Podcast audience is 9.2 million people; 5.6 millions downloaded video
The podcasting audience is now up to nine million people. 6.6 percent of the United States online audience has recently downloaded an audio podcast - that\'s is exactly 9.2 million people. And 5.6 million people recently downloaded a video podcast.

The percentage of people downloading podcast is about the same as the percentage of people who publish blogs. The younger the person, the more likely they are to download. Those data come from a Nielsen/NetRatings new study, click here.

Startrek.com is No. 1 among video podcasters

\"The portability of podcast makes them specially appealing to young, on-the-go audiences,\" said Nielsen/NetRatings. \"We can expect to see podcasting become increasingly popular as portable content media player media players proliferate\".

Since the popularity of Apple\'s iPod is largely responsible for the spread of podcasting, not surprisingly podcasters use Apple products and sites, and therefore Safari is the primary Internet browser, followed by Firefox. Macworld is the No. 1 most-visited site. Apple and iTunes are the No. 2. But the Apple connection is not as clear for video podcasters, who flock to Startrek.com. Live365 and eMusic are the two most popular e-commerce sites for video podcasters.

Create customized DVDs with news video segments
CBS News has figured out an additional way to monetize its vast archive of news programming. CBS News will start offering current and past programming on DVDs using Amazon\'s CustomFlix customizable DVD service.

You\'re not stuck with just a full broadcast, you can mix and match your own stories, choosing from hundreds of program video clips. A disc can hold up to 10 clips or 90 minutes and costs $24.95.

Condé Nast Wired Magazine purchased Wired.com
It is said that Wired print magazine has preached the digital gospel, but that hasn\'t happened online. Now things may change. Condé Nast, Wired\'s owner, has purchased Wired.com back from Lycos Inc. Condé Nast has paid $25 million for Wired News online properties.

Remember that during the 1990\'s Wired company was divided: Louis Rosetto and Jane Metcalfe, the co-founders, and other investors sold Wired magazine to Condé Nast for $75 million. In the meantime, Lycos acquired Wired News for a reported $83 million.

Fox reporters shot by Israeli forces... Yes, Fox reporters!
Last week Fox reporters were shot at by Israeli Forces in Gaza. We couldn\'t find the clip on FoxNews, but it was on YouTube, right here. The clip got 274,147 views. A new way to watch what TV networks tend to forget.

RSS syndication technology triggers the explosion of podcast
Do you want cool names for different podcasting distributing ways, triggered by the RSS technology?

Our fellow Shelly Palmer, in his Television Disrupted book give us a glimpse:

Autocasting: The automatic generation of podcast from text-only sources
Godcasting: Religious podcasts, typically Christian
Javacast: Podcasting to mobile phones using J2ME Midlets
Learncasting: Delivering instructional content or academic support content
Media RSS: A kind of syndication of media files used by Yahoo!
MMScast: Podcasting to mobile phones using MMS.
Mobilecast: Podcasting to mobile phones
Palmcasting: Podcasting to Palm devices like Treo and LifeDrive
Punchcasting: Punching podcast directly into smartphone devices
Skypecasting: Recording Skype text, voice or video conversations
Soundseeing tour: Podcast utilizing ambient noise and descriptions
Streamcasting: When an RSS feed contains a link to streaming media
instead of a file, RSS becomes a way to control streaming syndication
Vodcasting/Vidcasting: Video-based podcast

Google\'s Cick-Fraud put at risk its multibillion advertising business
Google is facing a big problem with click fraud. How can they determine if a real person, and not a robot, is sitting at a keyboard and clicking on all those adwords. Bruce Schneier says in Wired.com that Google\'s 6 billion-a-year advertising is at risk because it can\'t be sure that anyone is looking at its ads.

And the fraud itself is becoming a business for some companies. Here is a site, ClickMonkeys.com, that offers to commit click fraud for you.

