video

When I walked into midtown Manhattan's flashy Arena nightclub on Tuesday evening for an event celebrating the introduction of RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service on TiVo, a waiter approached me with a tray full of tumblers containing a clear liquid accompanied by slices of lime.

I was thirsty. "Is this water?" I asked him.

"No, it's an HD Crystal Clear Cosmo," he replied matter-of-factly, "so, no, it's not water."

A little bit of journalistic digging--i.e. finding a sign detailing the evening's signature drinks--yielded that that the HD Crystal Clear Cosmo … Read more

Video search engine blinkx is launching on Wednesday a service that allows people to make money when they embed video clips on their Web sites-- regardless of where the video comes from.

Blinkx has technology called AdHoc that matches relevant text ads with the context of video they accompany. Blinkx will share 50 percent of the revenue generated from the ads with the publishers of the Web sites hosting the video. Advertisers pay every time an ad is clicked on.

The text ads come from a … Read more

There's something deeply satisfying about creating a video, and in the spirit of discovery, National Geographic Digital Media has announced Wildlife Filmmaker, an online video mashup to make you look like a wildlife documenter.

At first glance this is a nice-looking package for targeted video creation--all stylish black with bold accents in a Flash application. Putting together fun film clips is dead easy when you drag National Geographic's video footage of a variety of animals from the clips library to the corresponding clip bin on the storyboard. Repeat with sound snippets, music themes, and captions you author in the Web application's tab. Then click "play" and try to choke back the lump of pride you experience watching little Susie's--or your own--masterpiece.

It's a fun trifle, but from a Web application perspective, Wildlife Filmmaker is flimsy. Footage is limited, and there doesn't appear to be a way to import your own sounds, music, or video clips. Also absent is a way to preview the visual and audio media before dragging it to the storyboard. Once there, the clips lock into time slots graduated at every 5 seconds. The unfortunate result in my film was a caption that spilled over the crux of the clip. I should also note that I couldn't delete unwanted captions from the caption creation tab.… Read more

Like most of us who spend considerable time in the Web 2.0 universe, I love to embed content on blogs and social-networking home pages. YouTube is loaded with countless hours of entertaining videos, but it wouldn't be nearly as popular without the ability to embed those wacky movies all over the Web. Now, a new online service called Yoink'd hopes to capitalize on the embedded-video craze by providing a free method of compiling, presenting, and sharing Web videos with your friends.

Yoink'd is essentially an online media player that uses AJAX and DHTML to search for, collect, and share online video files. It is an entirely self-contained, Web-based application. All of your preferences and playlists are saved within the Yoink'd Mediabox itself. There's no profile page or settings page you have to visit each time you want to add videos or change your preferences. To me, that's the beauty of Yoink'd. The entire application lives in the embeddable widget. Once you pop it on your blog, you'll never need to visit the Yoink'd site again.… Read more

Your boyfriend forget your 30th birthday?

Try sending some raging elephants his way.

Vringo, a video ringtone sharing company, announced Tuesday it's adding video clips from the Discovery Channel to its bevy of video ringtones offerings.

The 2- to 10-second Discovery Channel video clips run the gamut, of yes, raging elephants to bees to serene sunsets.

While the video clips are free, users have to be subscribers to Vringo on both the sending and receiving end to make use of the service. Users also need a compatible phone, such as one running on Symbian J2ME, or the Windows Mobile … Read more

This is one product that definitely benefited from more work at the drawing board. The version of the wearable "Teleglass" video lens we saw last year looked more like a Halloween mask than cutting-edge technology. But according to Japan-based Pink Tentacle, the new "Teleglass T4-N" has a pair with miniature monitors seated discreetly behind the lenses while still providing the effect of viewing a 45-inch screen from 6 feet away.

Each monitor can also be focused independently, and earphones are built into the frame to complete the all-in-one wearable system made by optical device manufacturer Scalar. … Read more

The rumors were true, almost to the letter. Sony Europe has confirmed the existence of a new entry-level PlayStation 3. Scheduled to hit stores on the Continent on October 10, the new PS3 has been stripped down to hit a lower price point: it's got a smaller 40GB hard drive, no built-in flash media reader, and two (rather than four) USB ports. But the biggest change appears to be the loss of backward compatibility with PS2 games. Sony's release specifies that "[t]he new model is no longer backwards compatible with PlayStation 2 titles, reflecting both the … Read more

RoboForm is a popular browsing companion that saves time and finger flexing by filling your passwords and data into online forms and log-ins. Your personal data is securely stored, of course.

Watch RoboForm in action in the First Look video below. The RoboForm trial lets you use the full-featured version of the software, with a limit of ten passwords, two identities, and one profile. If you want unlimited data storage, you'll need to purchase the full version for $29.95.

If you've ever searched for video on the Internet, you know that the results can be a mixed bag. To enhance its search, Veoh Networks, which bills itself as the leader in Internet television, is partnering with video search provider Pixsy. Pixsy will power the video and image search on Veoh.com and VeohTV. Pixsy scours syndication feeds (in the Really Simple Syndication format) for up-to-date images and makes them searchable. Veoh is backed by Time Warner and former Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner.