Justin.tv Blog

Wirecast Giveaway broadcast!

2009-11-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

If you didn't know already, Justin.tv is fully integrated with Wirecast. Wirecast is an incredibly powerful broadcasting software that allows you to do live production with overlays, multiple camera sources, Chroma Key and many other awesome features!

Our friends over at Telestream and McInTEC have generously offered to sponsor a Wirecast Giveaway broadcast here on Justin.tv!

So how do you win yourself a free copy of Wirecast? It's easy! Join us on Friday December 4th from 7PM to 9PM EST on http://www.justin.tv/mcintec. Details about how you can enter the giveaway will be announced during the stream, so don't forget to watch the show and look out for entry details and see some very special guests.

We want to give a huge thank you to Telestream and Mcintec for their support of the Justin.tv community! So don't forget to give them a follow on twitter: @Telestream, the makers of Wirecast and @McInTEC creator of the Mcintec community and one of our newest Tech broadcasters here on Justin.tv!

SF MusicTech Summit

2009-11-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

We're excited to announce that Justin.tv will be the proud media sponsor of this year's SF MusicTech Summit. We'll be broadcasting the panels from the main room and anyone who wants to attend can get a 15% discount by applying the promo code "justintv" at checkout.

Just what is SF MusicTech Summit? It's only the hottest conference in San Francisco that brings together some of the most talented visionaries of the music and technology scene, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them to discuss evolving music/business/technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment.

If you'd like to attend here are the details:
The SF MusicTech Summit
Hotel Kabuki, San Francisco
December 7th, 2009

Don't forget to apply the coupon code "justintv" at checkout for a 15% discount!

Also don't forget to check them out on twitter: @SFMusicTech or see who is talking about them #sfmusictech!

Justin.tv on the Startup Crawl

2009-11-11T16:14:00.000-08:00

On Friday November 20th, 2009 launches the first annual Startcup Crawl! Justin.tv will be participating with heroku, Scribd, heyZap, Yammer, Zendesk and Engine Yard for a tour of some of San Francisco's hottest startups.

The Startup Crawl an open-studio-like tour of SF startups, open to any interested folks (locals or those in for RubyConf). They'll have a shuttle circling between the RubyConf hotel and a number of stops in the city. The first shuttle is at the hotel at 5:30p; the last one leaves the city at 11p.

So if you're in the San Francisco bay area and want to a chance to visit the locations of the awesome startups mentioned above, head on over to startupcrawl.com and sign up! You can also check out @Startupcrawl on twitter to get more updates!

Y Combinator wants Justin.tv API ideas. We have some.

2009-10-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

As some of you may have heard, our friends (and investors) over at Y Combinator announced yesterday that they would like to get applications from startups building on the Justin.tv API. Well, we agree, and we want to help. Any Y Combinator startup working with our API will get direct access to our founders and engineering team to make sure you have all the support and features that you need. Pretty good, right? Well, maybe that's not enough, so we put together a list of ideas to kickstart your brainstorming.

These are part of a list we made a couple months ago while thinking about what we'd ultimately like to see people do with our API. Thanks to Paul, Jessica and the rest of the YC crew for helping us out. Now, on with the list...

Hardware broadcaster for video game console inputs - We get a ton of gaming broadcasts on Justin.tv, but it's hard to do. Maybe you can make it easier.

Customer service application - Ever wanted to yell--err, calmly request assistance - face to face from that CS rep on the phone? We have.

Professional services - Taxes, legal advice, etc. Sometimes you want to see a real person, but you don't want to leave your house.

Video dating - Match.com and Eharmony leave out a lot of information. Some people have noticed but they're not using live video yet, seems like that would solve the problem.

Remote education - We've occasionally stayed up late watching obscure lectures online. Wouldn't it be more fun if you could interact in real time?

Preview a business - Anyone who's waited patiently for a Shack Burger or wondered if a particular item is in stock can appreciate the value of seeing a business from your couch.

Real interactive gaming - Trash talking is fun. Trash talking to someone's face is more fun. I'd like to watch you cry while I beat you in Heyzap games.

Presentations - Anyone ever use WebEx? Ever use it a second time? Yea, neither have we. Make it better with live video.

