In addition to being in good standing, the YouTube channel must have a minimum of one thousand subscribers. The sticking point, however, is that neither of the two alone seem to guarantee that you’ll be granted access to the feature, instead making you eligible to apply for it. Says YouTube, after enabling the Live button, users will gain access to the feature “in the following weeks,” all of which is a rather obtuse explanation of the expansion.

You can find out rather quickly if you meet the requirements by heading into the Account Features page and scrolling to the bottom of the listing. At the end of the list is the “Live” feature with a radio button. If you see a clickable button that says “Enable,” you’ll eligible to apply. If you’re not for whatever reason, such as bad standing or too few subscribers, you’ll see the following instead:

There are three categories in which an account is monitored for good or sub-par standing: Community Guidelines, Copyright Strikes, and Content ID Claims. All three are likewise listed on the Account Features page, each with a radio button and rating next to it. All three radio buttons must display a green light and the phrase “Good Standing.”

YouTube specifies the standards for gaining – and remaining – in good standing in its Community Guidelines. If you are granted the live streaming feature, you’ll be able to use any live video stream, with the ability to implement various camera angles, advertisements, slates, and close captioning. The live streams are supported across multiple devices, and can be watched from a computer, tablet, or smartphone.

SOURCE: YouTube

According to the announcement, the agreement between the two companies allows Yahoo to exclusively provide Saturday Night Live’s archive of video content from the last 38 years. Full video content from the current season will not be offered by Yahoo, but it will feature clips from the season, with Mayer specifically listing Coffee Talk, Wayne’s World, Coneheads, and Pat being among them.

The announcement doesn’t give us much more detail than that, simply saying that it will be available “across Yahoo!’s sites,” implying that it won’t be all aggregated in a single location. Mayer says that another announcement will be made once the video content is available, and we’ll be sure to keep an eye out for it, with more details to follow.

In other Yahoo news, we reported earlier today that Yahoo Japan and Softbank Capital have joined forces to create a $20 million fund aimed at helping U.S. startups get a foothold in the Japanese market. In addition, Yahoo Japan also appointed a new U.S. operations head, Toshiaki Chiku, who said that the Japanese market can be a hard place for US startups to succeed, but this program aims to change that.

[via Yahoo]

The easiest way to grasp how many users this is? Almost one of every two Internet users visits YouTube for their video needs. That is astronomical, but perhaps still not enough to grasp the full nature of 1 billion users. How about this? The user base in one month is equal to approximately the Super Bowl audience – times ten.

Taking it even further, if YouTube were its own country, it would be the third largest, coming in behind only India and China. And rounding out the examples, remember PSY and Madonna’s Madison Square Garden event? They would have to perform in front of that audience 200,000 more times to equal the number of unique monthly visitors YouTube gets every month.

In summary: 1 billion users is a huge number, and certainly a celebration-worthy achievement. And as any good company would do, YouTube has given a hearty thank you to everyone who uses the service, expressing gratitude for every user from the “aspiring filmmaker in his basement” to the “next great pop musician.”

[via YouTube]

Socialcam 5.0 boasts a complete visual effects redesign, including a new icon for the app, meaning users will feel like they’re getting an entirely new experience with the latest version. Unlike the last version, 5.0 now offers 720p HD video recording, as well as a video HDR mode for creating well-exposed, color-saturated videos. Both video modes offer real-time mapping, as well as color correction, making it a handy option for creating videos that aren’t entirely bland.

Other features on Socialcam 5.0 include unlimited video recording length and storage, as well as the ability to set videos to private, and to have a private account. Title, soundtracks, and themes are all available, as well as “experimental” and vintage filters that let you give your videos an Instagram-like makeover. Videos are cloud-stored, and can be shared on social networks, YouTube, and sent to friends or yourself via SMS and email.

Autodesk’s Consumer Group Vice President Samir Hanna had this to say: “We’re particularly excited about this update to Socialcam, as it starts to deliver on our promise to expose aspects of our award-winning visual effects software to everyone through the Socialcam community. We believe there is a huge opportunity in the video sharing market and anticipate that we’ll all share videos the way we share photos today.”

[via Business Wire]

Sony promises that the new online store offers rich and detailed product pages making it easy to browse the store catalog containing what Sony claims to be millions of pieces of game-related content. The game content includes downloadable games, add-on content, and themes. The store is accessible through the PS3 and content can be purchased online via computers.

Content purchased using a computer for the PS3 will be added directly to the My Downloads area within the PlayStation Store. The content is also accessible using the PlayStation Vita or the PSP. The content also includes movies and TV episodes available through the online store that can also be watched on any Windows computer via the Media Go application for Windows PCs.

The movie and TV content can also be viewed on Android-powered Sony Xperia smartphones and tablets. Sony says that this online store was first offered in Europe in December. As of January 24 the store is available in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Sony announced not long ago that people can also find their account wallet using PayPal and those wallet funds can be used to purchase any content from the new online store.

[via Sony Entertainment Network]

The free content on the channels will include: H+ The Digital Series from Warner Bros., Crash Course and Written by a Kid from Geek and Sundry, Blue from WIGS, and The Key of Awesome from Barely Political. In making this content available, YouTube is expanding its audience and presenting its content offerings to a larger demographic of users, who may not be aware of the content it currently offers.

