It’s not nearly as thorough as I’d wanted but I did manage to slap that open source license on all of the files and cut out a bunch of extraneous stuff in uploading SocialCastr (the personal broadcasting studio software). You can find the source code here: https://github.com/Patrick-Bay/SocialCastr

This is certainly not for the novice, at least not at this time. There’s some advanced code in there and you need to know your way around Adobe Flash to actually compile it. I’ll be going into much greater detail on the project page but, basically, you’ll need to create (or import), a custom application certificate to sign your code, update the SwagCloud class with your own server address (and optional developer key), and work around any minor issues like missing fonts in the IDE (included).

Eventually there will be very clear details that can be followed verbatim (even by the novice), and by that point I hope to have the project ported over to FlashDevelop (the open source version of Adobe Flash), but until then I’m simply going to include these caveats.

However, if you really don’t care to get your hands dirty and just want to start broadcasting, visit http://www.socialcastr.com/ to download the finished product.

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 ;)

Attention: Councillor Kyle Rae,

Sir,

With all due respect, you’re a jerk. I’ve enclosed a reduced photo of you to demonstrate this fact. To you.

I wake up to Bill Carroll on CFRB every morning. I could wake up to The Edge or CHIN but I don’t. Do you know why? Because I don’t necessarily enjoy the music. Or understand the words.  But not because I think that the audience are skanks! Or whatever it is that you were implying:

“And the cruel vengeance of fate is he has to talk to the listeners of CFRB.”

I understand that you and Mr. Tory, to whom you were referring, may have had some political encounters in the past. However, your trysts had nothing to do with me or CFRB’s audience. Spiteful public jealousy does not behoove a politician, sir. And if you have a problem with John talking to us, take it up with him!

Disregards,
Patrick

Dear Bill Carroll,

Sir,

With all due respect, oh no! I can’t believe they’re moving you to 9 a.m. I mean, great that you get to wake up later and have a longer time slot, but I’m not sure about this John Moore fellow that’s replacing you. (I’ve enclosed a photo of him looking rather menacing — he says he doesn’t like cats!)

I hope he can muster the same incensed outbursts at, well, anything like you can. I doubt he’ll be able to evoke the same enraged, torch-bearing, city-razing rabble that your rants do during my struggle with consciousness.

Will he be able to adopt the same seething indignation at even the most inane topics like you, Mr. Carroll?  And I hope you take this as the compliment it is, but your hair-trigger City Hall temper is awe-inspiring. Sir, you are a champion. I would name my cat after you but Oliver Carroll sounds too Dickensian.

Perhaps one day, when this nutty day job of mine is behind me, I can set set my alarm to nine o’clock and wake up refreshed and angry like I used to. Until then, I’ll wearily hold your memory in a petulant little piece of my heart.

Blubberingly,
Patrick

Dear Tess Kalinowski,

Madam,

With all due respect, what the hell?! I was ready with that Toronto subway post a couple of days ago; where were you?! I thought we were supposed to put them both up at the same time. You know, cross-promotion; I link to your story and you link to mine. That was the plan.

But no, I guess your story on the new Sheppard West subway station design was more important.

It could have been so poignant, your spanky new airport terminal of a station against my musty old Bloor-Danforth ones. Mix in a couple of the Transit Commission’s screw-ups like the new transit maps with all the errors, and the under-priced monthly pass that’s losing them money, and we could’ve caused a tidal wave in the media! Think of the brouhaha that this would’ve started. We could’ve singlehandedly taken down the entire Commission!

Now we’ve lost our window of opportunity. It’s best if you disavow any knowledge of me. Pity you chose the route you took; you’ll always be just a transportation reporter.

Regretfully,
Patrick