Real "video" games - Make a game that responds to actual movement on camera that you can play across the web

Hopefully that gets you started. We'd love to hear any other ideas if you have them. Let us know what we can do to help.

Haunted Channel Design contest!

2009-10-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

Think you've got awesome design skills? Want to get a chance to win up to $300 to buy cool stuff? Love Halloween? Then you've come to the right place! Starting today until Friday October 30th, Justin.tv is hosting a channel design contest! Top three winners earn a gift certificate from our friends over at ThinkGeek.

1st Place: $300

2nd Place: $150

3rd Place: $50

Rules:

The channel design has to be done on the new layout channel pages. You can go to your settings and on the Design tab to change it. After you've designed your page head on over to our Contest submission page and click "Enter now". Give us the URL to your designed Justin.tv channel in the title and description field and you can even include a screencapture of your channel page for folks to see, give us your Justin.tv user name in the display name field and a valid email address where we can contact you if you win, then viola!

For a great example of a channel that's been spruced up for Halloween take a look at ThinkGeek's channel here on Justin.tv!

Remember, to keep your submissions clean and appropriate! Any submissions that don't follow our general community guidelines around Justin.tv will be disqualified.

Winners:

So how do you win? The winners will be selected by you the community! Every submission can be voted on and the designs with the most votes wins! So don't forget to tell your friends about your design and get them to vote!

Super awesome thanks to our friends over at ThinkGeek for sponsoring this contest, if you're not familiar with ThinkGeek you should certainly head over to ThinkGeek.com to take a look of the cool geek toys and items they sell and certainly give them a follow on twitter @ThinkGeek.

Live Chat with Diane Birch

2009-09-24T13:10:00.001-07:00

Join us here for a live chat with singer/songwriter Diane Birch on September 30 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. She'll answer questions and chat with fans, as well as play songs from her new album "Bible Belt".

If you'd like to ask Diane a question, please submit your questions by filling out the form below. For more information on Diane, please visit her Justin.tv channel or her site.

Kristinia DeBarge Live Chat

2009-10-13T10:27:00.001-07:00

Come chat live with Kristinia DeBarge tomorrow as she talks about going on tour with Britney Spears, her new single "Exposed" and much, much more.

If you have a question for Kristinia, submit them below and she'll answer them live.

Don't forget to tune in Wednesday, October 14 at 5:30PT on Justin.tv

Extra Life 2009 - Gaming for Charity

2009-10-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

This weekend, all around the US, gamers will be participating in Extra Life. Extra Life is a 24-hour gaming marathon to fund pediatric cancer research and treatment. Many of our gamers here on Justin.tv will be participating, like Swiftor, Chingy1337, Brokendesign and even Justin.tv's own Tia Marie. They will all be pitching in this weekend to broadcast for the charity!

You can even participate yourself! Just head over to the Texas Children's Hospital's website and create a login. Then you can join an existing team, like GameOn, or create your own. All proceeds go directly to the Texas Children's Hospital.

Don't forget to check out Gaming.justin.tv this weekend to catch the action or sign up yourself to broadcast! Don't forget, if you can't participate you can always donate.

Justin.tv Networks

2009-10-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

As many of you are already aware, Justin.tv has been going through a lot of changes and we've been thrilled at the feedback, support and awesome community that we have here. We're constantly looking on ways to improve Justin.tv and make it better for everyone.

We've seen a lot of features come to Justin.tv, many of which have been strongly embraced by the community and have made themselves an integral portion of the site today.

After a lot of consideration, we've decided that we will be removing the Networks feature on Justin.tv so that we can better focus on more features in the future and better support the present features that have been so strongly embraced by our community.

For those of you who use Networks, it's not going to just go away overnight. There will be about a two month transition phase so that those who are network creators can create an alternative and direct your friends and fans there. One suggestion is to use BlastGroups.

Once you have something set up as an alternative you can have it linked to your Networks page:

We know that it's difficult to accept a change like this, but we hope by making this change that we can focus our attention and time on better features that will make your experience on Justin.tv that much more exciting.

Live Q&A with Kaci Battaglia!

2009-10-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

Kaci Battaglia's single “Crazy Possessive” is sweeping the nation as it can be heard on radio stations across the country and Kaci will be here live on Justin.tv to answer your questions!

