MTV jumped the shark, at least when it comes to music video, years ago.

But a video podcast – Blogotheque’s The Take Away Shows – is making music videos relevant again.

“Every week, we invite an artist or a band to play in the streets, in a bar, a park, or even in a flat or in an elevator, and we film the whole session,” explain the video podcasts’ creators Vincent Moon and Chryde.  “Of course, what makes the beauty of it is all the little incidents, hesitations, and crazy stuff happening unexpectingly. Besides, we do not edit the videos so they look perfectly flawless, instead we keep the raw sound of the surroundings. Our goal is to try and capture instants, film the music just like it happens, without preparation, without tricks. Spontaneity is the keyword.”

Here, one of Blogotheque’s directors, Jeremy Montana Lundborg, explains his approach to making the gorgeous video, above, for Priscilla Ahn‘s Dream:

I put Priscilla up in an empty apartment with a microphone, loop station, and her guitar. She’d invited some friends and a few fans from her show the night before to be a part of this private concert. Most of them came in pairs, talking about their favorite music and the last bad movie they’d seen. The rest of the fans were alone and stood quietly as Priscilla and I decided on the play list. Like some sort of instinct, she began playing for the crowd stuffed into the room as I set up the camera. She continued to sing as I turned the camera onto her, stepping out from the fringes.

The fact that there’s nothing in the videos that you couldn’t do with iMovie and a cheap video camera helps capture the excitement of the music without the artifice of most music videos.

Here’s a few more examples that you won’t want to miss.

Frommer’s has announced a collection of Travel Guides for iPhone and iPod Touch. The app features local travel tips, restaurant and hotel reviews, and bonus features such as location-based services, interactive maps, and web and phone links. A demo video is embedded above.

Frommer’s New York City, San Francisco, London and Paris are available for purchase and download via the Apple App Store and iTunes.

This is a nice example of how interactive applications can replace books and be a smart alternative to ebooks.

A guidebook like this, along with some travel podcasts and location-based social media apps, could make traditional Travel Guides obsolete.

It looks like Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine may be another victim of the popularity of Apple’s iPhone.

The publisher has announced that it’s published the final issue of the magazine, and is replacing it with one that focuses on he iPhone:

After 11 years, we will be publishing a final 2008 issue of Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine and then suspend publication! We are working hard to make it the best Windows Mobile issue ever, a keeper, a reference guide.

In 2009 we will publish Smartphone magazine’s iPhone Life.

They go on to explain that lack of interest from advertisers and buyers has made publishing the magazine impossible:

The other business challenge has been the lack of advertising sponsorship from Microsoft, phone companies, and OEMs, despite our coverage of their products. In order for us to sell subscriptions at current low consumer magazine-type prices, we must have a stronger and growing circulation, and we much attract the large advertisers who benefit the most from our existence.

While they don’t pin the blame for the magazine’s demise on the iPhone, it’s clear that Apple’s smart phone has leapfrogged the Pocket PC platform and has attracted the interest of both developers and power users.

SusanG at The Daily Kos points out an interesting discussion in U.S. News & World Report’s Washington Whispers column:

Rocked by warnings that it will cost news organizations $50,000 more per reporter to cover Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain, a growing number of journalists and press pundits are questioning why the media is staffing up coverage of the political conventions where little major news is expected. At least one paper and several Washington bureaus, we’re told, have budgeted only $100,000 for political coverage, and their convention teams will eat most of it, leaving little to put reporters on the campaign trail.

She adds:

There is no calculus in the known universe that can justify nearly 50 times the cost (unless newspaper management, in talking to Washington Whispers, fudged a bit and didn’t pro-rate its annual costs).

What it does reflect is either management lying to reporters about how much they “burden” the outlet, or businesses that truly are the cumbersome, establishment, jacked-up-expense-report outfits they appear to be. Neither explanation bodes well for the future of traditional media, and visions of behemoth, slow-responding dinosaurs and scurrying little mammals come to mind.

This is a huge question for traditional news media to address.

There are a thousand reason why traditional news coverage costs a lot more than blogs – but when more and more people turn to the Web for their news, many of those reasons don’t matter.

In the long run, the most successful media sources probably won’t be traditional media or bloggers, but media organizations that combine economies of scale that traditional media can offer with the stripped-down efficiency of blogging and Internet media.

Image: a trying youth

A lot of tech analysts, including TechCrunch and Citi analyst Mark Mahaney, have been talking up their estimates of Kindle sales, and positioning Amazon’s device as the iPod of ebooks.

Unfortunately for Amazon, the numbers being thrown around by TechCrunch & Citi appear to be bogus.

According to a report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Amazon officials say that “high-end estimates on Kindle sales reported by TechCrunch and a Citigroup analyst are not reasonable.”

Amazon says that the Kindle is selling well, but that the “extremely high estimates” were unfounded and that the analysts “did not run them by the company”.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that NBC failed to cash in on interest in the Olympics with its online presence:

NBC’s decision to limit the amount of Olympics footage on its Web site has ticked off sports fans. But that decision could also dog the network in another way: NBCOlympics.com will generate just $5.75 million in video-ad revenue from the Games, according to estimates from research firm eMarketer Inc.

