Google+ Gets Its Own Anthem [VIDEO]

by Brenna Ehrlich

Really into Google+? Well, now you have a new tune to jam to whilst jamming people into circles.

This little video comes from Break Media and extols the joy of the newly minted network — in a tongue-in-cheek way, to the tune of Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust.”

What do you think? Are you in love with Google+?

Skype Enables Video Calls on 17 More Android Devices

 by Stan Schroeder

Skype announced in June one-on-one video chat for Android, but the feature was only available on a handful of smartphones. Now, the company has launched Skype 2.1 for Android, extending the support for video chat to 17 new Android smartphones and tablets.

The full list of devices that now support video chat includes: Acer A5, HTC Desire (2.2), HTC Desire HD, HTC Evo 3D, HTC Evo 4G, HTC Flyer, HTC Incredible S, HTC Sensation, HTC Thunderbolt – Verizon (2.2) (U.S. only), LG Revolution – Verizon (2.2) (U.S. only), Samsung Droid Charge – Verizon (2.2) (U.S. only), Samsung Galaxy S, Samsung Galaxy S II, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro, Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY and Sony Ericsson Xperia ray.

If your Android device is not on the list but runs Android 2.2 and above, you can still enable video calling in your Skype settings with the new option, “enable video calling.” If it’s not working, then it means your device does not meet the minimum requirements for this feature.

The new version of Skype for Android also brings a number of performance enhancements and bug fixes; gohere for a full list.

Google+ Hangouts Adding YouTube Live Video Viewing

 by Charlie White

The Hangouts group video chat platform on Google+ now lets video-chatting groups of up to ten people watch live streaming videos together on YouTube.

The ability to watch recorded YouTube videos together has been possible in Hangouts from the start, but now, YouTube Live product manager Brandon Badger told GigaOM that Google‘s been quietly rolling out live video stream viewing while chatting in Hangouts.

While it’s not exactly simple to enable a live video feed alongside a Hangout chat now, Google plans to add tools that will make it a lot easier to find those live video feeds on YouTube while using Hangouts. According toGigaOM, it’s already possible to incorporate live feeds into hangouts using the following five-step manual method:

• Start a Hangouts session in Google+ and invite your contacts to join you.
• In a separate browser tab, head over toYouTube.com/Live and select a live stream of your choice
• Copy the YouTube video I.D. of the selected live stream. Not sure how to find it? Just click on the share link below the video. You’ll get to see a link like http://youtu.be/XXXXXXXX – the cryptic code after the slash is the video I.D.
• Switch back to hangouts, open the video tab and search for the I.D.
• Click play, and you’re all set.

It doesn’t stop there. As you can see above, this is not a convenient way to incorporate live video into a Hangout, so YouTube plans to create tools that will tightly integrate the feature into its Google+ interface, as well as integrate Hangouts into YouTube Live.

For example, Google+ users will be able to watch a live stream on YouTube and see which of their friends are watching that stream in a Hangout. Then, they’ll be able to join their pals to watch that live video, letting them, say, virtually gather together to watch a live football game, with the ability to interact with each other face-to-face at the same time.

We’re going to select our friends carefully to watch live streaming video with this feature — imagine nine of your most talkative friends distracting you so much that you can’t pay attention to the broadcast. Beyond that, we have a feeling this capability will go way beyond watching football games together. What are some other uses for this new group watching of live streaming videos?

F-16 Fighter Jet Crashes On Runway [VIDEO]

 by Charlie White

An F-16 fighter jet ran off the end of a runway and crashed at the EAA AirVenture convention in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Friday.

The lucky Alabama Air Guard pilot wasn’t injured, but it looks like that $20 million F-16 Fighting Falcon might need a serious overhaul.

The cause of the crash is unknown, but it appears that for some reason the pilot simply ran out of runway. As you can see, after a few tense seconds the pilot exited the aircraft and jogged away to safety. He was taken away in an ambulance and found to be unhurt.

An Air Force team has begun an investigation into the cause of the accident.

EAA AirVenture, originally known as the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Fly-In Convention, is an annual event in Wisconsin, billed as “the world’s greatest aviation celebration.”

Rebecca Black’s Follow Up to “Friday” Has Arrived [VIDEO]

by Adam Ostrow

167 million views and countless parodies later, Rebecca Black has released a sequel to “Friday” on YouTube. We’re told that the new video, called “My Moment,” tells “the story of her sudden rise to fame,” with clips of Black’s life since “Friday” started to go insanely viral back in March.

The debut is part of an apparent push to cash in on Black’s popularity, with the singer also announcing she’ll have a 5-track EP out in August. The single goes on sale on iTunes and other online retailers on Tuesday.

A release about “My Moment” highlights some of the singer’s “achievements” since Friday took off, including her TV appearances, her role in Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” video and status as “the Number One most popular topic on Twitter in 2011 to date.”

Of course, all of that is more of a result of Black’s status as one of the most popular memes of 2011 and not what would represent a dramatic shift in the world’s musical taste (in late March, “Friday” had only been played 12 times on the radio despite its vast digital reach), but the singer seems poised to make a go of it as an artist.

