You can expect product and app reviews, gossip from the tech world and analysis of news from this group of experts. The show will release three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I think you’re going to like the hosts of the show and really trust what they have to say each week. Jon has diligently built up a reputation as a thought leader in the space and we’re thrilled to have his team joining us.

Please help me in welcoming Technobuffalo to the Revision3 family by checking out the show and subscribing for future episodes!

Ryan Vance | Vice President, Programming & Production | Revision3

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.

If you happen to be at CES (revision3.com/CES2011) this week or you’re in Vegas for some other reason (AVN Expo? don’t worry, your secret’s safe with us), or you live in Vegas (really?), then come on out tonight and say hello to the Revision3 crew and show hosts from Tekzilla, GeekBeat.TV and Hak5!

We’ll be hanging out for a bit and would love to meet you. We’ll even have some Revision3 hats and stickers to give out.

Where:

Encore Hotel – http://www.encorelasvegas.com/

Eastside Lounge
3121 South Las Vegas Boulevard

When:

Tonight, Thursday, January 6th from 9pm to Midnight

Hope to see you there!

Saturday, August 14th at 7:00 PM
Hotsy Totsy Club
601 San Pablo Ave.
Albany, CA 94706

RSVP now via Facebook – can’t wait to celebrate the grand years of old school hacking with you!

And that’s a big part of the reason why I’m so concerned about how the courts have removed the FCCs ability to police net neutrality across broadband ISPs. Left to their own devices, it’s only natural to expect large cable operators, including Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T and Verizon to start favoring their own cable networks and services, and slowing down competing services.

Heck, it happened back in 2007, when Comcast was ratcheting Bit Torrent traffic down , which negatively impacted us – as we used to distribute all our shows via BT.

But now, three years later, we’re an even bigger thorn in the side of traditional TV. Our shows are getting audiences that rival some of the best on cable TV, more and more people are abandoning traditional cable services for web-delivery of Netflix, independent TV, Hulu and other video sources, and new devices from Roku, Boxee, Syabas and others offer even more freedom of choice.

But today that choice is threatened. I just wrote an opinion piece for GigaOm detailing Why We Cannot Let Neutrality Fail. I encourage you to read it. But get involved too. Write your representatives and tell them you don’t trust the big ISPs to protect your interests.

Tell them you watch Web TV… and you Vote!

– Jim Louderback

Of course Revision3 is your place for coverage of the latest and greatest tech, and just like last year, we’ve headed to Las Vegas to bring you all the great product reviews and previews and updates from the show floor. Tekzilla, HD Nation and Hak5 will be there in full force as the CES main event gets underway. We don’t want you to miss a single moment of the action so we’re going to be releasing videos throughout the rest of the week from Wednesday, January 6 to Saturday, January 9. Tune into revision3.com/ces to watch all the videos! And don’t forget to check out Tekzilla, HD Nation and Hak5 next week as they come back with full episodes of their CES coverage.

Our CES coverage is being brought to you by Roku, the easiest way to watch Revision3 shows, Netflix movies, and more on your TV. Go to revision3.com/roku to try one risk free for 30 days.

And a big thank you to our friends at NBC Universal, whom we’ve teamed up again this year at CES to shoot from their booth. Be sure to check out all their CES happenings a nbcuatces.com

We hope everyone at CES has a great time, and for those of you who can’t be in Vegas, we hope you enjoy our coverage of the massive amounts of tech products out there. Be sure to tell your friends, tweet about it and spread the word that the best CES coverage is here at Revision3!

Hak5 will be LIVE at Virginia Tech this Saturday, November 7th. Join us at 7:00 PM for the best of networking, hacking and homebrew and Q&A. They’ll be in Torgersen 2150 at 201 Burruss Hall on the Virginia Tech campus in Blackburg, VA. Then later at 9:00 we’ll be for the first time experiencing Bar Golf, a VT tradition that the entire Hak5 gang would love to see you at. So lock down your firewalls and get ready for some Technolust as Hak5 begins the campus invasion. See you there!

Basically, it’s a way to enjoy the best of Internet Television on your computer or television. Boxee is the first “social” media center, whose free, downloadable software is changing the way we experience home entertainment. On a computer or connected to an HDTV, boxee allows you a simple way to bring all their entertainment into one place including personal movies, TV shows, music and photos, as well as streaming content from websites like Netflix, MLB.TV, Comedy Central, Pandora, Last.fm, and flickr. You can also share information about what you’re watching so friends can enjoy it too through legal sources online. It’s pretty darn cool and I’ve been using it for the majority of my Internet TV watching.

So, when the gang over at Boxee called us up and offered to create a Revision3 app for Boxee, we jumped at the opportunity! Any chance to make it easy for you, our audience, to watch Revision3 on your big screen TV (or any size, really) is definitely something we want to provide. Avner Ronan, Boxee’s CEO said, “”From Tekzilla to the Digg Reel to Co-Op, HD Nation, and Hak5 – Rev3 makes great shows that are available around the globe, on demand. They’re a great fit for Boxee, and we’re excited about the new interface we’ve created with them to encourage more people to watch Rev3 on their big screen.” Avner’s a great guy and so nice of him to say such kind words about Revision3!

