Science has come a long way in the past 100 years. We’ve sent humans to space, landed devices on Mars, proposed groundbreaking theories, exploded nuclear bombs, decimated diseases, and more.

But with all these advancements, why is still so hard for us to predict future weather conditions? A new video from popular YouTube channel Vsauce explains.

“We can send satellites into orbit and people to the moon and predict solar eclipses thousands of years into the future, but yet we cannot reliability predict which way the wind will be blowing in the next hour or so,” the video’s narrator says. “How can such monumental cosmic movements light minutes or light years away from us be understood whereas the weather … remains a mystery?”

Mostly, it has to do with the limits of what we are able to know. Predicting the future events of planets and cosmic objects is more doable because we know orbits and other conditions, so predictability becomes easier. But there are so many variables to weather and the air molecules on Earth that it becomes incredibly difficult to generally predict weather outside of about a week.

As a society, we’ve certainly gotten better at communicating when severe weather events are about to occur or are in progress. (We saw some of that in regard to the devastating Oklahoma tornado Monday.) But it will take more scientific breakthroughs to get us closer to predicting these types of events will be occurring more than a day or a week out.

Vsauce’s video also dives into other topics related to predictability, the butterfly effect, chaos theory, the possibility of a moon landing failure, and more.

Check out the fascinating clip above.

We all know Microsoft likes to challenge its competitors head on, especially Google. Now Microsoft is taking a swing at Apple in a new 30-second advertisement that uses Siri’s voice to make fun of the iPad.

The ad shows a Windows 8 tablet sitting side-by-side with the iPad. As the Windows 8 tablet shows off various functions — like updating its tiles or moving through a PowerPoint presentation — Siri admits that she can’t help with those things. Finally Siri says, “Should we just play Chopsticks?” The tagline for the ad? “Less talking. More doing.”

At the end of the video, it shows two prices — $699 for a 64GB iPad and $449 for the 64GB Asus VivoTab Smart running Windows 8. Microsoft also has a dedicated comparison page set up to compare the original iPad to Windows 8 tablets on the market.

Check out the video above to see the combative ad.

If you weren’t born as the son of all father of the nine realms, the chances are you won’t be able to pick up Thor’s almighty hammer, Mjölnir, which gives you the power to knock down bad guys and call upon the elements of thunder and lightning.

However, you might be able to make one yourself.

As you can see in the YouTube video below, Caleb Kraft over at Hackaday decided to build his own Mjölnir that contains a 80,000-volt Tesla coil. Yes, that means you’ll actually be able to get that “god of thunder” effect of calling down lightening bolts to scare off your enemies. … OK, well, only if your enemies are easily scared off by illuminating a lightbulb while it’s inside your mouth.

Still, this is way cooler than the $15 foam toy you can buy at Walmart. (You might also notice that, in addition to Thor’s hammer, Caleb also has a Portal gun and a miniature TIE fighter on the shelf behind him.)

Via BoingBoing

Recent scientific breakthroughs by NASA and SpaceX have increased the public’s thirst for knowledge about the stars and the science of space. Rocket launches and landings get a lot of coverage, but what about some of the everyday activities happening in space?

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, a prominent social media poster on Facebook and Twitter with great photography and music, recently recorded a video explaining how astronauts sleep in space. The video shows the sleep pod inside the International Space Station that Hadfield rests in and a sleeping bag within the pod that is tied to the wall. Hadfield also has special full-length “space pajamas.”

“You might think it’s uncomfortable not having a mattress and a pillow, but without gravity, of course, you don’t need anything to hold you up,” Hadfield says in the video. “You can just completely relax.”

Check out the video above.

Video via Canadian Space Agency/YouTube

The virtual currency Bitcoin is hot. In the past week, the price of a single Bitcoin has more than doubled and currently sits at about $240 on Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange.

If you’re new to Bitcoin, you’ve probably got a lot of questions. How does it work? Who controls it? Where do I buy Bitcoins? Is it safe?

Luckily, the 3.5 minute video above is a great place to start. While the video doesn’t go into much detail on how to create Bitcoins through “mining” or how to store Bitcoins in a digital wallet, it at least offers a handy overview.

