ZiiLabs Demonstrates Their Jaguar3 Android Tablet Media Platform On Video

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

We’ve seen a few peeks of Creative’s Zii-powered Android tablets over the last couple months, but being rather spec-oriented, this reference platform didn’t get much attention. This video does a better job of showing off the advantages of having a general-purpose parallel CPU array like StemCell. It’s a special 48-core chip they’ve married to a 1.5GHz Cortex A9, and it’s dedicated to media processing.

It may not be that we ever see this guy in action: the Zii series of media players just couldn’t stand up to the iPod touch, and it could be that this augmented Android platform isn’t cost-effective or flashy enough to bring in sales. A hell of a lot of people are going to opt for something like the Fire, since they have no idea what WebM is, and don’t see why they would want to have 1080p playback on a small tablet that can’t even display that resolution. That’s why they have a Blu-ray player attached to a 55? LCD. Who can blame them?

It does look like a nice little tablet, though, and having that big parallel array would probably be attractive to a lot of developers. But I don’t think the market is big enough right now for this to sell more than a few thousand units.

[via Fine Oils]

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Samsung And Google Postpone Nexus Galaxy Launch Hours After A Leaked Demo Video Drops

Matt is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. Matt Burns is a family man first and attempts to be a writer second. Born and raised in the heart of the automotive world, only cars eclipse his love of gadgets. He previously wrote for Engadget and EngadgetHD before moving into the party house that is TechCrunch. He learned the retail... ? Learn More

Oh well. Where’s that iPhone 4S pre-order link? Samsung and Google decided that “it is just not the right time to announce a new product” and postponed the scheduled Nexus Galaxy/Prime and Ice Cream Sandwich debut. The two companies were supposed use the CTIA stage next Tuesday to unveil the next-gen superphone and Google’s latest Android incarnation. But that’s not going to happen per a joint statement released this morning.

Samsung and Google decide to postpone the new product announcement at CTIA Fall. We agree that it is just not the right time to announce a new product. New date and venue will be shortly announced.

This takes the event off the books for next Tuesday, October 11th. The mobile world was expecting the big unveiling of the Nexus Galaxy (or Prime, if previous rumors are believed). Details leaked yesterday concerning the so-called superphone that places a 1.2GHz CPU, backed by 1GB of RAM at the core. The phone is said to include an NFC chip, 32GB of storage and a 5MP camera with a 1080p recording mode. Of course none of this was confirmed. Next Tuesday was going to be a big day for mobile nerds.

Eric Schmidt previously stated that Google would launch Ice Cream Sandwich by November. Hopefully Google stays true to its word and the Nexus Galaxy/Prime event will be back on the books sometime this month.

But fear not. A leaked demo video hit the interwebs today that might satisfy your Ice Cream Sandwich craving. It’s hard to tell if this is the real release or just a clever Android 2.x launcher, but we’re leaning more towards the former. The video doesn’t have any glaring goofs or obvious flaws. The OS shown is silky smooth, the animations are right, and there’s certainly a Honeycomb feel throughout the whole thing. If that video is indeed Ice Cream Sandwich, current Android owners might want to hold off jumping on the 4S bandwagon. A beast is nearly upon us.

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Jim Henson Honored With Interactive Muppets Google Doodle [VIDEO]

Google has rolled out a new Google Doodle to honor the 75th birthday of Jim Henson, the famous puppeteer who created The Muppets.

This is not just any Google Doodle, though. The Jim Henson Company and The Creature Shop partnered with Google to create an interactive doodle to honor his legacy. Using the Henson Digital Puppet Studio (yes, there is a digital muppet studio), they designed and animated the characters, which users can then manipulate using a mouse and keyboard. A YouTube video detailing the work that went into designing and creating the Doodle is embedded below

And, as with all good things, there are lots of easter eggs to discover. We’re still busy trying to find them all.

To play with the Doodle yourself, head over to google.com.

