Today we relaunched our Developer Center with additional documentation and a new interface to showcase Revver’s powerful set of tools for developers. Along with sample code of API implementations, we’ve also added RSS documentation and documentation for our Flash and Quicktime players. The Developer Center is the one stop shop for developers working with Revver’s API, providing them with everything they need to know to Revverize their projects.

The relaunch kicks off an accelerated update schedule that will see updates made every few weeks. Developers can keep tabs on changes in the changelog, and we’ll update you here when any major changes or additions are made. Developers, this is your resource, so let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see added.

Adobe releases beta of Flash for Linux.

Until now, the newest Flash player was not optimized to work on Linux operating systems. This meant that Linux users were limited to Revver’s QuickTime option. Well, now Linux users can download a beta of Flash Player 9!

Adobe on Wednesday released a beta of a Flash Player 9 for Linux and said that it is working on 64-bit editions of Flash… The beta of Flash Player 9 for Linux supports most of the features except a full-screen mode and support for SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption… The final Flash Player 9 on Linux is due early next year.

By the way, everyone will soon have more options for sharing as we’re adding a quicktime embed option to Revver 1.0. So you’ll be able to choose Flash or QuickTime.

We’ve been talking about the Revver API for a while now. API stands for Application Programming Interface. An API allows software developers to access a set of functions without having to access the source code for those functions. Our API is a way for web developers to create their own video-sharing communities using our technology. We like to call it a “video portal in a box.” And of course, Revver shares any ad revenue from uploaded and syndicated videos with the creators of the portal and with its community members.

The Revver API is now available to the public and you can go see what all the fuss is about!

Revver.com is the first public implementation of the Revver API. We’re eating our own dog food, as they say. So if you want to build a video-sharing site complete with user accounts, uploading, sharing tools and complete access to the entire Revver library, then you are in luck! We’ve built the API just for you.

Check out the new Revver Developer Center for everything you’ll need to use the API. The supernerds even have their own blog over there:

The Revver API provides web developers and site owners an easy way to access the Revver system and complete Revver library. All Revver users have the ability to distribute and syndicate Revver videos using an advanced set of features that allows you to create a dynamically driven video portal site and earn additional ad revenue for each ad click. The Revver syndication model rewards you for any traffic you generate to videos – this API was designed with you in mind – helping you capitalize on all the syndication opportunities the Revver community has to offer.

The release of the Revver API is central to our business model of wide syndication and free sharing of content. The goal is to build the network across the open web, disseminating Revver videos as widely as possible, always holding strong to our pro-artist ethos.

So all you developers out there, head on over and get building.

Hey there.

We’ve spent a lot of time and effort optimizing and refining Revver 1.0 in the weeks leading up to to launch. If you read this blog, you probably know that. You might not know the technical details, however - and the details are pretty exciting (to us):

The Ruby language and the Ruby on Rails framework has had quite a bit of attention lately. Revver 1.0 is built on Ruby on Rails — nothing like this has ever been done at this scale with Rails. We’re also using the Mongrel and lighttpd web servers, the Pound load balancer, and running it all off of an API we’ll fully open to the world in just a few months.

Speaking of that API.. it’s an implementation of the Twisted Python framework. Twisted is an event-driven networking framework that’s seen use in a lot of projects - for example, you may have heard of BitTorrent - of course there are many other interesting projects that use Twisted. Our implementation is notable given its heavy load - everything that the Revver site does is done through the API, from the moment you log in to the moment you fall asleep in front of your monitor after watching six hours’ worth of videos. That load is bound to increase, as we’ll be releasing the full API to the public at the end of October - everything the Revver site does, your site will be able to do. As a matter of fact, we’ll be giving you the code to Revver Classic as part of the SDK!

Those are the details, but here’s the short version: Revver runs on a chain of cutting-edge open source web technologies, each implemented at a significantly large scale, and we’re just about ready to share that power with anyone who wants to come to the party.

You’ve seen how much fun we have. You know we’ve got an awesome product. And you know we’re a company with a mission.

Well, we’re looking to expand our team. Think you can hang? Then check out the Revver jobs page.

Current positions:

More coming next week…

Woo! We launched Revver 1.0, we had a great party and now the real work begins. Let’s take a step back for a second for a bit of perspective. Here is a personal history of Revver from CTO, Rob Maigret:

When I first starting talking to Steven Starr and Oliver Luckett back in April of 2005 about their new company I was really excited/impressed with the idea of the “Rev-Tag” and how it would enable content owners and creators to participate within a channel of distribution that at that time was not available. When I began to dig deeper into Steven’s background in media it started to make sense. Steven had been an advocate for Artist’s rights going back to his days as an agent. Oliver I knew from iBlast, we’d been on the emotional roller coaster of Startup 1.0 together and both come out a little less convinced of the whole process but eager for something… different.

When I began to get to know Ian Clarke, I realized that he and I were very close in our ideas regarding software. Ian, if you don’t know, created FreeNet and is still its maintainer. Ian stands strongly for free media distribution. The ideals of the company started to form, and at least in my own head, I began to see where I fit in.

As I began to devote more and more time to Revver the picture of it’s infrastructure started to reveal itself. Revver had already made some key software choices. Namely Twisted Python as its web framework and PostgreSQL as its database. Everything else was up-for-grabs, as was whether or not to continue further with these technologies, or to replace with more traditional and/or proprietary applications. But the choice was clear. Revver’s mantra was this new form of “not-DRM”. That is, non-conditional, unobtrusive advertisement insertion. It was kind of like DRM, but we wanted as many people to watch the videos as possible. Anything that made the viewing limited wasn’t a consideration.

And by that definition, we adopted the idea of open media. It can go anywhere on or off the network. It can be downloaded, e-mailed, shared on P2P networks, burned to a CD or DVD…it doesn’t matter. It can be syndicated via RSS, watched on the site, embedded on a partner portal, or sit on someone’s blog… Again, doesn’t matter. We really don’t care. And again, by definition, we then adopted the idea of Super Distribution.

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