At a time when video ads are starting to catch on, analysts say NBC had an opportunity to make a lot more money had it offered more online content during the Games. CBS Sports, by contrast, streamed all of the NCAA’s March Madness basketball-tournament games live earlier this year and made $23 million in ad revenue, the CBS Corp. network says. (The basketball tournament lasted three weeks, while the Olympics runs over two weeks.)

It’s pretty clear why NBC failed to wow people with it’s approach to the Olympics – it used an old media approach to new media. It frustrated fans, chased away young people, drove people to unofficial channels and, as a result, many thought NBC’s Olympic coverage was a failure.

Update: It looks like a lot of people are coming around to our viewpoint on NBC’s Olympic strategy:

• TechCrunch says “No Matter How NBC Spins It, Olympics Web Strategy Comes Up A Loser.”
• Gawker‘s take: “NBC Blew The Olympics Online.” That actually sounds more like the Fleshbot take….
• BloggingStocks call’s NBC’s coverage “an online failure.”

Scott Sigler, one of the first authors to publish his fiction exclusively as a serialized podcast, has more recently been one of the first podcasting authors to land a (paper) book publishing contract. His book Infected was released in the US in April, and was published in July in the UK.

In this exclusive interview, Scott talks about his experiences and shares his views on podcasting, social media and the future of book publishing.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Lately, it seems like you’re all over the place. I heard you on National Public Radio, and saw you profiled in The Washington Post. Do you want to trumpet what it is you’ve done that gets you all this notoriety, if not infamy?

Scott Sigler: Sure, I give away my fiction novels as free podcasts, as serialized audio books, and that has resulted in enough listeners to get me a publishing deal with Crown Books. And Crown just released the hardcover of INFECTED, which is the first book in their five-book deal, and it just came out April 1st. And their media people have done a great job of pushing the podcast-to-print story, which has resulted in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, NPR– even got reviewed in Entertainment Weekly. So it’s just crazy.

On Pioneering the Podcast Novel

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: That’s exciting and fun, too, for your fans. You have an incredible, very active, very devoted fan base, and you’ve successfully pioneered the use of podcasting and new media to promote your work.

As far as I know, you were really the first author to start to really actively promote new work as downloadable, serialized podcasts. Was there anyone podcasting their books before you did?

Scott Sigler: There were three people who kind of came up with it at the same time. We didn’t know each other then, but we’re pretty good friends now, and that’s Tee Morris, who did a book called Morevi, Mark Jeffrey who did a book called The Pocket and the Pendant, and myself when I put out a book called EarthCore. And Morevi and The Pocket and the Pendant were already in print.

The unique angle for me was that the only place you could get the story was in the podcast. You could not peek at the end, you couldn’t get it, you just had to wait every week. And that got kind of a kind of core audience rolling along with it. And then I rolled into the next book, which was Ancestor, and then Infected, and then a couple more after that.

And it’s just- it’s really been growing since then. So that’s become the default model for me, to give it away as a podcast first and then to follow up with a print book.

Want to see a great example of a podcast audio tour?

The Friends of the Public Garden in Boston have launched a Public Garden Audio Tour podcast, a self-guided audio walking tour. The audio tour is available as a free download at the Friends of the Public Garden website, and as a podcast on iTunes. Visitors can also rent iPods at the Swan Boat ticket counter in the Public Garden.

“Many people walk through the Garden, but don’t know the secret stories about the place,” said Henry Lee, President of the Friends of the Public Garden, the nonprofit organization that helps care for the Garden. “This iPod audio tour is a new way to interact with the garden, to immerse yourself in its stories.”

The tour site features an interactive map, iTunes link and a direct download link. The audio tour looks at 18 different sites within the garden and features interviews and original music.

The audio tour site is iPod-centric, which may disappoint some visitors, but makes things very simple for iPod users.

The Radio Advertising Bureau has reported its latest revenue numbers, and, it looks “bleak” for the future of traditional radio.

On-air revenue dropped 7 percent in the first half of 2008. While other revenues, from the Internet and other sources, are growing at a healthy rate, they are not enough to balance plummeting broadcast revenues.

Here’s the radio revenue breakdown:

Total revenues are down 5 percent in the first half of 2008.

Rode has introduced a new microphone – the Rode Procaster – a professional dynamic microphone, specifically designed for voice applications in broadcast environments.

Featuring a tight polar pattern and frequency response tailored for voice, the Procaster targets applications where a rugged microphone with superior ambient noise rejection is needed.

The Procaster is compatible with the RODE PSA1 studio arm and PSM1 shock mount, for professional microphone mounting.

Key features:

• “Broadcast quality” sound
• High output dynamic capsule
• Balanced, low impedance output
• Internal shock mounting of capsule for low handling noise
• Internal pop-filter to reduce plosives
• Robust, all metal constructiom
• Ten year warranty

The Procaster lists for $369, but retails in the mid $200’s.