Radiohead and Google have partnered on a new project that is a very cool example of using cutting-edge video technology, social media and an open source approach to promoting music.

Radiohead’s latest video, for House of Cards, was created without cameras or lights. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects.

The video was created entirely with visualizations of that data.

Even cooler, Radiohead is open sourcing the project, releasing the video data as a remixing challenge. This means that anybody can revisualize the data, or even use it to create some bizarrely creative mashups.

Radiohead has also created a group on YouTube for sharing remixes of the House of Cards video data.

via Synthtopia

Internet TV is growing at an insane rate. According to comScore, U.S. Internet users viewed more than 12 billion online videos during the month, up 45 percent versus year ago.

Nearly 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 85 videos per viewer in May.

Google Sites (mainly YouTube) attracted the most viewers (83.8 million), who watched an average of 50 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (60.8 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (40.2 million) and Microsoft Sites (29.5 million).

Other highlights:

• 74 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 228 minutes of video.
• 82.2 million viewers watched 4.1 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer).
• 54.8 million viewers watched 703 million videos on MySpace.com (12.8 videos per viewer).
• 6.8 million viewers watched 88 million videos on Hulu.com (13.0 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 2.7 minutes.

For several years, we’ve been saying that Internet TV was going to make traditional TV’s shift to digital irrelevant:

“US broadcast television is scheduled to go digital on February 17, 2009, by order of the Federal Communications Commission. Broadcast television’s move to digital could be the start of something big.

But with Internet broadcast audiences in the millions, video download audiences in the tens of millions, and portable devices like the iPhone making Internet video increasingly available, it’s starting to look the broadcast television’s switch to digital may be traditional television’s last hurrah.”

It’s looking more and more like 2009 will be the year this will happen, at least for first movers.

Broadband users are already abandoning television for Internet TV. By this time next year, there will be a broad range of Internet TV devices available, including the XBox 360, Apple TV, Roku’s Player and Kodak’s Theater HD Player. That, plus more content, will only accellerate this shift.

MIcrosoft has announced XBox 360 updates that will give interface a cartoon-like appearance and a deal with Netflix that positions the XBox as an Apple TV killer.

“When people turn on their Xbox 360s this fall, they’ll get an entirely new interface and Dashboard, an entirely new Xbox through the magic of software,” said John Schappert, head of Live services. New features will include those fancy new Mii-like 3D Avatars, a new emphasis on community with IM, video chat, and photo sharing, along with a brand new 3D slide interface for the main Dashboard screen.

Engadget has posted images of the new interface – and it looks like the bastard child of Apple’s Coverflow and Microsoft Bob.

XBox 360 + Netflix

More interesting is Microsoft’s deal with Netflix, which will let you stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix to your television via the Xbox 360. This feature will be available to Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also Netflix subscribers.

A library of more than 10,000 movies and TV episodes will be available from Netflix when it launches on Xbox LIVE in late fall, with more choices added over time. According to Microsoft, with this deal, Xbox 360 will offer more movies and TV shows on demand than any other device connected to the TV.

“Xbox 360 will be the only video game system where you can access your library of instantly streamable movies from Netflix,” said Microsoft’s John Schappert.

It’s great to see companies ratcheting up support for Internet TV. While the Apple TV is a great system, it still only offers a fraction of the video content that’s available via the Internet. Increased competition from Microsoft and others means that this time next year, we’ll have a range of decent Internet TV options.

A Swarm Of Angels – an open source movie community – is looking for people to contribute images for their movie The Ravages:

We want to find an easy way for members to contribute to the content of the Swarm project at every stage. The easiest way we could think of for you to contribute visually was by uploading a photo of yourself.

Photographs will be used to illustrate “The Missing” – people who have disappeared during The Ravages (the climatic events that head a global meltdown) – as part of a fake propaganda trailer for the film project.

A Swarm Of Angels is trying to update “the current filmmaking models of Hollywood and independent film to create cult cinema for the digital age.”

In this video, Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose of Diggnation do a demo for Microsoft’s Zune digital media player.

Yeah – it’s an informercial. What makes it interesting, though, is that Microsoft is turning to video podcasters to help get the Zune some geek cred.

This wouldn’t work with all products, and this sort of product placement risks trashing podcasters’ credibility.

In this case, though, it’s a good example of another way podcasters are making money with their shows.

Podcamp co-founder Chris Penn told a couple of stories at Podcasters Across Borders 2008 that demonstrate how podcasting is changing the world.

Penn’s talk serves as a great reminder that there’s more to podcasting than making money.

YouTube, by default, creates embed code that displays videos in relatively low quality.

Here’s an example, Matt Harding’s Where the Hell is Matt? (2008):

It’s possible, though, to embed YouTube videos with higher quality.

Here’s the same video, embedded with YouTube’s high quality option:

Notice how images, and especially type, are sharper.

Unfortunately, this is implemented with a hack. In the embed code, you have to tack on &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 to the end of video clip’s URL, both places it appears.

Here’s an example URL with the extra code:

<embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/zlfKdbWwruY&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″

This is completely unintuitive to implement – so Twittervlog’s Rupert Howe created an Embed Code Generator that can create the code for you.

Apple’s nice, but limited, Apple TV is the device to beat in the Internet TV space, and the contenders keep on coming.

Kodak has introduced Theatre HD Player, a WiFi-enabled black box that connects to your HDTV, displays images and other multimedia content, and links directly to Kodak Gallery, the company’s online photo-sharing service.

This isn’t an Apple TV-killer, but it’s another sign that companies are waking up to Internet TV.

Features:

• View your pictures and video on your HDTV
• Access photos from your PC, camera, and online photo sharing sites
• Wirelessly send and receive pictures with Kodak’s Picture Mail feature
• Create slideshows to your favorite songs
• Access Internet Radio, podcasts and other web content on your HDTV

The Theatre HD Player will retail for $299.99 and is scheduled to launch in September.

Ever since Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 3G, we’ve been waiting for this moment – the time when Tom Dickson from Will It Blend? destroys the over-hyped, twice-as-expensive, underpowered device in one of those monster Blendtec blenders.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long:

OK. Maybe we’re just a little bitter that 3G coverage is non-existent in Iowa.

But you have to admit that this is the best coverage of the iPhone 3G introduction yet!

Earlier in the year, we had a preview of Belkin’s GoStudio iPod Recorder.

Belkin has now released full information on the GoStudio, and it looks like it will be a hot, reasonably priced device for recording directly to your iPod.

Here are the details:

• Record directly to your iPod in 16-bit, 44kHz digital audio quality
• Instantly play back your recordings directly from your iPod through GoStudio’s built-in speaker
• Two combo microphone inputs (XLR and ¼”)
• 3.5mm mini-jack microphone input
• Two built-in omnidirectional stereo microphones
• Master level control
• Direct monitor volume control
• Tripod mount

It’s compatible with iPod classic, iPod nano 2nd & 3rd generation & iPod 5G.

Pricing & Availability:

• US: $119.99; September/October in North America, EMEA, Asia, and Australia