The problem for Google comes in two basic flavors. Bruce Schneier writes:

\"You host Google AdSense advertisements on your own website. Google pays you every time someone clicks on its ad on your site. It\'s fraud if you sit at the computer and repeatedly click on the ad or -- better yet -- write a computer program that repeatedly clicks on the ad. That kind of fraud is easy for Google to spot, so the clever network click fraudsters simulate different IP addresses, or install Trojan horses on other people\'s computers to generate the fake clicks.
The other kind of click fraud is competitive. You notice your business competitor has bought an ad on Google, paying Google for each click. So you use the above techniques to repeatedly click on his ads, forcing him to spend money -- sometimes a lot of money -- on nothing.\"

Click fraud has become a classic security arms race. Google improves its fraud-detection tools, so the fraudsters get increasingly clever ... and the cycle continues. Meanwhile, Google is facing multiple lawsuits from those who claim the company isn\'t doing enough. My guess is that everyone is right: It\'s in Google\'s interest both to solve and to downplay the importance of the problem.\"

Google is testing a new advertising model to deal with click fraud: cost-per-action ads. Advertisers don\'t pay unless the customer performs a certain action: buys a product, fills out a survey, whatever.

\"It\'s a hard model to make work -- Google would become more of a partner in the final sale instead of an indifferent displayer of advertising -- but it\'s the right security response to click fraud: Change the rules of the game so that click fraud doesn\'t matter.\"

A website frees paid content in the Internet

You\'ve combed through many pages of search result to find the newspaper article you want, and finally reach it. But, wait a minute. They want a subscription fee. Don\'t pay! Get a free pass at Congoo.com for access to up to 15 premium articles a month from more than 200 sources.

Congo, a New Jersey company that advertises itself with the claim Unlock the Premium Web, has every month some partner sites. The number of free articles per month varies by published. How does it work? Simply download what the call the Congo NetPass, and activate it.


Burn a film to DVD and play it on any television set, and do it legally
CinemaNow.com, a well known online movie-downloading site, is saying that the future of DVD buying has arrived with its new Burn to DVD technology. They allow to download, legally, the complete DVD, including the menu and bonus features; then watch it on your PC or burn it to DVD, to play it in almost any DVD player connected to any television set.

Several large Hollywood studios will start letting people create DVD\'s of movies in their homes using that feature of CinemaNow. The studios participating include Sony, Disney, MGM, Universal, and Lions Gate, which is a major shareholder in CinemaNow.
\"People like to watch movies in their living rooms, and this solves their problem\" said the CEO of the company.

However, due to the need to compress the files, in order to reduce the downloading time, the picture quality is not as high as those films on commercial DVDs. Prices are about $9 to $15, the same as the films sold in version that could be downloaded only to computers. MovieLink.com plans to have the same burn to DVD feature next year.

Macy\'s will be the star in a new reality TV show

The American store chain Macy\'s will be the subject of a new reality TV show, to be aired on the Women\'s Entertainment network, WE, in September. This show, called \"Unwrapping Macy\'s\" will give a behind the scenes look at store operations, and will focus on the daily lives of employees and the drama of meeting deadlines. The premier of the show will coincide with Macy\'s expansion into new markets in the U.S.

Online news have a surprisingly long life
On the Internet when does new news become old news? According to a new research led by the University of Notre Dame, titled \"The Dynamics of Information Access on the Web\", the answer is surprisingly long: 36 hours on average. That is the amount of time it takes for half of total readership of an article to have read it.

Editors of online news sites, including IBLNEWS, said the results confirmed what they experience day to day. The top new story usually gets a lot of traffic, but many of the remaining stories don\'t loose their news value for a time.

Microsoft will launch a user-submitted video service to challenge YouTube
MSN plans to launch \"imminently\" a user-submitted video service. No surprise. It is the Microsoft attempt to assault on video-sharing websites, leaded by the hugely successful YouTube.com. Trying to increase the reach of its MSN portal, Microsoft will target users ranging from amateur documentary makers to aspiring pop starts.

YouTube, which allow users to post their own video content, is part of the so-called \"Web 2.0\" sites that aim to give users an online space to create and share content. More than 80 million videos are viewed on the site every day, ranging from teenage confessionals to video diaries recorded by Israelis, Lebanon people or troops in Iraq. 40 percent of YouTube video plays come off of MySpace.com pages.

