Rob Greenlee, Microsoft Zune Podcast Programming Lead, reports that Zune is a major sponsor of this year’s New Media Expo, taking place August 14 – 16 in Las Vegas.  Greenlee says that attendees of the convention “should stop by” the big booth featuring the portable media device.

Greenlee, a podcasting pioneer who was among the first (if not *the* first) to move his web-based broadcast, Web Talk Radio, to the podcast platform, was involved with mobile podcast delivery network Melodeo before joining the Zune team a year ago.  “I wanted to also let you know that I have as of today, I have launched the Zune Insider audio and video podcast.”

The Zune Insider audio and video podcast is co-hosted by Greenlee and Zune blogger Cesar Menendez. Listeners can subscribe via the Zune Marketplace, by using this url, or directly from the Zune Insider blog.

The premiere episode includes stories about Zune’s involvement in the Comic-Con event in San Diego. Because of Microsoft xBox’s sponsorship and participation in Comic-Con, the Zune folks also attended, helping to capture or create 74 videos of the convention, which have since been published at the Zune Marketplace (and at xBox Live). Upcoming episodes will be published every Thursday, and will cover everything in the Zune universe: software, devices, content available in the Zune Marketplace, accessories, events and more.

Greenlee also mentioned that “We are planning on having a Zune meet-up on Thursday.” Zune enthusiasts should stop by the Zune booth at the New Media Expo for more details.

Six Apart today announced an update to Movable Type and the launch of Movable Type Pro, a new version that’s designed to let you build your own social networking sites. 

Or as Six Apart puts it, “think Digg in a box”.

What’s New in Movable Type 4.2

• Movable Type Pro lets you turn any site into a full social publishing platform, combining all of Movable Type’s abilities as a blogging and CMS with social networking features like profiles, ratings, user registration, forums and following.
• The platform upgrade to Movable Type 4.2 fulfills the top three MT community requests:

It’s faster for common tasks; 

It features much simpler templates for customizing your site; and

It includes 100% free and open source TypePad AntiSpam for keeping junk comments off your site.

• Movable Type Pro includes all of the features in the Movable Type Community Solution. If you’re a personal blogger or have a current MT license, Movable Type Pro is a free upgrade.

Social Networking Features:

• You can add forums, community blogs and group blogs to your site, and you can keep track of all those conversations using a single set of tools.
• It’s easy to allow anyone on the web to register on your site, or to sign in with OpenID support. Members get full-fledged customizable profiles, personalized user pictures (avatars), and can follow their friends or other site members they’re interested in.
• Any member of your community can, with appropriate permissions, submit content for publishing on your site. Administrators have full ability to review submissions, and submitted posts show up on user profiles right next to their comments and other activity. 
• Any registered user on your site can vote for content they like, making it easy to create “most popular” or “most recommended” lists on your site. You can also create voting communities within your site.

The announcement is good news for all bloggers, because it raises the bar for blogging platforms. If you’ve got a popular podcast, blog or Internet video, you’ll soon be able to turn your site into a social network, using canned components from Movable Type, WordPress and others. 

WordPress has already announced its own social networking add-ons, with BuddyPress, but they aren’t expected to be finalized until the end of the year. 

Free content pioneer Lawrence Lessig notes at his blog today that a US Federal Court has upheld open source licenses (pdf), helping to build a case history for Creative Commons licenses that are frequently used in new media:

The Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you’re simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses.

Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license.

Creative Commons licenses are very popular with podcasters, musicians and others involved in new media, because they make it easy to share creative works and build on the works of others. The CC licenses are new enough, though, that there’s not history of how the courts will interpret them. This decision will help address that, which could pave the way for wider adoption of free and open source licensing. 

PodCamp Philly, the second annual “unconference” style podcasting event, will be held Sept 6-7.

PodCamp Philly topics will include blogging, podcasting, video-blogs, videos and social networking.

Also, this year PodCamp Philly has teamed with SearchCamp Philly, a new unconference focused on helping small and medium sized businesses market themselves online.

PodCamp Philly/SearchCamp Philly Details:

• Dates: September 6th & 7th
• Location: Tuttleman Center at Temple University
• Price: under $21.00 for both days and both Camps
• Register at: http://www.podcampphilly.eventbrite.com/
• Websites: www.podcampphilly.com and www.searchcampphilly.com

Best Buy announced today that it would be selling the Apple iPhone, starting on September 7th.

It will be the first US chain, outside of Apple & AT&T, to carry the iPhone.

The deal is significant for several reasons:

• The iPhone will be available in 1,000 new locations;
• It helps prepare Apple for carrier independence;
• It has the potential to rapidly speed adoption of the popular smart phone;
• There is likely to be some iPhone “halo effect”, since Best Buy already sells Apple’s Macintosh computers and iPods.

This is good news for podcasting and new media.

