http://vimeo.com/13398124

You gotta love this – Boxee Chief Product Officer Zach Klein offers an introduction and demo of the first Boxee Box off the assembly line.

Compared to the typical stiff demo or the hyper-prepped Apple intros, it’s sort of refreshing to see Boxee do this lo fi, even taking out time to nom on the Wheat Thins.

The Boxee Box is an Internet set-top box that is being created in conjunction with D-Link. It’s expected to retail for about $200 and to be available by Halloween.

Developer Humble Daisy has announced a temporary price drop for ProfCast, the company’s flagship lecture recording and podcasting solution. For remainder of the month of July, ProfCast will be half priced.

“We wanted to try something a little different. Rather than have a ‘sale’, we thought we would just simplify things and drop the price across the board.” explained David Chmura, CEO of Humble Daisy, Inc. “We’ll try it for a month and see how it goes. If it’s a success, we’ll make the change permanent.”

Will Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 smartphone be the next Zune?

Could be – based on the latest Windows Phone 7, InfoWorld says Microsoft should just kill the project now:

There’s no kind way to say it: Windows Phone 7 will be a failure.

Windows Phone 7 is a waste of time and money. It’s a platform that no carrier, device maker, developer, or user should bother with. Microsoft should kill it before it ships and admit that it’s out of the mobile game for good.

Windows Phone 7 is a pale imitation of the 2007-era iPhone. It’s as if Microsoft decided in summer 2007 to copy the iPhone and has shut its developers in a bunker ever since, so they don’t realize that several years have passed, that the iPhone has advanced, and that competitors such as Google Android and Palm WebOS have also pushed the needle forward. Microsoft is stuck in 2007, with a smartphone OS whose feature checklist might match that era’s iPhone but whose fit and finish would look like a Pinto next to a Maserati.

InfoWorld’s take on the Windows Phone 7 is scathing – but it mirrors the Zune’s failure to impress when it was introduced.

TechCruch reports that pioneering video podcaster Ze Frank is getting $500,000 from a band of investors to “play games”.

Frank says “The company is still in stealth mode – but it will involve social gaming and will be influenced heavily by what I’ve learned about play and participation over the last ten years with projects like The Show and Color Wars.”

His startup Ze Frank Games raised a seed round from Andreessen Horowitz, Chris Dixon’s Founder Collective, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, betaworks, Lerer Ventures, First Round Capital, CrossCut Ventures, Joshua Schachter, and fellow podcaster Gary Vaynerchuck.

Ze Frank is best known for his video podcast The Show, which brilliantly combined humor, social networking and insight on the news.

A massive recall of the iPhone 4 over its antenna design flaw is ‘inevitable’, say PR experts, because protecting the Apple and iPhone brands is more important than the multimillion dollar cost to fix the issue.

Yesterday’s announcement by Consumer Reports that they tested the iPhone’s antenna and duplicated anecdotal reports about the iPhone 4 ‘death grip’ pits Apple’s reputation against the most respected name in consumer protection. And Consumer Reports basically said that Apple was lying about the iPhone 4’s antenna problem:

Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4’s signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that “mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”

“Apple will be forced to do a recall of this product,” said Professor Matthew Seeger, an expert in crisis communication. “The brand image is the most important thing Apple has. This is potentially devastating.”

“Apple needs to put this fire out now,” said crisis communication expert Dr. Larry Barton. “There has to be a military-like response to this issue. And we have not seen this kind of urgency.”

“They’re response has been lackluster,” adds Barton. “It’s been borderline irresponsible. They are in danger of betraying customers’ trust and hurting the brand, which is infinitely more valuable than any one product.”

Apple is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The iPhone 4 is their most successful introduction ever and an update to their most important product. But it also has a basic design flaw, which, for a company that prides itself on having the best design in the world, is a PR disaster.

I’m a big fan of the iPhone 4. For many reasons, it’s the best mobile device for podcasters, because it makes mobile podcasting of audio and video fairly trivial. And the antenna issue, while real, has had no impact on my use of the phone.

Nevertheless, the iPhone represents a multi-thousand dollar commitment for buyers – and the last thing you want to do after spending a couple grand on a phone is spend your next day answering people’s questions about whether you have to wear gloves to make calls.

The iPhone 4 may be the best phone ever – but I think the PR experts are right: an iPhone 4 recall is probably inevitable.

