Lucky eBay Buyer Demos Ice Cream Sandwich On Video

Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More

Why is it that random eBay shoppers always seem to have the best luck? In what has to be one of the most fortuitous purchases I’ve seen in a while, someone picked up a Nexus S off of the auction site that just happened to be running a build of Google’s latest Android update: Ice Cream Sandwich.

Well, that’s the story, anyway. Thankfully, our lucky buyer was able to contain his or her excitement long enough to take some pictures and video and send them to Engadget.

The images in question look remarkably close to a handful of Ice Cream Sandwich pictures that leaked last month, but the video manages to explore ICS with a bit more depth.

The phone’s lockscreen, for example, bears more than a passing resemblance those seen on scores of Honeycomb tablets. On top of that, holding down the Home button brings up a new multitasking menu that allows users to quickly jump from between apps. Otherwise, all of the changes in design language we spotted last time are still around. If I may quote myself:

The distances between app icons and their names have increased a bit, and though the change is minor, it makes the whole layout feel more open. The notification bar is probably the biggest change, with room for bigger icons and updates. The app drawer also seems to have undergone a facelift, with different headers for apps and widgets, and an integrated link to the market for easy access.

It’s always good to have a grain of salt at the ready when something like this happens, but this new media lends a bit of credence to the original leak. Either someone is pulling the strings on an elaborate hoax here, or Ice Cream Sandwich will look as it does here when it finally ships within the next month or two.

Credit to Engadget for the video, and Droid-Life for throwing it on YouTube

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Video: Jeff Bezos Demos The Kindle Fire

Erick Schonfeld is the Editor of TechCrunch. He oversees the editorial content of the site, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three adorable children. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to... ? Learn More

The highlight of today’s Amazon event was when CEO Jeff Bezos finally announced the Kindle Fire about midway through. We captured it on video, and you can see for yourself how Bezos introduced the device.

He demos the unique interface, which highlights the media you’ve interacted with most recently. There is also Whispersync for movies, which lets you pick up watching a movie where you left off when you move between devices. And he even plays Fruit Ninja to show off the dual-core processor’s speed.

You can also watch our hands-on videos for both the Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch to see the devices in action some more (but the one above is the only one with Bezos). And here is more coverage of the Kindle Fire and the rest of the Kindle family.

Launch Date: September 29, 1994

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them all in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells, or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...

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Kindle Fire brings you Movies, apps, games, music, reading and more, plus Amazon’s cloud-accelerated web browser Product features: 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books Amazon Appstore - thousands of popular apps and games Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle Fast, powerful dual-core processor Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows

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Live Webcast: TechCrunch Hackathon Demos – Tune In Now

Jon Orlin is the Production Director for TechCrunchTV at TechCrunch. Jon founded the video production studios at Yahoo! and also co-founded the live daily streaming webcast, Yahoo! FinanceVision. Before that, he was an Executive Producer at CNN for many years, overseeing daily news programs. His work at CNN won a Peabody and Emmy Awards. Jon also co-founded ProductClips, a... ? Learn More

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OnLive Teams Up With GameSpot To Embed Game Demos In Reviews

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. ? Learn More

Game reviews are always inadequate, in that while they can describe how it feels to control your guy, or how the level design is frustrating, you can only kind of get it. Video reviews help, but you can never be sure you and the reviewer are on the same page — more so than with books and movies, I’d say. OnLive and GameSpot are hoping to change that up a bit by adding instant game demos to reviews, so if you’re curious how a game plays, you can just… play it.

You can see it at work on their review of Red Faction: Armageddon here. Unfortunately you need to download a plugin, free of course, but even that low barrier might be too much for people just skimming the review.

They’re not the only ones doing this: in February we saw a very impressive showing from Gaikai, which pushes games to your browser with no plugin at all. I’ve got Crysis 2 running in the next tab over right now.

That said, who does it first isn’t really the point. Both companies have impressive streaming technology and the winner will be the one with its fingers in the most pies come 2012 or 2013, when streaming gaming really goes mainstream. I love the idea of clicking to fire up a demo, not just because it makes the review more effective (the reviewer can even say “try this in the demo below”) but also because demos these days are gigantic. It’s almost as much trouble to download and install the demo as it is to actually buy the game.

This partnership should be fruitful, and it brings up the whole question of exclusivity for demos — instant play on reviews could be one of those “premium” features reserved for registered or paying members. People tend to find away around those barriers, though.

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