The number of unique viewers of online video increased 10.5% year-over-year, according to The Nielsen Company. While still impressive numbers, the explosive growth of a few years ago appears to be gone, replaced by slower, but still respectable organic growth.

Other highlights of Nielsen’s stats:

• People are watching more video – the number of streams watched is growing faster than the number of views;
• People are spending more time with online video – time per viewer grew 7%; and
• People are spending more time with long-form videos, time at Hulu is up and down at YouTube.

Details below.

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The Government Accountability Office has introduce a podcast that highlights its recent investigations.

GAO’s Watchdog Report features five-minute interviews with auditors and investigators on new investigations.

“Podcasting enhances the service GAO provides to Congress and the public by offering an alternative means for people to learn about significant issues and new GAO reports and testimonies,”said Gene L. Dodaro, head of the GAO.

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iTunes alternative doubleTwist has been updated with podcast support.

doubleTwist users can now subscribe to podcasts, search for new shows and  sync those podcasts to a variety of media players.

Other updates:

• library sorting issues fixed (sort by original track number)
• id3 tag discovery and display enhancement — not a full featured id3 tag editor but progress has been made on a more stable display of id3 tag info from iTunes and WMP media.
• Support for networked drives added
• Status and progress of application loading (status of iTunes, WMP scanning, playlists importing)
• ability to reload iTunes and/or WMP playlists at each launch
• Ability to not scan iTunes for changes at each launch

Podcasts are only 5 years old – but podcasting has already gone from being a niche indie tool to being a mainstream communication channel, even for corporations.

Podcast pioneer Dave Winer, who created one of the standards upon which podcasting is based and who helped popularize the technology, has published a torrrent that aggregates podcasts from the early days:

I was doing some research for a blog post and came across this folder of RSS enclosures from late 2004 and early-mid 2005.

These were the months when podcasting was beginning to take root.

I was doing Morning Coffee Notes. Adam Curry was doing Daily Source Code. Together, we were doing the Trade Secrets podcast.

Dave Slusher, Steve Gillmor, IT Conversations, Dawn and Drew, Tony Kahn at WGBH, Engadget.

It occurred to me that this slice of early podcasting might be worth preserving, so turned it into a torrent and have uploaded it.

Podcasting has come a long way in 5 year. But, while podcasting has changed a lot, the key feature of podcasting – that it lets anyone publish audio to the entire world – hasn’t.

Do have any favorites from the early days of podcasting?

Image: mr brown

Adobe is going to war with Apple’s iPad, as this Adobe + HP demo video shows.

Apple has demonstrated that lack of Flash support isn’t going to keep people from buying iPhones by the millions. It’s betting that the same will hold true with the iPad.

The HP Slate demo is pretty slick – and if the Apple iPad had not been introduced, this would probably be wowing people.

I’m not sure if an online Sponge Bob Flash game is going make anyone want to get the HP Slate.

What might, though, is the Slate’s ability to view video at today’s Flash-based video sites.

Do you think we’re heading towards a “full Web” vs “open Web” battle over Internet video?

YouTube has introduced a new feature – automatic Closed Captioning – and it’s starting to look like they may have brought All Your Base Are Belong To Us into a new decade.

Automatic Closed-Captioning uses speech recognition technology to translated audio from videos into text.

It’s a great idea – but it often has unintentionally hilarious results.

Dan Rickmers at Film Fail tried it out on his movie review vlog Trailer Trash.

YouTube’s automatic Closed Captioning turned a harmless review of the new movie Remember Me into a sometimes hilarious, sometimes strangely poetic tale of Robert Hansen, code name Rubber Band, who is plotting some sort of terrorist attack.

“That’s right Barbara, most part because it does whatever the party! Lots of coal.”

Enjoy the goodness below.

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Apple today announced that its “magical and revolutionary” iPad will be available in the US on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models.

In addition, all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple’s online store or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.

“iPad is something completely new,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

Where’s The PageMaker Of iBooks?

We get that Apple thinks the iPad is “magical and revolutionary”.

But what’s really magical and revolutionary is giving individuals the power to create content that can be shared instantly with people anywhere in the world.

The Apple iPad has the potential to be an interesting new platform for doing that – but where’s the PageMaker of iBooks?

PageMaker – the most important early desktop publishing program – revolutionized typesetting when it was introduced in 1985.

PageMaker, combined with the Apple LaserWriter printer, created desktop publishing. It turned everyone into print publishers and it also helped establish the Macintosh platform.

Until Apple, Adobe or someone else comes up with an easy-to-use app for creating interactive iBooks, iBook publishing is going to be handicapped, just as iTunes LP has been.

What do you think of publishing content for the iBook? Are you waiting for the PageMaker of iBooks?

Book designer Craig Mod has published a very interesting article looking at books in the age of the iPad.

He argues that print is dying – and that it’s a good thing:

As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over?

We’re losing the throwaway paperback.

The airport paperback.

The beachside paperback.

We’re losing the dredge of the publishing world: disposable books.

These are the first books to go. And I say it again, good riddance.

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Christiaan Van Vuuren bas been stuck in quarantine for tuberculosis for two months.

He’s sick, and not in the sense of being sick, sick.

He’s making the most of his isolation, though, learning how to record songs on his laptop and making music videos, Twittering and making friends on Facebook.

And while Van Vuuren may be quarantined, it hasn’t kept him from going viral.

He’s racked up hundreds of thousands of views for his videos on YouTube. The videos, especially his most recent one, above, are densely packed with weirdness.

You can help Van Vuuren out in his quest to get more fans than Nickleback on Facebook.

via bb

Flash is dead – at least at Virgin America.

When the Apple iPad was introduced, we said that Flash Is Dead + The iPad Is Its Tombstone.

Why?

Flash is a great tool – but users and Web developers alike are better off developing standards-based content and not being locked into proprietary tools.

Virgin America appears to have come to the same conclusion.

They’ve updated their site, dumping Flash.

“I don’t want to cater to one hardware or one software platform one way to another, and Flash eliminates iPhone users,” explains Chief information officer (CTO) Ravi Simhambhatla. “This year is going to be the year of the mobile [for Virgin].”

What do you think? Are more sites going to be dumping Flash to ensure compatibility with mobile Internet devices?