Meta has secured rights to the voices of actors Judi Dench, Kristen Bell, John Cena and others for its Meta AI chatbot, a ChatGPT-like digital assistant that is part of the plan for conversational AI as part of the multimodal Llama 3.2. Also revealed at Meta Connect this week was Orion, “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen,” queued up to become Meta’s “first consumer full holographic AR glasses,” though they won’t be available anytime soon. A low-priced Quest 3 mixed reality headset, the $299 Quest 3S, will be arriving in time for the holidays, however. Continue reading Meta Reveals Orion Concept Glasses, Celeb Voices, Quest 3S

During CES in Las Vegas last week, Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and chief executive Meg Whitman revealed more details about their streaming content venture fueled by $1.4 billion in venture capital funding. A portmanteau for “quick bites,” Quibi plans to offer short content — under 10-minutes — for mobile phones. In other words, the enterprise is entering the streaming wars, looking for a sweet spot between the heavy-hitter long-form providers like Netflix and HBO and the free, varied content of YouTube and TikTok. Continue reading CES: Quibi Pitches Streaming Short Video for Small Screens

Actress Kristen Bell may soon become the poster child for a new era of film production and distribution. Following the success of a new “Veronica Mars” project crowdfunded via Kickstarter, which reached its $2 million goal in just 10 hours, Bell’s upcoming indie film “Some Girl(s)” is slated for a June 28 release in theaters and online through Vimeo’s new VOD platform. This could mark another change in the digital distribution of media. Continue reading Vimeo On Demand Gets Exclusive Distribution of New Movie

As of this writing, the Kickstarter campaign for the “Veronica Mars” movie is over. It broke fundraising records and took in more than $5 million in crowdfunding. Launched just one month ago by show creator Rob Thomas and actress Kristen Bell, the campaign has raised the topic of whether or not fan-funded projects could change the way films are being made, particularly for projects with rabid fan bases. Continue reading Veronica Mars Movie Funded on Kickstarter: New Model?

A crowdsourced fundraising campaign to produce a film version of the popular 2004-2007 TV detective show “Veronica Mars” has set a new record for the fastest growing Kickstarter campaign, reaching the $1 million mark in just over four hours. In fact, the entire funding goal of $2 million was achieved in less than 10 hours (at press time, the project’s Kickstarter page listed a total of $3,306,914 from 50,094 backers). Continue reading Veronica Mars Project Sets New Record for Crowdfunding