Google’s Own Youtube Channel Confirms Ice Cream Sandwich’s Oct. 11th Debut

Greg Kumparak is the Mobile Editor at Techcrunch. Greg has been writing for the TechCrunch network since May of 2008. Greg was born just outside of San Jose, and now lives in the East Bay of California. ? Learn More

If you had any lingering doubts that Samsung’s upcoming Unpacked event would serve as a launching pad for Ice Cream Sandwich (the next major build of Android), let them be cast away: Google has just gone and confirmed it themselves.

Early this morning, the Android Developer Youtube channel (which serves as the official video repository for Google’s Android Dev group) put up a placeholder page for the livestream of the October 11th event. Nothing too unusual there.

What is unusual, though, is the name of the placeholder. Rather than “Samsung Unpacked!”, or “A Special Event From Samsung And Google”, or anything else even somewhat vague, they just come right out and say it: it’s the Android ICS Launch.

Between Ice Cream Sandwich and the unveiling of the Galaxy Nexus (the device formerly known as the Nexus Prime), this event is absolutely shaping up to be one to watch. We’ll be there bringin’ back all the details as they break, so be sure to tune in next week.

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....

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Android is a software platform for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in Java that utilizes Google-developed software libraries, but does not support programs developed in native code. The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards...

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Norma Kamali to Debut Spring Collection in 3D Show & Ecommerce Site [VIDEO]

American designer Norma Kamali is taking online runway shows and ecommerce to new dimensions — literally — with the premiere of her Spring 2012 collection this week.

The designer has developed a fun and dynamic 3D film and series of product pages showcasing the collection, which will premiere for press and buyers at Lincoln Center between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Wednesday, and online at normakamali3d.com on Thursday.

Viewers can register for 3D glasses, designed in Kamali’s signature cat-eye shape, through her Facebook Page, or opt to watch the film in 2D. More than 16,000 people have signed up for glasses so far, Kamali says.

The film, which is eight minutes long, isn’t your typical fashion presentation. Models are shimmying and playing tambourines. Odd objects, such as lizards, are embedded throughout as part of an interactive game visitors can play for prizes.

Afterward, viewers can shop the collection via a series of short and equally fun 3D clips showcasing each look. Models are holding — and playing with — numbered placards that can be used to identify the items they’re wearing. Since the collection has not yet been manufactured, shoppers can sign up to be notified when specific items are available for purchase.

A sample product video. (Requires 3D glasses.)

Kamali says she was inspired to produce a 3D film and ecommerce website after seeing the 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

“The minute I saw that vineyard [in the film], I thought ‘oh my god.’ I couldn’t concentrate on the film anymore, I kept wondering what would clothing look like, what would a presentation of my spring collection look like, what would be shopping be like in 3D,” says Kamali. “What if we had a girl in action representing the personality of the collection, have her pop right out at you [in 3D], what could be better than that?”

After the film, Kamali recalls, she ran out and bought a cheap video camera, borrowed “a couple of dancers” from a studio down the street, and began experimenting with 3D films. “We were screaming looking at this, saying, ‘We have to do this, we just have to.’”

Kamali’s team then began doing research and hired a two-camera film team to do the shots. It was the first fashion film they had done and they learned a great deal, she says.

“[The 3D film and product pages] give people a reason to want to come to your website,” Kamali adds.

Kamali has a long history of innovation, not just in design, but also in digital. She was among the first designers to plaster her store windows in scannable barcodes, advertise on the iPad and was the first to open an online store on eBay.

When asked why it was important to position herself as a digital pioneer, she explained: “It’s part of your personality. [I am] my business, they’re inseparable, and in my business communication is everything. You can have the most incredible something, but if nobody knows about it, if you don’t communicate the story behind it, your invention has no value.”

“We think about telling the story as much as the product itself,” Kamali says of her business these days. “It’s a competitive world. It’s important not only that you have a unique product but that you tell your story in the most interesting way possible.”

