The company behind Uber’s driver calls and Airbnb’s text messages is now offering multimedia messages for businesses that want to reach their customers with photos and videos. Twilio’s API enables businesses to run call centers and send voice and text messages through Amazon Web Services for mere pennies. The new multimedia offering will work via MMS, or multimedia messaging service, through contracts with phone carriers in the U.S. and Canada. Continue reading Twilio Aims to Help Businesses Send Photo, Video Messages

The United States Patent and Trademark Office granted leading aircraft manufacturer Airbus a patent in August for headrests that include helmets attached to a carrier. The headrests will relieve passenger stress by providing entertainment in addition to “sensorial isolation with regard to the external environment.” They will play immersive multimedia content on glasses with display screens that are capable of “holographic projection mode,” according to the patent. Continue reading Virtual Reality Helmet Could Redefine In-Flight Entertainment

MTV and GE are among the brands that have turned to 23-year old Jerome Jarre and his popular Vine videos and Snapchat messages that reach millions (his Vine account alone touts 7.2 million followers). Brands pay up to $25,000 for his Vines and $35,000 for a single Snapchat message. Jarre’s marketing firm, GrapeStory is helping to shape the contagious appeal of short form media. And his star status is going mainstream. Celebrities such as Robert De Niro, Ashton Kutcher and Aaron Paul have appeared in his Vines. Continue reading Short Form: Brands Enlist Jerome Jarre for Social Advertising

SanDisk unveiled its new 512GB memory card at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam last week. The $800 Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I card — which SanDisk touts as “the highest capacity SD card on the market” — is designed for professionals that shoot 4K video, Full HD video and high-speed burst mode photography. The new offering marks an increase in SD card capacity by 1,000 times in just over a decade. It was only 2003 when consumers were scrambling for SanDisk’s 512MB cards. Continue reading IBC 2014: SanDisk Premieres Record-Breaking 512GB SD Card

By the middle of next year, Verizon customers could be watching over-the-top live channels and on-demand movies through a digital video service. Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam told investors at a conference last week that his company was close to reaching deals with major content providers such as ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, DreamWorks, and AwesomenessTV. Verizon may even use multicasting technology to broadcast live content to smartphones via a single stream of airwaves. Continue reading Verizon Considers Launching a Digital Video Service in 2015

According to eMarketer, Google’s YouTube is projected to take in about $1.13 billion in video-advertising revenue this year, up 39 percent from $810 million in 2013. However, the digital video advertising segment in the U.S. is expanding (YouTube’s 18.9 percent share is down from 21.2 percent last year), and YouTube is not expected to increase its market share significantly over the next three years. YouTube is also somewhat limited in its ad potential due to the amount of user-generated and short content. Continue reading Growth in Digital Video Ad Market, YouTube Maintains Lead

Cable channel VH1 and Internet media company BuzzFeed have joined forces to expand their audiences. BuzzFeed will produce videos to drive viewers to watch “Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn” on VH1’s television channel. Segments will air on television in addition to VH1’s digital platforms and the BuzzFeed website. This is the latest deal in BuzzFeed’s Social Tune-In Program and part of its larger video expansion efforts. The company has also inked similar deals with Bravo and IFC. Continue reading BuzzFeed-Produced Videos to Promote VH1 Television Shows

Samsung’s updated Galaxy Note 4 can serve as a screen in a new virtual reality headset accessory. The phone has a higher resolution 5.7-inch display and camera, and can snap into the Gear VR headset to provide users with an immersive video game or concert experience. Samsung has partnered with Facebook’s Oculus VR to develop a new headset, the Gear VR Innovator Edition. This wireless headset contains speakers and electronics to display the Note 4’s screen in a 360-degree experience. Continue reading Samsung Unveils New Galaxy Note 4 Phone and VR Headset

Apple unveiled its new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus at a press event in Cupertino yesterday. The next-gen smartphones feature higher resolution displays, improved camera capabilities, and a glass that curves around the sides. The iPhone 6 Plus has a 5.5-inch screen, the largest so far for an Apple phone. The company also introduced the long-awaited Apple Watch, its first major new product since the iPad in 2010. The $349 smartwatch will work with iPhone 5 models and the new iPhones. Continue reading Apple Announces Two New iPhones, Smartwatch and Apple Pay

Startup QuickFire.TV helps news and sports broadcasters encode their videos for playback on 20 different platforms at lightning fast speeds, making it faster to distribute video content online. QuickFire claims its cloud-based solution transcodes video ten times faster than real-time, thanks to its complete stack infrastructure with Intel Core i7 processors. QuickFire also offers a set of APIs that allows video producers to create custom workflows and tools for uploading videos. Continue reading QuickFire.TV Transcodes Broadcast Quality Video in Seconds

According to Facebook, its users have watched an average of more than one billion videos per day on the social network since June, with more than 65 percent of video views occurring on mobile devices. Facebook is planning new YouTube-like features that should appeal to content producers. Starting this week, users will be able to see the number of views a video has received, which could help people discover popular new videos. Facebook is also testing the ability to display related videos once a clip has ended. Continue reading Short-Form Video a Top Priority at Facebook, Says Zuckerberg

Israel-based Vidmind plans to unveil the second generation of its Android set-top box this week at IBC in Amsterdam. The company hopes to attract cord cutters with an offering that combines over-the-air broadcast TV with live streaming and on-demand content. Meanwhile, TiVo has announced its 24TB TiVo Mega, slated for launch early next year. For $5,000 you can record six shows at once and store up to 4,000 hours of HD programming (or 26,000 hours of SD content). It also includes free TiVo service for life. Continue reading Vidmind Debuts Next-Gen STB, TiVo Readies New 24TB DVR

In order for online video producers to make money, YouTube offers a feature that allows viewers to donate to their favorite artists. Independent content creators are the major source of revenue for YouTube, and while some of them do make money through pre-roll ads, it is not enough for many. Now, Google offers Fan Funding so viewers can essentially tip their favorite video creators. The feature works in both the browser and the Android app, and all transactions are processed by Google Wallet. Continue reading YouTube Feature Enables Fans to Donate to Content Creators

Netflix’s new privacy feature will now allow users to select which shows they want to share with Facebook friends. In the past, people who decided to link their Netflix and Facebook accounts shared their viewed titles to all of their Facebook friends. Now, each user can recommend a TV show or movie to just one or more friends. With this update, Netflix users now have the ability to be more selective about which programs they recommend to others, and which programs they hide. Continue reading Netflix Users Control What Shows They Share with Privacy Tool

Foreign film fans may have a new reason to get excited. Israeli startup VideoDubber is introducing a new technology that could address complaints of subtitles in media content. The company claims that its TruDub technology can automatically dub films, TV shows and video into more than 30 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and four dialects of English. The service uses synthetic voices that it says sound natural since they are based on professional voice talent. Continue reading VideoDubber Automatically Dubs Video into 30+ Languages