The New York Times Shows How to Build a Chromecast Application
The old gray lady isn't just about text anymore. For years the New York Times has been creating excellent online video, and now it lets viewers watch that content on their living room TVs. At the recent Streaming Media West show in sunny Huntington Beach, California, Maxwell Da Silva, director of video technology for the Times, shared the lessons he and his team learned creating the Times Chromecast application.
"What kind of platform you are supposed to build when you think about the Chromecast?" Da Silva asked. "It's very much iOS, Android, and Chrome. They have specific SDKs for each one of those platforms. The iOS in Objective-C, Android in Java, and Chrome in JavaScript HTML5 and CSS. In order to be a developer and make a Chromecast application you don't need to pay anything, but if you want to publish your app you need to pay a fee of $5."
For brands starting out with multiscreen apps, Chromecast's helpful guidelines make it a smart first step.
"One thing that was quite interesting at the New York Times when we started to build the Chromecast application was we had talks with many vendors and the design guidelines in other OTT is not that clear," Da Silva said. "Chromecast is a relatively new OTT device, and they have pretty good design standards and guidelines, and how you should build your app and how all the components should interact. The main goal when you start to think about Chromecast and build an app is the remote, it's your application, so if you're in the Chrome tab, your interface in the browser will be controlling the device."
For more instructions on building a Chromecast app, watch the video below and download Da Silva's presentation.
HOW TO: Building a Chromecast Application
This session covers the entire Chromecast application workflow, including registering your app and developing, debugging, and publishing it. Attendees find out how the Chromecast user model works and learn more about the design principles of the platform. Get insights into the sender and receiver technology, which displays the content and metadata, and the mobile device or laptop, which controls the playback. Finally, using HTML5 and JavaScript, attendees see how easy it is to build a simple video player and, using Chromecast SDK, filing the content to receiver.
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