SnapStream Blog

SnapStream is located in Houston, TX so we have the occasional the tropical storm or hurricane blow through town. This year, after a dodging tropical storm Edouard’s bullet, we took a direct hit last week from Hurricane Ike. Compared to Hurricane Rita (which we wrote about 3 years ago here, here and here), there was a lot less evacuation chaos. It was clear, to me at least, that city and county officials had closely studied the pandemonium that Hurricane Rita created 3 years ago and had built a pretty robust hurricane response plan from that experience.

The SnapStream office is about 40 miles from Galveston, where Ike made landfall, so we didn’t get hit as badly as many, but we did lose power and the office took on some water. So the office was without power for a couple of days, but we were able to restore power to most of the building by Tuesday afternoon. Our Internet wasn’t affected, but to give you an idea of infrastructure damage, take a look this electricity pole down the street from our office. It carries our Internet and electricity:

Holy hovering light pole, Batman!

I’m happy to say, though, that between yesterday and this morning, our hovering electrical pole is no longer hovering. So I’m breathing easier about our office’s power and Internet.

All of our customer-facing services were down for most of Sunday and part of Monday, but they are all back up and running now. The only thing we’re behind on now is technical support (the bulk of our support team was pretty significantly affected by the Hurricane) but we’re going to be working through the weekend to play catch-up.

Thank to everyone for their good wishes.

There comes a time in a homeowners life when he realizes the importance of being able to play full high-definition content from his neighbor’s house 5 doors down… wirelessly.

Never mind the fact that getting the needed 20mbit sustained wireless connection for HD inside of a single house is difficult. The prospect of playing Music, DVDs and even full resolution HDTV between houses is just too tempting.

This is our story.

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I’m the designer at SnapStream and I was recently invited to participate in the 9th Annual American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Student Portfolio Review at the Museum of Printing History. Every year, design students from Houston and surrounding cities come to have their portfolio critiqued by professionals in the field like me. This was my third year attending this event and every year I have been impressed by the work being produced.

Many students come from the University of Houston Graphic Communications Program, which was the very same program I graduated from 6 some-odd years ago. Talking with these soon-to-be graduates, who seemed perfectly comfortable showing their work off to total strangers, made me remember when I was in their place. When I was a student, I stayed up all night putting the finishing touches on my portfolio and writing down everything I wanted to say so that when the time came, I was ready for anything. Once I got used to the process of explaining my work to seasoned designers, I became more comfortable and confident as the day went on.

A former classmate of mine, Brian Gossett (left), gives his advice for the students at the event.

The first year I participated as a professional, I wondered how candid I was supposed to be. There is nothing more frustrating, as a designer, than to get comments like “I don’t like it� without an explanation. When I went through this process as a student, it was very common for a reviewer to give generic, “looks good� comments which, in hind-sight, didn’t benefit my growth at all. I wanted to show more respect to the students I reviewed. I went in with the belief that the criticism needed to be constructive so that the students would gain something from the experience. Hopefully, I was able to provide some real influence on their progress of their design careers.

Another former classmate, Johnny Luu (right), listening intently as a student describes her work.

I have worked for SnapStream for the past 6 years and they are finally letting me get out of the office. Now that I have the opportunity, I tried to think of the farthest place to go for a bit. That’s right, Australia!

My name is Alfonso. I am the Director of Engineering at SnapStream. Although I love our products, I work to support my first love, playing ultimate frisbee. I have been playing competitive ultimate frisbee for 11 years now.

What is ultimate frisbee? It’s a sport that involves a lot of athletic individuals running and diving in pursuit of a frisbee. For more information, check out this helpful page on the Doublewide web site. (http://www.austinultimate.org/doublewide/resources.html).

My main team, Doublewide, has finished in the top 10 (out of 300+) in the country the past 3 years in a row. That is no easy feat. In addition to playing with Doublewide, I play on a beach ultimate frisbee team, No Tsu Oh, that has won 5 of the last 7 beach World Championships. The beach championships are held annually at a tournament called Paganello in Rimini, Italy.

Doublewide 2005

So, why am I going to Australia? To play ultimate frisbee, of course. From November 11-19, the World Ultimate Club Championships will be held in Perth, Australia. These championships happen once every four years and are held at various locations around the world. The tournament is played on grass and consists of the best teams from countries around the globe. This year’s field will include around 20 teams from 5 of the 7 continents. Doublewide qualified for the event with an 8th place finish at nationals in 2005. Ever since then, we have been working hard both on and off the field to make it a successful trip. In addition to training four nights a week, we have been fundraising to help pay for the expenses of the trip. SnapStream was kind enough to support my habit with a generous donation and I am very grateful for it.

Teammate Roscoe Dick lays out for the disc.

So I must admit, SnapStream let’s me out of the office come frisbee time. I am psyched that they are helping me get to Australia, and I am looking forward to playing some frisbee down under.

Here are some links to find out more about my teams and the tourneys that we play in.

Doublwide: http://www.austinultimate.org/doublewide/index.html

Worlds: http://www.wucc2006.org/

No Tsu Oh: http://notsuoh.vcultimate.com/

Paganello (Beach world championships): http://www.paganello.com/

Joel, our fearless Graphic Designer, is embarking on a journey. On this trek, he will face exhaustion, dangerous competitors, and dehydration. This Sunday, Joel will be participating in the Chevron Houston Marathon, which weaves a path from downtown Houston south to Rice University, west to the Galleria shopping center, and back again. If you know Houston, you know that’s one long run.