For Kamali, that meant creating a film that was “fun,” “funny,” and “shameless.” Most fashion films are esoteric and moody she says, and that’s not for her. “We are very disrespectful of the way you present fashion. As you see [in the product pages], pulling a number out from under your skirt is not a typical fashion presentation. The film is very funny, it’s fast and to the point, but you get to see all of the clothes and you get to see them in 3D in a fun, playful way. It is meant to make people feel good. I think it’s quite different from what most industry people are doing at this time.”

As the technology evolves, Kamali is confident that all fashion films and shopping sites will be designed in 3D in the future.

After other brands see this, we can’t help thinking she’s right.

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Facebook News Feed Gets Smarter— And The Ticker Makes Its Big Debut

Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’. You can reach him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (he has other addresses too, so don’t worry if you have a different one). ? Learn More

One of Facebook’s most important products is getting much smarter — and a little easier to use.

Less than 48 hours before its f8 developer conference, Facebook is rolling out an updated version of News Feed that does away with the two-tabbed interface that it’s had for two years now. Before today you’d have to swap between ‘Top Stories’ (a feed of stories that Facebook thought were important) and ‘Most Recent’ (a feed of your friends’ most recent actions on the site). Plenty of users clicked both of these tabs — over 50% as of last year — but Facebook has long been convinced that it wasn’t the optimal solution.

Which brings us to today’s launch. Facebook will now merge both types of content into the same feed, intelligently determining how much screen real estate to allocate to ‘Top Stories’ based on how recently you’ve logged into the site. If you’re checking Facebook ten times a day at work, then most of the items in your feed will be recent; if you’re logging in for the first time in the few days, Facebook will try to give you an overview of the most important things your friends have shared. These important stories will be denoted with a small blue triangle in the corner, and you can manually tell Facebook if it missed an important story, or if you don’t care for one of the items it deemed important (in this sense, it’s a bit like Gmail’s Priority Inbox).

This is a big change, and it’s been a long road to get here — as the site’s home page, News Feed has seen plenty of iterations over the years, particularly around the way real-time content is displayed.

In the early days of News Feed, users would see a listing of posts that Facebook felt they’d be most interested in. It worked pretty well, but it had one downside: posts were often hours old, which made the content feel stale compared to services like Twitter. Facebook unveiled its solution to this in March 2009, which it first introduced a real-time News Feed. No longer would all posts be delayed by at least 10 minutes — the new Feed would show them as they happened.

Which, of course, brought with it other issues, like the fact that it was harder to tell which posts were actually important. Facebook used a ‘Highlights’ section in the sidebar to showcase the most important stories, but those were easy to look over. So it wasn’t a big surprise when Facebook later merged highlights back into News Feed, allowing users to swap between a ‘Live Feed’ and ‘News Feed’ view (which were later renamed to Top News and Most Recent).

How’s that for a history lesson?

The second major change today is the official unveiling of the Facebook Ticker, a stream of content in the right sidebar that some users have been seeing for the last few weeks (Facebook’s VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer says that the company has put a lot of work into making sure it gets Ticker right, hence the extensive testing).

The purpose of Ticker is pretty straightforward: it shows you a stream of your friends’ most recent activity on Facebook, as it happens. This means that every time one of your friend ‘Likes’ a piece of content, posts a photo, or comments on a status update, you’ll immediately get a notification in your Ticker. And if you mouse-over one of the updates, Facebook will show a pop-over with relevant information (for example, if a friend checked into a venue, you’ll see a Bing map).

At first glance Ticker may not sound like a big deal (after all, you’re going to see the most important updates in your News Feed), but it may well become one of the site’s most important features. The immediacy of these updates means it’s easy to tell if a piece of content is quickly going viral among your friends, or if they’re participating in a particularly active discussion. And, perhaps more important, it gives you a near-constant stream of stuff to look at, which means it’s probably a great way to kill time (this is one reason, I suspect, why Twitter has become popular). Ticker will also be accesible throughout the site: it shows up next to everyone’s News Feed, and if you widen your browser window, the Ticker will show up in a persistent right sidebar, above the chat box.

Finally, Facebook is boosting the size of photo thumbnails in your feed, which makes them nicer to look at (and more inviting to click on).

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term...

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