View As Slideshow » Each package gets larger with a mouse-over, and a click on it returns search results pertinent to a specific country or the particular items featured in a scene. This one is from December 24, 2010. The Google Doodle team stars in an homage to the silent film era's greatest star's 122nd birthday, April 15, 2011. This Doodle commemorated John Lennon's 70th birthday in October 2010. Debuting May 10, 2011, this Google Doodle marks dance choreographer Martha Graham's birthday. Commemorated the birthday of the inventor of the Bunsen burner, German chemist Robert Bunsen on March 31, 2011. The great inventor's birthday was honored on February 11, 2011. Marking Independence Day 2010. A real crowd pleaser was this playable Pac-Man game, which appeared on May 21. 2010. Here's a playable version.

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Video: Causes Founder Joe Green On The Impact Of f8

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

As you may have heard, today Facebook held its fourth f8 developer conference, showcasing an array of new features that represent what Facebook says are the biggest changes to its Platform since it launched in 2007. The changes include a completely redesigned profile and a new Open Graph API that gives third-party applications and sites more flexibility (and eyeballs) than they’ve had before.

Shortly after the keynote ended, I did a brief interview with Causes founder Joe Green, who outlined which of the features are a big deal for developers, and why they’re so important. Green has extensive experience with Platform — Causes was one of the first developers on Facebook Platform when it first launched, and it was a launch partner for today’s features.

Green has also written a pair of guest posts this week that go into more detail about Facebook’s major changes — including one on Smart Lists and one on the new Open Graph.

Note that we did the video via Skype, and while the video feed was a little iffy at times, the audio remains strong throughout.

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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Joe Green is a Co-Founder of Causes, a popular Facebook and MySpace application.

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Scientists Turn Brain’s Visual Memories into a Mind-Blowing Video

Ever dreamed of recording your dreams and turning them into a video clip? The technology that enables you to do that is near: UC Berkeley scientists figured out a way to turn the way our brains interpret visual stimuli into a video, and the result is amazing.

To be able to do this, the researches used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure the blood flow through brain’s visual cortex. Then, different parts of the brain were divided into volumetric pixels or voxels (the term might be familiar to those who remember early 3D games which were based on voxels instead of polygons which are more commonly used today). Finally, the scientists built a computational model which describes how visual information is mapped into brain activity.

In practice, test subjects viewed some video clips, and their brain activity was recorded by a computer program, which learned how to associate the visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity.

Then, test subjects viewed a second set of clips. The movie reconstruction algorithm was fed 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos, which were used to teach the program how to predict the brain activity evoked by film clips. Finally, the program chose 100 clips which were most similar to the movie the subject had seen, which were merged to create a reconstruction of the original movie.

The result is a video that shows how our brain sees things, and at moments it’s eerily similar to the original imagery.

“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery. We are opening a window into the movies in our minds,” said Professor Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the study published in the journal Current Biology.

Recording our dreams and “reading” the minds of coma patients requires a lot of work still, as current technology only enables scientists to interpret brain activity while the test subject is watching a movie. Ultimately, it could be used to decode how our brain processes visual events in everyday life or, perhaps, our dreams.

Check out another video, which shows the movie reconstruction algorithm at work, below. More details about the study can be found here.

[UC Berkeley via Gizmodo]

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Chinese Social Network Renren Buys Video Sharing Site 56.com For $80 Million

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

Chinese social network Renren has purchased China-based video and photo sharing site 56.com.The deal size is around $80 million, according to a release.

Founded in 2005, 56.com is a Chinese video sharing site where users can upload, view and share videos, similar to YouTube. The majority of the videos on the site are user-generated, consisting of content mix from performing artists, amateur groups, and video enthusiasts.

Renren, which is the closest social platform China has to Facebook, has around 30 million active monthly users and around 100 million registered users in total. The social network recently went public earlier this year, debuting on the New York Stock Exchange today under the symbol “RENN.”

Joseph Chen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Renren, says that 56.com’s photo abd video sharing capabilities is complimentary to RenRen users’ social behavior. “We expect that the synergies and cross marketing opportunities between 56.com and Renren.com communities will further drive growth in user engagement, traffic, and advertising solutions to clients,” he explains in a release.

