Comments on: Why MSN Video Will Never Be a Contender http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/07/31/why-msn-video-will-never-be-a-contender/ Jeff Nolan's take on innovation, entrepreneurship, tech and stuff that interests me Thu, 17 May 2012 21:05:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Jeff http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/07/31/why-msn-video-will-never-be-a-contender/comment-page-1/#comment-13581 Jeff Tue, 01 Aug 2006 17:12:53 +0000 http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/07/31/why-msn-video-will-never-be-a-contender/#comment-13581 Hi Tim, You are right about YouTube requiring Flash, but I guess I don't think of that as a big hurdle because anyone who is using the web these days is likely to have that plugin... and they make it pretty painless to get. Good point about MSN Video giving a false positive about not having Flash when I really do. Like I said in the post, I'm on a Mac so there's no way I would have even been able to get to the site (Media Player for the Mac is discontinued and won't install on Intel Macs at any rate, there is a plugin for quicktime that plays wmv files but clearly MSN Video didn't find that). Regarding IE6, you would have to rip Camino/Firefox out of my cold dead hands before I'd go back to that browser. IE7 is looking sharp, it's a pity their own service doesn't identify this as kosher. Hi Tim,
You are right about YouTube requiring Flash, but I guess I don’t think of that as a big hurdle because anyone who is using the web these days is likely to have that plugin… and they make it pretty painless to get.

Good point about MSN Video giving a false positive about not having Flash when I really do. Like I said in the post, I’m on a Mac so there’s no way I would have even been able to get to the site (Media Player for the Mac is discontinued and won’t install on Intel Macs at any rate, there is a plugin for quicktime that plays wmv files but clearly MSN Video didn’t find that). Regarding IE6, you would have to rip Camino/Firefox out of my cold dead hands before I’d go back to that browser. IE7 is looking sharp, it’s a pity their own service doesn’t identify this as kosher.

]]> By: Tim Marman http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/07/31/why-msn-video-will-never-be-a-contender/comment-page-1/#comment-13576 Tim Marman Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:52:13 +0000 http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/07/31/why-msn-video-will-never-be-a-contender/#comment-13576 I agree that's ridiculous. As I've written before re: "Web 2.0", this type of mentality of doing something in the browser for the sake of doing it in the browser completely misses the point. If it's not accessible from (nearly) any standard desktop install, then you might as well just make it a desktop application. If I have to download ANYTHING that normally wouldn't be there, it might as well be a richer desktop application. That said, in fairness, YouTube does require flash (though I'm not sure what version). Is Flash 6 not widely deployed yet, and does YouTube use an older version? Or, perhaps worse, do you already have Flash 6 installed and MSN Video is giving misleading messages? (Perhaps because of security config not allowing you to instantiate). I agree that’s ridiculous. As I’ve written before re: “Web 2.0″, this type of mentality of doing something in the browser for the sake of doing it in the browser completely misses the point. If it’s not accessible from (nearly) any standard desktop install, then you might as well just make it a desktop application. If I have to download ANYTHING that normally wouldn’t be there, it might as well be a richer desktop application.

That said, in fairness, YouTube does require flash (though I’m not sure what version). Is Flash 6 not widely deployed yet, and does YouTube use an older version? Or, perhaps worse, do you already have Flash 6 installed and MSN Video is giving misleading messages? (Perhaps because of security config not allowing you to instantiate).

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