Microsoft is under pressure to show Wall Street they can maintain current traffic flows. It has set aside $2 billion to fund its online new initiatives. Wall Street analysts have singled out video as the next big thing in online services.

Logitech and Grouper.com launch an offering to post video with one click
More than 200 sites host user-uploaded video. Among them the race to grab market is very intense. Competitors strive to develop new features to distinguish themselves from market leader YouTube. One of the latest offering comes from Grouper.com, which has partnered with Logitech.

Next week Logitech will include a link within its webcam software that will enable consumers to record video directly to Grouper\'s servers. This feature will eliminate the time-consuming step of saving and uploading video. Now consumers must launch software on their PCs or laptops; record and save the file to their desktops; find the file; and then wait for it to be uploaded.

Grouper.com will promote it as the easiest way to post video on the web. Their offering will works as follows: when a Logitech Webcam user clicks on a link to Grouper\'s site that\'s embedded in the camera\'s software, he will be routed to a page where he can record a video. Once he approves the video, that clip will be posted on the site.

People are YouTubing to find a video before visiting the original site
YouTube is becoming the Google of video. People are \"YouTubing\" to find video before visiting the originating site, and many bloggers, and news services, IBLNEWS among thousands of them, are embedding YouTube players on their sites.

Let\'s say that you are searching a clip of Comedy Central, you go their website, but no luck. In case you found a desired clip, there\'s no functionality to embed the player on the site. So YouTube is the answer. (By the way, one of week\'s most watched video was Addicted to YouTube, over 327,000 views).

PBS will sell downloadable video in Google and Open Media Network
PBS has decided to put some shows for sale in Google Video. Basically, they are offering award-winning and kids intended programming. For example, Nova is selling for $7.99 a pop, but Antique Roadshow and Arthur episodes are selling for $1.99 each. “We’ve received significant viewer feedback this year, requesting that we offer our television content in downloadable formats,” explained PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger.

Also PBS hopes that programs downloaded through Google Video will carry a spot encouraging viewers to become members of their local PBS station. Besides Google Video, PBS has announced that it has teamed with the Open Media Network to sell downloads.

Anti-MySpace bill approved to protect minors from sexual predators
Public schools and libraries in the U.S. House will be required soon to forbid minors from accessing social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster and Facebook, which has become a haven for online sexual predators who use it as their own virtual hunting ground.

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved this week a bill that would effectively require that chat room and social networking site be rendered inaccessible to minors.

Post video comments on any video clip, the latest feature
The user video site Grouper.com has just added a feature that allows people to post video comments on clips using their webcams. Experts consider that this is a natural evolution for comments.

Another coming idea is the sharing functionality. Many sites defend the philosophy that clips should be played everywhere. Grouper allows any clip to be downloaded to desktop, iPod o PSP, as well as to publish them to MySpace, Friendster, Blogger, Wordpress, and any website.

This site, which is competing in the newly sector of sites dedicated to host user-uploaded video, is trying to distinguish itself from market leader YouTube.

Ways to save streaming video from the Internet
Feel frustrated when trying to save videos on the Internet? A CNet.com freelance writes an insider secret article about capturing streaming video, take a look.

The end of the TV as we know it: A future industry perspective, by IBM
We are attending to the end of TV as we know it. \"Today, audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented, splicing their time among myriad media choices, channels and platforms. For the last few decades, consumer have migrated to more specialized, niche content via cable and multichannel offerings. Now, with the growing availability of on demand, self-programming and search features, some experiencers are moving beyond niche to individualized viewing. With increasing competition from convergence players in TV, telecommunications and the Internet, the industry is confronting unparalleled complexity, dynamic change and pressure to innovate\", says a study done by IBM Institute for Business (\"The end of TV as we know it: A future industry perspective\").

\"Our analysis indicates that market evolution hinges on two key market drivers: openness of access channels and levels of consumer involvement with media. For the next 5-7 years there will be change on both fronts -but not uniformly\", IBM adds.

Download complete IBM Institute for Business Value study.

Download executive summary.