56.com has raised $30 million in funding from Sequoia, Steamboat Ventures, Adobe and others.

Renren, which is the closest social platform China has to Facebook, has around 30 million active monthly users and around 100 million registered users in total. The social network recently went public earlier this year, debuting on the New York Stock Exchange today under the symbol “RENN.”

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Vimeo Launches Audiosocket-Powered Music Store To Bring Tunes To Video

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At F8 on Thursday, The Social Network will by all accounts be making its official foray into music, with scrobbling and music content galore headed straight for our news feeds. Ahead of Facebook’s new music service, Vimeo is announcing its own musical news, thank you very much, that has some interesting implications for artists and filmmakers and music technology. You may know Vimeo as the quality YouTube alternative that’s long been a place for semi-pro videographers, filmmakers, and Vloggers to host, share, and present their video content. Today, Vimeo is taking its long-awaited leap into the music world with the “Vimeo Music Store” — a custom-designed music licensing solution that will allow Vimeo’s video buffs to search for, discover, and license songs for both non-commercial and limited commercial use.

Powering the nuts, bolts, and backend of the Vimeo Music Store will be Audiosocket’s Music-as-a-Service (or MaaS) platform, a cloud solution designed to allow digital media companies to easily integrate music search, discovery, and licensing. The Vimeo Music Store, which represents the first commercial implementation of Audiosocket’s solution, will allow users to take advantage of all the benefits of a music library that contains more than 100 categories of integrated metadata, all from inside the friendly confines of Vimeo’s platform.

Vimeo users will also have the benefit of access to Audiosocket’s library of 33,000+ legit songs in the new music store, enabling the video platform’s users to select and license a wide variety of tracks that they can use as soundtracks for their video productions, with the ability to then distribute them over the Web, and film festivals, and so on, without worrying about an RIAA SWAT team descending from the roof.

On the flip side of the partnership, Audiosocket’s music artists will now have the benefit of a sizable new distribution channel (along with guaranteed royalty payments on licensed music) and exposure to Vimeo’s audience of more than 50 million monthly visitors — many of them semi-pro and professional filmmakers.

On this note, obviously the real key to Vimeo’s music store is that it opens the door for musicians to monetize their work in personal video creation: An area that’s traditionally been tough for artists to make any significant profits. In this way, Audiosocket’s MaaS platform could prove to be a great way for indie musicians to receive both widespread, multimedia exposure (with attributions) and make some extra income, potentially turning Vimeo into an even more appealing musical alternative to YouTube for the world’s melody makers. (Especially as Audiosocket’s catalog specifically features content from emerging bands, composers and record labels, making it a great tool for indie music discovery.)

It’s also great to see the evolution in the relationship between music and technology — and now the cloud — as Audiosocket’s MaaS platform, which is designed for integration into video and photo sharing platforms, virtual worlds, online games and social networks, could have a disruptive effect on the way music is licensed in digital media. And we all know how much music licensing has been in the need of workable, affordable solutions (really, innovation). Just ask Napster.

After all, when you get down to it, amateur filmmakers really have no idea where to start when it comes to music licensing, and vice versa; both parties want to take advantage of the benefits without the hassle, but they’re by and large clueless on where to start.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Vimeo users will be willing to pay to license Audiosocket’s music content, the pricing structure of which currently stands at $1.99 per track for personal, non-commercial, and web-use for casual users and $98 per track for commercial, web-use licenses for professional users. Thankfully, much of the content will be available for free thanks to Creative Commons Licensing, but professional users may be heard issuing a few groans.

Nonetheless, this could really be a real future-altering partnership for Audiosocket and is no doubt a great bonus for Vimeo users, but it also seems as if the video platform will need to go bigger with its song catalog if it’s to truly make waves.

For more, readers can check out an embeddable widget which includes sample tracks from Audiosocket’s library here and for a look at the Vimeo Music Store, check it out at home here.