If you’re still hungry for more after watching the video, here are a few other resources to help you get in the know:

• 15-part video series on Bitcoin from CBT Nuggets
• Short video introduction to mining Bitcoins

While screenshots of Windows Blue — the next version of Windows — leaked yesterday, it appears the flood of new details is continuing. The Verge has posted a video walkthrough with an early version of Blue.

Windows Blue is a code name for a major upgrade to Windows 8 that should offer new features and functionality. Microsoft hasn’t revealed much on its own, but from the leaks, we can tell that Blue could offer improvements and fixes for some of the the most glaring problems in Windows 8.

Microsoft will likely release Blue later this year.

The video walkthrough shows some of improvements in action, including changing the size of Live Tiles on the Start screen to large, medium, and small and snapping two Windows 8 apps side-by-side, with each app taking up 50 percent of the screen. (Right now you can only do a 70-30 split, and it’s highly annoying.) It also showed more personalization options so you can customize the Start screen with more colors, and it displayed more options available from the Start screen so you don’t have to go into the Desktop to change them.

Additionally, Windows Blue should offer new built-in apps that could improve the experience. New Windows 8-style apps include an alarm, calculator, audio recorder, and a replacement for Windows Movie Maker that edits videos via touch.

Check out the full video below for more.

Microsoft has debuted a new video that shows what it imagines the future of technology will hold in the next five to 10 years, and it includes massive touchscreens, Siri-like voice controls, and Microsoft’s Surface tablet.

While Microsoft has shown us several astounding visions of the future before, this video is more of a practical take on what we will actually see rather than what can be imagined. And because this Microsoft, it has cameos of Windows Phone and Surface as devices that interact with large touchscreens and voice commands.

The video was put together to showcase the opening of Microsoft’s Envisioning Center, which focuses on making improvements to our daily lives with technology. Microsoft writes about the Envisioning Center in a blog post:

The facility encompasses scenarios at home, at work and places in between, and is inspired by our product teams, Microsoft Research and by the trends across the industry. I like to think of it as a concept car that allows us to share what it might be like to experience future technologies with visitors, get their feedback, tweak, remix and discuss. It’s all part of advancing the trends we think have the greatest potential.

As part of today’s opening, we put together a short video that gives a sense of what’s inside – and while none of these ideas are meant to be predictive about our products, they do highlight some of the key trends we’re investing in, such as machine learning and NUI. They also give you a sense of where these technologies could lead us over the next five to ten years.

Check out the video above to see Microsoft’s latest vision of the future.

With the thousands of automatic takedown notices for illegally uploaded videos flooding Google’s inbox, it’s nice to know that the legitimately bad requests by media companies aren’t blindly approved.

Yesterday NASCAR send a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) takedown notice request to YouTube concerning a video of a horrific crash at the Daytona Speedway that injured 28 people in attendance after debris from the 10-car wreck was sent flying into the crowd. (Video embedded below.) And while it was initially removed, YouTube restored the video on the grounds that it had not violated any copyright owned by the motor sporting organization, who clearly wanted to minimize coverage of the wreck.

“Our partners and users do not have the right to take down videos from YouTube unless they contain content which is copyright infringing, which is why we have reinstated the videos,” YouTube wrote in a statement sent to the Washington Post.

The video, NASCAR  says, was initially blocked out of respect to the families of those that had someone injured in the wreck. The truly sad part about all this is that most media companies and organizations treat YouTube as if its a personal extension of their product, as is the case here.

Via The Washington Post

I remember the first time I ever met someone who had color blindness. I was young and wanted to know why another kid wasn’t calling a certain Lego piece “green.” It was an incredibly confusing moment and one that helped me start to understand that we all have distinct differences in how we experience things.

Perhaps if I had seen this new video from popular YouTube channel Vsauce that goes into detail on the subject of color, I may not have been so befuddled. Not only does the video explore how our minds perceive color, it also takes a turn into other aspects of our minds and how we experience everything differently.

Weirdly enough, there is still no way to know exactly if my red is the same as your red. Perhaps we will be able to see into each other’s minds in the future, but until then, we simply have to ask each other about our experiences and hope we make sense of it.

Check out the fascinating video above.

Popular YouTube channel AsapSCIENCE has produced a great new video explaining how your brain works differently when you are in love — just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Surprisingly (or maybe not, depending on how deeply you’ve felt love), a brain in love looks a lot like a brain on cocaine.

