For the past few weeks, I've been exploring how to encode and publish video on the Internet. Although I think it's cool to publish potential association (SAF) content or personal videos on YouTube, there are limits in time unless you partner with YouTube -- which is also an option but in either case, you're still using a third party system. The bottom line for me is that I truly believe video is it, on the Web, and then eventually if not already, on mobile devices.

First I explored Adobe's Flash Technology. They have a suite of products that allow you to do this:

Adobe Flash Media Encoder: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/flashmediaencoder/

Adobe Flash Media Server: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaencoding/

Awesome stuff. Easy to use and was able to encode and publish test files. I was ready to go with any further delay until I watched the iPad launch.

Like most geeks, I was glued to Steve Jobs' introduction of the iPad. Crazy reality distortion field happening during the announcement but what struck me was how Apple was intentionally displaying pages on the iPad WITHOUT Flash -- all you saw was the cube with the question mark. Yikes! And it was Jobs holding the iPad. Then of course, Jobs confirms all this by saying in the press that Flash is a deadend. Really? 80 percent of the Web video is Flash. Youtube, Hulu.com, etc., some big names out there. But Jobs must know something cause he's Jobs.

Anyways, I started looking for alternatives. Not much. Really only viable product is Silverlight.

Check this out: http://silverlight.net/

It pained me to buy the Expression Encoder 3 Web suite considering most of Adobe's stuff was free: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

Learning any new Microsoft product seems like you need a diploma nowadays but the initial encoding is complete. Just at a point on learning how to publish and stream. I'll keep you posted.

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After a quick two months of intense development, we launched - on time - the new www.aboutflowers.com. Currently, www.aboutflowers.com is one of SAF's two Web sites. The other being www.safnow.org which serves as the official Web site and online resource for SAF's 10,000 member floral retailers, flower growers, importers and suppliers. Aboutflowers.com is geared toward providing online consumers flower information, floral gift-giving ideas and decorating tips.

If you followed the Web site development on this blog -- type in keyword search "joomla web site dev," you already know we used the Joomla content management system (CMS). The Joomla CMS allows staff to easily post updates to the site and add functionality down the line such as a blog, discussion board, etc. But the true advantage of the Joomla CMS is the ability to easily optimize Web sites for search engines.

Joomla has a great back-end feature called Search Engine Friendly URLs. You'll see as you browse through Web site sections how the URLs are not numbers or characters as you may find on many sites, but a nice long string of keywords that describe the section you are visiting. Please check out the site and more importantly, let me know ASAP if you find something "not right." Although we had a thorough beta test period, there is always something that needs adjusting with any new launch. Thanks ahead for your feedback!

Also, we have a couple new Web presences under development that we aim to launch in the next two weeks -- both with much more Web 2.0 built on the Joomla platform. Stay tuned.

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We're very fortunate at the Society of American Florists (SAF) to have an extreme systems administrator extraordinaire in Joe Aldeguer. After a few months of development and prodding, he's launched his own blog at www.joealdeguer.com. He's already published a few articles which cover a wide breadth of open source implementations, mostly about hosting Web sites on the Linux platform using the Joomla content management system (CMS).

Over the past several years at SAF, we've developed many open source solutions for our medium sized organization that literally has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. And in these very tough economic times, open source can be a compelling solution to many IT challenges that is an equal and sometimes better alternative to costly, proprietary software. Joe and I plan to share this knowledge and experience with open source software with the association community through our blogs and perhaps in good ole print publications.

We'll approach it as a one-two punch. I'll talk about the benefits of the open source software and how it applies to your business continuity, then Joe will deliver a thorough how to on how it's all done in the backend. Until we get our act together however, I'll blog and link to specific posts on his Web site. Now let's see if I can convince Joe to get on Twitter . . .

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For the past several weeks, I've been a web slave developing the new version of SAF's consumer website. As you may guess if you've been following my web development activity, it's based on the open-source Joomla content management system. You can check out my series on basic Joomla installation here (first article), here (update) and here (update).

So in essence, we've gone from this to this in a very short time. SAF plans to launch this website in January, prior to the busy Valentine's Day holiday where we field a ton of calls from consumers and the press. Aboutflowers.com is our primary tool in which we share information about the industry and the holiday.

Like any website, it's nothing without content. So much kudos goes to SAF Consumer Marketing maven, Jenny Scala who was responsible in moving content from point A to B. She also will field many of the calls from consumer and the press as we approach the holiday. As you can tell, it's still a work in progress, but thought I'd share for those who would like a peak into the development process.

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