Vimeo is a cleanly-designed video sharing website that allows people to publish their videos for public consumption or just for friends and family. Vimeo launched support for high definition video in October 2007, further establishing itself as a leading video hosting platform. The website is owned by the media conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp and operated by Connected Ventures.

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Audiosocket is a music media and technology company that provides artists with the opportunity to monetize their work through both traditional and new media licensing. Placing high standards on the quality of their catalog, Audiosocket is very selective about the content it delivers to the market place. The company only works with artists, bands and composers that are active and creating culturally relevant content. When accepted onto the roster, artists have agents working to deliver their music to the market...

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Run a User-Submitted Photo or Video Contest On Your Site With Olapic

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Olapic

Quick Pitch: Olapic helps online publishers add galleries of user-contributed images.

Genius Idea: Pooling images in a database of social content.

83% of Americans own a smartphone, according to a recent study by the Pew Internet Project. Most of those phones, even the “dumb” ones, are equipped with some kind of camera. More cameras equal more photos, which can be a great opportunity for publishers — if they can find a way to leverage it.

Olapic’s product is one way to do this. The startup makes it easy for site publishers to collect and display user’s photos through widgets they can embed on their sites. Visitors to the publications can either drag and drop files into a box on the site, choose to upload photos from social networks like Facebook or Instagram, email their photos to a special address or tweet their photos with a specific hashtag. Publications get a centralized moderation dashboard. As soon as they approve photos, they appear in a Gallery on the site.

New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune and Styleist have either used the widget on their site or purchased a white label version [Disclosure: Mashable is a customer of Olapic's]. Olapic charges a monthly fee based on each customer’s number of monthly unique visitors.

The majority of Olapic’s customers are news organizations, but co-founder Jose de Cabo said he also thinks the application has a future with sports teams and event organizations. One soccer team, the New England Revolution, already uses it to collect fan photos on its Facebook Page.

From a revenue standpoint, advertising seems to be an even more promising route than subscription fees. Olapic is, for instance, coordinating a branded Facebook version of its widget for Pepsi. It’s an instant campaign that engages consumers, and it can work well for hosting a branded contest. Eventually it may also share revenue with publications for ads the company can incorporate into the gallery widget.

But the startup’s grand vision extends far beyond interactive galleries.

“We’re building a very large network of sites that have video and photo-sharing,” De Cabo says. “What we want is to have this network where users can contribute with photos and videos, and get more exposure to their pictures.”

In other words, any website could search the entire database for material to publish. It sounds like a convenient solution for publishers, but will site visitors be eager to share their photos with the world without compensation? De Cabo says their excited reactions to the widget so far suggest that they will. That, and what he calls “vanity coins.”

Would you be willing to share your photos this way? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Thomas Hawk

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

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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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International Video Site ViKi Debuts iPhone App, Will Partner With Samsung For Android App

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

ViKi, an international video site for world TV series and movies translated in 100+ languages by its community, is debuting a new iPhone app today, called ViKi On-The-Go.

As we’ve written in the past, ViKi is an open-source-like solution for video, and acquires the rights to TV shows and movies. The site then puts it on one of its channels and within the first 24 hours an organized, volunteer community subtitles the content using ViKi’s software. The site has gained considerable traction in the past year. Currently, ViKi is seeing 8.5 million unique visitors and 36 million tota visits in the past month, which is four times the traffic that ViKi has seen from last year.

One of the most wanted features, says the startup, is a mobile offering. The new app is free (with in-stream ads), and will contain TV series, movies, and entertainment news from around the world, with subtitles created by fans. The app currently includes movies from Japan, India’s Bollywood, Egypt, Indonesian and TV series from Hong Kong, Venezuela, Russia, Korea and the UK (e.g. Hotel Babylon & Mistresses from the BBC).

ViKi is also partnering up with Samsung Southeast Asia to develop an Android app for the company’s tablets. The app will be launching later this year in Southeast Asia. The partnership is expected to expand to other regions early next year.