“Cocaine acts on the pleasure centers in the brain by lowering the threshold at which they fire,” the video’s narrator says. “This means you feel really good a lot easier. We see the same thing in the brains of those in love. But it’s not just the cocaine or the love that makes you feel good, it’s the fact that anything you experience will now more easily set off pleasure centers and make you feel good.”

Check out the full video above for a deeper explanation.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google used a primetime advertising slot during Grammy Awards last night to show off the popular Nexus 4 smartphone and many uses of Google Now, its Siri competitor.

The Nexus 4 is one of the hottest Android phones on the market due to solid feature set and its relatively cheap off-contract pricing. It was originally plagued with supply issues, but Google and manufacturer LG have mostly fixed those issues and it can be purchased in the Google Play store for $300.

While the Nexus 4′s placement in the commercial was key, the real star might have been Google Now. Google clearly wants people to see what its competitor to Apple’s Siri can do. In the commercial, we see many uses for Google Now: a mother gets weather updates, two girls are helped with translations, a couple finds a place to eat, and a father looks over his busy calendar.

Check out the video above to see the full ad and let us know what you think in the comments.

Where is the most dangerous place on Earth? While there are many options — on top of volcanoes, the tip of Mt. Everest, the bottom of the ocean, warzones, etc. — what’s the very worst?

Popular YouTube channel VSauce has explored various places with low and high temperatures, thin air, insane pressure, diseases, murder rates, and more to answer that question.

Check out the great video above for the answer (or answers, if you will).

2012 was a great year for gaming. Many of the best-selling games of the year provided plenty of high-octane experiences and unforgettable moments.

This year saw the release of blockbusters such as Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Halo 4, Fay Cry 3, and Mass Effect 3, while it also gave birth to quirky gems such as Journey, Fez, and FTL: Faster Than Light.

Check back with us soon for GamesBeat’s picks for the best games of the year. But in the meantime, check out the video above for a two-minute retrospective on some of the biggest gaming moments of 2012.

YouTube user Malcolm Klock, who put the video together, describes it as such:

2012 has been another amazing year for gaming, with blockbuster AAA titles and innovative indie games galore. Developers this year tested the boundaries of the medium. This is a salute to their work and all the terrific interactive experiences we had in 2012.

These are by no means the only great games from 2012, but they are great. Your favorite game isn’t missing because I don’t think it’s great, more likely it just didn’t edit together well with the rest or had to go to keep it under 2 minutes. I also tried to give some screen time to overachieving indies that deserve the attention, rather than trying to cram in every major release.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Video analytics company VisibleMeasures ran the numbers on videos that Apple released in 2012. The top 10 have almost 40 million views in aggregate, and are very focused on Apple’s most popular products. Three of the top 10 Apple viral videos released in 2012 are about iPhone, four promo Apple’s iPad, and two are conversations with Siri.

Only one was about a non-phone and non-tablet Apple product: a video on the MacBook Pro with retina display.

The top video, with 13.3 million views, is an almost seven-minute video introducing the iPhone 5:

Here’s the full list:

Notable misses?

“I was surprised to see that the controversial Apple Genius campaign didn’t have a creative on the list,” VisibleMeasures’ Matt Fiorentino said to me in an email. “Their Mayday spot just missed the list with 1.3 million views.”

Visible Measures counts not just views but what the company calls “true reach views,” which a company representative explained to me is the combination of views generated by Apple uploading the video, plus any views of copies or derivative content uploaded by Apple fans anywhere on the web.

That’s one of the reasons Facebook is reportedly working on a new app that will let users send photos — and maybe videos — to friends that will self-destruct. According to AllThingsD, Facebook is testing an app to compete with SnapChat, the social network that deletes photos and videos seconds after they’ve been viewed.

SnapChat’s app, which has been accused of being a sexting tool, allows users to take pictures or short videos, add short, superimposed text messages, and send them privately to a friend. The sender can also chose how long the message should be viewable. As soon as the receiver gets and views the message, the timer starts. Once the message is deleted, it disappears from the receiver’s phone, the sender’s phone, and Snapchat’s servers.

Too bad there’s such a thing as screen captures.

After perhaps a slow start in mobile that Mark Zuckerberg blames on an over-reliance on an HTML5-based strategy to build cross-platform apps, Facebook has moving into the app space aggressively with standalone apps. Of course, it bought photo-sharing service Instagram for $750 million. It also has Facebook Messenger, a sort of SMS-replacement app on which messages do not disappear, and the apparently Instagram-competing Camera.

