A few days ago, we re-launched the StreamingMedia.com website with a new design, layout, navigation and whole host of technology changes on the back end. The former site was running using a very old database and CMS which have all been updated. The best part, the site now loads fast, is stable, the new nav makes it easy to find content and the search function actually returns results you are looking for. It's a much cleaner looking site and lot more easier to use.

We're still working on some of the broken links and re-directs from the old site and will continue to fix links over the coming days. If you come across anything that is broken, please send an email to help@streamingmedia.com so we can correct it. We also welcome any feedback on the new site which you can leave here in the comments section.

Also, the current content on the site goes back about 5-6 years. However, we still have every piece of content on the industry dating back to 1998. So if you are looking for a really old article, press release or other piece of content from way back when, just email me and I'll be happy to track it down for you.

I’m busy finishing the agenda for next month’s Content Delivery Summit and Streaming Media Eastevents in NYC, so I haven time to cover a lot of the news that came out yesterday and today. So here’s a quick round-up of all the news items that have come into my inbox:

• Kaltura to Add Microsoft Silverlight to its Open Source Online Video Platform
• Conviva and Adobe Form Strategic Alliance to Further Enhance Viewer Experiences on the Flash Platform
• Visible Measures Announces Support for HTML5 Video Measurement
• Unicorn Media to Provide Global Live Broadcast of the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards
• Sorenson Media Announces Not Only Support, but Video Optimization for Apple’s iPad
• mDialog Debuts First Dynamic Ad-Insertion and Video Solution Platform for HTML5 VOD and Live Streaming on iPad and iPhone
• ClickStreamTV Now Supports Streaming Video for the iPad
• Funai Electric Selects Widevine to Enable “TV Everywhere” Capabilities on Its Connected Devices
• Kyte Extends Platform To The Living Room Through Boxee
• National Association of Broadcasters Selects Highwinds’ CDN to Deliver NAB Show Video for Second Consecutive Year
• Adap.tv Teams With Grab Networks to Expand its Online Video Advertising Marketplace
• Microsoft Previews NAB Demos, Silverlight Advances

In addition to these releases, there are more releases under embargo that will hit the wire today at noon ET.

A few days before Apple’s iPad went on sale, Apple launched a new section on their website showcasing a list of websites that they call “ipad ready”. Clearly, part of their reason for doing so was to combat a lot of the people, including myself, who think the lack of Flash support on the iPad makes for a bad user-experience on the device. What Apple didn’t say is that many of these sites, including the New York Times, Reuters, Time and MLB, aren’t truly iPad ready.

After spending a lot hours over the past few days on the iPad, many of the websites I have visited on Apple’s list of “iPad ready” websites, simply don’t work. While videos on the home page work or featured content works, many times when you go a layer down, you can’t get the content. For instance, on the New York Times site, all it takes is clicking on a few links to get blank pages that tell you, “In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here“. What? According to Apple, I thought the New York Times site was “iPad ready”. No, Apple wants you to believe it is, but when a lot of the content I am trying to view on the New York Times tells me to download Flash, that’s not my idea of “iPad ready”. It’s simply Apple’s being fast and loose with their words, thinking we won’t notice. “Some” content on these sites works on the iPad, but to imply the “site” is iPad ready is a flat out lie.

On Reuters and Time, while a lot of the content is viewable on the iPad, some of it isn’t. It’s also interesting to note on the Apple site, in reference to the Reuters site it says that “most of” their content is viewable. Define “most of”. On all of the news sites they use a lot of Flash graphics, not just videos, for all of the interactive elements like showcasing election results or applications that have a lot of photos. None of those work on the iPad amongst all of the news sites I visited. And even on Apple’s own site, they use the word “video” when talking about these “iPad ready” sites, not the word content. Flash is used for all kinds of content, not just videos.

While MLB.com is listed by Apple as one of the sites that works on the iPad, it doesn’t. When visiting MLB.com or any of the team pages, in every video window you get a message that says “click here to learn how to get video highlights on the iPad“. That link then takes you to an MLB page that links to the MLB iPad app that you can download for $14.99. While there is nothing wrong with a content owner creating an app specifically for the iPad, no where does Apple say that on their website. In fact, Apple lists the MLB.com URL on their website, which is completely deceptive.

Maybe MLB and others plan to change this over time and it is possible that “iPad ready” sites, as defined by Apple, plan to make more content available down the road. But for all the folks who are quick to comment about how all these main-stream websites have agreed to support HTML5 and think Flash is doomed, you better pick up and iPad and use it for a few days before you make any comments. You can’t argue with a message that says “please download Flash to see this content“. Anyone who buys something from Amazon and can’t get a product video, is looking to adopt a pet and can’t see content on Petfinder or is trying to watch a video on NFL.com is going to be very disappointed.

Apple is shooting itself in the foot by not supporting Flash on the iPad because as much as they want to try and argue or convince us that the “experience” is better without Flash, anyone who actually uses an iPad will tell you it isn’t. Apple needs to quit with the hype, stop trying to make an Apple business decision into an Adobe technical problem and should focus on giving iPad users a REAL browsing experience and not Apple’s own defined limitation of what they think a browsing experience is.

