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While much of the emphasis on multimedia content on the web involves playback, Mozilla is working to extend recording capabilities in the browser as well. Today Mozilla Labs has released an early version of a new add-on for Firefox - Rainbow - that will enable web developers to access local video and audio recording capabilities in the browser.

The add-on generates files that are encoded in open formats - Theora for video and Vorbis for audio in an Ogg container. These files are accessible in DOM using HTML5 APIs, which can be used to upload them to a server.

The percentage of online video available in HTML5 format has grown 5X since January and more than 2X in the past 5 months, according to a report by web video cataloging service MeFeedia today. An estimated 54% of online video is now available in HTML5, generally in addition to availability in Adobe Flash.

What does that mean? It means iOS devices can play a whole lot of video without concern for Flash, it means that Flash's (alleged) memory problems can be minimized by deferring to HTML5 players and it may mean less industry dependence on Adobe's Flash publishing technologies.

Ustream, the live-streaming video service, announced this morning that it will begin allowing broadcasters to charge viewers to watch content on a pay-per-view model. In addition to pay-per-view, the site will begin offering ad-free broadcasting.

The move can mean great things for both broadcasters and viewers, as it offers a way to monetize streaming video while also bringing content to the site that might not otherwise be available.

Mobile video optimization firm Bytemobile has just released its most recent "Mobile Minute Metrics" report, a look at wireless users' video consumption trends and behavior based on metrics from a cross-section of nearly 2 billion Bytemobile customers in 58 countries around the world.

According to the new report, which focuses on Q3 2010 mobile traffic, mobile operators are seeing "unprecedented" levels of mobile data traffic, an increase heavily impacted by increased demand for video. Some interesting stats were revealed, too - like whether it's Android or iPhone users who watch more video, what sites get the most views and more.

YellowBird, a Netherlands-based video technology startup, just had its interactive, 360-degree video player approved by YouTube for integration into YouTube's channels. With the new player, you can now not only watch immersive, 360-degree YouTube videos, you can also navigate the video by dragging your mouse. As TechCrunch rightly described it last year - it's like Google Street View for video.

The first YouTube video with this technology is live now, in a campaign designed for Doritos.

A few days ago, demoslam.com, a mysterious - but clearly Google-related - website appeared, which resulted in a lot of head scratching in the tech blogosphere. Now, Google is officially taking the wraps of the site. Google Demo Slam is a competition for tech demos - not just by startups and other tech companies, but for anybody who wants to create a video that shows others how to use a cool tech product. As a Google representative told us yesterday, the company is asking people to create the most inventive, entertaining tech demos possible.

The good people over at the live  town hall platform Vokle invited yours truly and regular Mashable, Gizmodo and Wired contributor Shane Snow for a little live video Q&A session on their site today. If you want to tune in and ask us questions about this week's technology and social media news, tune in here at 11am. We have also embedded the chat and video below for your viewing pleasure.

Networking giant Cisco offers super-fancy "telepresence" video conferencing studios for rent in major cities around the world, but now the futuristic service will be made available to consumers for home use, according to reports.

Kara Swisher writes this morning that telepresence systems will be sold for between $200 and $500 and the announcement will be made next week. You can get a picture of what the enterprise product looks like, including the company's progress on interoperability with other platforms, in the video from last week below.

In order to help offset the costs of delivering an increasing amount of video, Wikipedia is experimenting with BitTorrent P2P technology.

As Michael Dale notes in the foundation's announcement, "One potential problem with increased video usage on the Wikimedia sites is that video is many times more costly to distribute than text and images that make up Wikipedia articles today. Eventually bandwidth costs could saturate the foundation budget or leave less resources for other projects and programs. For this reason it is important to start exploring and experimenting with future content distribution platforms and partnerships."

At Huawei's Global Mobile Broadband forum in Oslo, Norway this week, YouTube's head of platform partnerships Francisco Varel, told the crowd of attendees that the mobile video company is now interested in more partnerships and dialogue with mobile operators. "These partnerships are critical to our success," he said, explaining how YouTube is interested in hearing operators' needs.

Varela also noted that YouTube, the second-most searched site in the world, has seen incredible growth in the mobile sector in recent months. Mobile viewing of YouTube content grew 160% last year and strong growth is expected in 2010 as well, said Varela.