In addition, as part of a strategy to improve quality and get better faster, Facebook is now pushing out refreshes to its core mobile Facebook mobile apps every one or two months. Just in the past week, Facebook updated its Android and iOS apps, which are both now native apps, with better performance than ever.

The new SnapChat competitor is rumored to be going live sometime in the next few weeks. Little hint to Facebook: before Christmas would be a nice gift to your users.

photo credit: Shandi-lee via photopin cc

Google has introduced several new videos that show how online shopping sites often frustrate users by not giving them accurate search results, making them input awful captchas, or suggesting items not related to what they’re buying.

The videos simulate some of the frustrations of online shopping by playing out those experiences in real life. The company wrote on its Google Analytics blog late last week:

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, it’s important to ensure your website and digital marketing is running on all cylinders. Your potential customers should be able to find what they need on the digital shelf as easily as in real life. Sadly, many sites leave visitors frustrated – losing potential customers. However, the advantage of your online storefront is that you can understand where you’re losing customers and work to improve your shopping experience.

For the holiday season, our team at Google Analytics thought it would be helpful (and fun) to demonstrate how missteps on the digital shelf play out in real life.

The post goes on to make suggestions on how to improve sites to make the experience less agitating. One such tip is to optimize your landing pages: “Always make sure your landing pages meet your users expectations. Be sure your ad text leads visitors to a page that matches what was featured in the ad.”

Check out the hilarious videos below:

3D printing has created a lot of awesome items in its short history, and soon enough it could revolutionize traditional games and puzzles.

Dane Christianson, an enterprising creator at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Idea Shop, used a 3D printer to create what he calls the “X-Cube,” a 3-by-3-by-3 Rubik’s cube and what is arguably the hardest Rubik’s cube ever.

While other complicated Rubik’s cube blocks exist, such as the insane 6-by-6 cube, the X-Cube seems especially hard because you can “scramble” the pieces so they protrude in all kinds of crazy ways.

Check out the video above to see the X-Cube in action. For more Rubik’s cube fun, check out this video of the fastest Rubik’s cube solver.

YouTube announced this morning that its app is now available on the Nintendo Wii U. This is obviously a big deal for Nintendo, which is trying to own the living room entertainment experience, as the app is not just available for free download — it’s featured right on the Wii U’s main menu.

Users can use the soft keyboard on the Wii U’s GamePad, which also doubles as a remote control for your standard TV content, to search for videos:

Videos will play on your big-screen TV in full high-definition at up to 1080P resolution, and while the video plays on your TV, the video details, description, and author data display on the GamePad. Naturally, since you’re signed in to your Google account, you’ll also have access to your channels, favorites, and history.

Whether this will help Nintendo in its attempt to make the Wii U the center of the living room entertainment experience is hard to say, but it is at least a statement that the company is here to play. With standard TV, online video, video conferencing, gaming, and more, the statement is getting bigger and bigger.

But the competition is fierce and has been there for a while.

Good luck!

photo credit: wiiu-spiele.com via photopin cc

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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No. 3 PC vendor Dell will include tutorial videos for Windows 8 on its latest PCs and tablets running the new Microsoft operating system, a move to help consumers learn the new interface and make it less intimidating.

While Windows 8 isn’t as complicated as one might initially think, it is a major change from the design Windows has had for the past 17 years. There is no Start button and some basic interactions are different. Many folks have complained that it’s simply too different. In turn, Windows 8 will require some training and hand-holding for the many people who don’t like change.

Thankfully Dell appears to be taking a step that Microsoft hasn’t yet. Microsoft does offer a short tutorial when you boot Windows 8 for the first time, but it is awfully short and doesn’t explain some of the important keyboard shortcuts people should know. It also doesn’t let you easily watch the tutorial again if you didn’t quite catch the new features the first time.

The Windows 8 Start screen on Dell machines will have a tile that takes you to six great tutorial videos that walk a user through many of Windows 8′s interface changes. For example, it clearly shows how someone can use a mouse to make the Start button appear in the bottom left corner of the screen.

At an event today in New York City where I looked over Dell’s Windows 8 lineup, Dell VP of computing products Kirk Schell told me and a small group of press that any new operating system required some educational efforts. In the case of Windows 8, he said he was happy Dell would provide some help to get a handle on the new interface.

