NEW YORK -- Richard Branson is ready to go Hollywood with the help of Ryan Kavanaugh.

"Create. Package. Provoke." That is a tagline found on the website of Branson's Virgin Group, which on Friday unveiled Virgin Produced, its new film and TV development, packaging and production company.

It will be led by former J2TV/J2 Pictures producers Jason Felts as CEO and Justin Berfield as chief creative officer.

Based in L.A., it promises nothing short of wanting of wanting "to break the mold of Old Hollywood by providing a collaborative environment that embraces talent so they can best create and inspire."

Importantly, Virgin Produced has struck a joint venture with Kavanaugh's Relativity Media's Rogue Pictures to develop, produce and market films.

"For 40 years, Virgin has pushed the envelope," Felts said. "With Rogue's boundary breaking approach and Virgin's entrepreneurial strength, the brands are perfectly suited for each other."

"Virgin has always been about doing it your way, expressing oneself through innovation," said Relativity CEO Kavanaugh. "It dares to be different. We believe that their approach to film is suited to do just that, and pairing the Virgin and Rogue brands together to create innovation couldn't be more natural."

"Entertainment has long been a focus of the Virgin brand, and I'm excited for the chance to further grow in this space," said Branson.

In addition to developing and producing original films, it is expected that Virgin will co-produce two to three movies a year with Relativity/Rogue, allowing the studio to use Virgin's marketing capabilities. The first film in this collaboration will be Peter Farrelly's latest.

VirginProduced.com shows off some of the approach and rogue attitude the company plans to take.

Under a section called P.O.V., it says: "Virgin Produced is a new kind of production company. One that is creative, not controlling. One that refuses to cut corners and doesn't use money to buy your love. One that has faith in its projects. Virgin Produced very simply has balls, and we're not afraid to show them. In fact, we're gonna go ahead and apologize ahead of time. You might see our balls. Our bad."

And the site's section containing executive bios is titled "Suits" and even mentions how hardworking and sexy the firm's assistants are.

No other medium is pushing the boundaries of creativity like video. YouTube Play, a collaboration between YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum, wants to recognize and showcase the most remarkable online videos from around the world. To have your work considered simply post it on YouTube and then submit it at http://youtube.com/play. A jury of experts will decide which works will be shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

We want YouTube to be the best place to upload video. Without question, the number one requested feature by our creators is to upload videos longer than 10 minutes. We’ve heard you, and today we’re pleased to announce that we’ve increased the upload limit to 15 minutes.

We encourage you to take full advantage of this new time limit by making a video of your “15 minutes of fame.” Imagine that this video is all the world will ever know about you: what would you want to communicate? What will be the enduring stamp you’ve left on us all? Tag your video with “yt15minutes,” upload it by Wednesday, August 4, and we’ll select a handful of people to truly gain their 15 minutes of fame by featuring them on the YouTube homepage in a future spotlight.

In the meantime, you may wonder “why now?” -- the upload limit for non-partners has been 10 minutes for years. Well, we’ve spent significant resources on creating and improving our state-of-the-art Content ID system and many other powerful tools for copyright owners. Now, all of the major U.S. movie studios, music labels and over 1,000 other global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube. Because of the success of these ongoing technological efforts, we are able to increase the upload limit today. We will continue our strong commitment to provide advanced technology and tools to protect the rights of small and large copyright owners worldwide. We’ll also do everything we can to release incremental improvements like this one that benefit our video creators.

One final note: if you’re uploading a video that was previously rejected for being too long, you’ll have to go into “My Videos” and delete it before attempting to upload it again. Thanks and happy uploading!

You should slip into something a little more comfortable before watching this unboxing. This are gonna get pretty hot with Verizon's Motorola Droid X, the newest iteration of their best selling Droid line.

Android 2.1
4.3 in screen
480x854 screen resolution
TI OMAP 3630 1GHZ Processor
microSD Card 16GB included
8MP Camera with auto focus, dual flash
HDMI out
$199.99 with 2-year contract

Help enterprising Colombia youths running an Internet cafe

Today is my birthday, and in the tradition of other social media strategists working in the nonprofit space like Beth Kanter (I wrote about her last birthday campaign in January) and Geoff Livingston, I’d like to ask your help in making the day special for some enterprising young people in Colombia.

But first a quick word of explanation. This post comes in two parts: this introductory fund-raising appeal, followed by an interview with the founder and CEO of Jolkona Foundation, which is running the campaign and scores of others like it.