Join Kaci and the rest of her fans here on Justin.tv on her channel: www.justin.tv/kacibattaglia, Saturday October 10th at 12pm PT/3pm ET.

Got a burning question to ask Kaci? You can either send it to on her Twitter: @kacibattaglia with the hashtag: #askkaci or by submitting it in the form below. Then tune in to see what she has to say in response!

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="https://justintv.wufoo.com/forms/m7p8p5/" title="Ask Kaci!" rel="nofollow"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Fill out my Wufoo form!&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Boxee gets a little more Justin.tv, and we like it

2009-10-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

First, if you haven't used Boxee you should check it out. Here's a short video demo of exactly what Boxee does and why it's cool:

quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

Boxee is a great application. In short, it's a media browser built for your TV--if that doesn't make sense, go back and watch the video :)

Today Boxee is rolling out a new version of their Justin.tv application and I want to tell you about it. First, I want to point out that the first version of the Justin.tv application on Boxee was built 100% without our involvement and is a perfect example of what you can do with our API. We saw it and liked it so much, though, that we wanted to help it grow. First, we added a couple of new API features to allow things like the producers directory to be included. Ike Gilbert, the developer who built the app, also added some great new features like the ability to log into your Justin.tv account and access your favorite channels.

The quality of broadcasts on Justin.tv is rapidly increasing--the average bitrate of Justin.tv broadcasts has increased 25% in the last 3 months! That means this is the best time ever to enjoy Justin.tv on a big screen TV, exactly what Boxee is built for.

Let us know what you think about the app and check out Boxee if you haven't yet. Ike is great to work with and has been very open to feedback, so if you have feature suggestions I'm sure he'll be interested in hearing them.

They're Alive! Animated Previews

2009-10-05T13:32:00.000-07:00

We just launched a super cool improvement to the directory…animated previews!

Now, when you hover over a channel in the directory we will present an animated preview of that broadcast. We are pumped about this upgrade because it makes finding interesting broadcasts easier. You can actually see the broadcast before clicking into it.

See them in action, click here!

Let us know what you think!

Say hello to JTV Gaming

2009-09-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

Today we're launching our first Justin.tv sub-site and it's focused on the gaming community. First, take a look at it.

One of the most common requests we get from users is for more community-oriented features. We've added a lot of them but always struggled with really making customized experiences for the different communities on the site. A couple weeks ago we decided to start a new project to make it much easier for us to give each community the experience that makes the most sense. The result was sub-sites and the first one is gaming.justin.tv.

I'm sure everyone has noticed the great new look (thanks to Kim!), but there's more here than just a fresh coat of paint. Justin.tv sub-sites will have their own promoted content and could include custom features as well. If you look at gaming.justin.tv you'll see that all of the front page events are focused on gaming. Also, the front page player will always be playing gaming content. We'd love to hear your ideas for custom features you'd like to see. Now that there's a dedicated gaming area, we're free to build new features just for gamers that may not have been possible before.

We're excited to launch gaming.justin.tv and we're working on more sub-sites as well. A couple ideas we're already thinking about are music and social. We'll post more about those as they get closer.

HAL Awards Live this Sunday

2009-09-24T13:33:00.000-07:00

Join The Heroes and Legends Foundation for the Let There Be Music 20th Annual Heroes and Legends Awards.

Join host JoMarie Payton for a special evening of entertainment, music, and lots of love as presenters, including Florence LaRue and Claudette Robinson, honor the legendary, and always colorful George Clinton, principal architect of P-Funk.

Other honorees and guests include recording artist Eddie Levert, entrepreneur, music and film producer Clarence Avant, TV and film star Mykelti Williamson, legendary songwriter Dennis Coffey, singer Smokey Robinson, legendary producer Quincy Jones and Motown founder Berry Gordy, Jr., and many, many more.

The festivities kick off here at 4:30pm PT with live coverage from the red carpet, followed by the ceremony at 7pm PT.

Wirecast integrates with Justin.tv!

2009-05-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

Using Wirecast on Justin.tv just got easier!