“There’s a lot of cool new stuff,” Schell said. “You’re going to want to know how to use it.”

Check out a few of the videos Dell has created by clicking the links below.

Windows 8 Start Screen Tutorial – Keyboard and Mouse

Windows 8 App Store Tutorial – Keyboard and Mouse

Windows 8 App Store Tutorial – Touch

Photo credit: Dell

Microsoft has unveiled several fun video ads that encourage people to dive into its new Windows 8 operating system, which debuts this Friday.

“As we enter the final countdown to the global launch of Windows 8, today marks the global unveiling of the Windows 8 advertising campaign going live in 42 countries,” Microsoft communications manager Brandon LeBlanc wrote in a blog post today. “With the reimagining of the Windows product experience, marketing is breaking from the past, as well. The idea behind the campaign is to be more motivating, more rooted in the product experience — less tell and more show — by connecting in an emotional and culturally relevant way that maps to the breadth of the global reach.”

8 things you need to know about Windows 8

The new ads all emphasize music in some way. Whether they focus on a band playing songs or people moving to music, they want Windows 8 to represent a casual OS that can also do work.

“Music, the universal language, is at the heart of this campaign, highlighting a variety of indie and up-and-coming bands across the globe, such as Best Coast in the U.S., Lenka in China, and Hogarth in Brazil,” wrote LeBlanc. “Regardless of country or language, the music universally is upbeat, positive, and encouraging [of] self-expression and experience.”

Check out the ads below.

This first ad will run in the United States and features music from indie rock darlings Best Coast.

This ad will focus on Asian markets and features Parkour performances.

This ad will hit Asia & South East Asia, with an emphasis on a relationship between work and play.

Finally, in Latin America, this ad focuses on spending time with friends and family and Windows 8 connecting you.

Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system arrives on virtual and physical shelves in just a few weeks. To get ready for the launch, Microsoft has created instructional videos to help retailers sell and explain Windows 8 to consumers.

Like any new operating system, Windows 8 will require training by salespeople and employers who decide to deploy it on computers. But unlike any Windows upgrade in the past 17 years, Windows 8 could be a harder sell because it favors tablets over desktops.

The videos, which were uploaded by Neowin’s Brad Sams, show in as simple terms as possible how to use the new functions and interface in Windows 8. I think the videos do a decent job of trying to simplify the big changes, but whether consumers will actually be comfortable with the interface is another question.

Check out the leaked videos below:

Sometimes you just build a rocket in your spare time. Or at least that’s what you do if you’re Valve hardware hacker Ben Krasnow.

Krasnow, a self-described “hacker extraordinaire,” has several videos on YouTube showing his crazy electrical and mechanical projects. But his latest is a real doozy.

In it, Krasnow shows off the “hybrid rocket engine” he built from an acrylic rod (which serves as the fuel source) and a few other parts. The way the engine is built allows Krasnow to throttle it and shut it off, something you can’t usually do with solid-fuel rockets. He writes:

I built a small rocket engine for demonstration purposes. The engine is built from a 2″ diameter acrylic rod through which I drilled a 0.5″ hole. The oxygen at 80 psi or less is passed through the hole and then is forced through a convergent-divergent nozzle at the tail end. The nozzle’s throat is about 0.25″ and expands to 0.625″. I lit the engine by inserting a burning cotton swab (with wooden stick) while a small amount of oxygen was flowing. The acrylic catches fire very easily in a pure oxygen environment. The engine can be throttled and shut off completely, which is a major benefit to hybrid engine designs. Solid-fuel rockets cannot be throttled or shut off, which makes them difficult to control.

Check out the awesome video above.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Well, this is … interesting. Research in Motion has just released a strange music video serenading BlackBerry developers and encouraging them to stick with RIM for its new BlackBerry 10 operating system.

RIM took the stage today in San Jose, Calif., to show off the latest features of its BlackBerry 10 operating system, which is set to launch in the first quarter of 2013. RIM CEO Thorsten Heins guaranteed developers that their BlackBerry 10 applications would make at least $10,000 in their first year. If qualified apps don’t generate $10,000, Heins said RIM would make up the difference.

