Developing story: Ustream has sent out some details on the DDoS attack that is currently attacking its system — which was reported on earlier by GigaOm, along with another DDoS attack on Bambuser.

A Ustream spokesperson says that the attacked is targeted on user “reggamortis1″, a prominent protestor’s live Ustream channel.  ”He has been broadcasting from a large protest at the ‘China Town’ metro stop in Moscow.” Ustream says that this is the third major DDoS attack on Ustream in the last six months related to a Russian citizen journalist, and the biggest DDoS attack it has ever had. The site is now gradually coming back up.

More Details

• Ustream says the attack started at 5:30 am ET (2:30 pm in Moscow), with the attack, centered on the channel ReggaMortis1.
• Ustream says it has never seen an attack of this scale on its worldwide data centers.
• The attacks originated primarily from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Iran, “involving thousands of individual IP addresses.”
• At the moment Ustream is in a heavy fight trying to mitigate the effect of the ongoing attack. “Our service is very slow, but working partially,” the company said in a statement.

Ustream is the world’s largest live streaming platform with 55 million unique visitors per month. It’s an open platform that allows for live video posts not just from individuals but more professionally-produced content as well. More than 125 hours of content is uploaded every minute and there are 10,000 broadcasts live on the site at any given time — meaning this DDoS represents a significant drop in volume.

Perhaps related to this, one of the groups associated with the Hacktivists Anonymous today claimed they were carrying out a DDoS attack on the Kremlin.

Back in November, Ustream Co-founder and longtime CEO John Ham stepped down from the company he had helped found four and a half years earlier. His co-founder, Brad Hunstable, took the reins in his place. Ham continues to serve as chairman of Ustream’s board of directors and as an advisor to the company, but as Jason reported, his stepping down in November was an acknowledgement of the Entrepreneurial Call.

At the time, Ham was tight-lipped about the particulars of his new venture, which remains true today, as the startup is in double-secret stealth mode. However, Ham is ready to reveal a few more details, including his partner. The Ustream co-founder has teamed up with Keith Lee, the co-founder of venture-backed, location-based mobile app developer Booyah — the makers of popular iOS apps including My Town. Prior to co-founding Booyah, Lee was the lead producer for Blizzard’s Diablo III, as well as a lead engineer for Insomniac Games.

The co-founders also revealed this morning that they recently closed a $1.5 million round of seed financing from a pack of well-known investors, including Canaan Partners, Greylock, Softbank Capital, Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments, Kevin Rose, and others.

We caught up with Ham and Lee this morning, and although the co-founders would not yet divulge the name of their new venture, or the size of the team, they did say that they’ve secured office space in the SOMA district in San Francisco and that the startup is be focused on building mobile applications that focus on social experiences and helping people make connections.

Ham said that he first met Lee when forging a partnership between Ustream and Booyah, which he said ended up being one of Ustream’s most successful partnerships to date. The two struck up a friendship, and Ham said he had vowed for years that he would eventually found a company with Lee, and at the end of last year, the opportunity presented itself.

Lee said that the two are all-out focused on building a great product, part of the reason they’ve remained heads-down for the last six months, and are iterating fast. The team plans to launch its first product and do a full unveiling by mid-summer. “We are both passionate about bringing people together through authentic, shared experiences,” Lee said, “and to help people meet in a way that sustains and strengthens relationships.”

Stay tuned for more.

Livestream, the premium live video streaming service, is announcing an interesting new product today: a $495 hardware encoder that can be connected to virtually any camera and that can stream HD video directly to the Web through a WiFi connection or most USB wireless modems. The small device is fully integrated into the new Livestream platform. The purchase price includes three months of free access to Livestream’s ad-free HD streaming service (normally $45/month). Livestream describes the device as “the industry’s first affordable unlimited ad-free HD live streaming end-to-end solution.”

The Livestream Broadcaster connects to the Internet through a 3G or 4G modem (in the U.S., Livestream recommends using a USB modem that connects to Verizon’s 4G LTE network), but producers can also opt to connect to a local WiFi or wired network.

Once it is connected to the Internet, producers can control it through a small LCD screen on the encoder or over the web. The Broadcaster supports virtually any camera that can feed it with an HDMI signal (including 1080i, 720p and 480i). The output is encoded in real-time in H.264 video and AAC audio at up to 720p and 2.3 Mbps. The device also has a 3.5mm audio input. Thanks to its tripod mount, users could even install it right on their cameras with a simple tripod to hot shoe adapter.

As the company’s CEO and co-founder Max Haot told me earlier this week, Livestream isn’t planning to become a hardware platform. While he wouldn’t tell me whether the company actually subsidizes the product to keep the price this low, he did note that this is basically a play to get more producers onto the Livestream platform. Because of this, making high margins on the device itself doesn’t really matter to the company.