Updated: As someone rightly points out in the comment section below, on Apple’s page that lists the “iPad ready” websites there is a disclaimer that says, “The above websites vary in their level of compliance with open web standards and in some instances may require a plug-in to view content.” The ironic part of that is that the iPad does not support plugins.

Note: Whenever I write about Apple, I get a lot of comments from folks who own Apple stock, think the company can do no wrong or leave me comments about how Flash won’t survive because they had a problem with their Acrobat reader, which isn’t even relevant to the conversation. You want to debate the points I raise above, lets do it. But don’t expect a reply from me if all you want to say in the comments section is “I don’t like Flash”.

As a fan of MLB.TV, it really pains me to have to write this, but MLB completely failed by not having a service that works on opening day. Since about noon Eastern, their main MLB.com website has not been loading at all, or just gives me a background image. Nearly ten hours later, it's still not working.

And aside from the website being down for hours or now directing me to a
"narrowband" version of the website, video streams on the iPad using
the MLB iPad app look really bad. Video is extremely choppy and that's
even if I can get the stream at all. Most times I get errors of "we are
having technical difficulties processing your request" and even short video highlights don't work. Team sites, like Mets.com and others are giving me timeout errors or if they load after a really long time, the video clips aren't work and deliver blank pages.

For a company like MLBAM, who leads the industry with some of the finest quality video and user-experience, when it is working, not having everything function properly on opening day is really unacceptable and is going to create a lot of really upset fans and video subscription customers. MLB has been offering a video based service for more than half a dozen years now and having this big of an issue on opening day really gives them a black eye.

I've put in a request to MLBAM to find out what the problem is and I will review the MLB.TV app on the iPad once its working.

Update: Also interesting to note is that MLB.TV on the Roku, which worked last year, will not be working until "mid-April" this year, which came to light from an email Roku sent to customers earlier today. I don't know if the problem is on Roku's side or MLB's, but it was working just fine last year.

Update 2: I am also just now remembering that back in January I broke the news on how Swarmcast, the company who's technology powered MLB.com's Next-Def Plugin, laid off half their staff and was down to ten people. When the news came out I asked MLB if that meant they were no longer going to use the Swarmcast technology for the 2010 season, but I never heard back. I wonder if some of today's problems are due to MLB using some new technology for the first time?

Thanks to some good reporting by Jessica Vascellaro at the Wall Street Journal, she's gotten Brightcove to confirm for her article that the company has raised a fourth round of funding totaling $12M. With this latest round of funding, led by Accel Partners and General Catalyst, Brightcove has now raised a total of $99M.

In a call I had with Brigthcove's CEO Jeremy Allaire just after the company confirmed the funding on their blog, I had the chance to ask Jeremy what the money would be used for and why he felt now was the right time to take another round. Jeremy said that, "now is the time to really accelerate and scale the business even faster and this round gives us even more room on our balance sheet." This round is all about acceleration and going faster and investing more aggressively this year."

While Jeremy would not talk in detail about Brightcove's balance sheet, in an interview I did with Jeremy last year, for the first time, he went on record to say that Brightcove was profitable in 2009 and cash-flow positive. Whether or not that's still the case in 2010 we don't know, but with the company growing their revenue by 50% last year and doubling the number of their customers over 2008, Brightcove clearly wasn't in a position where they needed this latest round.

While the WSJ article includes some revenue projections for Brightcove in 2010, Jeremy said Brightcove didn't comment on the "rumors" the WSJ published in regards to projected revenue, as the company does not disclose details about their balance sheet. Jeremy said the company will use some of the new funding to, "expand in more geographies, add more sales and marketing, ramp their Brightcove Express business, add additional products and look at potential M&A."

While some competitors are going to be quick to jump on Brightcove's fourth round of funding and try and portray it as negative, since it now totals a big number ($99M), Brightcove's latest round of funding is good for all the vendors in the online video platform space. In the WSJ article, which I was interviewed for, I estimated that the online video platform (OVP) space was less than $200M in 2009 with the potential to grow to $300M in 2010. There is a lot of growth taking place in this vertical of the industry and content owners are asking more and more about how to ingest, transcode, manage, monetize and track their content as opposed to just delivering it. That's all good news for any OVP vendor and the market still has a lot of growth in it.

UPS just delivered my iPad and I spent some time talking to the driver to get a sense for how busy he is. In my small community, north of NYC, he said he's already delivered about 40 iPads and has a bunch more to go. He said today he feels like he "works for Apple, not UPS". Also interesting to note is that he's not my usual delivery guy and is only working today to help out with all of the iPad deliveries.

Steve Swasey, VP of Corporate Communications for Netflix just did a quick post on the Netflix blog saying that Netflix is in fact working on a Netflix app for Apple iPhone and iPod users. Steve doesn't say when the app will be available or how far along they are in development, but at least users now have confirmation that Netflix will be coming to more than just the iPad. While the news is not surprising considering that Netflix has plans to be on more than 100 devices by the end of the year, it's great to see them set future expectations with their customers.