The video also shows the company’s “love” for its developers. It features a middle-aged band playing a song similar to REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You” with reworked lyrics, such as “And we’re gonna keep on loving you / Our updated SDK is really cool / The API’s complete / We just want to keep on loving you.”

Watch the weird video above and let us know what you think in the comments below.

In the classic game Final Fantasy VII, main character Cloud Strife wields a massive sword that’s roughly the length of his body. If his sword was made it real life, would physics make it possible to fight with such a large weapon? A new video from popular YouTube channel VSauce3 says “yes.”

Vsauce3 estimates that, in real life, Cloud’s sword would be about 70-inches long and between .5 and 1 inch thick. Some European greatswords were longer than this, so it seems plausible. As for weight, the video estimates the sword would weigh between 8 and 15 pounds. That weight also suggests it would be feasible to use the sword, although it would be a little awkward to handle.

Check out the informative video above for more.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Mobli, not to be confused with Mowgli from The Jungle Book, has raised $20 million.

Mobli is a real-time visual media platform where users can share photos and videos from their smartphones. It integrates topical channels and geo-location technology so content is only shared with others who may find it interesting. The app pledges to show users “the world through other people’s eyes.”

It is empathy for the era of social media.

A concert-goer with nosebleed seats could access a video from someone who shelled out for closer seats, and a bride planning a wedding can look at photos of other members on the community for inspiration.

Granted, there are dozens of other, more widely used and established platforms where photos and videos circulate, but that does not seem to stop a team of celebrity investors from throwing in money. According to the statement, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Serena Williams, and Lance Armstrong previously invested in Mobli.

This Series B came almost entirely from Kenges Rakishev, listed by Forbes as one of the 50 most influential people in Kazakhstan.

Which begs the questions, how many influential people are there in Kazakhstan?

It brings Mobli’s total funding to $28 million.

Mobli is based in the urban jungle of New York.

Popular digital magazine app Flipboard has made its first foray into video with new “TV” channels chock full of YouTube clips, the company announced today.

Two-year-old Flipboard just announced yesterday that it now has 20 million users. While the app is available widely for iPad, iPhone, and Android phones, it has had some trouble on the content side. Popular content providers, including Wired and the The New Yorker, have stopped providing full articles. So it makes sense to start adding video to the mix to give Flipboard users more options.

The new video feeds are curated from popular YouTube channels, and they cover a wide variety of topics including cooking, music, and science.

Check out the descriptions of the new channels below.

Cooking TV: For foodies and aspiring home chefs, these how-to cooking videos can add skills to your culinary repertoire. Learn the basics like Chow.com’s “How to Make the Creamiest, Cheesiest Mac ‘n Cheese” or try quirky recipes like Food Network TV’s “Chicken and Waffles on a Stick.”

Influencer TV: Hear about big ideas from leading innovators and creative thinkers. Influencers TV includes a TED Talks lecture on creating awe by Rob Legato, the visual effects supervisor for Titanic and Hugo. For shorter fare, check out Big Think videos on “The Search for Life on Mars” and “Seeing Sound, Tasting Color: Synasthesia.”

Music TV: Keep up with what the kids—and hip people of all ages—are listening to these days. Watch the latest indie music videos on Noisey and follow NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series for intimate sessions with emerging artists. Pitchfork TV catches live show moments, including “Bjork Dedicates ‘Declare Independence’ to Pussy Riot.”

Science TV: Feed your curiosity with cool experiments and surprising scientific facts. VSauce will answer “What if the Earth were Hollow?” and “What If Everyone Jumped at Once?” On SciShow, find out “Why Our Brains Love Junk Food” or other scientific explanations for everyday dilemmas.

News TV: With News TV, stay updated on current events via leading news outlets. Get storm and earthquake alerts from Associated Press and ABC News. CBS News follows the 2012 presidential campaigns and Al Jazeera provides international news.

Catwalk TV: Get the latest fashion trends, fresh off the catwalks in Paris, Milan, Tokyo, New York City and more. YouTube channels like Fashion TV and Videofashion cover global runways and rising models. See new campaigns from individual designers, like Alexander McQueen’s “Menswear Autumn/Winter 2012.”

Video stream via Shutterstock

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Video sharing service Vimeo has finally integrated with cloud storage service Dropbox after many requests from the vocal Vimeo community, the company announced today.

With the integration, Vimeo users can now add their Dropbox account on the Vimeo upload page or in their account settings. This will allow them to automatically or manually upload videos through a “Vimeo” folder in Dropbox.