Hardware encoders – even small and affordable ones – aren’t really new, of course. The real breakthrough here, says Haot, is that the hardware is fully integrated with the online service. In his view, “the missing link to accelerate the adoption [of live video streaming] was seamlessly integrating live video from any prosumer camera to our service without the need for a computer.” Ideally, Haot, told me, he would like to see mainstream retailers like Best Buy sell devices like this in the future.

The company is aiming the device at pretty much the same market as the Livestream service itself: large and small event producers who want to stream their events live to the Web and mobile devices. The company’s customers use the service to stream anything from wedding ceremonies to large movie premiers. Facebook, for example, uses Livestream for the live video stream from its press events.

The closest competitor to the Livestream Broadcaster is likely Cerevo’s Live Shell. At around $299, the Live Shell is cheaper than the Broadcaster (though once you count the three free months of Livestream service, the difference really isn’t that big). Unlike Livestream’s Broadcaster, though, the Live Shell isn’t fully integrated with any third-party service (it only supports Ustream right now) and it also doesn’t stream in HD.

The Livestream Broadcaster is available for pre-order today in the U.S. and Europe. It will start shipping in May.

Live video streaming website Ustream today is launching an integration with Facebook’s new Timeline user interface. This means that users will be able to share the live videos they’re watching on Ustream with their Facebook friends in real-time.

The Ustream launch is one of the first video app integrations with Timeline. Thus far, Facebook’s Timeline has been populated with other types of media: Journalism publications such as Yahoo News and the Washington Post, music through services such as Spotify, and social and lifestyle apps such as Foodspotting and Pose.

Of course, just like the articles you read and the songs you listen to, your tastes in video viewing are very personal — and not always something you’re willing to share with your entire social network of friends and acquaintances. Ustream says it has been very careful to implement strong privacy controls with the Timeline integration to make it completely clear to users what they’re sharing and when. “We have definitely made an effort to increase privacy controls, and make it very transparent to users what is being shared and what is not,” Ustream product manager Brian Mayer said in an interview this week.

For now, though, you still can’t watch Ustream videos at the same time as your friends within either Facebook or Ustream connected to Facebook (similar to how Google+ Hangouts lets you watch YouTube videos with friends at the same time and talk about it, but without the webcam aspect.) That capability is being worked on by the people at Ustream, I’m told, and should make its debut sometime in the weeks ahead: “Features that we are working on currently will let you see what your friends are watching and communicate with your friends live via our Social Stream,” a Ustream rep says.

Well, the avian theme has come back to haunt us of late, but here’s some avian news that’s sure to warm the cockles of your heart. Last year, the Decorah Eagles became the Web’s biggest reality TV stars.

Let me explain: A pair of Bald Eagles, nesting in Decorah, Iowa, were captured on camera 24/7 in a live stream established by The Raptor Research Project, a non-profit organization that specializes in the preservation of falcons, eagles, ospreys and other birds of prey. The organization set up a Ustream channel that allowed users to watch around-the-clock footage of the parents raising three eaglets. The live stream racked up more than 200 million views, making it the most-viewed Ustream feed in the company’s five-plus-year history.

And now, the Decorah Eagles are back for a “Season Two”. The parental pair returned to their nest at the end of December to begin their “nesting ritual,” and three eggs were laid in late February — with the first egg expected to hatch any day now. The two remaining eggs are expected to hatch about a week apart. Since the avian parents returned to their nest, Ustream tells us that the stream attracted 11 million global views, with viewership reaching as high as 23,000 live viewers at a time. [Ustream tells us its now reached over 41K]

Part of what made the Decorah Eagles feed so popular was that it was so bare bones, just a profile page, and a live stream of a family of Eagles doing what they do. But, with the rise of user generated content distribution media (and their popularity), social tools have the power to make the content much more engaging and interactive for viewers.

The feed didn’t include any bells and whistles to reach a broad audience, but Ustream has added a few features this year to improve upon the Decorah Eagles sitcom experience, including, for starters, night vision, high definition, and panning cameras. The company is also incorporating a “Social Stream” feature, where fans can communicate in a realtime, using an interactive chat module to share their thoughts and cheer on the eagles, as the video streams. (This also includes Facebook and Twitter integration.) Ustream also created a “Superchannel” for Raptor Resource Project, so that fans can watch all of its cameras in one, consolidated channel at once. Viewers can navigate through this interactive landing page, watch at once, or select between any of the live broadcasts.

Jon Orlin, the man in charge of TechCrunch TV, is himself a fan of the Decorah Eagles, and had this to say about the uber-popular feed:

It’s pretty amazing how this live eagle channel has taken off. There are no (human) actors, writers, or fancy production or graphics. Just mother nature. Actually, it does take some impressive bird cameras and technology infrastructure. Much of the time, there isn’t a lot of action happening. But its live, compelling, and you don’t want to miss what happens next. If it weren’t available live, it just wouldn’t have the same impact, or, likely the sizable viewership.

The Ustream channel is below. For more, here’s the Decorah Eagles’ page on Ustream. Raptor Research Project here.

