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.

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

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

Nominated for an award in the Online Film & Video: Technology category, Diggnation is up against some great shows like CNET TV and Boing Boing TV and others. No matter who wins, it’s great to see such great shows get recognized.

But it doesn’t stop there! Last year, Diggnation won the People’s Choice Award for best show in the Online Film & Video: Technology category and we’d love to see the Diggnation fanbase represent again and help us bring home the Webby again! So this is where you can get involved.

Head over to the Webby’s People Choice voting site, register and cast your ballot for Diggnation! Diggnation is for you, the loyal audience and we can’t do it without you – we appreciate your support!

In addition to Diggnation, Revision3 was recognized as Official Honorees in Online Film & Video: Systm for the How-To and DIY category and the Totally Rad Show for the Variety category. It’s great to see our shows get noticed and recognized as more and more people jump on the Internet TV bandwagon and watch our great shows.

Thanks!

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.

We’ve got some cutting edge technology in place that allows us to index both our site’s content as well as the content within the show’s episodes! So if you’re looking for that review of Crysis on The Totally Rad Show? Just type in “Crysis” in the search box on the top of the page, and boom! You get every mention of “Crysis” on our shows. You can filter by shows to find your exact result, and when you pick the episode you want. We’ve also indexed all of our forum content, so if you’re looking for something specific from a flame war a few months ago, now you can find it!

This is the first step of a greater build out of our search functionality, and as 2009 progresses, we’re going to be rolling out even more great functionality around this search engine, which will enhance the ability to find exactly the information you’re looking for within seconds! So check out our new search functionality today and let us know what you think!

thanks.

Revision3 shows have been nominated in the following categories:

• Totally Rad Show – Best Produced, Best Podcast
• Diggnation – Best Podcast
• Wine Library TV – Food/Drink

Congratulations to the Totally Rad Show, Diggnation and Wine Library TV for their nominations and may the best podcast win! Get your vote in as soon as you can, as voting ends on November 6th, 2008.

In addition to the Podcast Awards, we were thrilled to see that Fast Company named SYSTM as one of the Top 10 Gadget Sites on the Internet. Highlighting the fact that SYSTM is one of the best sources of information and ideas about modding your tech and great do it yourself projects.

Thanks to Fast Company and to everyone who nominated us in the Podcast Awards. We’d be nowhere without our awesome audience and we’re glad to hear that you enjoy our shows. You keep watching ‘em, we’ll keep making ‘em.

thanks.

We’ve been searching for a new full time cohost for Systm for what seems like forever. In a perfect world, we’d have found somebody months ago. Instead, we found somebody perfect for the job… it just took us a while to find them. Meet David Calkins, robotics expert, RoboGames founder, occasional pyromanic and the new cohost of Systm.

Lest you think David is just another pretty face, we’ll skip past his experience teaching classes on how to build your own R2D2 droid at events like Comic-Con to his experience as a Lecturer of Computer & Electrical Engineering at SFSU.

To say that David loves robots and robotics (and all the various disciplines required to make them work, from programming controllers and milling metal to the terminal search for better battery tech you can actually afford to buy) is a gross understatement.

Forget about his combat and Cocktail Robots... to advance the art of robotics David founded RoboGames, the world’s largest open robot competition (It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records) The annual event has a stellar reputation for bringing contestants together from around the world to compete in dozens of events. The real focus, though, underlying the competition, is cross pollinating ideas across the all too specialized fields of robot development. (OK, the robot combat is of epic intensity, and well worth watching… think 504 robots in 58 events, the video is sick)

Then there’s his work in advancing robotics in education, working with local high schools, NASA, and, of course, as the president of the Robotics Society of America, which works especially well with Systm: David’s not only used to sorting out tech puzzles, but explaining them to other folks.

Did I mention R2D2 earlier? David molded the plastic to build his own Stormtrooper armor. Chances are he takes his nerdly obsessions a tad farther than you: there were Stormtroopers at his wedding. Think I’m kidding? It made BoingBoing I won’t get into where it was held.

So join me in welcoming David Calkins to Systm… this should be fun!