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December 31, 2006
About This Blog
Hi, I'm Brian Deitte. I work at Brightcove, where I develop in Flex, AS3, and Java for the Brightcove video platform. Previously I worked at Adobe (through Macromedia through Allaire) where I worked on the Flex team from Flex 1.0 to Flex 2.01.
You can subscribe to this blog through this RSS feed.
If you'd like to say hi or have an interesting idea to share, please send me an email at brian at deitte.com. You can also find me on Twitter.
Are you wondering how you pronounce Deitte? Say "be it", but with a "d" instead of a "b".
Happy New Year
A Happy New Year to all! Between a trip around the world to a new job to so much else, this has been a very interesting year for me. I hope everyone has a good year ahead.
Posted by Brian at 12:05 PMDecember 21, 2006
Simplicity in Software
I just came across an excellent discussion on simplicity in software (via a post on scary software). It's on the blog of Nick Bradbury, who wrote Homesite and FeedDemon:
It's of special interest to me right now as I develop an application that users actually have to... you know, use. I picked up a few ideas here, like this:
"Sometimes in beta versions I'll deliberately remove (or obscure) access to a specific feature just to find out if people really use it. If a lot of beta testers complain about the feature being removed, then it's an 80% feature that needs to be an obvious toolbutton. If only a few complain, then it's a feature that only 20% want so it can be demoted to a menu item."
December 18, 2006
Time Tells the YouTube Story Through Brightcove
I love the fact that the "YouTube: The Early Days" video (as part of the Time Person of the Year feature) uses the Brightcove player.
Top Ten Reasons to Work with Flex at Brightcove
We're still in need of Flex developers and QA for an exciting project at Brightcove. In the spirit of Ted Patrick, here's my top ten list for working at Brightcove:
1. First off, I'd like to stress that you don't have to know Flex. Knowing your UIComponents would be helpful, but we're more interested in your ability and willingness to work on a Flex project. In other words, we're interested in athletes more than experts.
2. It's a new project, which means that you get a lot of say on how things work in the development and testing environments. You'll be on the ground floor of a new project and the first floor of a growing company.
3. Work with Flex 2 every day, all day.
4. Work directly with three former members of the Flex team. This includes Sean Neville, who was writing about Flex more than three years ago and me.
5. Work close to a lot of excellent Flex, Flash and Java developers. This includes one of the authors of the AS 3.0 Cookbook, Keith Peters, Flasher extraordinaire Sam Robbins, and a swath of people who've helped build J2EE servers.
6. It's a project that Jeremy Allaire is excited about. He'll come by occasionally and ask about the project.
7. My HR one-liner: Brightcove has a good set of medical, dental, 401k and other benefits.
8. You won't have to see any more posts on this site about the subject. I can't help but try to get more people on board to the project I'm on. Like the threat in an NPR fund drive, you could make the world a better place and help me get back to more insightful posts by working here.
9. Brightcove is all about video, video, video. The online world is currently abuzz with video. Wouldn't you like to work with video?
10. Have you seen the view out of our office at One Cambridge Center in Kendall Square?
Apply by emailing your resume to resume to work AT brightcove DOT com or finding the job through the career site. And if you have any questions for me, I'd be more than happy to answer them at bdeitte AT brightcove DOT com.
December 17, 2006
An Ajax Look at Flex, New TV, and More
Three groups of links for your Sunday reading:
1. Andy Budd has a fascinating post on going to the Flash on the Beach conference as an Ajax developer: The Lion's Den (found via Aral Balkan) Having lived in Flex-land for too long, I always find it interesting to hear a perspective, positive or not, from someone in the majority group of Web development. To quote: "The thing that excites me the most about FLEX 2.0 is how similar it is to standards based development. You have an declarative XML-based mark-up language to build the UI. You can then add style in the form of CSS and behaviour using the ECMAScript based Actionscript language. Cool huh?"
2. I saw the newwteevee.com blog after a post on Brightcove's user upload feature. I'm now a daily reader, as the blog is the best place I've found to read about everything happening with online video.
3. The folks at Jive Software (founded by fellow University of Iowans) have had a number of good posts about software companies, the latest being about creating an open organization.
December 5, 2006
Ryan Stewart on Brightcove
Ryan Stewart has a glowing blog post about Brightcove on his ZDNet blog. Even if you know about Brightcove already, it's a great article to read to get a few more ideas about it. I also see that Ryan has updated his mugshoot... Ryan, you look much older and balder. :)
Amusing Support Videos
I actually enjoyed watching these support videos. That's scary. The current version includes an interviewing video character, pancakes, and Buddha:
Here's the rest of the support videos.
