Archive for 2009

Happy New Year

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 by Francois

As this year draws to a close I’d like to wish all of our customers, collaborators and friends all the best for 2010.

2009 has been quite a year for us, we’ve grown in numbers, worked with some great companies, become dad’s and in general done a lot of growing up.

It has been tough at times but with all of your custom and support we’ve pulled through.

Looking at what we’ve achieved and all that we have to look forward to, I can’t help but feel that 2010 is going to be a really exciting year for us all.

So here’s to each and everyone of you – have a brilliant Hogmanay and all the best for 2010.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/people/meddygarnet/

Our Bookmarks: Dec 21 – Dec 27

Monday, December 28th, 2009 by The BCM Team

The Week That Was In Links

Creative & Technical Development

Promotion & Distribution

Consumer Behaviour & Analytics

Business & Monetisation

Technology & Infrastructure

Tips & Tutorials

Festive Opening Hours

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 by The BCM Team

First off, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

Our office hours over the festive period are as follows:

  • Monday 21/12/09:  9AM – 5 PM
  • Tuesday 22/12/09:  9AM – 5 PM
  • Wednesday 23/12/09:  9AM – 5 PM
  • Thursday 24/12/09:  CLOSED
  • Friday 25/12/09:  CLOSED
  • Monday 28/12/09:  9AM – 5 PM
  • Tuesday 29/12/09:  9AM – 5 PM
  • Wednesday 30/12/09:  9AM – 5 PM
  • Thursday 31/12/09:  CLOSED
  • Friday 01/01/10:  CLOSED

Normal office hours will be resumed on Monday January 4th, 2010.

We will be checking emails over the festive period but all non-critical issues or enquiries will not be dealt with until January 4th 2010.

For all critical enquiries please call your designated point of contact on their mobile phone.

Have a wonderful Christmas & New Year!

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenmanning/1263330273/

Our Bookmarks: Dec 14 – Dec 20

Monday, December 21st, 2009 by The BCM Team

The Week That Was In Links

Creative & Technical Development

Promotion & Distribution

Consumer Behaviour & Analytics

Business & Monetisation

Technology & Infrastructure

Tips & Tutorials

AWS CloudFront Now Does True-Streaming

Friday, December 18th, 2009 by Francois

AWS_LOGO_RGB_300pxAmazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced that CloudFront now supports Flash streaming (RTMP) in addition to progressive downloads (HTTP). Live streaming is also expected to be rolled out at some point in 2010.

This is all being made possible by Amazon’s decision to deploy Flash Media Servers (FMS) at its 14 edge locations. The decision to go with FMS over Wowza Media Server is somewhat surprising given the fact we’ve been streaming off AWS for quite some time using Wowza Media Server for EC2 .

Even though we were really happy with the quality of service we eventually got out of this, setting it up was not a pleasant experience.

Given what I’ve just said why did we go down this route when there are plenty of content delivery networks (CDN’s) we could have used for this?

Bottom line, pricing and flexibility.

Put simply, using a CDN for true streaming (RTMP) more often that not is out of reach for low-volume publishers due to cost, long-term contracts and minimum commitments.

Hence, our decision to stream off of AWS using Wowza.

Now that CloudFront has deployed FMS we will certainly be reassessing our current set-up.

Using Amazon CloudFront for true-streaming offers low-volume publishers like us the following benefits:

  • high performance
  • reliable delivery
  • global coverage
  • ability to leverage other streaming protocols such as RTMPT, RTMPE, RTMPTE
  • no up-front commitments
  • no additional platform or licensing fees
  • no long-term contracts

We will definitely be testing CloudFront for streaming and will report back on our findings in the New Year.

Our Bookmarks: Dec 7 – Dec 13

Monday, December 14th, 2009 by The BCM Team

The Week That Was In Links

Creative & Technical Development

Promotion & Distribution

Consumer Behaviour & Analytics

Business & Monetisation

Technology & Infrastructure

Tips & Tutorials

AWS Economics Center Releases New Cost Comparison Calculator

Sunday, December 13th, 2009 by Francois

Amazon Web Services Logo

Amazon Web Services Economics Center provides access to information, tools, and resources comparing the costs of Amazon Web Services (AWS) with alternative IT infrastructure.

The tools AWS have provided really help quantify the cost/benefit of cloud computing as you can model certain usage patters and determine the likely cost/benefit of each approach to meeting these infrastructure requirements.

The latest of these tools, Amazon’s EC2 Cost Comparison Calculator, is perhaps the most informative as it helps determine the annual costs of EC2 vs. co-locaton vs. on-site hardware.

It is easy to use and can be modified to reflect your specific requirements. You can download the spreadsheet here.

The AWS Simple Monthly Calculator which seems to have been around for ages includes all of the services and regions on offer but due to the fact it is geared towards a monthly estimate it is less useful for analysis purposes. That said, the customer samples are interesting, and cover the primary scenarios we would suggest using AWS for.

The point is even before you speak to a specialist I would suggest playing around with these tools.

They won’t make a decision for you but they will indicate whether or not you should be investigating AWS further.

Our Bookmarks: Nov 30 – Dec 6

Monday, December 7th, 2009 by The BCM Team

The Week That Was In Links

Creative & Technical Development

Promotion & Distribution

Business & Monetisation

Technology & Infrastructure

Tips & Tutorials

Our Bookmarks: Nov 23 – Nov 29

Monday, November 30th, 2009 by The BCM Team

The Week That Was In Links

Creative & Technical Development

Promotion & Distribution

Consumer Behaviour & Statistics

Business & Monetisation

Technology & Infrastructure

Tips & Tutorials

Will Amazon Flexible Payments Ever Reach Europe?

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 by Francois

AWS_LOGO_RGB_300pxFirst off what is Amazon Web Service’s Flexible Payments Service?

Flexible Payment Service (FPS) allows you to accept payments on your website. It supports the processing of payments using credit cards, bank accounts and Amazon Payments account balances to send or receive money.

We first started looking into FPS when we were looking at a payments solution for a side project we had been working on and were ready to release.

The project was already all up and running on AWS so it seemed natural to investigate the possibility of using FPS.

Unfortunately just as we were getting really excited about the benefits of FPS we noticed something we should have spotted away. FPS is only available to companies with a US credit card or those authorised to do business in the US.

So that was that one out of the window so we had to look elsewhere and guess where we ended up. Yup, PayPal it was.

Anyway that’s not our major gripe. The main point of frustration is with AWS itself.

In general the AWS team are amazingly responsive and if you look at what they update/add it is clear that they really listen to the requests that they receive.

However, one of these requests keeps on being glossed over.

When, or rather, is FPS ever going to be rolled out in Europe.

I’m not asking for a date, just confirmation of whether or not this is something they are actually working on. After all it has been over 2 years since FPS was first released in the US.

So please, please, please AWS give us an update on whether or not FPS in Europe is ever going to happen.

Now I know this isn’t going to happen but writing this post has been somewhat cathartic.