This reflects on Virgin’s stated goal of increasing the number of videos it offers four-fold, something it would do in conjunction with increasing the size of its 9-inch rear seat displays, which are available on a quarter of its US flights. This is in addition to the in-flight wireless Internet it offers on many of its flights.

Virgin already offers a variety of in-flight video content via other deals, bringing fliers content from Vevo, Funny or Die, Red Hour Digital, Stoodpid Monkey Productions, Barry Katz Entertainment, AEG, Vice, Rogue, Relativity Media, and more. Back in July, we reported that Virgin American was rated the top domestic airline for the fifth time straight.

[via Variety]

Thanks to this deal, viewers can now shell out cash to buy on-demand access to any of the 300 Sony titles. Options include Dracula, Groundhogs Day, The Fisher King, and Sense and Sensibility. If those sound kind of…aged, there will also be some modern offerings, including Men in Black 3, 21 Jump Street, and The Amazing Spider-Man.

Said Huilong Zhu, Tudou’s Vice President of Movie Operations: “We’re delighted to be working with Sony Pictures Television to enrich our film library. Since launching Youku Premium in 2010, Youku Tudou has been committed to building the best platform for viewers and copyright holders alike, and our strong working relationships with all eight major Hollywood studios allow us to offer our viewers a wealth of licensed content.” He went on to explain that unanticipated subscriber numbers lead them to believe that viewers are willing to pay for quality content.

Youku’s first paid content was a live broadcast of Guo Degang’s comedy show in 2009. Soon after, the company launched Youku Premium in 2010, which provides high-resolution and ad-free programming via both on-demand and subscription-based models. Presently, Youku Tudou enjoys two million paying users, and is “China’s first premium video platform.”

Even better is the fact that these digital movies will be offered for less than current going rate for movies. Fox plans to offer its digital flicks for around $15 a pop, down from the $20 that consumers normally pay. The company will offering these movies with “Digital High Definition” or “DHD” branding, and this new initiative marks a team up between Fox and UltraViolet, a digital streaming service that Fox has been hesitant to partner with in the past.

Fox needs to tread carefully here, however. The company has tried to offer early digital copies in the past and failed to succeed for a number of reasons. Not only did Fox offer these earlier releases at a premium, charging as much as $30 per movie, but it also released these digital copies only two months after the movies premiered in theaters. Obviously, that didn’t sit too well with theater owners, so this time around, we’re seeing Fox take a much less aggressive approach to offering digital content early. Everyone should be happy with this new plan, as Fox says that most of the movies it offers early will be out of theaters by the time they become available digitally.

This new initiative will launch in 50 countries around the world simultaneously, and even though Prometheus is the only film with a solid digital release date at the moment, we’re told to expect other Fox films such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Watch, and Ice Age: Continental Drift to follow suit. If Fox does this right, it could help grow the digital movies market, which is already on the rise but still quite small when compared to the boxed movies market. Stay tuned, because this could get interesting.

[via The New York Times]

The cards will be limited edition and the little screen will be used to show 20 minutes of career highlights for the player the card is featuring. The cards were created a company called Recon Group Inc for Panini America. The company makes cards for the NBA, NHL, and NFL. The cards are still made from cardboard but are “many times thicker” than the traditional cards. The screen can be turned on and off and it has 2GB of storage for the user to upload more content to the card.

It runs from an internal rechargeable battery and the card appears to have its own USB connector. The special video cards will be limited edition inserts in Panini’s Totally Certified Basketball card line. The packs will include normal cards as well. Apparently, you will never know if you are getting a video card or not. A pack of five cards is about $20. The company will offer autographed video cards too.

[via LA Times]

Chris “Burnsy” Burns was impressed with the Looxcie in his review, it did what it said it would do, and worked smoothly. It was also comfortable to wear, and didn’t make people nervous when being recorded (always a plus). Burnsy’s aunt did ask him, “what in the heck do you have on your head now?!”, but aunts can be that way. The LX1 sells for $200 MSRP, but is selling on Amazon for $159. We’ll be looking forward to hearing from Looxcie about the LX2, and will be sure to update you on the new features, pricing, and all the details once the device has been officially announced.

[via Wireless Goodness]

The display system puts the screens on the floor, walls and ceilings and it takes 156 of the screens to make the attraction work. Each of those panels is 60-inches in size and they are Sharp PN-V601 screens. The attraction is called the 5D Miracle Tour and it looks interesting. Visitors don’t get to walk on the floor screens, from the rendering it appears that the viewers stand at railings behind the room.

The front wall, floor, and ceiling each have 36 monitors on them each and the sidewalls use 24 monitors. The official release says that the finished effect surround the viewing in a giant seamless display. The rendering hardly looks seamless; perhaps the real thing has less of a seam. This looks like an interesting attraction; I can see people, crowding in to see underwater views and other types of movies. It’s too bad the screens aren’t strong enough to stand on, it would be really cool to stand in the middle of that room.