What’s interesting about ViKi is that the model allows content owners to open up to new international markets. Investors have bet on ViKi’s model too—the company recently raised $4.3 million in funding from Saar Gur of Charles River Ventures, Reid Hoffman of Greylock, Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, and others.

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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’s New Features Get Animated [VIDEO]

The Taiwanese are at it again! This time the humorists at Next Media Animation (NMA) have turned their computer-animation reenactment efforts to the latest Facebook changes.

NMA takes on the latest updates from the f8 conference including the new Timeline and music features.

As usual, NMA nails it.

Check out some images from the event below.

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Video: Kawasaki’s Power-Assist Robot Suit Helps Humans Lift Heavy Objects

Dr. Serkan Toto currently works as the first and only Asia-based writer for the TechCrunch network, mainly covering Japan-related technology and web companies for TechCrunch, CrunchGear and MobileCrunch. Serkan also works full-time as an independent web and mobile industry consultant with a focus on the Japanese market. He is sept-lingual, holds an MBA and is a PhD in economics. Serkan... ? Learn More

Japanese tech powerhouse Kawasaki is working on the so-called Power Assist Suit, a wearable robot that helps humans carry objects weighing 30-40kg without any effort from the muscles. The suit is actually one of quite a few similar models currently available in Japan.

The Kawasaki robot features a total of four motors in the parts covering the hips and knees (see picture below). The control unit and lithium battery are placed in the part placed around the lower back.

According to Kawasaki, the self-supporting robot is designed in a way that wearers don’t feel the weight of the suit itself when moving around. The Power Assist Suit can be adjusted to the length of the wearer’s legs and doesn’t take more than a minute to put on and off, Kawasaki promises.

The company wants to commercialize the robot after testing it out in its own factories for one to two years.

Here’s a video that shows a human walking around with the Power Assist Suit:

Via Robonable [JP]

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Video: Padzilla Case Turns Your iPad Into An iCoffeeTable

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

There were quite a few thoughts running through my head when I purchased an iPad, but I can honestly say that “I wish I had an iPad as big as a coffee table” wasn’t one of them. Now, after having seen Crunchy Logistics’s Padzilla case, I can safely say it’s all I’m thinking about right now.

Crunchy Logistics seems to have a thing for creating absurdly big touchscreens, a great example of which is the conference table-sized display they showed off last month. The Padzilla is their newest product, and it allows users to interact with their iPhones and iPads on a completely ridiculous scale.

To call it a case is a bit of a stretch: you’re not putting the Padzilla on your iOS device so much as you’re mounting your iOS device inside the Padzilla. The name is pretty apt, for sure: the Padzillas are custom made, and assuming you’ve got the green for it, they come in sizes as large as 150? diagonal. To give you an idea of scale, the model demoed in the video below comes in at a slightly more reasonable 70? diagonal.

The Padzilla is a purely plug-and-play solution to boot; the iDevices don’t need to be jailbroken, but anything older than the iPhone 3GS isn’t supported. If playing Angry Birds and its ilk get old, feel free to connect your choice of game consoles or computers into the display too.

While I’m sure the Padzilla has some practical uses (they’d give your local news station a bit of pizazz, for one), the wow factor alone is enough to make it tempting. Better start saving your pennies though, because CrunchyLogistics CEO Neil Dufva says that buying a 70? rolling display like the one in the video would cost roughly between $30-40,000 (iPad included). If that seems a bit steep, don’t worry: Neil says CrunchyLogistics is open to renting these things out to interested parties.

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Y Combinator-Backed SellStage Wants To Help You Better Showcase Your Products — With Video

Rip Empson is a writer at TechCrunch. He’s not here to make friends, he’s here to WIN, and don’t you forget it. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More

If you’re advertising a product, would you rather simply have an image of that product, or have your consumers be able to watch a video of that product in action? Unless you’re sarcastic like myself, you probably answered with the latter, because the truth is that videos help products sell online. This is true even for those vendors that sell products that one wouldn’t necessarily assume would be made more attractive with video. Consider Zappos, for example, which currently offers over 50,000 product videos. Zappos also happens to do a pretty good business.

For SellStage, a startup from this summer’s batch of Y Combinator companies that is launching today, Zappos is the standard. But most big eTailers are far behind the shoe seller in terms of video content. So SellStage is launching a platform that is designed to make it easy for both big and small businesses to add video content to their websites to showcase their products.

Product videos tend to be different enough from other video content that it needs a specific, if not niche, solution. Videos also tend to be a pain in the ass to integrate with product pages, as you can’t just take your normal embed approach, because it will take up too much space, and may even displace the product images.

So, SellStage wants not only host and stream your product videos, but also play them in a lightbox. So after your product video plays, you want a call to action, not simply a replay link. Of course, SEO is critical eCommerce sites, and that most product videos don’t take this into account, so SellStage automatically generates sitemaps optimized for video search crawlers.

On the merchant side, SellStage offers great value proposition in that all you have to do is add one line of Javascript to the product page, and the startup handles the rest, the players, the hosting, and the streaming. You can then drag and drop your videos where you want them, all with a few clicks.

What’s more, SellStage videos work on iOS devices, which a lot of product videos don’t because they use Flash. The startup is also working on tools to make video production easier, including this forthcoming iOS app, and some “you shoot, SellStage edits”-type features.

The startup, while still in its early form, is going to be very useful to marketing departments who want to manage video on their eCommerce platforms, especially for those who have a large product catalog and want to add 500+ videos and not have those turn into 500 IT requests.

“Retailers who consider their expertise a competitive advantage need to find a way to use their greatest asset – their knowledgeable sales staff”, SellStage Co-founder Tom Saffell said. “To differentiate their online stores from everyone else. Video lets them do that”.

Retailars already have everything they need to make great video: The store is set, the sales staff are the actors, and the script is whatever you say to the customers in store — your sales pitch, says Co-founder Thomas Escourrou.

But how is SellStage going to monetize? The Co-founders told me that they are going to establish a tiered pricing structure that takes into account how many videos the company wants to make, host, and stream, and whether or not they want production assistance from SellStage itself. As the startup moves forward, it also will begin giving its customers more customization options.

SellStage is launching in private alpha today, but is making 50 priority invites available to readers. Simply visit the startup’s homepage and enter “concorde” for a sneak peek.

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Prism Skylabs Refocuses Security Cams Into Productive Video Assets

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

Prism SkyLabs was able to draw media attention before it was even launched thanks to buzz among angel investors (including TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington). When we last reported on Prism, we only knew that the startup planned to ‘bring physical spaces online.’ But the startup, which is debuting today at TechCrunch Disrupt, does so much more, and may be a killer new tool for any merchant or business who has a consumer storefront.

Simply put, Prism Skylabs is a cloud-based service thats allow business owners to bring video feeds online, capture images from these feeds and share this data with consumers and the public. Most stores and restaurants have surveillance videos running 24-hours a day. Unless there is a theft or another crime that takes place in the establishment, this massive amount of surveillance video is unused.

That’s where Prism Skylabs comes in. The startup allows a business to download a free software that detects cameras or video on a network, showcases a number of images of the space to the business. Similar to the way you can pull images from videos using a video editing software, Prism Skylabs pulls relevant images of your establishment and builds insightful visualizations from these photos, while protecting customer privacy.

For example, Prism Skylabs can extract a visualization that will show the path that people are taking in a store (which can help owners gain insight into the performance of design or display), a heatmap of bodies, a photo without any people in the store and more.

Why would businesses want these images? Well, as I stated above, owners can gain insight about the performance of the store and the flow at certain times. And Prism Skylabs allows users to share and syndicate these photos directly from their platform to a business’ Facebook page, Twitter stream, website and Yelp profile.

More over, users can compare web analytics, social media traffic and more with traffic documented by the video images. For example, the startup says that a store could see how much foot and web traffic a Groupon or other daily deal could bring in and at what times the traffic is the greatest. Basically, Prism will be able to mashup data like Google analytics with the intelligence from the actual traffic in the store.

