In the coming month we will be revamping the User Interface for Wiredrive to vastly improve the overall speed and performance of the application. With this update, Wiredrive will be dropping support for all 5.x versions of Internet Explorer on both Windows and Macintosh. These browsers account for less then 3% of the overall usage of the application, and are the great hindrance to our development process.

We estimate the new UI will be launched in early November, 2005; more details on these changes will be sent out in the following weeks.

For the rest of the month, the very few users that are still using IE 5.x will see an alert message on the login page informing them of the upcoming change in browser requirements. After the update, users will not be able to log in using a IE 5.x browser. The alert message will also provide links to download the latest versions of IE, Firefox, and Safari.

For a list of supported browsers please check here.

Information about Microsoft IE

Microsoft discontinued support for IE on the Macintosh in 2003
Microsoft discontinued support for IE on Windows in 2003

Recently, we had a new client request we overlay watermarks on all their thumbnails. This was an easy task since we have been watermaking all the images in Next Trim since the site launced in 2004.

We love it when new and existing clients request features that make Wiredrive better for everyone. Needless to say, this new feature is now available to all new and current WiredrivePro and WiredriveHubclients.

Looks like the Supercomputer propellerheads in San Diego had fun last month reviewing compressed 4k footage delivered from Japan IN REAL TIME over an ultrahigh speed fiber network (250-400 Mbps). 4k footage, btw, is 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution. So far, only 1 movie, Spiderman 2 has been worked on in 4k resolution (by our friends at EFILM), so this stuff is very new. Apparently, Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC, a consortium of the seven major Hollywood studios is pushing the 4k standard, although it’s a ways off.

My favorite quote - “This experiment emulated a multi-site production digital dailies session scenario, where the cinematographer is on one continent, the colorist on another and the director on his laptop in a screening room in his East Hampton summer house, or in a DI suite in Hollywood.” Yeah - my “state-of-the-art” PowerBook can barely play back 720p without choking and I’m eagerly awaiting a 400 Mbps connection So, think that director is going to sip back a few more Long Island Ice-T’s before THAT scenario pans out…

Johnathan Schartz, a bigwig over at Sun, has written an interesting blog about how software and file distribution is changing big - and will change yet again this week with their new announcement of a web-based version of Office.

So, lots of people are seeing the connection between websites, desktop applications, and interconnected data. Currently, this interconnectedness is best shown with iTunes - largely because the application is already installed on Macs (PC’s have to work harder), it runs locally and uses the Net, and it just feels right. Sun and others are trying to connect up word processing and document sharing, so we all will be bombarded with this new way of working. Just because it is happening doesn’t mean it will be smooth - there is plenty of hand holding along the way, including developing interfaces that non-techies love to use.

So as Volume increases (photos, video, documents meeting with networks, hybrid desktop and web applications), their intrinsic value will increase - BUT only if done right. Lots of projects in the open source world stall out and don’t get adopted - purely because not enough thought or effort went into them in the first place.

As we prepare for this congregation of EVERYTHING, common sense and balance needs to prevail (doesn’t it always). Finding good examples of this still is not too common.