Tech Talk

37signals is the gadfly of the startup world. They've built a hugely successful company that is not (1) venture funded, (2) in Silicon Valley, or (3) looking for an exit. Many of their ideas are spelled out in detail in a great little book called Getting Real. If you haven't read it, you should. Not because they're right about everything, but because they're opinionated and will make you think. And they're right about a lot of things. One of their recurring themes is: build a minimal feature set. "Build half a product, not a half-ass product." "Make features work hard to be implemented." "Expose the price of new features." This is all good advice. Take it to heart. Especially if you're building a web-based tool like Basecamp. But if you're building infrastructure, think differently.

We're rolling out some awesome new audio processing features this week at Zencoder, and we'll be releasing more soon. These features aren't for everyone, we know; most of our customers won't have to to worry about audio gain or highpass filters or equalization. But others will, and we hope to power some cool things with features like this. Here is a quick rundown of the new audio settings.

EDIT: We've posted an updated guide on HTML5 video formats. Go check it out! The <video> tag in HTML5 is a great thing. It enables native video playback in all current browsers, rather than relying on a plugin like Flash. It opens the door to web video on devices that don't support Flash. And it enables codecs that previously weren't web playable. But if you're publishing video content, this can be confusing. To really support web video, how many output versions do you need to create? WebM, Ogg, and MP4? What about iPhone or Android? What about low/medium/high bitrate versions? There isn't a single answer to this question, so here is a short guide to picking outputs for HTML5 video.

The bad news first. There are hundreds of mobile devices out there, and it's basically impossible to support 100.0% of them. The good news is that mobile devices are getting better. Gone are the days when 176x144 3GP was synonymous with mobile video. Modern smartphones can actually play high quality video, and smartphone use is increasing. That's not to say that 3GP is over, or that everyone has a smartphone. But smartphone use is growing (at a 64% annualized rate as of Q2 2010), and, not surprisingly, smartphone users are more likely to watch video on their phones than their, er, dumb-phone-using friends. So if you want to support 90%+ of mobile devices, you need at least two video types: 3GP + MPEG-4 for less sophisticated devices, and H.264 + MP4 for smartphones. That's good news, really. One output video can cover all of your smartphone users - iPhone/iPad/iPod, Android, and (for the most part) Blackberry too. Toss in PSP, PS3, and Xbox 360 for good measure.  (If you want to learn more about encoding for iOS specifically, check out our comprehensive iOS encoding guide.)

Zencoder, a growing startup funded by Y Combinator and top angel investors, is looking for a sales professional to drive growth of our video encoding service to web and enterprise customers. T

Zencoder does video encoding, as a service, in the cloud. While we solve hard technical problems - blazingly fast encoding, handling corrupt videos, massive scalability - we also care deeply about user experience.

The stereotype of a Y Combinator founder goes something like this. Programmer. Smart and driven. Went to MIT or Stanford, or else skipped college altogether. Able to live on a ridiculously low salary. Enjoys working 90 hour weeks. And of course: young. Early-to-mid 20s. I almost didn't apply for Y Combinator last year because I thought I was too old. I was 31 at the time. The application asks for age, and I figured they would just ignore anyone who wasn't in their 20s. But friends of mine made it in to the summer class, and they were older than I was, so I thought I'd try. Granted, it can be more difficult to do YC when you're advanced in years, like myself. I have a wife, two kids, and a mortgage. But there are advantages to being a bit older too. Since applications are open for the Winter 2011 class right now, I thought I'd share my experience. Here is a quick guide to doing Y Combinator in your 30s.