Siu Lun

I’ve had the privilege of socialising, and working with some of the more passionate web enthusiast in Hong Kong for the past few months. As being a producer, I’ve had to source vendors whom can deliver exceptionally high quality web productions to match the need of our clients.

In my search for such talents, I’ve come across a lot of individuals whom I would never have found unless I found somebody who knows of them.

Such talents obviously found that it is much more lucrative, and satisfying to work for oneself in a city where web development is poorly understood, appreciated and paid.

The talent is out there, it’s a matter of either they get together to form a bigger group, or, somebody with the money and willingness to snatch them all up. Can you depend on any existing companies in Hong Kong? I doubt it very much, one thing I’ve noticed is that in a 4As environment, you can only get in if you either worked for another 4As before, or a recommendation from a friend.

It’s really quite an ‘inbred’, closed-off group particularly when people in Hong Kong looks out for friend and family even when they have no real talent. No offence intended to those that do.

I’m stumped the past few days, it turns out a term that I’ve used since the first time I’ve uploaded a video for Flash to ‘play before it’s finished downloading’ is actually an arguing point that seems to be fussy with no definite answers that can be found on the web.

It could have been a misused terminology but I’ve always thought HTTP Streaming – literally means, progressive download via HTTP.

Since, from the outset, when you reference a video file to play in Flash. Unless it’s true streaming via a streaming server. It’s always been in the http protocol.

I guess the matter is made ‘worst’ by the fact that there are HTTP Streaming servers around that imitates streaming but allows for progressive download at the same time such as: http://stream.xmoov.com/

So… what is the difference actually? I’ve read an artcial that says HTTP Streaming refers to HTTP Tunneling – i.e. streaming by tunneling streams in the HTTP protocol. Others, seems to think the same as me. I suppose the tunneling one make sense, but it all just seems like semantics to me. I know the idea between real streaming, tunneling real streams to HTTP and false streaming via HTTP/progressive download are all very common, but is there a definite term to seperate all of these?

A search on google only yields differing results.

An interesting find.

UPDATE: Some clarity that also suggest the trap of the term HTTP Streaming – http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10789
I’m actually surprised it’s written in late 2008, when people have been using that term since at least 2006. I guess there was never a defined definition.

UPDATE 2:
“Streaming” – the definition of it does not in anyway say that streams cannot be preloaded, all it says is that it is data packets being constantly sent to the recipient. Therefore ‘technically’ from a language perspective, HTTP Streaming can mean ANYTHING, including, “PUSH” data such as COMET. Therefore, it’s best to avoid that terminology whenever possible because of it’s ambiguous nature.

In my current role, I’m trying to do what seems like an impossible task. Changing the web development landscape in Hong Kong.

Being in a large multi-national company in Hong Kong, I’ve been empowered to help develop a world-class interactive agency. This means I have the projects that can show the world, all I need is to find and gather the right people, work with the right people, train the right people and overall raise the bar of web development in Hong Kong to a whole new level.

This might sound big, and well, to be frank, I do believe it is. In my environment now, it helps being around similarly ambitious people. The hard part of course, is to educate such people without being patronising, and it’s a lot about working with people while being courteous. I find it very challenging, especially with working with over 200 individual minds with their own quirks and traits.

Nevertheless, we try every step to push the limits, we’re pushing the limits in every level. It is a challenging road for all involved, but everytime we emerge with a project that’s better than the last. There comes a limit though that we’ll touch one day on the level of skills, and overall enthusiasm. I’m trying to find the right people, convert what we have. It’s a little like a missionary on a mission to convert the populace.

It’s a hard road, I’m learning as I’m going along, while bringing everybody else up to speed, but success will eventually come.