Disclosure: Ustream provides live streaming services for TechCrunch

Back in October, live video streaming platform Ustream announced a partnership with KT Corporation — a leading telecommunications provider in South Korea. The joint venture also included an additional $10 million funding round, much of it led by the sizable Japanese telecom provider, Softbank (whose independent by closely-connected VC firm, Softbank Capital, operates in Boston, among other cities). The funding brought Ustream’s total outside investment close to $60 million.

Both the additional capital from Softbank and the partnership with KT Corporation came in the anticipation of Ustream’s launch in Korea, and today the streaming video provider is finally ready to officially announce its new Korean language service and portal, Ustream Korea .

Ustream Korea is the second non-English platform that the company has released, after its Japanese-only version, which launched back in January of 2010, headed by Ustream Asia CEO, Tomotaka Nakagawa. In partnership with KT Corp. and Ustream Asia, Ustream announced that Jimmy Kim would become the new CEO of its Korean entity in January of this year. Kim previously served as the Vice President at Viacom International, and has also worked with CNBC, Technicolor and Bloomberg Television.

The joint venture will also allow Ustream to expand its text-based social network experience in South Korea, which is to include a live, interactive experience, says Ustream’s Social Media Manager, Tony Riggins. At the outset, Ustream Korea will offer content like, the “Penguin Cam,” which airs live from SeaWorld in San Diego, as well as its live AP news channel, and events like the Olleh Smartphone movie festival and Indi Band Awards.

Ustream Korea will include all of Ustream’s established features, including co-hosting video, IRC chat, customizable channels, embeddable player, and viewing content in realtime directly from mobile devices, smart TVs, etc. Korean pop stars like Wonder-Girls and Park Jae Bum got an opportunity to test out the platform earlier this year in advance of its official launch, and obviously Ustream will be making a push to sign up more of these influencers in the coming months.

As Ustream Japan has established actual TV studios across the country (there are currently 12), which broadcast everything from news to messages from celebrities and advertising, along with the ability for anyone using the Ustream Asia platform to stop in and broadcast content, the company will no doubt be looking to establish a similar mix of TV and user-generated content in Korea.

Ustream Asia has already seen brands like NHK, Starbucks, and Nikkei come on board as partners, and there are plans to use Ustream Korea in a similar vein — both as a PR and marketing platform. In addition, KT Corp and other local Korean firms have said that they will launch new products and services using Ustream, along with blasting out those realtime, multimedia press releases.

As of February, Ustream had 14.2 million registered users and saw 29 million social stream messages created and 2 billion viewers access its content across the Web and mobile. According to Quantcast, 54.5 million people tune into Ustream every month.

Ustream continues to make moves to expand its presence in Asia, and has smartly been doing so with the help of major telecom providers. The service has seen growing traction there, and these country and language-specific platforms stand to give the service a boost, and though the team wouldn’t comment on whether or not China is next, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Ustream pop up in additional fast-growing Asian markets over the course of the year.

For more, check out the new Korean platform here.

In part II of Chris Dixon’s Founder Stories interview with Livestream co-founder Max Haot, Hoat offers his analysis of what he encountered while attempting to secure funding between roughly 2007 and early 2008. At the time, Haot feels VC’s were hovering over technology that allowed people to digitally record events and watch the action on their own time.

However, as presidential candidates crisscrossed the country during the ’08 election, Livestream caught a break thanks to an invite from Gannett who started using Livestream (then known as Mogulus) to broadcast the activity. Pleased with the results, Haot says Gannett invested $10-million and delivered a bundle of cash that arrived just in time.

Livestream pocketed the money shortly before the financial sector imploded, and after it did, the team seemed to sharpen its focus. He tells Dixon, we needed “to operate under the assumption that we will never get anymore cash and we started monetizing and deploying our premium business, understanding our customers more and rebranding to Livestream.”

Haot adds renaming Mogulus to Livestream was “one of the single best decisions” the company has ever made.

As Livestream looks ahead, Hoat is broadening Livestream’s offerings by blending various forms of media (text, photos, pre-produced video clips and live video) into a scrolling event pages in order to “extend the event online.” He says Livestream is not just “live video” but “a stream in realtime”

Make sure to hear his full thoughts by watching both videos, and check out episode I of this interview here.

Past episodes of Founder Stories with leaders from Gilt Groupe, BirchBox, Eventbrite, and Flipboard are here.

John Ham, cofounder and longtime CEO of live streaming video service Ustream, is stepping down from the company he helped start four and a half years ago. Ham will be replaced by cofounder and (and former West Point classmate) Brad Hunstable, who will serve as interim CEO while the company looks for a permanent replacement. Ham will stay on as the company’s Chairman of the Board and an advisor.

Ham says that the decision to step down is one he made entirely on his own accord, and that the company has been preparing for his transition for the last 2-3 months. His reason for leaving? He says that he’s ready to scratch his entrepreneurial itch again, and will be announcing a new startup he’s working on by the end of the year. He isn’t talking about the new company just yet, other than to say he’ll be starting it with an (unnamed) founder of a social gaming company.

