipes”, fast and powerful internet connections that can support millions of viewers simultaneously, something that is simply out of the reach of the vast majority of us.

SocialCastr does things differently.

When you broadcast, you only actually send your video/audio stream to two or three people at most. They in turn take care of re-distributing the stream to others using peer-to-peer networking. Your audience quite literally share the burden of re-distributing the content to other peers. Practically this means that you are able to broadcast to a potentially unlimited number of people with a pretty basic computer and equally basic internet connection.

Despite the fact that I have an ongoing wish-list of additional features, SocialCastr is complete so there’s a lot that can be done with the underlying technology along similar lines as above.

For example, distributing files  á la BitTorrent is something I’ve (successfully) tested, and I’m not the only person to do so. Similarly, two-way peer-to-peer chat, including video and audio, are laughably easy to set up within SocialCastr.

Perhaps more interesting than this would be to use SocialCastr to anonymize web browsing much like Tor does — when you want to view a web page, a request goes out to all connected peers who make the request on your behalf. Just as with Tor, it’s the peers that actually get the data for you (encrypted, of course), and return it to you. Spreading a web page load over many peers, a request which typically requires tens or sometimes hundreds of requests to fully complete (i.e. all the images, ads, etc.), could potentially speed up retrieval of the web page in addition to helping you to stay anonymous.

I’ve even opined that it should be fairly straightforward to build a distributed computing platform of some sort. US Berkeley does exactly this when searching the heavens for signs of extra-terrestrial life this with their SETI@Home project, and many Bitcoin miners now work in similar cooperative groups to feed the cryptocurrency with its raw Bitcoin rainbow tables.

And did I mention that because it’s Adobe Flash / AIR, it’ll run on most computers, devices, and browsers currently in existence? PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari … the same code runs everywhere.

This is all very realistic and mostly tested, so it’s far from being merely speculative. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to make these ideas a full reality so I’ve decided that I’ll be open-sourcing SocialCastr very shortly (just as soon as I’ve cleaned up and commented the source code a bit, you know the drill).

So if you want to download the SocialCastr source code and compile it yourself (detailed instructions to be included), you don’t have to trust me or anyone else to produce the end software. You can fiddle with the code directly and change it in small or large ways in order to learn, or produce something unique, or whatever. If all you want to do is to slap your own logo on there and release (including sell) the software, be my guest!

Often people post long apologies on their blogs for their long absence, explaining how their cat infected them with some version of feline AIDS or some such other, and it always comes across as pandering and whiny.

Well not me. No sir. I’ve been busy, and I told myself at the outset that TCL will just have to wait. It’s not that I don’t love ranting about evil politicians or posting misty photos of a blah Toronto winter (anyone else noticed it’s been totally wimpy this year?), but as I’ve explained in earlier posts, I’m also a Flash developer and I’ve been creating a product that I really think will help to shake things up a bit (plus that day job thing).

It’s a live, social (peer to peer) broadcasting technology (not a social network!), called SocialCastr, and you can get more information here: http://www.SocialCastr.com/
Some people have reported trouble with seeing a blank front page, but since all it really has is a Google Docs presentation, you can go ahead and view that here: https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=d48tf93_8hfnctdgb
There’s also a blog that goes with the site: http://www.SocialCastr.com/blog/
And the downloads / installers are available here: http://www.SocialCastr.com/download.html

I realized that I kinda failed in my description of the software when my parents assumed you could use it to have a live, two-way chat like Skype. In fact, you can (both people run Broadcastr and Receivr at the same time) , but right now that conversation would be broadcast to the world which is really what SocialCastr is about: broadcasting content (audio and video are just the start), to the world.

But I happen to think it’s a bit more elegant than anything out there right now. For starters, you don’t broadcast through any central server as you would with any other video service. In the past this would’ve been prohibitive since anyone broadcasting would need a massively fast and powerful connection to the internet in order to broadcast to as few as 100 people — each one would need their own individual copy of the video/audio stream.

SocialCastr overcomes this by using peer to peer stream sharing; the broadcaster only sends audio / video streams to a few peers and they share with others. In this way, a simple broadcast from one person can be viewed by almost unlimited numbers of people worldwide, and at a fraction of the cost of most other technologies. I happen to think this has larger implications for business too — renting out Content Delivery Networks, high-bandwidth pipes, and servers are all costs that have made getting into video semi-professional broadcasting impossible for anyone without a wad of cash. Until now, that is.

I’ve been warning people that before version 1.0 it’s still a beta (i.e. test, unstable, etc.) product and there’s still work to be done to make the software more useful. However, even at this early stage it incorporates some features you won’t find anywhere else. So if you’re a citizen journalist, vlogger, podcaster, lecturer, teacher, trainer, or may otherwise find the software useful, I encourage you to drop by and try it out. More importantly, send me your feedback and feature requests!

My commitment to keep producing a free version of the software isn’t exclusively a product of generosity, it has very real and tangible business reasons behind it. That doesn’t mean there won’t be paid or “freemium” versions too, but the fully free option will always be available.