Joel has been training for five months, and during that time, has faced several injuries and setbacks…but we’re sure he’ll do great!

Good luck Joel! Run fast!

It’s now Saturday morning and it appears the worst of the hurricane has passed in Houston.  Hurricane Rita did us all a favor and veered off to the east as it approached.  It also continued to weaken to a high category 3 as it made its way inland.  Out in Sugar Land, which is on the far southwest side of the Houston sprawl, we didn’t even get rain…just some heavier than normal winds.  To sum up, while there are power outages all over town, there is only some light damage to the east side of town and from what I can tell, virtually no damage to the west side of town as a result of the hurricane placement.  There have been some reports of looting but most of them are being arrested immediately. (Go HPD!)

The major problem right now has mostly to do with moving people around.  First of all, there are people trying to come back into Houston right now even as we speak. Not smart!  The city, state, and federal officials are telling everyone to stay put and NOT come back into town.  Some common sense will tell you that if there was no gas on the way out, there probably isn’t going to be any more gas on the way in either.  If you somehow get stuck without gas in the middle of the emergency response, you are most likely just going to be sitting there for a while.  In addition, the emergency supplies and manpower are needed to respond to power outages and other damage that has occurred.  Remember, Houston didn’t get hit badly, but that just means other coastal areas did.  If eager and premature returnees start clogging the freeways, lives may be put at risk.

The evacuation may not have gone as smoothly as possible, but it definitely was not unwarranted.  We just got lucky at the last minute.  If the hurricane had kept strength and veered west, there would have been a much different story being posted here.  The most interesting thing about this right now is the real-world testing of the quantity of resources, organization, and time it takes to optimize the evacuation and subsequent repopulation of a major city.  Although an entirely separate problem domain from software design, the principle to me remains the same…it’s difficult, if not impossible, to substitute planning for real-world scenario testing and validation.  It’s just as applicable to the major statewide events as it is to the design of media center software.  I’m quite certain that if a big one does hit Houston in the future, we’ll be much better equipped to respond as a result of what happened this week.

At the moment, the current recommendation from authorities is for folks to have Monday and Tuesday off and to wait for word on when to return to Houston.  Even though the storm may be over, people aren’t going to be able to drive to and from work without fuel available, and, frankly, I have no idea when that situation will be resolved.  We’re still learning from this as much as anyone.

Houstonions are used to bad traffic, but this really takes the cake.  Highways are backed up for miles in all directions and people are running out of gas waiting in the lines.  Supposedly the Department of Transportation is running around gassing up cars, but it’s hard to say how well that’s going.  Most gas stations are completely sold out of gas at this point. Of course, the goodies like plywood and generators were sold out days ago.

It’s pretty clear that this city is hardly equipped to handle all the people leaving, even with all the forewarning.  Our director of engineering, Alfonso, just gave me a call a minute ago.  He left around 4 AM and just broke out of traffic around 2 PM on his way to San Antonio.  The whole drive is normally about 3 hours, so that gives you some idea of the gridlock.  And the traffic is even worse now…some people have driven only 15 miles in 5 hours and have simply given up and turned around.

In fact, I’d have to say at this point it looks more dangerous for many people in the Houston area to be stuck out in the middle of the road with no gas, no food or water, and no air conditioning in sweltering heat. It’s probably a better idea for people outside of the storm surge areas to stay in, which additionally frees up more room for the people in the storm surge areas to get out.

If there’s a bright side to this, it’s that the storm appears to be veering east and weakening, which would spare the folks in Houston the brunt of the hurricane. Might not be so good for New Orleans, though. 

Well, it looks like the hurricane known as Rita is heading straight for Houston. At the beginning of the week, we were buckling down to get another beta release of Beyond TV out.  Two days later and everything has changed.  We’re busy running backup procedures, arranging for employees to stay in touch, lifting up all of our equipment off the floors, and hoping the roof doesn’t fly off the building.

You can read more about Hurricane Rita at the Houston Chronicle…potentially the largest hurricane to hit the United States since the United States started recording hurricane data.

For obvious reasons, orders, fulfillment, the beta program, and other contact with SnapStream may be delayed or affected by the hurricane.  We thank you for your patience while we ride this thing out.

Richard Kuo
Chief Technology Officer

This blog post isn’t exactly related to the state of things in the DVR industry. However, I feel that it is important to recognize what’s going on in our neighboring states. We want to express our concerns and sympathies to those who are affected by Hurricane Katrina. Our hearts go out to you.

As many of you may know, SnapStream Media is located in Houston, TX. We, like New Orleans, are on the Gulf Coast. So hurricanes aren’t exactly new to us. Many have fled to Houston as a result of the hurricane. From my understanding, the situation in New Orleans will likely worsen in the next few days. Not due to more rain, but to the flooding waters, lack of electricity, contamination, and so on.

There are many ways to help and I urge you to check the Internet and also with your local communities to see what you can do to help those affected by this hurricane. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has compiled a list of agencies in need of cash donations to assist hurricane victims and is a good place to start.

There are acutally a few of us at SnapStream from the affected region and others with friends and family there. Percy, a software test engineer here, is from Biloxi, Miss. and has posted on our dev blog his personal account on how this hurricane is affecting him and his family.

Thanks for listening.