Remember when Apple was the king of tools for creating your own media and it was hyping podcasting and user-generated media?

When Steve Jobs bragged about the company hitting milestones with its iTunes podcast directory? When it added podcasting support to Mac OS X? And when podcasting was a selling point for Garageband?

It looks like the thrill is gone, baby.

At Apple’s Sept 1st iPod refresh event, Jobs rubbed a lot of new media geeks the wrong way when he called new media content the “amateur hour”.

People want “Hollywood movies and TV shows,”Jobs said at the event, adding that “they don’t want amateur hour.”

Read more »

The Zune has been the whipping boy of new media since the portable media player’s introduction, because Microsoft made the mistake of taking a iPod wannabee and throwing a bunch of marketing money at it.

The Zune has improved a lot, since then, but it still hasn’t made an impression with buyers. This is largely because Microsoft botched the brand introduction of the Zune, establishing the brand as the biggest tech failure of the last decade.

Now Microsoft has finally done something intelligent with their Zune marketing: they’re putting them on international United Airlines flights:

United Airlines has just given the media player a new lease on life thanks to a partnership that will place Zune HDs into the hands of patrons. Reportedly, United will host around 500 Zune players on extra-long flights between the U.S. and Australia and Hong Kong.

The deal will provide those Zune players with pre-loaded content that can’t be found anywhere else (think pre-release movies), but details beyond that have yet to be made public.

This isn’t a huge deal for Microsoft – but it’s a smart one.

Take a bored, captive audience and give them Zunes loaded with content and you’re going to get a lot of people giving the Zune an open mind.

Read more »

The iTunes Ping social music network was easily the most interesting announcement out of Apple’s special music even, last week.

But after using it for even a short while, most people are unimpressed or puzzled – with Fortune  asking “Can Ping Be Saved?” and PC World calling it “Not so hot”.

Here are three reasons Apple’s Ping will make you say “WTF?”:

Apple left the musicians out. There aren’t any musician artist profiles to follow in the Ping music social network.

All we could find was these 14 musician profiles:

1. Lady Gaga
2. Yo-Yo Ma
3. Katy Perry
4. U2
5. Jack Johnson
6. Linkin Park
7. Shakira
8. Coldplay
9. Mark Ronson
10. Taylor Swift
11. Dave Mathews Band
12. Diddy
13. Linkin Park
14. U2

And, yes, Apple lists U2 and Linkin Park twice to pad the list.

No Jay-Z, no David Guetta, no Vampire Weekend, no Sade, no Black Eyed Peas, no John Mayer, no Alicia Keys……

Worse, Apple won’t let you create an Artist page for your band or your podcast or even stuff that you’re already selling in iTunes.

WTF?

Read more »

YouTube has introduced a new YouTube Movies section, which offers about 400 free full-length films.

If you’re looking for YouTube to offer an alternative to Netflix or Blockbuster, this ain’t it.

On the other hand, if you want to take a trip back to the 70’s drive-in grindhouse, you have hit the motherlode!

Read more »

Wired today declared that the Web is dead, backing it up with this chart that shows the history of the proportion of total Internet bandwidth taken up by various types of traffic.

According to Wired’s Chris Anderson – the proportion of Internet traffic taken up by Web requests is getting smaller – so “the Web is dead”.

It seems that Wired, in its quest to come up with outrageous linkbait, decided that the percentage of traffic carried over the Internet is the determiner of the viability of the Web and other forms of Internet traffic.

Read more »

Apple will replace its Apple TV hobby with a new member of the iOS family, Apple iTV, according to an Engadget report.

Apple iTV will be priced starting at $99 and will be similar in size and specs to the iPhone 4 (A4 CPU, 16GB of flash storage). It is expected to support a new iTunes streaming video service.

According to Engadget’s latest info, Apple iTV will be limited to 720p video.

This is the barest of rumors – but relaunching Apple TV as a member of the iOS family is a no-brainer.

Here’s why.

Read more »

Podcasting network Wizzard Media announced today their selection by Research In Motion (RIM) as a content partner for RIM’s new BlackBerry® Podcasts.

BlackBerry Podcasts is a new app and service that allows BlackBerry® smartphone users to discover episodic audio and video content [that is to say, podcasts] that can be downloaded directly to their smartphone, and played via the BlackBerry media player.

BlackBerry Podcasts users can search the application’s podcast catalog by keyword, category, channel or top downloads, and subscribe [or preview a particular podcast before subscribing]. Downloaded episodes can be stored on a microSD card. BlackBerry Podcasts notifies users when new content from a subscribed channel becomes available.

Wizzard Media is one of the first content providers for BlackBerry Podcasts, providing over 300 shows for the launch of BlackBerry Podcasts.  This includes popular podcasts such as Grammar Girl, Kevin Smith’s The Smodcast, WTF with Marc Maron, The Nerdist, RISK, Dilbert Animated Series, Happy Tree Friends, Hot For Words, Zig Ziglar and many of the other top shows distributed by Wizzard Media.

Rob Walch of Podcast 411 [and an executive with Wizzard] has an exclusive interview with Nick from RIM, which includes links to the submission page for Blackberry Podcasts service and the technical specs for podcasts.

BlackBerry® Podcasts is available today on BlackBerry App World™ to BlackBerry® smartphone users for phones running BlackBerry Device Software v4.6 or higher. BlackBerry® Podcasts comes pre-installed in BlackBerry 6.

Nielsen has released a new report on video and the Internet, based on input from people in 55 countries, and has found that most people, around the world, are now watching online video. Furthermore, interest in Internet-ready TVs is now at 20%.

“The research reveals how connected consumers all over the world are expanding their video experience across screens,” says Nielsen’s Matt O’Grady.

Key Findings

• Online Video: approximately 70% of global online consumers watch online video; but North Americans and Europeans lag in adoption. More than half of global online consumers watch online video in the workplace.
• Mobile Video: is already used by 11% of global online consumers: penetration is highest in Asia-Pacific and among consumers in their late 20s.
• Tablet PCs: are expanding the definition of mobile video. Globally, 11% of online consumers already own or plan to purchase a tablet PC (such as an iPad) in the next year.
• Television: is a universally important platform for video consumption, with connected consumers in many markets spending 4+ hours per day watching television.
• HDTV (High-Definition TV): is improving the TV viewing experience for as many as 30% of global online consumers. Adoption is highest among older consumers and in North America, where HD content has proliferated.
• 3DTV (Three-Dimensional TV): will have a small but important audience: 12% of global online consumers own or have definite intent to purchase a 3DTV in the next year.
• “Over the Top” TV: televisions with Internet connections are gaining interest. About one in five (22%) global online consumers owns or has definite interest in buying a television with Internet connection in the next year.

Read more »

Research firm Nielsen reports that social media & blogs are now the top online activities:

Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company.

The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.

Here’s how how people’s time online now breaks down:

Based on the Nielsen report, it looks like mainstream Internet users have joined the first adopters, making new media and social media a key part of what they do online.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today announced that it has won three critical exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anticircumvention provisions today.

You now have the right to:

• Rip and remix DVDs for non-commercial purposes;
• Jailbreak your iPhone, or other cell phone, and load up any apps you want; and
• Use your iPhone, or other cell phone, with any carrier you like.

“By granting all of EFF’s applications, the Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress have taken three important steps today to mitigate some of the harms caused by the DMCA,” said Jennifer Granick, EFF’s Civil Liberties Director. “We are thrilled to have helped free jailbreakers, unlockers and vidders from this law’s overbroad reach.”

Read more »