Thanks for hanging in there while I get this baby of the ground. Updates on TCL will probably still be slow, and I ain’t making any promises; I know better by now. But SocialCastr is really a proudly Toronto-based project so I see no reason why I can’t blog about it here, do you? Cuz I kind of already have ;)

Here’s what I like to plug my ears with on my way to work. They’re also a great idea for days like, well, all this week — rain, rain, and rainy. They are all Toronto (at least produced here) but, ironically, hardly contain any music at all.

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It’s been a while since the Toronto mayoral race had a scandal, don’t you think, dear reader?

The last one toppled Adam Giambrone, reducing Jammers to a sobbing wreck as he was delivering his stepping-down speech. To be honest, we all kinda saw that one coming, didn’t we? Young guy, in politics since he was in diapers; he was overdue for a political misstep. According to the Toronto’s Sexiest Councillor poll (you haven’t voted yet?), he gives most of the councillors a run for their money, and even I’ll grudgingly concede that he’s a fairly good-looking guy, so the fact that it was a sex scandal that took him out (the standard had sex with another woman kind), really didn’t come as a surprise.

The latest one involving Rob Ford, however, was a bit of a surprise. To say it came out of left field would be a bit of an understatement.

Seems Rob got himself tangled up with a Dieter Doneit-Henderson (first name pronounced “Deeter”, second like “doughnut”), a gay guy with Fibromyalgia living somewhere on the west end of the city. From what I could glean; just outside of Rob’s electoral district anyway.

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Here’s the online thesaurus:

baking, blazing, blistering, boiling, broiling,burning, calescent, close, decalescent, febrile, fevered, feverish, feverous, fiery, flaming, heated, humid, igneous, incandescent, like an oven, on fire, ovenlike, parching, piping, recalescent, red, roasting, scalding, scorching, etc.

I believe they’re all applicable. Except maybe calescent (and its cousins), because it’s supposed to mean “growing warm” and it’s way too obscure besides.

Oh, sorry, I’m talking about this past weekend. And today. Probably tomorrow too. And for a few more days beyond that.

It’s hat. That’s hot said with a mouth that’s too hot and tired to form a proper “o” sound. If you start off hissing like a cat, you’ve got it bang on.

The right uppercut is the heat, the repeated left jab is the humidity. I was down for the count since Saturday morning, hardly able to peel myself off the sofa where my new window fan is paying dividends! I actually fantasized about having this fan last summer, kind of like a heat-induced delirium. So I got one this year. But she struggles. I have a neat little neo-vintage desk fan too, but that one’s been dropped a few times and now makes all sorts of interesting, potentially explosive noises. I keep it on at night. That way, when it happens, I die in my sleep. Groovy.

So, what would cause me to grab the fifth shower of the day and begin contemplating venturing out? Have a listen for yourself:

(If you don’t see anything, you might need Flash installed [my bread and butter; 100% legit, I promise], so click here to install it. Then just reload. )

If you invested in a good set of computer speakers or, failing that, headphones, you should be good. And turn it down a couple of notches;  it’s supposed to be ambient :)

What you’re hearing …

What? You didn’t start it playing? Just hit the little triangle! Jeez, what’re you saving your bytes for a rainy day or something?

…good. Thank you.

What you’re hearing is an unpublicized event that took place in Allan Gardens park, obviously not too far from my place. Judging by the signage, the show was put on by the Carpenters’ Union. They had a couple of politicians show up, and I have no idea what it was for. My best guess would be that it was just a union summer picnic with a talent show tacked on. If you read casually, as I do, you’re probably hearing the results of that talent show now. (You did start the audio, didn’t you?)

The first chunk was a bit of bad (in the Michael Jackson sense) bidness that was the deal breaker for me. Had to go check it out. Looped riddims and live vocals:

Yup. Hurt my pelvis a couple of times. Good stuff.

And then there were some rather fierce Punjabis. Or Pakistanis? I must confess my ignorance here and if anyone can correct me, I’d be much obliged. In any event, they beat up on the stage pretty good:

My elbow still hurts from resting it on that red strip. Thanks, guys!

I was going to leave after that; the following act were some young ladies showing off their choreographed Beyonce moves and, I must say, I didn’t approve. Terrible. No photo for you!

But then, about thirty minutes in (you can fast-forward in the audio player), comes the saving grace. A local Toronto busker named Smokie. Smoky? Yup; he’s that local:

I’m gonna go with Smoky. Again, corrections welcome.

Anyway, he really ripped up the stage; while I was busting a sweat pressing the trigger. Even more impressive, Smoky’s daughters and sons barely broke a sweat either:

Truth be told, aside from the drummer and Smoky, the act was a lot more demure. Well, except for the way those girls slapped those guitars; they should be ashamed of themselves!

So at this point, if you hadn’t pressed play on the audio player, you’ll be missing out on the performance that Smoky and his family put on. It’s a bit quiet, but you’ll get the gist of it. It was … awesome.

Okay, I know he probably sang the same tunes every week busking at Yonge and Dundas. But c’mon, with that much practice, he’s got it down!

Hands-down winner. I’ll see if I can crack a web address out of him next time.

Right. And that’s it. Too hot to do anything else. Back to the flat, plunk down on the sofa, and grow roots.

Now if you’ll excuse me …