For example, the Creamery (an establishment which many San Francisco residents may know of) is using Prism Skylabs to capture these visualizations to gain insight into consumer behavior (with customer privacy intact). Basically, Prism allows businesses to make sense of any video of their store. And the software integrates with point of sale systems as well.

Another use case is the ability to post realtime pictures of how crowded a restaurant or bar is in realtime. So a restaurant could post pictures of how empty or full the space is to Twitter or Facebook so potential customers can see how busy an establishment is.

Prism was founded by video surveillance expert Steve Russell and Silicon Valley investor Ron Palmeri. Russell previously founded 3VR, a digital video security company where he is currently chairman, and has a dozen video-related patents. Palmeri was Halsey Minor’s right-hand man at Minor Ventures, where he backed and incubated GrandCentral (now Google Voice), OpenDNS, and Scout Labs, a social CRM and brand-monitoring service sold to Lithium Technologies.

Russell and Palmieri have built a proprietary technology that compresses the surveillance video for reduced bandwidth and have already applied for a number of patents. Russell explains that he believes this is a huge market, as most retail stores, restaurants and bars have surveillance cameras but aren’t putting the video to use. In fact, businesses have spent $100 billion on surveillance video platforms in the world.

As for the business model, Prism Skylabs will go freemium, in which the startup will offer some extra paid features.

And already, Prism, which is in closed beta, has attracted the attention of major investors including the CrunchFund. To date, Prism Skylabs has raised $1.5 million from the SV Angel, Yuri Milner, Eric Schmidt, Aaron Patzer, Brad Garlinghouse, the CrunchFund and others.

Q&A
Judges: John Ham (Ustream), Hilary Mason (Bit.ly), Kevin Rose (Milk), George Zachary (Charles River Ventures)

JH: This is a huge opportunity. Timing is great and you are solving a fundamental problem for video in public places, which is privacy. I am bullish on this.

HM: I think this is cool, especially with the things you’ve done around privacy.

KR: I see where this makes sense for the business owner. I don’t get the consumer play. What is the play?

A: Privacy is the big reason why this doesn’t get published. If restaurants can give users a realtime view into the space through images, the consumer benefits.

KR: So the use case is letting consumers know whether a business is busy?

A: yes. Businesses spend thousands of dollars on video and images depicting this space.

GZ: Awesome demo. I love what you are doing. How do you connect deals, campaigns with video.

A: As a business, you can integrate your social media accounts. And we are seeing interest in correlating video and images to point of sale information.

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YouTube Video Hints At New T-Mobile myTouch Phones By LG

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

It used to be that T-Mobile’s myTouch line consisted exclusively of HTC devices, but a video uploaded to T-Mobile’s official YouTube account has revealed that the myTouch club may have some new members.

Before being marked as private, the tutorial video briefly showed off two heretofore unseen LG smartphones, named simply the myTouch and the myTouch Q. A similar pair of LG phones was spotted in a leaked T-Mobile roadmap from a few months back, meaning that this could be the first glimpse of the rumored LG Maxx and Maxx Q.

The LG myTouch line bears a striking resemblance to LG’s Optimus Sol, which as TmoNews points out has a 3.8? AMOLED display. The screen size seems consistent, as does the strangely low placement of the three Android softkeys, but it’s too early to tell if the LG myTouch is just a simple rebrand. The Maxx Q was also reported to sport a four-row QWERTY keyboard, which for right now seems like the only major difference between the two units.

Given the number of other myTouch entries in T-Mobile’s lineup, the branding choice here seems a bit puzzling. To call LG’s device simply the “myTouch” almost seems to imply that it’s more of a myTouch than all of HTC’s devices. It wouldn’t surprise me if T-Mobile made the video private to fix certain inconsistencies in the title and description. Still, if the original roadmap is to be believed, then we’ll only have to wait until November to find out the real deal.

