OStatic

Whether you do some blogging, operate an e-commerce site, or simply have moving pictures in the back of your mind to work with, web-based video and animation should probably be on your radar.

Fresh out of the Mozilla Labs oven this week is a beta version of Prism, a new incarnation of WebRunner that integrates Web applications with the desktop. The idea behind Prism starts with from the premise that as more people move their computing activities to the cloud, users will become increasingly dependent on Web apps designed to replace locally-based email, calendaring, and word processing.

Often, when I hear from OStatic readers, they express interest in open source graphics tools. Many of them already use some of the best tools, but there are actually many, many good, free resources in the open source arena for adding to your graphics arsenal. There are also free tutorial resources for getting started with them right away. Whether you want to produce a full-length animated movie, desktop publish good-looking graphical booklets, add a galactic brush set to GIMP (for effects like the one at left), work more efficiently with Flickr, or create eye-catching logos, check out our updated collection of 12 free graphics applications and resources here.

That's the open source Android operating system running on this fairly slick looking ARCHOS tablet, which is concrete proof that Android is headed for more than just smartphones. As JKOnTheRun notes, the ARCHOS 5 Android-based Internet Tablet isn't scheduled to go on sale until September 15th, but online retailer B&H jumped the gun and has a 500GB version of it shown and listed on its site. The ARCHOS 5 is a 5-inch slate, and JKOnTheRun reports that at one time B&H listed both HDD and SSD models, with prices ranging from $294 to $420, depending on configuration. Those specs have since been removed.

At those prices, I'm betting this tablet has a chance. Tablet computers have never taken the market by storm, but they have their loyal users, and ARCHOS' primarily video-focused devices have had a loyal user base for years. How might people use these tablets, will they get their own applications, and is there a good future for Android on them?

In July, we covered the much updated version 1.0 of VLC Media Player. You can download a new version 1.0.1 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux here, and if you don't already use it, it's fantastic. I find that it consistently plays video file formats that other players have problems with, and there is much more under the hood in this open source media player than many people realize. For example, you can use it to broadcast your own video content, you can use it as a video transcoder for converting video file formats, and you can listen to and manage podcasts with it. VideoLAN, which makes VLC Media Player, reports that version 1.0 has already hit 14 million downloads.

VLC Media Player is so powerful, though, that it could use better documentation (As I write this, the wiki for VLC Media Player's documentation is down altogether). In this post, I'll round up four good tutorial resources that can introduce you to some of the many useful VLC Media Player features that may not be immediately apparent.

Among open source media center applications for managing video, music and other entertainment content, Boxee has emerged as a clear leader. This week the company announced that it has received a $6 million injection of venture capital funding, led by Boston-based General Catalyst with participation by prior investors Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures.

The investment brings Boxee's total funding to $10 million, obtained in under a year. As Boxee officials noted in their announcement of the funding: Boxee today is mostly serving a tech-savvy audience ? those who feel comfortable connecting a computer to a TV. For example, Boxee is very popular with Apple TV users, who manage media with it, and are able to watch video content on big-screen TVs. So what lies ahead for it, and how can it gain appeal beyond a tech-savvy audience?

Researchers and developers at the University of California, Berkeley are working on open source software to help distribute audio and video files of classroom lectures to media services like iTunes and YouTube. The university already publishes full-length videos of classroom sessions on YouTube, but recording, editing, and posting these videos is an costly undertaking. Now, new grant money will pay those expenses and help expand video distribution worldwide.

Known as the Opencast Matterhorn project, an international team of developers from universities in Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and the UK will draw from a coffer of $1.3 million to create the software platform that's scheduled to launch next summer.

Google's announcement yesterday that it is acquiring video compression company On2 Technologies for $106.5 million may appear to be just another acquisition in a buyer's market, but there is a strong chance that it could dramatically affect video standards online. Because of the enormous share of online video viewing that Google's YouTube commands, the company can swing a bigger stick in setting online video standards than many people realize, and the company has already been frustrated by the refusal of leading browser makers to agree on a central, shared codec to mutually support.

Ars Technica suggests that the On2 acquisition will have a big impact on web video standards, and The Register comes right out and speculates that Google will quickly open source On2's video compression codecs. I lean toward the latter scenario.