In any event, give the sequel a watch and let us know what you think in the comments — can anything from this video come close to matching the viralness of the original?:

Kaltura Raises $20M for Open-Source Video Technologies

by Jolie O'Dell

Today, open-source video platform Kaltura announced a $20 million round of funding led by new investors Nexus Venture Partners with participation from Intel Capital, existing investors .406 Ventures and Avalon Ventures, and technology lender Silicon Valley Bank.
Altogether, the company has raised $27.5 million since its 2007 Series A.
Currently, the startup says it serves more than 100,000 publishers, including media companies, enterprises, educational institutions and service providers.
Its users include such big-name entities as Fox, Paramount, HBO, Warner Brothers, Best Buy, Texas Instruments, Coldwell Banker, MIT, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, NYU, Columbia University and Siemens. These clients use the platform to enhance their web-based and mobile offerings with custom multimedia features.
The company hosts an app and plugin marketplace called the Kaltura Exchange, and its HTML5 media library has also been a recent focus.
The startup’s CEO, Ron Yekutiel, said in a release that the company’s open-source mission isn’t at all at odds with its capitalistic goals — something other open-source entrepreneurs such as WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg are also quick to point out in interviews.
Yekutiel said, “Kaltura is disrupting the online video space in a similar way to how open-source Red Hat and MySQL have disrupted their fields of operating systems and databases. We are honored to have gained the support of Intel Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, who have played an important role in the success of these two open-source giants.
“Kaltura’s financial success and the premium investors that it attracts demonstrate once again that there is indeed no dissonance between doing good and doing well.”

Our World, Slowed Down 100 Times [VIDEO]by Charlie White

by Charlie White

Come with us into a world where everything is slowed down more than 100 times. Thanks to an expert videographer and editor named Tom Guilmette and a Vision Research Phantom Flex camera, we get a peek into an alternative universe — the same one we inhabit, but where the temporal element has been distorted in a variety of ways.
According to Guilmette on his Vimeo site:

“I was working a gig in Vegas with a brand new Phantom Flex high speed digital cinema camera. I had to try it out. In fact, I never did go to bed that night. I opened up a wormhole shooting at 2,564 frames per second.”

Most video ambles by at somewhere between 24 and 30 frames per second when it’s shot and viewed, but when you play back this 2,564 frame-per-second video at the usual speed of 24 or 30fps, things are slowed down so much, you can see things you’d never be able to detect in real time.
I’m always amazed at the way extreme slow motion techniques can turn everyday occurrences into mind-bending art. Beyond that, I’m impressed with the way Guilmette makes his video so entertaining with convincing sound effects, music and sharp editing, further playing with speed differences to create an astonishing timescape.
Want to shoot one of these yourself? Get yourself a Phantom Flex camera, available for rental for $3000 a day.

X-Men: First Class Trailer Hits YouTube [VIDEO]

by Jolie O'Dell

If you like Cold War-flavored, comic book-inspired action flicks (and who doesn’t?), here’s something to kick off your weekend.
We’ve got a long wait until the theatrical premiere of the next X-Men installment from the Marvel comic universe, X-Men: First Class, but here’s a sneak peak at what the film will entail, courtesy of a 2-minute YouTube trailer.
According to accompanying text, we learn that the new movie in the successful comic-to-silver-screen franchise “charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga and reveals a secret history of famous global events.

“Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other mutants (some familiar, some new), to prevent nuclear Armageddon. In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-Men.”

The film, which won’t be in theaters until June 3, 2011, is seen by Fox as both a prequel to the three primary X-Men films and as the beginning on a new trilogy.
X-Men: First Class is produced by Bryan Singer, directed by Matthew Vaughn and stars James McAvoy as the young Professor X; Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr, who becomes Magneto; Kevin Bacon as villain Sebastian Shaw; and January Jones as Emma Frost. Principal photography took place in London.
X-Men: First Class is the fifth in the X-Men film series, which includes X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Will you be going to see the new X-Men film when it’s in theaters?

Watch All 61 Super Bowl Ads in 2.5 Minutes [VIDEO]

by Charlie White

 

Was it a good year for Super Bowl commercials or not? Take a couple of minutes (2:24 to be exact) and watch parts of all 61 spots shoehorned into this tightly edited masterpiece, and then let us know.
While you’re trying to recall each one of the ads racing by, sit back and enjoy the editing work of Adweek‘s Matt McBrayer, who cut thousands of shots down to this exquisitely manageable size.
In case you missed our Super Bowl Advertising Play-by-Play, one of our many conclusions was that there was plenty to love in this year’s Super Bowl, with certain themes coming to the fore. That must have been thinking of Adweek‘s video editor when he created this spectacular montage, grouping the shots into categories.
So now that you have the perspective of a few days, after this quick recap, which Super Bowl spot was your favorite? Are any more memorable than the others?

Twitpic Brings Video to Twitter

by Jolie O'Dell

Twitpic is launching support for video Tuesday, bringing about a new way for Twitter users to share their clips in a timely manner.

With Twitter’s growing importance as a tool for citizen journalism, multimedia uploading and sharing tools are more relevant than ever before. Services like Twitpic, while still fun for vanity purposes, have played a critical role in spreading newsworthy images from eyewitnesses who have been present with mobile phones at world-changing events.

Events such as the evacuation of Times Square, the earthquake in Haiti, the protests in Egypt and many others have been graphically and valuably portrayed on Twitter via services like Twitpic.

And occasionally, Twitpic images not only depict the news, they become the news, themselves. Last year, a photo of a transit worker sleeping on the job was posted to Twitpic and caused an uproar in the media.

While many folks post YouTube links to Twitter when they need to spread the word about an important video, it’s good to also have a tailor-made video-sharing solution for Twitter users.

Twitpic founder Noah Everett told us in an e-mail, “Users will be able to upload video from the site itself, email, and clients that support the new video option. Everything else basically works the same. We’re trying to be a one-stop-shop for users to share their media on Twitter in real-time.”

We asked if the videos would play from within the Twitter web interface, and Everett said, “The thumbnails will still show on Twitter for now; we’ll work with them to get the actual video itself integrated soon.”

Here’s what the new feature looks like on Twitter and on the Twitpic website. Click the images to see the videos in action:

We’re sure that Twitpic’s events and location features will also be a welcome addition to video sharing on Twitter.

Twitpic currently has 17 million users with 30,000 new registrations daily.