A service in Texas featuring a woman reader is giving the blind a full view of Playboy magazine. Suzi Hanks reads the articles, jokes, the cartoons, and puts the legendary centerfolds into words. (Sept. 9)

Zaytuna College, a new Islamic college, opened its doors to its inaugural class of 15 students in Berkeley, California. Three Islamic scholars founded the school and want it to be the country's first fully accredited Muslim academic institution. (Sept. 9)

Highlights of this day in history: Inmates seize control of Attica prison in upstate New York; Mao Zedong, Communist China's founding leader, dies; Elvis Presley first appears on TV's Ed Sullivan Show; Soul singer Otis Redding born. (Sept. 9)

The town council in a quiet South Carolina bedroom community refused to pass a proposed ordinance banning illegal immigrants from residing in their town. (Sept. 9)

A severe thunderstorm packing heavy rain and strong winds blew over a trailer home, damaged other structures and brought down power lines Wednesday as remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine moved into Oklahoma. (Sept. 9)

A total of 163 couples tied the knot in a mass wedding in Taipei on Thursday. (Sept. 9)

A Georgia man who was rescued from his burning vehicle last weekend thanked the three sheriff's deputies who saved him. The doors of the vehicle were locked, so the deputies broke the windows and pulled Dan Goth to safety. (Sept. 8))

Vice President Joe Biden handed out hot dogs to Iraq War veterans on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" Wednesday night. He later thanked former President George W. Bush for his support of the troops. (Sept. 9)

Akamai is set to announce new capabilities that will make it easier for media companies using its HD Network to deliver video to the iPhone, iPad and other Apple devices. With its new “in the network” packaging of iOS content, content providers will be able to serve up video to multiple Apple devices without changing their existing workflow.

Akamai’s HD Network can autodetect the Apple device that is trying to connect to a video and will serve the correct version of the file based on the device profile and available bandwidth. It does this by automatically transcoding the files into the correct format, so that the content provider doesn’t have to encode multiple versions of the same file.

The system works by taking pre-existing video assets in the network — which could include single bit rate or multiple bit rate versions of a file — and placing them in the appropriate format to be viewed by different devices. The solution even makes those files available using Apple’s adaptive bit rate streaming, meaning that if a video is accessed and network conditions change, it will adjust to send the highest quality version of the video available to the iOS device. As a result, video providers will be able to reach more than 120 million iOS devices without making any changes to their existing workflow.

For now, Akamai says the solution is only available for Apple devices such as the iPhone or iPad, which don’t support Adobe Flash. Instead, web videos delivered to iOS devices need to be encoded in the H.264 format and playable in an HTML5 player. By enabling this type of “encode once, serve everywhere” capability for iOS devices, Akamai can help its customers speed development of HTML5 video pages across devices, as well as iPhone and iPad app development.

Akamai isn’t the only provider to simplify the process of serving video across multiple devices; online video management provider Brightcove has rolled out support for iPhone, Android and other mobile devices with universal embed codes that autodetect the device trying to access a video and serve up the correct file. And Akamai rival Limelight Networks purchased mobile delivery specialist Kiptronic, which provides dynamic delivery of mobile content based on the device that is requesting a web page or video file.

While Akamai is launching its dynamic “in the network” packaging of video to iOS devices at first, it could expand those capabilities to reach other devices in the future. With the ability to autodetect a device requesting content and transcode a file into the correct format, Akamai’s ability to serve files shouldn’t be limited to Apple devices only. Determining the correct video format and serving to Android or other mobile devices might be next on Akamai’s list of features.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Report: Delivering Content in the Cloud (subscription required)

Mexican marines have arrested seven gunmen suspected of killing 72 Central and South American migrants in the worst drug cartel massacre to date, the government announced Wednesday. (Sept. 8)

Today, Argentina becomes the 25th country to get its own version of YouTube. This means that Argentines will be able to more easily discover local talent like GuadalajaraMan, UESiglo21, farolatino, casiangeles or yoteloexplico, as well as view the most popular and most viewed videos in their country.

