UK comedy blog Chortle reports that Ricky Gervais’ world-record breaking podcast is getting turned into an animated series for HBO:
The 13 half-hour episodes, due to air next year, could make an unlikely star of sidekick Karl Pilkington, whose strange opinions they mercilessly mock.
‘Karl is a man who believes that a sea lion is a cross [...]

The Canadian arm of professional services firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers today announced a series of business podcasts which explores “key issues” affecting businesses during an economic downturn.
The podcast series, “Strategy Talks,” shares strategies companies can use to address the problems facing companies today. The episodes will feature interviews with PwC “thought leaders” about the recession, and [...]

Podcasting is going mainstream, at least according to eMarketer:
Podcasting has evolved from an odd, funky blogging experiment into a broad medium with mainstream trappings. Today, the vast majority of the top-rated podcasts come from recognizable media entities that are using podcasts to expand their existing radio, TV, cable or satellite audiences.
They peg the podcast audience [...]

The biggest new story of the day may be Barack Obama’s Presidential inauguration, but, at least for people interested in new media, the most interesting story of the day may be the introduction of an official White House blog. 
Three years ago, we predicted that the next President would be a podcaster, saying:
The next president of [...]

The Times Online has an interesting story today about Scottish beer maker Brewdog, looking at how it used blogging to market their beers.
Brewdog’s approach was smart and incredibly cheap - give bloggers free beer.
Brewdog was struggling to sell its product until its co-founders hit on the idea of using the internet to market their distinctive [...]

If you still have any doubt about whether podcasting is becoming a mainstream phenomenon, Oprah and Apple have announced that her series of podcasts is available through iTunes.

Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk has a great story to tell about getting your site hacked and dealing with bad publicity in real time.
Do you think a large corporation can react like this - in “new media time”?
via TechCrunch

Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s free podcast of all of the Beatles’ music played Hello, Goodbye as it was introduced and then quickly yanked because of licensing agreements.

Apple has published an article looking at how the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) is using podcasting for communciations and training:
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD), much like any organization with a critical mission, requires lightning-fast communications between senior staff and troops. The department also needs to deliver in-depth training, especially for situations that involve a high [...]

ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick brought to our attention a great new podcast feature from NPR that lets you mix your own podcast feed.
NPR’s Mix Your Own Podcast lets you enter in topics that you are interested in and it will create a custom podcast feed for you. 
I’d like to see them provide the ability to drag [...]