This year at CES, Sony made dreams of have live HD video from your camera a reality by adding live streaming (via WiFi) to their Bloggie line of cameras with the introduction of the Bloggie Live.

The Sony Bloggie Live

This is being done through a connection with Qik which has been used for live streaming on smart phones for years.

There is also a new smart phone application from Sony called Play Memories Mobile that allows you to use your phone as a hotspot for the camera if there is not an open WiFi signal to connect with.

In addition to live streaming of video, the camera also has the ability to upload videos to the web directly from it. Shot something that you loved and want to share it with your friend on Facebook and YouTube? You can now do this directly from the video camera.

We are excited to see what people create with this because it opens the possibility for everything from citizen reporting to live event coverage. We are hoping some of you will show us what you’ve created with this camera in the coming months on your own .tv’s.

The camera is set to be released at the end of January and expected to retail for around $249. If you’d like to watch a hands-on demo, the team at TPN.tv has a great one.

RedBull.tv

Everyone knows that Red Bull has made extreme sports a cornerstone of their marketing and brand. Watch anything from the X-Games to your local skateboard competition and you are more than likely to see a Red Bull logo somewhere.

Now, any of us stuck in an office or waiting to board a plane can get our adrenaline fix with the introduction of RedBull.tv

Featuring a variety of video from every sort of sport, there is something for everyone. We watched surfers tear up waves, motorcycles climb sand dunes and snowboarders some insanely fun tricks on the slopes.

If you are not sure where to start viewing from the hundreds of hours of video they have click on the Live button at the top of the page for a constant stream of some of their best clips.

It excited us to see more brands registering .tv domain names and using it to showcase their video content. Have you seen any brands that you love doing this? Let us know so we can spotlight them here on the site.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was last week and we saw a number of new products and services that companies launched that use and promote online video and a few exciting .tv’s.

Flingo.tv

As covered by GigaOM, two .tv’s that showed new products are Flingo and Simple.tv.

Flingo, headquartered in San Francisco, launched in late 2008 as a way for sending online video to internet-connected TVs (including sets from LG, Samsung and Vizio). They launched a new product at CES, called SyncApps, which they claim allows users to share easily on Facebook and Twitter, while allowing social content from broadcasters, like polls and updates, to be sent to the user’s TV screen. There have announced a number of really exciting features, including an API that enables developers to create application that use SyncApps to hook into their system. This looks like the next phase of social television and we can’t wait to see where this goes.

Another .tv that emerged from CES is Simple.tv, a set-top device that lets you stream live and recorded TV content to supported mobile devices – including the iPad.  Simple.tv announced availability for Spring 2012 and are taking reservations for their device on their website. Simple.tv also announced a premium subscription package will be available  that will include an enhanced program guide, automatic recording and streaming to a set number of connected devices.

Simple.tv

These are pretty exciting uses of technology for online video – it looks like the future is really here!

We’re also looking forward to exploring great new features that are being implemented in cameras – like Wi-Fi and 3D – that will help take online video up to the next level.

One of the big events of this year’s CES was the International Academy of Web Television Awards. This is an organization that promotes and celebrates online video and the amazing creators behind them. The awards were given out on January 12^th and you can watch the stream of the ceremony here.  We were really excited to see one of our advocates, Brad Powell’s webshow, DadLabs, win Best Educational Web Series – Congratulations Brad!

Once again, the Consumer Electronics Show was an exciting kick-off to the year and we’re looking forward to seeing all of these products in use during 2012!

Twitch.tv website

We’ve written about Twitch.tv before and have followed it’s progress since it’s spin off from Justin.tv in June 2011. Twitch.tv is a site for video gamers to watch, broadcast and chat about their gameplay, a great site to discover new games and personalities to follow.

The site has been growing at an incredible rate – 11% month over month since their launch – and announced in December that Twitch.tv is now engaging more than 12 million unique visitors a month. They also launched an iPhone application, which had over 80,000 downloads in the first month.

Twitch.tv has a premium partner program that includes the Electronic Sports League, Major League Gaming and the IGN Pro League, and is now more than 1000 members strong.

There is an incredible amount of momentum going into 2012 around Twitch.tv and the gaming space – what we see is that this is an incredibly connected and vibrant community that’s passionate about video gaming and online video.

This is the time of year for many of us to make, and to hopefully not break, our New Year’s resolutions. We hope your 2012 resolutions include shooting a ton of great video and showcasing it on the web.

Happy New Year!