Empower young entrepreneurs in Colombia’s slums

This is the first time I’ve ever directly asked my blog readers and followers on Twitter and Facebook to donate to a campaign of mine, though I’ve spotlighted dozens of worthy causes over the years. So, please donate here — looking for nine people to donate an average of $25. Details:

What: Support young people in the slums of Bogotá, Colombia, as they develop their own community internet cafe business, called MegaRed (pictured above). The cafe provides opportunities for young entrepreneurs to create a better future for their families while providing a safe and positive environment for young people at risk of being recruited or attacked by armed groups.

What’s cool & different: Jolkona.org showcases scores of great causes to help out — and you get individualized feedback and progress reports on how your donation made a difference in people’s lives.

How much: We’re asking for $25, or whatever you can afford.

How: Click the Give button on this page. You’ll be able to track their progress in the months ahead.

Thank you! Please retweet or Facebook it if you can.

Jolkona: One-to-one philanthropy

Imet Adnan Mahmud, co-founder and CEO of Jolkona, during Beth Kanter’s book signing party for “The Networked Nonprofit” at TechSoup Global last month — and was immediately impressed by his seriousness and dedication to helping great causes through one-to-one philanthropy.

Support a library in Tibet that needs $50 to buy books, and you’ll get the list of books purchased through your donation.

Jolkona is at the bleeding edge of this phenomenon, which will become an increasingly important part of charitable giving in the years ahead, as young people in particular want transparency, interaction and accountability when supporting a cause.

Adnan says Jolkona is the first nonprofit “to give tangible feedback on your donation.” Kiva, which pioneered the technique, provides entrepreneurs with loans. And while nonprofits like charity:water and Global Giving often give updates on projects, Jolkona is positioning itself as a technology platform that enables one-to-one philanthropy for nonprofits of any size.

Watch, download or embed our interview on Vimeo

The year-old Jolkona — which means “drop of water” in Bengali (Adnan is a native of Bangladesh) — currently showcases 75 projects in 35 countries, including the United States.

Jolkona’s premise is simple but powerful: Support a library in Tibet that needs $50 to buy books, and you’ll get the list of the books purchased through your donation. Help people in Bangladesh and Myanmar get an artificial limb for $200 — $200! — and you’ll receive a before and after photo. In Iraq, you can save a girl from an honor killing for $120: You get the story of the girl you saved, though for security reasons they can’t supply a name or photo. And in the U.S., you can provide field trips to a classroom of disadvantaged children in Seattle.

In Iraq, you can save a girl from an honor killing for $120.

Says Adnan: “If you ask any nonprofit, Do you want to tell your supporters how their money was used, they’ll all tell you, Yes I do. But they don’t because they’re strapped for resources. Jolkona decided to come in and provide that technical infrastructure.

“Our focus is on youth philanthropy,” he adds. “We’re focused on galvanizing this next generation of givers. We’ve seen the frustration of this generation — that they don’t know where their money is going to. … We want people to feel that their [donation] can make a difference.”

It does, and the Jolkona team has gone out of its way to provide transparency and dispel worries that surfaced after last year’s revelation that Kiva wasn’t being forthright about its donations process.

Jolkona is now accepting nonprofit partners, though there’s a waiting queue. “If you are doing great work and are committed to showing impact, we are your best partners” as a platform solution, Adnan says.

Well, he didn’t actually walk all the way across America, but in his time lapse movie he does. Check out this great stop motion movie created by Peter Cole. There’s over 2,700 individual shots all taken on a Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-70 f/2.8 lens then edited down into a time lapse creation. Apparently there’s a little corporate influence behind the video, because Peter and his company pitched the concept to Levis Jeans, and they sponsored the production. Take a look at the video after the jump along with a behind the scenes one if you’re interested!

Microsoft pens ARM architecture deal

SoCs on the way

By Paul Taylor

Fri Jul 23 2010, 15:19

ADDING FUEL to rumours that Microsoft will actually design its own computing devices, the company has announced it has signed a new licensing deal with ARM, the IP deity of all things mobile and embedded.

This new deal expands on the original one in that it "gives Microsoft access to the microbarchitecture and instruction set of the ARM architecture", said Ian Drew, executive VP of marketing at ARM.

Microsoft, who was already an ARM partner, will have access to everything it will need to design platforms rather than just the OS. In so far as operating systems are concerned, that was covered by a previous agreement, which enabled Microsoft to basically design SoCs based on ARM and not just the software.

