Ah, spring is in the air. The time when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love…and all that. It’s also a time when everyone opens the windows, does a little spring cleaning, fixes the gutters and maybe throws on another coat of paint. Well, it’s the same thing here at Revision3… except for maybe the “young man’s fancy” part.
The Revision3 Storage Archive
Revision3 has shown incredible growth over the last year, thanks to all of you. With that growth , however, come some growing pains. Our servers were sweating, hard drives were bulging, intertubes were full, and platforms were…uh…platforming. So, over the winter we rolled up our sleeves in the engine room and got to work. Most of the upgrades have been completed – or are close to completion – so we can continue to expand our great programming to you, as well as our reach.
Here’s a sampling of what we’ve been up to. Hopefully, you’ve noticed and have been enjoying the new changes.
Our new episode discussion system: DISQUS
Our previous forum system was good, but not great, so in March we rolled out a new forum system based off the popular DISQUS service. If you are a DISQUS user on other sites, it will feel like old home week to you. (You can also merge your existing DISQUS login with your Revision3 login. Yay.) If you’ve never used DISQUS before, you’re in for a treat: realtime commenting, mobile integration (forthcoming on the Revision3.com site), media embedding in your comments, and much more. Check it out under each of the show and episode pages.
Our improved CDN service
You don’t have to know what a CDN service is to know when it isn’t performing well. CDN stands for “Content Delivery Network,” and it pretty much does what it says. It is the “tube” part of the intertubes, using advanced technology to download or stream large-scale content to all four corners of the earth. For a year now, we’ve been getting complaints about delivery to places like Australia, Western Europe, the UAE and even parts of North America. Back in February, we asked for your help evaluating new solutions to that problem, and you responded in droves. (Nearly 1000 of you gave us your feedback, thank you!) Last week we began rolling out a solution based on your feedback. We’ve seen results of the changes via measurement, but the proof is in the pudding. Folks who had been having problems with downloads and streams in the areas I’ve mentioned have begun to report to us that they’ve seen a noticeable, and welcome, improvement. We’ll keep at it, but its good to see we’re moving the needle.
The T-Rex of Hard Drives
Take a look at those glowing eyes at the top of this post. Go ahead. Take a close look. That’s not your daddy’s thumb drive you’re staring at, you are looking at part of a system that provides 240TB of serious RAID storage for Revision3 content. It’s large enough to cover our production and partner needs for quite some time to come, as well as provide instant access to our archive of content for our editors. It provides redundancy and backup, and – the best part – it’s a green system. Drives which are not currently in use are powered completely off until they are called up to serve up their delicious goodness.
Tablets are a’Comin’
We heard you and brought out real Revision3 mobile applications for iOS and Android late last year, and we heard you again about Revision3 applications designed for the iPad and Android Honeycomb tablets. I’m happy to tell you they are in the works as we speak, so… stay tuned.
The 10′ Experience
…or leanback… or Revision3 on your TV… or license for being a couch potato. Whatever you want to call it, we’ve got it. Roku, GoogleTV, Connected Televisions, iTV, Windows Media Center…whatever your flavor of poison, we’ve got you covered. Take a good, long look at Revision3.com’s leanback experience.
That’s just a few of the revisions to Revision3 that we’ve been up to over the winter. We’ve also been drinking beer, but not (necessarily) at thesame time. Watch this space for more announcements of new tech as we keep up with the demand you guys are putting on us. Thanks for that, we need a reason to get off the couch.