If you’re looking for a new and cool way to watch Revision3, we strongly suggest you check out Boxee and install the Revision3 app. I can’t stop playing with it, it’s so cool. Just hook up your media center PC or your laptop to your TV, load up Revision3 on Boxee and then you’re on your way to hours of Revision3 fueled entertainment!

So head over to Boxee’s website, download the client and check it out for yourself.

Here’s what the Revision3 App on Boxee looks like:

Imagine browsing Revision3 with your remote control on your couch! Not bad, eh?

Huge thanks to our friends over at Boxee for putting the app together and helping us make it easier and better for you to watch Revision3 on Boxee!

Let us know what you think of the Revision3 app on Boxee!

So just what exactly has changed? Practically everything! Here’s a brief summary of the changes to the site with Revision3.com version 4.0 that you can expect:

Updated Design – It’s a brand new site with a brand new interface. Every section and page of the site has been redesigned and improved from the previous version. In addition, we’ve made navigation easier on the site so you can get around and find what you want. We’ve even given some love to the forums, so it’s fresh, new and ready to be used.

BIGGER & Better Video – We’ve increased the size of our video player, so now when you’re watching your favorite show, it truly is an entertaining experience. We’ve also added some cool features like the ability to pop out the player to another window or to put it in theater mode and make the video really pop.

User Preferences – We want to make the Revision3 website the site YOU want it to be, each and every one of you. To do that, we’ve begun expanding the User Preferences section to allow for customization of what you see and how you use revision3.com. Admittedly there isn’t much there right now but from what is there, you should get the general idea of what will be coming. Expect to see this area expanded on the most over the upcoming weeks, so make sure you register and log in to the site when you visit.

Enhanced Shows and Host Pages – We’ve redesigned all the show pages so that it’s easier to browse and find your favorite episodes. We’ve also worked to make sure our search functionality gives you the results your looking for. It’s also easier to find information about your favorite show host, such as the link to the their blog, Facebook Profile or whatever other social network they may be on.

Twitter! – Twitter’s everywhere these days, so why not Revision3? You may notice that we’ve worked with our friends at SquareSpace to create a Revision3 Twitter directory so it’s easy to find everyone from Revision3 on Twitter. We’ve also integrated the Twitter feeds of our hosts on their pages so you can see what they’re up to, minute by minute.

Under The Hood – For those of you interested in how things work, a lot of the changes and improvements come from behind the scenes. Previously, as many of you know, we were using WordPress for our content management needs. As we’ve grown, we’ve outgrown WordPress as a solution. Don’t get us wrong, we still love WordPress and still use it for our blog, but for running the site, we learned a lot from using it and have evolved beyond its capabilities. Now we’re running an internally produced content management system that was built on a PHP based MVC framework. And what’s even better is that we’re primed to grow from here, making it easy to add new features and functionality later on (hint hint).

As I said, we’re immensely excited for the site. Personally I love the new look and I love how bright the future looks for Revision3.com. We’re going to be building from here and creating some cool features for all Revision3 fans to come and enjoy. We hope you like the new site as much as we do, and please let us know what you think either by e-mailing us or on the forums.

I’d like to take a moment and put the spotlight on the awesome team here at Revision3 that labored for months to bring you the new Revision3.com – Stephanie Chu, Ryan LaBarre, Jeff Rizzo, Chuck Siu, Brendan White and a few others who are unfortunately no longer with us here at Revision3. All your hard work and dedication has absolutely paid off and I hope all the loyal Revision3 fans join me in applauding you.

thanks.
- Ron Richards

Today’s update to the flash player introduces two new buttons on the user interface, “Share” and “Embed”. We’ve made it much easier for you to now take your favorite Revision3 shows and share them with your friends, either by email, posting on your site, or submitting to the social network of your choice. Now all you have to do is click “Share” and you’ll see the flash player transform into a panel with options to provide you the URL to share, or one click post to Twitter, Digg, Facebook and many others.

But we didn’t stop there. Oh no, there’s more. We’re also rolling out the ability for you, the viewer, to choose the clip of your choice to share with your friends. Once you click “Share” or “Embed”, you’ll notice a timeline above the video, and markers that show the time in the video. All you need to do is click on the starting marker and drag to the point of the video you’d like your clip to start at, and then do the same for the end marker. The URL, embed codes and links to other sites automatically update, making sharing your favorite moment easier than ever! So now, when you want to show your buddy that moment when Jimmy Fallon busted on Alex in Diggnation, or show your Dad a cool product review on Tekzilla, you can just pick your clip, and share away! We’re super excited for this bit of functionality and we hope it’s something you, the audience, can find easy to use and enjoy.

Here is the latest episode of Tekzilla if you would like to play with the new functionality:

Like I said, this is the next step in our rollout of enhanced functionality for our flash player, which hopefully will make your viewing experience on Revision3 as awesome as you want it to be. Stay tuned for more updates and changes in the coming months. We’ve got some super cool stuff still in development that we can’t wait to share with you! And as always, let us know what you think. Leave a comment below or talk about it in our forums.

thanks.