While we’ve certainly seen Bonnaroo streamed live in the past, like on Vevo and YouTube, Ustream says this deal marks the first time viewers everywhere will have access to the lineup of performances for both festivals through its interactive, socially integrated platform.

“This year, fans will be granted never-seen-before, live access to two of the most important festivals in the U.S. — even in the palms of their hands via mobile devices,” said Chris Blocker, SVP of sales and business development for Ustream. “The mix of premium and fly-on-the-wall content powerfully illustrates how bands can become fans and fans can join bands in a seamless social entertainment experience such as this.”

“The world famous Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and Outside Lands in San Francisco’s beautiful Golden Gate Park are two of the premier destination music festivals in the U.S. and attract diverse and heavily engaged audiences each year,” said Alex Machurov, director of new business & partnerships at Superfly Presents. “We are excited to partner with Ustream and believe their technology will significantly enhance the user experience in Manchester and San Francisco. Now millions more music fans around the world can enjoy its interactive, personalized platform.”

Bonnaroo takes place in Manchester, Tenn. On June 13-16. Outside Lands takes place in San Francisco August 9-11.

Check out the Bonnaroo line-up here. Outside Lands doesn’t have its lineup posted as of the time of this writing.

It’s a simple idea, really. All you have to do is open up the standalone BFF app, connect to your Facebook account, and find something worthy of broadcasting to your friends. You don’t even need a Ustream account to do it.

Once you decide to stream something to your friends, you can chose the distribution scale – whether you broadcast to everyone, just your friends, or just yourself. Once you start recording, the video will show up on your Timeline and on your friends’ news feeds, immediately. And in true Ustream fashion, the live video will be saved automatically and stored on your Timeline for future viewing.

The concept is pretty fun on its own, but Ustream wants to make it a little more playful with fliters.

“BFF not only has a high quality camera, we also have 10 Hollywood-inspired filters to make your video pop. Favorites around the office are Maltese (film noir style) and Vendetta (graphic novel style). We also have a “Curiosity” filter inspired by the recent expedition to Mars. You can change filters by swiping or by selecting a filter on the bottom,” they say.

There are a lot of possible use for the BFF app, but the first thing I thought of when I saw it was concerts. Strangely enough, it appears Ustream thought the same way.

Though I can see people getting in trouble with this…

Ustream unveiled and demoed the new app last night at an event in San Francisco. They say that it will be launching soon on iOS, and you can sign up to be notified when that happens here. For you Android users out there, a BFF app is coming, eventually.

It’s a unique opportunity for both organizations. Ustream’s coverage can now be viewed by the Post’s near 37 million monthly readers, and the Huffington Post will gain access to diverse coverage of breaking events from all over the globe.

Here’s what the duo had to say in their press release about the partnership:

At 3:30 p.m. (EST) sharp, be part of the groundbreaking exclusive live press announcement event with Editor-in-Chief of Huffington Post Arianna Huffington and CEO of Ustream Brad Hunstable by watching and providing commentary through Ustream’s exclusive social stream at Ustream.tv/huffingtonpost. Additionally, after the live-announcement, Ustream’s up-and-coming citizen journalist Luke “We Are Change” Rudkowski will give his perspective on why being a citizen journalist is important for today’s society especially with this generations’ greater access to mobile devices worldwide.

Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group comments on the new deal with Ustream:

“We launched Off The Bus in 2007 to go beyond the one-dimensional horse-race aspect of election coverage and actually respond to the widespread dissatisfaction about the way campaigns are covered,”

“So I’m delighted that we are partnering with Ustream for Off The Bus 2012, and renewing our commitment to holding politicians accountable and telling the stories that need to be told by tapping into a wide range of voices and perspectives.”

Brad Hunstable, CEO and co-founder of Ustream comments on the deal with the Huffington Post:

“Citizen journalism is increasingly democratizing the Internet with live Ustream news events playing an important role,”

“Our partnership with Huffington Post will further push forward this trend and our mission to enable anyone, anywhere to share their stories. By combining Huffington Post’s world-class news reporting with Ustream’s live video citizen journalism, viewers everywhere will now have a raw and unedited perspective of diverse voices on the world’s most important events.”