Telestream announced with the release of Wirecast 3.5 the full integration of Justin.tv with Wirecast! It's now even easier to use Wirecast than before. Here are some quick easy steps:

Download Wirecast 3.5
Load Wirecast (If this is your first time loading it, simply click on the Broadcast Button on the upper right hand corner, or you can go into the Broadcast settings.)
Click "Encoder Preset" and select Flash Low/Medium/High/HD Bandwidth (dependent on your internet speed)
Destination: Click the Justin.tv destination and enter your Justin.tv Username and click "Generate RTMP"
At the Prompt, enter your Justin.tv password and click "Okay"

It's just that easy! Wirecast contains a complete tutorial to help get you started and to purchase a license, open Wirecast, select Preferences > Register > Purchase Now and follow the online instructions. You can also purchase Wirecast from their Secure Online Store.

Twitter Chat Upgrades

2009-09-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

We have some nice Twitter goodies to tell you about today.

First, we have made the process of signing into Twitter even more secure utilizing Twitter's latest and greatest authentication system.

Second, we have added a super cool feature for broadcasters. You can now set a hashtag (#whateveryouwant) for your channel. Anytime a chatter is using Twitter chat and has opted-in to update their status, your hashtag will be added to the tweet. This will make it easier to follow and connect with fellow Justin.tv users on Twitter as well as make it possible for your broadcast to trend on Twitter.

We are going to continue improving the chatting experience with services like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

Stephen Wolfram Live Q&A today!

2009-09-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

We were exceptionally pleased to have Wolfram|Alpha launch here live on Justin.tv it was a monumental moment! It's been incredible to watch all of the broadcasts from the Wolfram|Alpha channel here on Justin.tv.

We're pleased to have Stephen Wolfram joining us live today for a Q&A broadcast at 12pm PDT. So head over to: http://www.justin.tv/wolframalpha - To chat live!

Archives get a Massive Upgrade

2009-09-16T15:59:00.000-07:00

We have been working on some big improvements to the way archives work, making them more useful for both broadcasters and viewers. Archives have been limited to 5 minute segments, as a result broadcast archives were often chopped up into many segments. This was annoying for both viewers and broadcasters and so we decided to make it better. We also heard from broadcasters that you wanted your past broadcasts to be available for longer than 7 days, and we heard from viewers who wanted to be able to watch more past broadcasts from their favorite broadcasters. We are happy to announce we are addressing all of these issues making the experience better for everyone.

So what's new? For starters, your past archives will seamlessly migrate to the new system, you won't have to change a thing. Once the new system launches, archives will no longer be limited to 5 minutes (yay!). We are upping the limit from 5 minutes to a whopping 2 hours. This will make it much easier to watch complete past broadcasts and make it easier for broadcasters to embed them elsewhere on the web. We are also now going to store up to 24 hours worth of past broadcasts for each broadcaster. To illustrate the change, if you broadcast a 1 hour show once a week in the old system we would only keep the last week's show. But in the the new system we will keep nearly 6 months worth of your past broadcasts. We are also updating the channel pages to show both past broadcasts and clips as well as making it easier to rename and manage your past broadcasts. This is a massive upgrade.

The long and short of it is, we are making past broadcasts easier to view and access (no more 5 minute segments) and giving broadcasters a deeper back catalog of their content so new viewers can enjoy older broadcasts. All of these upgrades combined make it more convenient to watch past broadcasts as well as share them elsewhere on the web.

We can't wait to roll out these changes, and will be doing so within a few weeks. As you can imagine, this is a big upgrade and we are checking and double checking the systems to make sure everything is right, but we wanted to let you know about the changes now because we are so excited and would love your feedback. To go along with all these upgrades, we are upgrading what we call these previously recorded broadcasts from Archives to Past Broadcasts.

If you have any questions about the changes please feel to let us know!

Negative favourites bug squished!

2009-09-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

Victory!

Thanks to our awesome developers, we've tracked down, squished and normalized everything effected by the negative fans bug on channel pages.

We know this has effected quite a few channels and we're sorry for the troubles! This shouldn't happen any longer and everyone who had a channel that was effected by this bug has their channel favourites restored to the number it should be.

Thanks for your patience, you're all awesome as ever!

Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language? Randall Munroe does it all

2009-09-14T14:05:00.001-07:00

Not many things ranks cooler on the geek cred scale than getting a chance to meet Randall Munroe, the suave and geeky genius behind the popular webcomic XKCD.

This week, Randall will be in San Francisco during an EFF fundraiser to celebrate the release of XKCD: Volume 0.

Reddit will be there to interview Randall live, here on Justin.tv during the charity event! You can get a chance to get your question answered by Randall Munroe! Just head over to Reddit.com and submit your question to be voted for! You can ask him anything, like... "Has Stallman ever attacked you with his samurai sword?" or perhaps, "Have you ever had a life or death encounter with a velociraptor?"

If you're in the San Francisco bay area, you should try to head over and attend the event yourself!

You can Order tickets here. Starts at 7 p.m. at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. Admission is $30, and attendees must be 21+. There will also be a special pre-reading VIP reception at 6pm!

So get your questions in gear, submit them on the Reddit thread and join us Monday September 21st at about 6pm PST: http://www.justin.tv/reddit

Check out the Reddit.com blog for more information about this event!

Two Hours Traffic, Live chat!

2009-09-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

In celebration of the newest release of their newest album "Territory" those lovable guys from Two Hours Traffic will be doing a live Broadcast here on Justin.tv

You can check them out here: http://www.justin.tv/twohourstraffic - Wednesday September 16th at 1PM PT.

So don't forget to Join the guys here on Justin.tv!

Join Chris Koon live on Justin.tv

2009-09-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

If you haven't had a chance to check out Chris on Justin.tv before, you have a great chance to get a special live broadcast from Chris after his hit release of the song "It Girl".

Chris will be broadcasting live on Justin.tv, Sunday September 13th at 7:30pm PS on his channel: http://www.justin.tv/chriskoon

You'll get a chance to check out his previous broadcasts on Justin.tv as well! So head over on Sunday and chat with Chris live!

"No Impact Man" Live Q&A

2009-09-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

One day Colin Beavan woke up and asked himself "Is it possible to have a good life without wasting so much?" and for one year Colin, his wife, daughter, and dog, while living in the middle of New York City, attempted to live without making any net impact on the environment. In other words, no trash, no carbon emissions, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, no toilets…

Since then "No Impact Man" has gone from just a blog to a full book, film and a full project from his one idea.

Sept 8th at 2pm PT (5pm ET) Colin will be live taking your questions and talking about what he's done here on Justin.tv. So don't forget to join us then to get a chance to ask Colin anything.

Alexa Vega Live Q&A

2009-09-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, September 8, 2009 we're excited to have Alexa Vega joining us live on Justin.tv for a Q&A session with her fans.

Alexa is the star of the upcoming movie Broken Hill, and she's excited to be talking about this project as well as taking your questions from chat!

Don't forget to tune in Tuesday September 8th at 5pm PST for your chance to get to chat live with Alexa.

Official Justin.tv API Hack Day!

2009-08-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

Can you find the median of two sorted lists of cocktail weenies in O(log(n))? If the answer is yes and you live in the Bay Area, then you should join us Saturday, September 5th from 12 - 9pm at the Y Combinator offices for our Official Justin.tv API Hack day!

We're hosting this hack day so that you can get a chance to work directly with our API Developers on your Justin.tv app and get a great feel for the API. Rest assured, there will be plenty of programmer fuel on board and four $300 Amazon gift cards will be awarded to the best use of the API.

So just head over to our Event page and register with us before September 3rd and we'll see you and your creative juices at the Y Combinator offices for some Hack Day Awesomeness.

About the API

The API itself comes in two main pieces, REST and Flash. In short, we've giving away access to several pieces of our technology and infrastructure. The REST API was built to provide information about already existing Justin.tv data and broadcasts. The Flash API includes the live player and the broadcaster, each of which are fully customizable in appearance and behavior. Finally, our chat, along with our social chat channels, is available as well.

The possibilities for live video applications are really only limited by your imagination. Want to create a custom-skinned player? You can do it. Integrate with your own service's existing profile and identity system? No problem. Think you can make a great live video search engine, if only you had access to the stream data? Now you have it. We're hoping to see all these applications, along with the ones mentioned above, and more.