Alongside the news, Ustream is announcing that it’s raised another $6 million from existing investors Softbank and DCM. This comes on top of a $10 million round it raised as part of a joint venture with South Korea’s KT Corp, which was announced last week. Ustream has raised a whopping $103.8 million to date.

I spoke with Ham and interim CEO Hunstable about the move, and about Ustream’s health.

They say the service has strong traffic — 60 million users watch live streams each month — and that it now has three international offices, two US-based offices, and over 150 employees overall. They aren’t talking revenue numbers, but they say the company will be profitable in 2012.

Ustream has seen a steady evolution over the last several years as it’s focused increasingly on premium content. Like Qik, the service allows users to stream videos directly from their PCs, tablets, and mobile phones, but these streams are difficult to monetize and to consistently drive traffic.

So the company has partnered up with content owners including CBS, MTV, the AP, and many others abroad to stream shows and live events (TechCrunch has used Ustream to stream our TC Disrupt conferences). Hunstable says that the company will continue this strategy going forward, and that it will continue to foster growth in Asian markets, which have been a hotbed for the service.

When I pointed out that YouTube is also increasingly working with premium content owners for its own live streams, Hunstable said that Ustream has an advantage because it has been focused on live content for 4.5 years, and that, alongside the site’s social features, it provides a unique experience to consumers and content owners.

Ham and Hunstable were classmates at West Point, and originally started Ustream as a way to help deployed military personnel connect with friends and family back home.

Live video streaming service Ustream continues to expand its presence in Asia with the help of major telecom corporations.

Today, the company is announcing that it’s teaming KT Corporation, a leading telecommunications provider in South Korea, to launch Ustream Korea. Ustream will be launching its new Korean portal in January 2012, with a new office opening in Seoul that month as well. The joint venture includes a new $10 million funding round for Ustream, which brings the company’s total funding to $98.7 million.

The bulk of that funding comes from Japanese telecom provider Softbank, which forged a deep relationship with the company in February 2010 and has invested 75 million.

Ustream says that since Ustream Asia launched 17 months ago, the portal has seen its video views grow by 307%, with the number of unique visitors growing 266%. Here’s the roster of brands using the Ustream Asia service so far, from the company’s press release:

Toyota, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Nintendo, NHK World, NIKKEI, Coca Cola Japan, MTV Networks Japan, Yahoo! Japan, and more.

Japan-based startup Cerevo took the wraps off the so-called “Live Shell” [JP] yesterday, a small device that makes it possible to stream live video to the web (via Ustream) without using a PC. It’s a significant improvement over the similar “Livebox” the company introduced last year.

The Live Shell is sized at just 68×120×26mm, weighs 106g and is officially approved by Ustream (it has the “Ustream Compatible” mark). It connects to the web via IEEE 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, a mobile router or Ethernet.

The device comes with HDMI, USB, and composite interfaces and can livestream video in 704×528 resolution at 1.5Mbps max.

After setting up an account on Cerevo’s website, users just need to plug their camera into the Live Shell to start streaming for 3 hours on 3 batteries (buyers get an AC adapter, too). The broadcast can be managed via the Cerevo site on the web or smartphone (see below for the smartphone dashboard).

Cerevo already accepts pre-orders and plans to start selling the device within this year (online and in Japan only, for the time being). The Live Shell will cost US$350 (this camera livestreams video from Cerevo’s Akihabara office using the device).

Last month, Ustream launched its video streaming service on the iPad. As Jason reported at the time, the app allows users to view live and recorded content streaming through the Web and even to stream their own footage directly from their iPad 2s.

The move was a big step forward for live, streaming video on tablet devices, especially in that the latter feature allows users to be couch videographers. Of course, since last year, Ustream has been working on a series of apps that give users the added benefit of video editing features that can turn couch videographers into pro video creators.

Today, Ustream is announcing a partnership with Telestream, the maker of digital media tools and workflow solutions, which will bring Telestream Wirecast live video production technology to all Ustream subscribers and add yet another layer to Ustream’s video editing solutions.

Last year, Ustream launched the first product in its “Producer Studio” line, which aims to turn a user’s PC into a live video production studio with video editing tools that add a professional look to a user’s streams. Since its initial launch in 2010, Ustream Producer products have attracted over 600,000 downloads. Today, Ustream and Telestream are launching a jointly-developed version 2.0 of its family of desktop streaming media applications, which adds a bunch of updates to all Producer products and sees the suite expanding to a total of three flavors.

The triage now includes Ustream Producer, which can be used by any users for free, Ustream Producer Pro, a more advanced application available for $199, and the new Producer Studio, an app for pros starting at $549.

Each version of Ustream Producer will include a newly remodeled “Desktop Presenter”, which enables users to screencast desktops of any computer within their local network in broadcasts. Version 2.0 also adds audio capabilities, which allows Desktop Presenter, for example, to serve as a Skype client for web talk shows, which will likely be of particular interest to those participating in the growing gamecasting space.