To experience the new site, head to the bottom of the page, click on the ‘Location’ tab, and select Argentina from the menu:


We’re also teaming up with local broadcasters to ensure that YouTube viewers, wherever you may be, can watch some of the best news, sports and public television videos being made in Argentina today. Such partners include Encuentro, America TV, Boca Juniors and TV Pública. Other Argentine video-makers can apply for partnership at www.youtube.com/partners.

We look forward to working with everyone in Argentina to make the YouTube community even bigger and brighter than it is today.
Ricardo Blanco, Communications Manager, Latin America, and Brian Truong, Product Manager, recently watched “Otakus with English Subtitles.”

The remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine spawned several tornadoes in Texas Wednesday night. A truck driver was injured when a twister slammed his rig into a warehouse near Dallas Love Field, causing the building to topple onto the cab. (Sept. 8)

Adobe announced the latest version of its Flash Media Server (FMS) today, with new features aimed squarely at making it the streaming server of choice for enterprise webcasts and other communications.

Previous updates to Adobe’s Flash Media Server — like FMS 3.5, which introduced HTTP streaming — were focused mainly on making streaming servers better suited for use by media companies. But the latest update is aimed at attracting potential new customers on the enterprise side of things.

The biggest additions to FMS 4 are the availability of IP multicast as well as Adobe’s proprietary Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) peer-to-peer technology. With IP multicast, Adobe is for the first time enabling enterprises to deliver live events behind the corporate firewall with a single stream, rather than delivering a separate stream for each user or connection. And with its P2P-based RTMFP technology, enterprises can dramatically reduce bandwidth costs for large-scale events.

Not all versions of the new Flash Media Server will have these new features. In fact, with the launch of FMS 4, Adobe is breaking out its streaming server into three different products, each with different capabilities. The Flash Media Streaming Server 4 is Adobe’s basic offering, with live and on-demand streaming, as well as RTMPE content protection, priced at $995.

The Flash Media Interactive Server 4, which costs $4,500, takes that one step further, with support for HTTP streaming, IP multicast and multi-user capabilities. The Flash Media Enterprise Server 4, meanwhile, offers all of those features plus RTMFP, enabling enterprises to blend its IP multicast and peer-to-peer delivery capabilities to increase the efficiency of video delivery behind the firewall and across the broader Internet. (Adobe didn’t provide a price for the Flash Media Enterprise Server.)

Adding IP multicast will allow Adobe Flash to finally compete with Microsoft’s Windows Media for enterprise webcasting behind the firewall. Before this announcement, Windows Media (and to a lesser extent, Real Player) acted as de facto solution for webcasting because it had multicast capabilities behind the firewall that Adobe didn’t.

The addition also gives Adobe a new addressable market in the enterprise, which becomes important as media companies and content delivery networks that once relied on FMS for streaming services have transitioned to more scalable and less pricey commodity implementations of HTTP-based Flash streaming. Akamai, for instance, rolled out Flash streaming without Adobe FMS servers with the introduction of its HTTP-based Akamai HD Network last September.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Brewing a Better Web Video Experience (subscription required)

A wildfire burning in the canyons and steep mountainsides near Boulder became one of the most destructive blazes in Colorado history Wednesday as authorities determined it had destroyed at least 135 homes in just three days. (Sept. 8)

NFL Pro Football Writer Barry Wilner previews the opening weekend of the season, highlighted by Thursday's game between the defending Super Bowl champion Saints and the Vikings. The Jets and Colts are also in action. (Sept. 8)

Georgia star receiver A.J. Green was suspended by the NCAA for four games Wednesday for selling a bowl jersey for $1,000 to someone who qualifies as an agent. (Sept. 8)

I left some love in your mailbox. Iphone4 video I love you

BP has released its internal report on what triggered the Gulf oil spill. The oil giant takes some of the blame, acknowledging that it misinterpreted a key pressure test of the well. But it also faults its partners in the project. (Sept. 8)

A series of weak tornadoes spawned by the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine struck the Dallas area, injuring at least one person. Several warehouses were damaged in an area near Dallas Love Field. (Sept. 8)

Pastor Terry Jones told reporters outside his Florida church he will go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Quran Saturday, to mark the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. He says he's not convinced that 'backing down is the right thing.' (Sept. 8)