Monday, June 13, 2011

Today's Update

What's New:

  • Wall - A place where you can just leave random comments! (cliche, but they can be fun)
  • Leaderboard - Calculates the scores of the entire playlist

And of course bugs, stability and internal fixes, and some UI updates.

FYI or those you who are not interested in these new options, there will be an update coming up where we allow room owners to have more control over the room (only registered members can participate, rules like that), and also a section where you can turn these modules ON or OFF. The tabs also defaults to original synchtube (with Search first) so you can just ignore the new features as well if you are not interested in them.

cheers,
~mrchess

Monday, June 6, 2011

Synchtube TV is back!

Thanks to our architecture change we are excited to announce that Synchtube TV, which initially debuted almost 10 months ago, is now back!

What is TV?

TV is a mode that FULLY automates a room allowing it to function without a leader!

How does it work?

The leader clicks the "Enable TV" button. This will lock the playlist and cause the room to continually repeat the playlist until a moderator or room owner disables TV mode.

When in TV mode, the room will play the playlist repeatedly and the media will be continued to be synchronized.

Why is this useful?
  • TV mode is useful for leaders who need to leave when there are no moderators around to "take over". You can put the room in TV mode and leave with the peace of mind that the room will be safe until someone can take over.

  • TV mode is also useful for individual room owners who want to run rooms without being around. You can set up a station for your personal blog/website, set TV on, and just leave!

  • TV mode is just useful in general to relieve you of leader stress -- you don't have to worry about losing or having a leader.
Future of TV?

One direction we are headed in is allowing rooms to become individual TV stations, letting rooms have set times to play videos, just like a real TV station. More on this later...

We will also be starting to implement analytics features so you can track the popularity of your room.

TV is still highly experimental so all feedback or suggestions is great appreciated. Please leave any feedback in the comments section -- we read it all.

I know I'm in the blog all the time, but I would also like to give a shout to the co-founder of synchtube, lucidrains, who devised the new architecture and algorithms that improves synching and makes TV possible.

Thanks all.
~mrchess


Extra:
Here is an excerpt of the original TV debut 10 months ago. Pardon the corniness. :)

synchtube TV (beta)
Create your own TV station that streams YouTube videos in real-time. synchtube TV allows you to set up a playlist as if you were broadcasting it as a TV station to the world. People can join
your TV station, watch simultaniously, and chat!
Promote your blog/YouTube Channel/website
  • Imagine creating a lounge area with streaming YouTube media be it music or videos where users of similiar interest can come and hang out. Wait, stop imagining! You can do it now with synchtube TV! We hope synchtube TV can be used to supplement your website of choice to further develop your online communities
Create a radio station
  • Not into video? Why not create a radio station to broadcast your favorite music. Live personal playlists are so much nicer than anything Pandora can offer.
Not your average synchtube room
  • synchtube TV requires NO LEADER. Like real television, content will continue to play regardless if people are viewing or not. Your content will also loop indefinitely -- once it hits the end of your program, it will go back to the beginning of the program.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Today's Update

  • Fixed loading of old playlists
  • Fixed importing playlists
  • Fixed various bugs including a dangerous XSS bug (thanks Binaryheap)
  • Added thumbs up down (currently does not save... yet)
  • Added username next to video when you add a video (currently does not save... yet)
  • Removed individual update bars