Producer also takes advantage of the new H.264 codec by MainConcept, as well as a built-in bandwidth meter that works to ensure that broadcasts remain in high video quality. In addition, some cool new features of the new Ustream Producer Studio include an audio mixer with sync delay, built-in support for HDV and IP cameras, integrated scoreboards for sports fans that can be viewed during live broadcast, and a new catalog of lower-thirds to help make broadcasts a little more professional looking.

The best part is that now both amateur and professional videographers will be able to take advantage of streaming content that incorporates music, image transitions, and picture-in-picture capability with a few clicks. Incorporating Telestream’s Wirecast architecture into Ustream’s products will now allow users to benefit from scalable, high-quality video production tools on both Mac and PC — and to create custom productions, regardless of one’s level of expertise.

For more on Ustream Producer, visit the Producer Demo here, or check out the live demo below:

Ustream has landed on the iPad.

Today, the streaming video service has launched its first iPad-optimized app, allowing users to view live and recorded content streaming through the service — and to stream their own footage direct from their iPad 2. You can grab the app right here.

iPads are obviously well-suited for lounging — and Ustream is expecting that plenty of people will take advantage of the app to stream their thoughts direct from their couches (in other words, don’t be surprised if you see a bunch of new talking head streams pop up as people react to what they just watched on the news or after a sporting event).

The iPad version also includes all-important AirPlay support, which lets you stream whatever you’re watching on Ustream to your television.

The company launched its Android application on Honeycomb two weeks ago (it’s quite slick, and definitely better than most of the other Honeycomb apps out there), which also supports streaming direct from the tablet.

If you’ve used an Android Honeycomb-equipped tablet for any length of time, you’ve probably run into a serious issue: there just aren’t that many good applications that have been optimized for the tablet form factor (or at least, they’re impossible to find). Sure, there are some phone apps with minor tweaks that scale up nicely, but in terms of apps that feel like they were built with Honeycomb in mind, the pickings are slim.

Well today, Honeycomb is getting a very nice addition its app catalog, complements of Ustream. The popular video service, which lets users stream their content live to the web, for free, has just launched a version of its Android app. It’s available right here.

The app is pretty much what you’d expect, and it’s done well. You can watch both live and archived content, and, in a feature that may lead to a major influx of mobile streams, you can upload live from your tablet as well (cue hundreds of people uploading couch-side reflections on the TV shows they’ve just watched). The service’s social features are also baked in — you can view a real-time stream of comments and run polls directly from the app. These features are all available on supported phones, too.

All in all it’s a solid app (and it makes me wish more apps on Honeycomb felt like this). Oh, and don’t worry iPad fans — a new tablet app will be coming your way in the near future as well.

“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber”.

– Winston Churchill

It seems that the “Decorah Eagles” have officially become America’s biggest reality-TV stars. For those who haven’t yet heard, the Decorah Eagles are a family of Bald Eagles nesting in Decorah, Iowa. The Raptor Resource Project, a non-profit organization that specializes in the preservation of falcons, eagles, ospreys, hawks, and owls, established a Ustream channel, consisting of live, round-the-clock footage of a pair of Bald Eagles and their 3 eaglets.

In the last month, the Decorah Eagles have become a full-blown national phenomenon. The stream has been live since February of 2010, but the majority of traffic has arrived since the pair’s eggs began hatching on April 2nd of this year. The Huffington Post wrote a story on the Decorah Eagles in April and, at the time, the channel had attracted 25.6 million views. Today, less than a month later, that number has passed 95 million (currently at nearly 95.9 million). Thus, in 29 days, the stream has tallied over 70 million views, which breaks down to roughly 2.4 million views-per-day over that time.

Ustream told TechCrunch that the Decorah Eagles stream has become the most-watched live stream in the company’s five-year history, passing the 34 million views garnered by Ustream’s Canal 5 news page (which covered the Chilean miner saga in September of last year) over the course of the last month.

According to the live video platform, the average time spent watching the Decorah Eagles in April, per-unique-viewer, was 6 hours and 10 minutes, and over 2,400 human years have been invested in watching the “eagle cam”. Of course, many people are likely leaving the stream on for 24-hours-a-day, so this skews the figures a bit, but the point remains: People love the eagles. And I don’t mean Don Henley’s Eagles.

YouTube’s coverage of the “Royal Wedding” generated 72 Million total live streams, so, considering that Ustream expects the Decorah Eagles to pass 100 million views within the week, the video platform believes that it now has the most-watched live stream (emanating from a single source, or provider). Ever. Though it’s true that the Royal Wedding’s 72 million viewers watched over the course of a much shorter time frame.

Ustream Marketing Manager Tony Riggins tells me that the company has been hearing from people from all walks of life, who have been tuning in to watch the eagles go about their day-to-day bird business. He said that they’ve been receiving calls from hospitals, where cancer patients are routinely checking in with the eagles to get a few minutes of much-needed distraction from their treatments.

The “Real World Decorah” live stream has also become an inimitable educational opportunity, as classrooms of grade-schoolers through colleges are watching the live stream to learn about biology, natural history, and more. With scientists, bird lovers, seniors, kids, and even bloggers all tuning in, this has truly become what Beverly Macy called a “global social learning experience in realtime”.

This is obviously a big moment for Ustream, just as it is for this family of eagles, who are giving the world the best damn reality show it’s ever seen.

So far, my pleas to the Eagle Family for an exclusive interview has not been granted, but stay tuned. This just might be my opportunity for some unprecedented embedded reporting.

And just for good measure, to appropriately commemorate the occasion, here is John Ashcroft singing “Let The Eagles Soar”.

For more on the Decorah Eagles and the man behind the Raptor Resource Project, check out the National Wildlife Federation’s interview with him here.

You might be saying, “Wait a minute, high definition today means 720 or 1080 lines of resolution. I’m only watching the videos on a smaller-than-HD window on the TechCrunch website or smartphone. That’s not HD, so what’s the point.” Well, there is a big point.

It’s true most of our viewers don’t watch on HD size displays. You can watch in HD resolution on a monitor by clicking the fullscreen button in the player. But even on smaller displays, the image quality is much better. It’s partly a case of GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. Starting with the highest quality images will get the best end result after all the encodings, decodings, and scaling – which also needs to be kept to the minimum.

For cameras, we use 3 robotic Panasonic AW-HE50′s. These cameras, introduced last summer, look like those security cameras in the ceiling. But, we have them mounted on tripods at eye level. They are not very intimidating to guests. We control them with a robotic camera controller, which allows us to store shots and make changes remotely.

We’ve chosen to use the cameras in 720p mode (for you video techies, the cameras output this via HD-SDI). Our programming is mostly viewed on computers or mobile devices with progressive displays so this mode works well. The cameras also offers 1080i and 480i outputs. Before getting our HD switcher, we used the 480i output in a DV timeline and the image quality was poor. But, shooting, switching and editing in HD mode has solved this.

Below is a screenshot using the SD 480i and DV timeline

And here’s a screenshot using 720p mode, HD switcher and HD timeline

Our production switcher is Newtek’s TriCaster TCXD850. The same model, launched last year, was used to produce the Facebook Live townhall with President Obama, MTV’s MVA red carpet show, ESPN’s X Games and many other sporting events. We bring in our HD camera inputs, add name or other graphics, and can do double-box graphic effects to put multiple sources on the screen at once.

We also input multiple Skype video sources into the switcher, so we can do multi-box interviews with anyone with a Skype connection and a webcam. Many cameras used for Skype output a 4:3 image. But, we can use the switcher to keep the image at 4:3, and put it over a background using the ‘virtual input feature’ that fills our 16:9 screen, so guests don’t get stretched.

The TriCaster also runs Adobe’s Flash Media Live Encoder, so with one button we can launch a live stream to our Ustream channel.

We record our studio segments on the TriCaster’s hard drive. From there, we render it in a format that works in Final Cut Pro, then transfer the file over our network to another computer for editing. After editing, we encode and upload a h.264 file to Ooyala, which makes multiple versions of the file for different bandwidths and player size. For playback, Ooyala uses adaptive bit rate streaming to dynamically select the highest quality stream to send to each viewer. You won’t get the highest quality feed if you don’t have the bandwidth for it.

While we’ve gone HD, the most important thing for us is our editorial content. If we have something our readers and viewers would be interested in, as long as you can see it, hear it, and aren’t distracted by the technical issues, we’ll bring it to you no matter what it’s captured with.

Much of our field shoots are done with Panasonic HVX200a cameras. We’ve also used iPhone cameras, Skype webcams, point-and-shoot digital cameras that record video, and DSLRs like the Canon 7Ds to capture our videos. Arrington even bought us some Barbie Video Girl cameras, which shoot with an impressive 320×240 image. That might have been called very high definition in the 1930s, when television systems used as few as 30 lines of resolution. Watch this fun video on how the Barbie-cam stacks up to the 7D.

Exclusive - Ustream is today launching a new and improved Facebook application that it says will take live streaming within the hugely popular social networking site “to another level”.

The app, which is currently available to anyone with a Facebook fan page, be they businesses, artists or general user communities, enables users to opt-in for reminders for upcoming streaming events using Facebook Oauth and receive notifications whenever a certain broadcaster turns on a live stream (the ‘Join Crowd’ feature).

Facebook page administrators can now also customize their application’s look and feel, require users to ‘like’ their Facebook page prior to viewing, and more.

One of the first to give the new Ustream for Facebook app a whirl is Black Eyed Peas front man Will.I.Am, who will be broadcasting live on Facebook today at 2PM Pacific time.