“Integration within Dropbox is something our community wanted for a while,” said Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor in a statement. “This is another tool for them to upload and share their videos with friends and family or the rest of the world.”

The Dropbox integration adds to the many moves Vimeo has made this year to solidify itself as the go-to destination for high-quality online videos. So far in 2012, the company brought in a new CEO, redesigned its main site, and launched a wide array of apps to bring more mobile users into the fold.

Check out the video below for more on the Dropbox/Vimeo team-up.

CloudBeat 2012 is assembling the biggest names in the cloud’s evolving story to learn about real cases of revolutionary cloud adoption. Unlike other cloud events, customers — the users of cloud technologies — will be front and center. Their discussions with vendors and other experts will give you rare insights into what really works, who’s buying what, and where the industry is going. Register now and save 25 percent! The early-bird discount ends September 14.

Earlier this month, scientists at CERN observed what was most likely the elusive Higgs boson particle. But unless you’re a physics geek, it can be hard to understand just what made the discovery so significant.

Thankfully, the good folks of the Minute Physics YouTube channel have created a three-part video series that does a great job explaining the Higgs boson, mass, and particle discovery. While Minute Physics doesn’t dumb down the science, it does make the discovery a bit easier to understand with clever diagrams and metaphors. Heck, even if you’re a science fan, you’ll probably get a laugh or two.

Check out the three-part series below:

Part 1: The Higgs Boson explained

Part 2: What is Mass?

Part 3: How to Discover a Particle

How many times do you tap characters on your keyboard a day? Which letter do you press the most? A new video from popular YouTube channel Vsauce explains these and more.

The video reveals which letter is pressed is most often, how many calories you burn an hour by typing, how many text messages are sent a day, and more. Not only do you get to find out all kinds of crazy typing facts, the video also links back to other cool things related to typing, including the real-time heat map of your keystrokes and great free software for tracking your keystrokes and clicks.

Check out the thoughtful video below:

Photo credit: Ryan Kulawiak/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

While the race is on to create a popular mobile video sharing equivalent to Instagram, Ptch, a free app launching today backed by DreamWorks Animation, is taking mobile media sharing a step further.

Instead of just focusing on pictures or video, Ptch lets you remix the media on your phone and social feeds to create a minute-long mashup that can be easily shared. Like Instagram and the plethora of photo filtering apps out there, Ptch offers different styles to give your mashups their own unique look.

You can think of Ptchs as short music videos made out of media on your device and Web services like Instagram, Viddy, and Twitter. The company calls Ptchs “living media,” since anyone who receives a Ptch can also remix it further to their liking.

“We’ve built a product that’s trying to really address a significant gap in the market, the ability for broad consumers to creat interesting content in fun and fast ways,” Ptch CEO (and former DreamWorks CTO) Ed Leonard told VentureBeat in an interview this week. He made it clear that Ptch isn’t trying to replace the existing services users love, instead it’s trying to give people a new and interesting way to share their media.

Ptchs can resemble anything from a slideshow with photos, to a well-produced segment that’s mostly video. The app sports a clean and intuitive interface that should make it easy for anyone, from kids to the tech-savvy, to create their own bits of content easily.

Leonard, who was DreamWorks’ CTO for ten years, said the idea for Ptch came about when DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg asked his team last year to come up with ways to grow new businesses. The goal was to leverage innovation from within DreamWorks, which has thus far been entirely focused on creating films. So, aiming to do something different, Leonard formed a separate company to follow through with the Ptch idea.

The company has been working in stealth mode fort the last 9 months and has 20 employees (15 full-time and 5 consultants). About a third of the employees at Ptch came from DreamWorks, while the remaining two-thirds includes a who’s who of outside talent. Among them, there’s chief operating officer David Geller, who previously headed up Yahoo’s popular Fantasy Sports division.

Ptch is available for the iPhone 4 and 4S, but it isn’t yet optimized for the iPad. Leonard tells me the company is working on scaling out to other platforms, including a more robust Web version. Eventually, he imagines the company could offer items for sale on the Ptch platform, perhaps with an open marketplace for additional styles.

Ptch hasn’t brought in any investors outside of DreamWorks yet. Instead, Leonard says the company wanted to get some traction and then strategically bring in partners.