[via Akihabara News]

A job posting was discovered by Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet by Microsoft for the Ventura Media Services team looking for developers for a set of services “revolving around music/video discovery and consumption.” The project is being developed under Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices unit, which manages the Xbox and the Zune. The service reportedly will incorporate ratings, recommendations, and comments from users.

Ventura looks like it could be web-based service much like Pandora. The recommendations and ratings could give users music and videos based on their choices or what their friends might be listening too. In 2000 Microsoft bought MongoMusic for $65 million, which was building a engine for music recommendations like Pandora. Nothing really came of the technology, but we know Microsoft has the capability. The Ventura service probably won’t make it to the Zune, but could make it onto Windows Media Player, Windows Phone 7, or Xbox Live in the future.

[via Business Insider]

Nielsen also tracked the number of unique browsers on top Chinese websites during Chinese New Year. The top Chinese sites saw a significant increase in the number of unique users.

11 percent of Shanghai homes simultaneously used the Internet while watching the Gala show.

[via nielsenwire]

The Content Server 5.0 can record Telepresence sessions in 1080p resolution at 30 frames a second and allow for immediate review, playback and sharing, using Cisco’s Show and Share technology. The MXE 3500 can help tag words from a speech to a text engine to allow easy searches for videos with specific content.

Cisco also announced a 47-inch display unit, the CTS 1300, which is big enough for telepresence sessions with three to six people.

Prices have not yet been announced. The MXE 3500 will ship in Q2 2011, and the Content Server will be available in March, according to Cisco.

[via ComputerWorld]

The large photodiodes deployed capture light and give the DP2xhigh resolution and richly-graduated tones, Sigma says. The camera features the TRUE (Three-layer Responsive Ultimate Engine) II image processing engine. It also includes a RAW data (X3F) recording mode for retaining full image capture detail, in addition to the standard JPEG recording format.

The price and release date have not yet been announced.

Press Release:

The Sigma Corporation is pleased to announce the new Sigma DP2x compact digital camera featuring a 14 megapixel FOVEON X3® direct image sensor (2,652× 1,768× 3 layers).

The new Sigma DP2x is the latest DP2 series model and incorporates AFE (Analog Front End) and faster autofocus. AFE is also used in the DP1x compact digital camera and SD15 digital SLR and converts full color data, which the FOVEON X3® capture system records, into a digital signal. This enables the camera to reproduce high definition and richly colored images. In addition, the new AF algorithm provides high speed autofocus, ensuring convenient shooting.

SLR-sized image sensor
The size of the image sensor used in the DP2x camera is 20.7mm x 13.8mm. It is approximately seven to twelve times larger than sensors used in ordinary compact digital cameras. The large photodiodes deployed capture light efficiently and give the DP2x its high resolution and richly-graduated tones.

Full-colour image sensor
Utilising the special features of silicon, which is penetrated to different depths by different wavelengths of light, this 14 megapixel direct image sensor succeeds in full-colour capture with the full RGB in a single-pixel location.

TRUE II image processing engine
The DP2x incorporates the “TRUE (Three-layer Responsive Ultimate Engine) II” image processing engine which improves the processing speed and overall image quality. The unique image-processing algorithm provides high resolution and reproduces high definition images with richly graduated tones.

AFE (Analogue Front End)
AFE (Analogue Front End) converts the colour data, which full-colour capture systems record, to a digital signal. This enables the camera to reproduce high definition and richly coloured images.

24.2mm F2.8 lens
The DP2x is equipped with a 24.2mm F2.8 large aperture lens, equivalent to 41mm on a 35mm SLR camera, which has been designed exclusively for DP2 series. Two high refractive index elements and two molded glass aspherical lenses provide superior image quality and allow its compact construction.

RAW format recording
The DP2x includes JPEG recording format for convenience plus a RAW data (X3F) recording mode for retaining full image capture detail of the utmost quality. The RAW images can be processed in the supplied Sigma PhotoPro software.

[via DPReview.com]

Since the screen is detachable, it allows the camera to be small and light, and still have and LCD screen for easier shooting. According to Nicholas Woodman, GoPro’s CEO: “At the core, we’ve kept the HD HERO camera as small and light as possible, cutting out everything that isn’t required for capturing incredible HD content. Our wide angle lens allows for the omission of an LCD screen for most uses, but of course there are times when an LCD screen comes in handy.”

The detachable screen sells for $79.99. See the video here.

[via GoPro]

Savoy judges the UI to be a bit difficult to master, but that the user manual that comes with relieves the load considerably. Moving away from a physical dial and to a touchscreen may not have been the best idea, but only to some. The camera itself is lovely to look at and all components seem to be very light, but pro. A more than substantially nice flash for non-pro users, bulk reduced from the previous model, and the inclusion of HD video 60fps (which is super hot, if you did not know), make this a camera that should definitely be out today rather than January. I want one too, Savov! Lemme just borrow that one!

A note from Savov:

Please note: Panasonic has not yet finalized the GF2′s firmware, meaning that the sample images … below may not necessarily be indicative of the quality you’ll get from the final product.

To see examples of video playback and sample images, head over to Engadget.

[Via Engadget]