You’ll also be able to catch it on BEP’s Facebook page.µ

For more background on Ustream, read these recent articles:

Ustream 2.0 For iPhone Lets You Broadcast And View Live Video, All In One App
Ustream Hits 10M Broadcasters, 60M Monthly Unique Viewers

Finally, a tutorial video for the new app:

Video service Ustream has seen an interesting six months, between broadcasting the Chilean miner rescue, the news feeds of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the debut of the Charlie Sheen show and the news surrounding the Japanese Tsunami and earthquake last Friday. VP of Marketing and Communications Lynn Fox tells me that the service has seen unprecedented growth, and hit 10 million total broadcaster signups at the end of February, averaging a rounded 20% growth month over month since December.

According to Quantcast, Ustream’s monthly unique viewers are 60 million across the entire network. Vistors to the Ustream site have grown from 18 million in January to 25 million in February, and are on a trajectory to grow 10% on the 25 million to 27.5 million in March. 174,000 broadcasters signed up in the past month alone. (I’m still waiting for word on how many of those are active users.)

Fox also tells me that revenue was also at all time high and that Ustream has had nine straight quarters of growth — at 45% average growth month over month. Fox would not tell me whether the company had yet achieved profitability.

Fox attributes the service’s upswing to combination of good content choices, product improvements and increased awareness. Future plans include, “Improving what we already have, and continue to improve platform monetization with Pay Per View and Ad Free and other services.” Ustream monetizes through a combination of advertising, pay per view, ad free and conference production services.

Ustream, which has $87.8 million in funding, revamped its mobile app (combining both broadcasting and streaming capabilities). It also recently announced that all 4G Verizon Android phones will be bundled with Ustream as well, further increasing potential for mobile distribution which grew 77% from January to February.

Most recently the news surrounding the Japan earthquake brought in record numbers of viewers, apparently people flooded Apple stores on the ground in order to watch the news on the service. On just the day of the quake Ustream hit 7.2 million views due to all of us who were glued to the stunning and terrifying imagery on the streams, an audience greater than Sheen’s antics and greater than those who watched the Chilean miner rescue.

“We’re pretty big in Japan, so people in Japan were watching Ustream and people outside of Japan were watching Ustream and people were sending social stream messages through Ustream to look for people. Just like people are using Twitter individually as a medium to do that,” said Fox.

Want to watch Charlie Sheen’s Sheen’s Corner on mobile? Aspire to be Charlie Sheen? Well, just like it did on Android back in January, Ustream today has combined both its Viewer and Broadcaster app into one all-encompassing and newly redesigned iPhone app allowing you to stream and watch live video all from your iPhone.

Taking advantage of iPhone 4′s front facing camera, the Ustream 2.0 app allows you to easily log in to your Ustream account and live broadcast or record video with one click, letting you share your broadcast on Twitter and Facebook as well as launch chat or take a viewer yes/no poll.

While the app retains full functionality in both 3G and Wifi, it does need a strong network to perform the heavy duty task of livestreaming video (Ustream tells me that the quality is better in the latest version). Ustream 2.0 also offers the option to record to your device in case of poor signal for broadcasters but will throw down a “Please check your network connection” message for people who want to view video in less than ideal connectivity settings.

The Viewer part of the app lets you search for shows by Featured, Category, and Ustream show name. You can set up alerts on your favorite content by hitting the Remind Me button on the content you’re interested in or by joining Ustream Crowds and Events (viewable under More > Favorites). You can also check out individual Ustreamer profiles and share what content you’re viewing both on Twitter and Facebook.

While Justin.tv and others have these functionalities in their iPhone apps for awhile, Ustream has been hitting it out of the park with its ability to attract the kind of content people want to view on the go (Chilean Miner rescue anyone?). The service is just about to hit 10 million users and Charlie Sheen’s debacle on Saturday brought in over 1.6 million views despite the show itself being less than impressive. Something tells me we ain’t seen nothing yet (I mean wait ’til Sheen finds out about the app).

You can get the app either by updating the Viewer app if already installed or by clicking here.

Parsing the language I heard the same thing we heard earlier when Steve Ballmer fired Bob Muglia, when Eric Schmidt was kicked “upstairs,” when I was asked to leave along with my wife and a friend from the Crunchies because the room was too full. In the last case, I refused to move, waiting until the venue manager moved on to people more her size. I wonder what would have happened if Muglia just said, no, Steve. I’m not going anywhere.

We’ll get back to Eric and the boys in a minute, but in the Age of iPad, all is not as it seems. Take Olbermann for instance: firing him seems like exactly what NBC doesn’t want. It dredges up the recent Leno fiasco in a visceral way, suggesting that even if Conan’s new show might as well be emanating from Siberia, at least he suffered no bad will for telling NBC where they should get off. By contrast, I wouldn’t touch NBC at 11:30 with someone else’s hard disk.