[via AndroidGuys]

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Kleiner-Backed Vlix Is An Instagram For Video; Adds Filters, Effects And More To Mobile Video

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

Mobile video app Vlix is launching a new version of its Instagram-like mobile video sharing iOS app with text-in-video options to video effects, filters, effects and more. The app is currently available in the App Store for free.

Basically, Vlix allows users to post short video (a max of 1 minute) on the fly, but add cool effects, text, edit the content and more. Via the app, you can capture a video and then add artistic filters, and effects like reverse, slow-mo, brighten, and color boost. You can also add customizable text that appears at the start and end of video, and share videos to a private group or to email, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

New features to the app, which originally debuted in April, is the ability to enter the app and browse through featured videos by other Vlix members without having to register as well as the ability to save videos to the iPhone’s camera roll. Additionally Vlix allows you to create a pre-roll short video to run before all of your posted videos.

When you are ready to post a video from Vlix (after using the company’s dead simple editing tool), you render the video (which takes second using Vlix’s proprietary technology), and post. Fellow users within the apps (you can follow other users) can comment and like your video, and you can see how many views it has received.

In many ways, the ease of adding effects to video as well as editing makes the app similar to an Instagram for video. The Vlix folks also have experience with online video. They operate One True Media, a simple video slideshow creation site that sees over 6 million users posting over 10,000 videos a day and over 5,000 videos a day posted to YouTube and Facebook. The company’s other startup SpotMixer allows businesses to create videos for online, TV and mobile.

Vlix has raised $16 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, and DAG Ventures.

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Live Streaming Video Platform IntercastNetwork Brings Real-Time Feedback To Online Broadcasters

IntercastNetwork is a rich-media interactive platform that allows brands to connect to audiences using a combination of live-streaming video, real-time polling, live chat, Q&A, payment processing and more. The resulting platform works well for live broadcasters, who can track audience engagement levels and feedback during in real-time, and adjust their message accordingly.

Unlike LiveStream, Justin.tv or UStream, for example, IntercastNetwork lets broadcasters and publishers push live video feeds, including those from outside sources, directly to their own website’s homepage or others’ sites, where branding, features and other platform components can be more directly controlled.

IntercastNetwork grew out of Brand Knew, a full-scale digital agency with offices in Los Angeles and New York. Explains Co-founder Zachary Suchin, he and fellow Co-founder Jason Schutzbank refer to themselves as “a developmental venture equity firm” because, on occasion, they invest development and other services in exchange for equity in the venture.

Recently, Brand Knew was approached by a long-time ad veteran about building out a “QVC for the Internet.” But it was Jason who realized that the application for the technology could extend far beyond online shopping.

With the platform, publishers can push live video to viewers in a number of ways using the technology, including on Facebook tabs, microsites, mobile, or to homepages, through banners or expandables, for example. Alongside the main video window, real-time polling, chat, and other applications run to further engage the audience. With all these technologies combined, the broadcaster has something closer to a “real” conversation with viewers. They’re talking “with” their viewers, not “at” them.

For obvious reasons, this platform is ideal for politicians who give live speeches online. Candidates can immediately adjust their talking points on the fly based on the feedback they receive from the real-time analytics on the service’s backend. In addition, the platform includes a payment processing mechanism, which politicians can use to solicit campaign funds on the fly.

The company has a long list of interested companies, brands, politicians and others. We got a peek at the “in talks with” list here at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley, and it definitely included some recognizable names in terms of global brands and well-known politicians. We can publicly confirm that NBC Universal will be using the service. And with election season just around the corner, know this: you’ll see IntercastNetwork in action very soon, somewhere big.

IntercastNetwork has received $1.25 million from undisclosed angels.

Intercast is a rich-media interactive platform that allows brands to bring an experience to a wide, but highly targeted audience. The platform can push content onto any website at a set time, utilizing live-streaming or pre-recorded video, real-time polling, live chat, Q&A, and a one-click-buy option to increase user interaction. Broadcaster experience provides virtual focus groups during which brands can use the data to alter their broadcasts in real-time in order to most efficiently convey messages to a targeted...

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