In the last three years, Ustream has produced mobile apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices making the process of streaming live broadcasts easier than ever. As a result, viewing on mobile devices has increased over 50%, and 1 out of 8 live broadcasts are coming from mobile devices.

According to a post on Ustream’s blog, the problem stemmed from a third party ad provider. The provider was removed and everything started working normally again.

Fortunately, Ustream’s live coverage of Apple’s WWDC keynote was not significantly harmed. The stream drew an impressive 40,000 viewers who watched Apple introduce the next-generation MacBook Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and iOS 6.

Perhaps the most interesting part, though, is that the Ustream coverage was not sanctioned by Apple. For reasons known only to them, Apple hasn’t done live broadcasts of product announcements for a few years now. What’s more, they forbid attendees of such announcements from doing their own broadcasts via services like Ustream. In fact, the Ustream feed was interrupted fairly early in the presentation because the person running the camera was apparently caught. Fortunately for those who were watching, though, the feed was restored shortly thereafter, and although it was a bit choppy, it remained uninterrupted (except by Ustream’s ads) for the rest of the keynote.

Though Apple usually posts its own video of WWDC keynotes and other presentations, it hasn’t done a live stream of such an event since the 2010 launch of the second-generation Apple TV. I contacted Apple to ask why they don’t stream these events, but have not yet received a response.

If you missed today’s WWDC keynote, you can check out our WWDC 2012 to see all the cool stuff Apple unveiled at this year’s event.

Similarly in Firefox, we’re seeing:

Apparently, Apple’s Safari sees no problems:

Google’s search results are displaying it as if it contains malware:

Google is apparently on the case. As one Twitter use points out, Apple’s WWDC starts today, and some are no doubt hopeful to catch some stream of the keynote on Ustream:

Follow @brianmmonroe

Brian M. Monroe
@brianmmonroe

@mattcutts I am not sure if you are aware but @ustream is showing up as malware. Please fix before #WWDC today!

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

@brianmmonroe specific url?

Follow @brianmmonroe

Brian M. Monroe
@brianmmonroe

@mattcutts http://t.co/PZfNiPOx FYI .. All domains under the Ustream TV.

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

@brianmmonroe asked the anti-malware team about it.

Follow @brianmmonroe

Brian M. Monroe
@brianmmonroe

@mattcutts You did? Thanks! Let me know if you need any more info from me?

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

@brianmmonroe I think that’s enough for people to start digging in to see what’s going on–thanks!

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
9 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Even simply searching Twitter for more info about this, Chrome displays another message:

Apparently whatever the perceived threat is, it transcends the Ustream site itself, into media being shared through social networks.

Update: Looks like the browsers have lifted their messages (and even Safari started showing one at one point), but we’re still seeing the message from Google in the search results.

Matt Cutts did tweet:

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

@brianmmonroe looks like they were already looking into it. But the warning is cleared for me now.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
32 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

The new interface is being called Ustream Explore, as it “reflects the increased focus on allowing you to quickly explore the best live content from around the world.” One of the cool features of the new site involves multitasking – allowing users to browse and watch videos at the same time.

Now, when you’re exploring new content, you can click on any video and it will immediately begin playback on the left hand side of your screen. While the video is playing, you can continue to browse without disrupting it. Check out their video below for a rundown of all the new stuff:

Video streaming by Ustream

As of right now, the new site is available to anyone that wants to try it as an opt-in beta. All you have to do it log in to your Ustream account and you’ll see a blue button on the right hand side that prompts you to “Try the New stream.”

In 2011, Ustream recorded over 2 billion total views (both live and recorded). They also boasted 51 million global viewers per month and 49 million hours viewed per month. Their highest amount of concurrent viewers during the year was an impressive 800,000.

Others of note: 51 million viewers per month globally, and 49 million hours of video viewed per month.