"It is a much broader architectural license, similar to the likes of Qualcomm and Marvell", added Mr Drew. Qualcomm and Marvell design SoCs and full-blown systems that any vendor can build on or simply rebrand - a world apart from what Microsoft does in its labs right now. Put the Vole in the same bag as the others and things may just start to happen. When asked whether Microsoft could design its own devices based on the license, the reply nipped us in the bud "We can't speculate on what Microsoft is going to do", added the exec, due to the confidential nature of the agreement.

The opportunity for Microsoft to design its own SoCs for mobile and embedded computing has not gone unnoticed. After the Kin flop, Microsoft might be looking to doing its kit in-house rather than rely on partners like Sharp to do the work for them. On the other hand, if Microsoft thinks Kin failed because of the way the handset was designed, then we'll beg to differ, creepy ads'n'all. Considering Microsoft is seen as being struck by Iphone/Ipad-envy, access to the ARM microarchitecture may give the monolith more drive to branch out its ED&D division into just about any area of computing, mobile or otherwise.

On the other hand, and contrary to popular belief, porting the desktop version of Windows to ARM is a separate matter entirely and we don't see why Microsoft would need to sign another agreement to get this done. µ

7" Touch Screen TFT LCD Google Android 1.7 Tablet PC w/ WiFi/Camera

Feature:

Operating System: Google Android OS 1.7

Processor: VIA WM8505 ARM926

Memory: 256MB DDR2

Capacity: 2GB NAND FLASH, support SDHC TF card up to 16GB

Display: 7" high-brightness TFT LCD wide screen touch display (800*480 pixel resolution)

Touch Control: Full size touch operation, sliding menu, functional icon dragging

Orientation Sensors With accelerometer, automatic steering display screen

Network: 802.11b/g Wi-Fi network connection

RJ45, 10/100Mbps network connection

Camera: 0.3 Mega pixel camera

Photo Formats:JPEG,BMP,GIF,PNG,

Microphone: Built-in

Speaker: 2 speakers

Slots: 1 * Micro SD/TF card slot (support up to 16GB)

1 * 30 pin interface (with adapter can be 2*USB HUB and RJ45 network interface)

1 * 3.5mm Stereo Audio out

Music Formats:MP3, WMA, APE,FLAC,AAC,AC3,WAV

Video: MKV(H.264 HP), AVI, RM, RMVB, FLV,MPEG-1, MPEG-2

Software: Google Chome-lite Browser

OS Language: Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

Battery: Built-in 2400mAh rechargeable battery

Power Adapter: Power adapter:110 to 240V Input, 9V DC Output

USB, Lan port for netbook expansion

Power Adapter: 180-240V (US plug)

Accessories: AC power adapter, USB splitter, user manual

Disney has released the newest trailer for TRON: Legacy at Comic-Con, and it’s spreading around the web like wildfire.

TRON: Legacy is the much-anticipated sequel to Tron, the 1982 classic that follows hacker Kevin Flynn’s journey into the virtual world of the ENCOM mainframe. Jeff Bridges is reprising his role as Flynn in the sequel, which is due to be released on December 17, 2010.

This trailer not only shows off the cutting-edge, techno-style special effects that make the world of TRON; it also dives deeper into the storyline and the relationship between Bridges’ character and his hacker son Sam Flynn (played by Garrett Hedlund). Comic-Con attendees got an extra bonus, though: eight full minutes of footage from the upcoming film.

The film trailer has been a hot item around the web. The movie wins nostalgia points with children of the eighties, and it also wins the hearts of technology and computer geeks. After seeing this trailer, we’re more excited than ever for this film.

What about you: Are you excited? Are you planning on going to see the film later this year? Let us know what you think in the comments, but please, no reaction videos.

The biker boys at Amen Design have built a chopper based around Franco Sbarro’s hubless wheels. And it really rides!

Hubless wheels work by fixing the rotating parts (brake ring, bearings, hubless rim) onto the outer side of a non-rotating inner ring that attaches to the motorcycle’s swingarm or forks.

Advantages include decreased unsprung weight, reduced structural stress (no spokes to transmit forces through), increased braking leverage, more accurate steering, reduced vibration and a lower center of gravity. Hubless wheels also look bitchin’, which, we’re guessing is the main motivating factor in Amen’s decision to use them.

The Hubless Monster

Since this bike is a clichéd raked out chopper, any pretense of performance or functionality is thrown out the window in the name of extremely questionable style. We’re guessing the immense complication, need for extreme precision and high maintenance needs of the hubless design are the least of Amen’s concerns, as this motorcycle wasn’t designed to be ridden.

Via @LaniAR