What do you think? Is the new iPhone’s antenna problem overblown, or do you think an iPhone 4 recall is inevitable, too?

Podcasting community blubrry announced a 31 percent ad revenue increase for the second quarter of 2010, reflecting new ad buys on 27% more shows hosted on Blubrry, Tech Podcasts Network and other RawVoice subsidiaries.

CEO Todd Cochrane attributes the increase to podcast advertisers seeing a healthy return on their investment and because of their podcasts’ availability on multiple platforms.

“Our strategy of multi-platform distribution is exposing new audiences to our content creators on venues that accommodate their lifestyle needs,” says Cochrane. “We are continuing to focus on multi-platform distribution for the shows that are part of the network..”

YouTube Uploader is a new WordPress plugin designed to let you upload YouTube videos directly from the WordPress admin area.

It uses browser-based uploading, in a WordPress uploader like interface. Your videos are uploaded directly to YouTube, so no traffic is wasted uploading videos first to your website, and then to YouTube.

YouTube authentification data is different for each WordPress user, making it secure to use in multi-user WordPress environment. Authentification can be either done by storing YouTube username/password or by requesting a session token, which keeps your YouTube information out of the WordPress database.

For vloggers that use self-hosted WordPress as their content management system and YouTube for video hosting, this YouTube video upload plugin could offer a simplified workflow.

If you’ve used the YouTube Uploader, leave a comment with your thoughts!

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5BF9E09ECEC8F88F

YouTube today announced support for videos shot in 4K (4096 x 3072 pixels) – a mega HD format designed for screens up to 25 feet wide.

This level of resolution may seem like overkill – but devices like the iPhone are demonstrating that more pixels per inch is better, and TV screens are likely to follow.

Here’s what YouTube had to say about 4K video support:

We always want videos on YouTube to be available in the highest quality possible, as creators intend. In December of last year, we announced support for 1080p, or full HD. At 4096 x 3072 pixels, 4K is nearly four times the size of 1080p. To view any video in a source resolution greater than 1080p, select “Original” in the video quality pulldown menu.

Because 4K represents the highest quality of video available, there are a few limitations that you should be aware of. First off, video cameras that shoot in 4K aren’t cheap, and projectors that show videos in 4K are typically the size of a small refrigerator. And, as we mentioned, watching these videos on YouTube will require super-fast broadband.

Check out the playlist above for a few examples of 4K videos. YouTube notes that streaming videos in 4K requires an ultra-fast high-speed broadband connection.

While 4K video is welcome, adding support for longer videos would be a lot more useful for most. Few people will have access to 4K cameras – but just about anyone posting YouTube videos would welcome the option to upload longer videos.

What do you think about YouTube’s 4K HD video announcement? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Vericorder has updated 1st Video, it’s prosumer iPhone video editor.

New features include faster processing, new save options, video uploads to YouTube, new format options, audio export to iPhone ringtones and SoundCloud support.

Details below.

Podcasting pioneer and self-described “podfather” Adam Curry thinks app programmers are the new rock stars, so he’s positioning himself as the DJ of applications.

Here’s what Curry has to say about his new project, The Big App Show:

The concept of the Big App Show was really filling a void in the app market I identified as a frustrated user, who always wanted to find cool apps for my iPhone, but the process of discovery in the itunes store reminded me of wading through the racks in tower records, patiently waiting my turn for the store clerk to place my selected vinyl on the store turntable so I could listen to the tracks in sequential order.

That pretty much sucked, and of course radio back in those early days of FM became the music discovery mechanism of choice. Your favorite DJ would be your guide, a task I liked so much that I started my professional career doing just that, later moving into Music Television, and eventually became reasonably well known for ‘counting down the hits’.

Curry sees other correlations between the world of iPhone apps and the world of music:

Apps are today’s version of 45’s, and we in fact buy them in very much the same fashion. We even make our purchase of them in a store originally designed to sell the digital version of the single.

If my intuition is right, I think we might even see app programmers become the heroes of a generation, where fans can’t wait for the release of the next magical app their idol has become famous for.

The Big App Show (App Store link) is a free iPhone app that features a new app each day. In each “appisode”, Curry demonstrates an app in a short video.

If you decide you like the app, an option is available to buy it.

The show builds on Curry’s experience as a VJ on MTV and as a podcasting pioneer. It’s not a review show. Instead, Curry is acting as an “AppJ”, presenting apps that he thinks are cool and that you’re likely to want to buy.