I don’t put much stock in Comcast being behind the Olbermann firing, because showing him the door doesn’t just hurt MSNBC, it hurts CNN and Fox as well. First of all, the only cable news coverage of the number one story of last night was on CNN and Fox. Tonight’s NBC Nightly News studiously ignored it, and somehow I doubt the Today Show will touch it either. Without any credible reporting from one of the 4 major networks, the other three have little to pivot off of, no comparable story about how cable news is being squeezed out by the Age of the iPad. That’s what happens when you become the story.

The unreported story is that a new network has emerged with new rules of engagement. Once the hall monitors had retreated from the Crunchies auditorium, I pinged my former overlords at TechCrunch and soon we were escorted backstage to an empty sofa. The sound was difficult, and I didn’t much feel like standing in the wings. But then I realized that combining the audio in the room and the sound of the crowd with Twitter produced an excellent new medium. I could hear Dick Costolo and Mike Arrington toss a few softballs around, and knowing Dick’s background as a standup comedian, wait a few seconds after the laugh for the punchline to appear on my iPhone.

Bear in mind that this is not the Golden Globes or the Grammies but an industry tech event being streamed live worldwide in realtime over Twitter and Ustream. Given the people I follow and the @Mention Cloud, we now have a microcast network that levels the playing field between all such events. Already the networks are bending to the new iPad reality, broadcasting the Ricky Gervais pummeling of Hollywood live at 5 on the West Coast, because Twitter has already eviscerated the results on the East Coast if they are embargoed. Gervais’ jokes cut to the bone all the more because his victims knew this was going out in realtime. He said what?

Actors or anchors, it doesn’t matter. When someone bypasses the big network to get straight to the audience in realtime, something big has changed. Olbermann had a 4 year contract worth a reported $30 million, or something north of $7 million a year. Let’s say he goes direct to iPad once a day, and takes Rachel Maddow with him. Push notify the audience of a rundown of each show along with headlines as they occur. Oh my, suddenly Comcast is happy to charge for the increased download bandwidth to support the model. And they don’t have to split the rate increase with the network, especially nice since they own one now.

Of course, Disney is ABC is Apple, so they might have some interest in bypassing the cable network business and going directly to revenue. That will bring Fox in, who are already playing ball with Apple TV on a test basis, and new power houses like whatever network produces Mad Men. Mad Men, by the way, is now the flagship of our go-to realtime network. We’re just starting Season Three, which I paid 22 bucks for and downloaded to my iPad for Airplay in whatever room the kids haven’t commandeered for Xbox Kinect. It’s realtime, just 1962.

Chatting with Dick Costolo after the Crunchies, I told him what he already knows, namely that the Twitter iPad app rocks. Then he said a very smart thing, that he thinks they should use the iPad implementation as the base platform and conform the other apps — web, iPhone, Android — to it. I couldn’t agree more. The iPhone may have started the revolution, but now it is a peripheral to the iPad. As is Apple TV, which is way more than a hobby.

Gone are the traditional networks. They are not dead, but rather absorbed into a new state of mind, one where we view our time as more valuable to us if we can sculpture it. I resisted Mad Men for years because I was already years behind. But AirPlay gave me the ability to try the first one, then “save” money on the first season, then let the mediocrity of the network offerings slowly but surely be routed around by streaming the now-addicted time machine of 1960. The year Kennedy was elected, the first television president, the dawn of realtime crisis, political and social upheaval, you know what I mean.

For those of you too young to remember, this was the time of not just Walter Cronkite but Huntley and Brinkley, not just the Beatles but the Stones, not just Miles but Hendrix. When Olbermann quits, he’s firing Glenn Beck. And when Steve Jobs steps aside he’s firing Schmidt too. Google’s job is to provide competition for Apple, to slipstream alongside the economic juggernaut Jobs has unleashed. Muglia’s ousting appears to be payback for Ozzie quitting, and in so doing Ray fired Ballmer, not the other way around.

The Age of the iPad has launched a wave of desperate moves, of actors and anchors testing the waters of the emerging economic model, of CEOs acting like COOs when what is needed is real leadership and insight. Costolo is one of the new breed, tempered in the crucible of the comedy circuit and the RSS politics of Feedburner and Google acquisition indigestion. Nothing about the Google realignment suggests any material change in the equation, and Microsoft’s retrenching around Sinofsky may prove the same kind of miscalculation NBC made in betting on Leno 2.0.

At the end of Season Two, Don Draper beats back a move to demote him or worse by pointing out that he has no contract with which to contain him, no non-compete to keep him away from the competition. Suddenly they serve at his pleasure. According to reports, Olbermann can’t go on television for some period of time, but can do anything he wants on radio and the Internet. The AirPlay Network awaits.

The application will let you both broadcast and view live video streams, with integrated chat and social network integration for posting your videos to Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Obviously this is good news for Ustream in terms of getting exposure, and, as with MOG, this is the kind of application users are going to be eager to try to test out their new speedy connections.

This is the first time that Ustream will come bundled on a mobile phone. These partnership can be huge when it comes to boosting adoption, as evidenced by Qik’s jump from 600,000 to 5 million users in the last year, largely due to its partnerships (Qik was just acquired by Skype).