The guys over at GamingChronicles.com are currently embroiled in a 72-hour video game marathon, and their game of choice for this excursion? Sonic the Hedgehog. The proceeds from the Sonic marathon will go to the Child’s Play charity, which, according to their description, is:

…a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in our network of over 70 hospitals worldwide.

The Gaming Chronicles marathon began at 12:01am, Friday morning (1/6) and runs until Sunday (1/8), and for your viewing pleasure, the gang has set up a UStream channel so you can watch them endure their arduos battles with Dr Robotnik.

It should be noted the content of the stream is just a couple of guys sitting around with video controllers in their hands. In the lower portion of the video player, there’s in-screen footage of the Sonic game in progress. The page also features a ChipIn! widget so you can donate right then and there. Those who make donations can make requests of the guys playing, which they will perform live on camera. An explanation from the site:

Your donations will affect the marathon in the following ways:

• Punish us for failure via a “Fail Pie”. And we’ve activated the FAIL PIE! When a donation is made in honor of the FAIL PIE (currently a $4 donation will suffice) the pie comes out. If the current player loses a life during the level the pie is issued he will receive said pie to the face. If that player finishes his level the pie is passed to a player of their choice.
• Keep a frustrated gamer playing through a tough level
• Voting for the next game played
• Earning yourself a shout out or hilarious request (performance, singalong, etc)

Unfortunately, it seems as if the donations are slow going. The current ChipIn! total is $157, thanks to the eight people who contributed. Considering the worthiness of the cause they are supporting, surely we can do better than that. To donate to their worthy cause, check out their GC Marathon page.

If anything can be a commodity, why not craziness? Also, what better way to market your shenanigans than posting it on Twitter?

WebProNews has already reported about Sheen being the fastest Twitter user in history to gain 1 million followers.

To go along with this feat, “Sheen’s-Korner” (NSFW: language), a UStream channel has already garnered over 600,000 views. Episode 2, titled “Torpedoes of Truth” received 327k views on its own. He really opened up during this episode, showing a phone call with who appears to be his agent.

If the UStream views aren’t enough to convince one of the success Sheen is having with social media, he’s already searching for an intern. Of course, in order to be Charlie Sheen’s intern, you must be filled with #tigerblood and full of #winning.

It has been reported (during my typing of this article) that Sheen has been fired from Two and a Half Men. Which could truly prove the power of social media. With Sheen being fired from his moneymaking job, will Twitter and UStream be powerful enough to carry him to his next gig? Or has his life become the gig now?

Guardian reports that Apple has refused to allow its iPhone to be included in the UK’s green ranking system, which gives phones a rating of zero to five based on their environmental footprint.

As you may have heard, Google unveiled a new feature in Gmail today that allows users to make and receive phone calls. In addition to this, Google will be setting up phone booths on college campuses and in airports. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land shares a video looking at the inside of the phone booth and talking to the product marketing manager about it:

According to PaidContent, Alibaba has acquired eBay auction management provider Auctiva. It recently acquired a similar service in Vendio.

Nick Bilton at the New York Times has an interesting profile of a startup called Stipple, which aims to tag the web’s images. It lets publishers add tags to parts of an image with info about its contents and related links. Launch partners include Six Apart, Jive Records and E.W. Scripps.

Ian Sheer at the Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece about online coupons and how they’re getting smarter. "Among the new approaches: computer programs to better target consumers with personalized deals and staff on the ground to help merchants," he writes.

ReadWriteWeb points to a video of Apple SVP of software engineering, Bertrand Serlet, who talks about using Apple’s private APIs.

According to Guardian, Facebook is now being valued at over $33 billion as investors try to secure a stake in it. Facebook shares are changing hands for up to $76 each, the publication reports. Still, it doesn’t look like there will be an IPO anytime soon.

Ad firm Specificmedia is being sued amid accusations that it is re-creating deleted cookies, according to Wired’s Epicenter.

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at the WSJ reports that Amazon has lost a big e-book deal with literary agent Andrew Wylie. This comes as the company also announced that its new Kindles are selling faster than any previous models.