While wider adoption may mean that the iPhone loses some of its caché, it also means more people using podcasts, viewing mobile television, using mobile social networking applications and doing mobile content publishing. The iPhone tops Flickr’s cameraphone list for a good reason; it makes it easy to create and share media.

If you’re like me, you probably think that sitting through pre-roll ads – online video ads that you have to sit through before you can watch what you really want to see – is up there with getting your teeth drilled.

In fact, a lot of people won’t sit through pre-roll ads. Three quarters of the people in a recent survey said that in-stream advertising is intrusive. Half (49.7%) of those surveyed will not sit through a pre-roll ad, and said the presence of in-stream advertising in online video content makes them less likely to view other video content they may encounter online.

Unfortunately, advertisers love pre-roll ads, so they won’t be going away anytime soon.

For example, TVWeek reports that online video ad network BrightRoll has signed a new $1 million month-long ad deal for pre-roll ads across 30 branded media publishers. According to BrightRoll, the $1 million pre-roll campaign is the first buy of that size. BrightRoll CEO Tod Sacerdoti said the size of the buy shows the importance of the pre-roll format for online video advertising.

Pre-rolls appeal to advertisers because they interrupt your attention, like television ads, and are more of a known quantity than other formats.

There’s a big downside to pre-roll ads: a lot of people won’t sit through them. But until someone comes up with something that’s less intrusive and more effective, expect to be seeing more pre-roll ads.

Update: More discussion at Clickz, Silicon Valley Insider

Blubbry’s Todd Cochrane has introduced a new feature for podcasters, Custom HomePages for blubbry.:

“The custom homepage looks like a regular weblog, and it has all the standard features you have come to expect from. We have 7 really cool templates designed by Brian our creative director to choose from, and if you don’t like our templates you can build your own just by picking your colors, no coding knowledge required.

You can add your own HTML snippets to the sidebar for advertising, blog roll or anything else you would want to put in there. We even allow you to add your Google Analytics code on the site, so not only do you can have a full picture of web traffic with Google Analytics you also track your Podcast Statistics with Premium Statistics that is included in every hosting package.”

This sounds a lot like what podcasters that use WordPress and Movable Type have been getting for a long time – but blubbry tries to provide a turnkey solution, so that podcasters can focus on podcasting.

Citi analyst Mark Mahaney is bullish on the prospects for Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader.

He estimates that Amazon (AMZN) will sell 378,000 units this year, double his initial guess. And he thinks instead of being a $750 million business that accounts for 3% of Amazon’s sales in 2009, the Kindle will be a $1.1 billion business that accounts for 4%.

Mahaney upward estimates for Kindle sales are not based on any hard figures from Amazon, but are based on numbers taken from the TechCrunch blog:

“We acknowledge being “out-sourced” by TechCrunch. But we believe the 240K number was well-sourced and believe reports of 40,000 shipments a month may also be reasonable.”

Mahaney will probably take a lot of heat for basing his sales figures on blog posts based on anonymous tips. Nevertheless, Mahaney is making the case to investors that Amazon has the next iPod on its hands.

I’m not convinced by Mahaney’s case, because there are a lot of reasons the Kindle is not like the iPod:

• Much of the success of the iPod can be attributed to the fact that it adds value to your existing investment in CDs. For many people, a $200-$300 iPod takes 10 or more years of purchased CDs and makes them portable. The Kindle requires additional purchases to be useful.
• iPods/iPhones are also a doorway into a vast quantity of free content ranging from podcasts to Internet videos & even the Web. Amazon wants you to subscribe to Kindle versions of publications that are freely available on the Web.
• Finally, the iPhone and iPod have become platforms for content and application development. There are tens of thousands of people developing media for the iPod and over 200,000 have show interest in developing applications for the iPhone. There’s no sign of this sort of interest developing with the Kindle.

There are many niche’s where the Kindle makes sense. One example is college text books. But the Kindle hasn’t demonstrated, yet, that it has what it takes to become a mainstream success.

via Silicon Valley Insider

Podcast hosting service Wizzard Software has announced its second quarter 2008 financial results. They report that revenues are up, expenses are down and losses are decreasing:

• Wizzard reports revenues for the second quarter of 2008 of $1,465,874, a 3% increase over revenues of $1,428,097 in the second quarter of 2007
• Operating expenses totaled $2,159,433, which was a 30% decrease from operating expenses of $3,104,138 in the second quarter of 2007.
• Wizzard’s net loss available to common shareholders was $1,998,225, or $0.04 per share, in the quarter ended June 30, 2008. This represents a 30% decrease from their net loss of $2,866,308, or $0.07 per share, in the second quarter of 2007.

In their statement, Wizzard highlighted several second quarter growth figures:

• Wizzard’s publishing platform grew by over 1,500 new shows and 54,000 new episodes
• Wizzard Media grew to over 15,000 publishers using its service
• Wizzard signed 20 new network publishers to its PRO enterprise platform
• Download requests grew to 241,600,000, from 196,700,000, in the second quarter, 2007

“By focusing our efforts on high quality, episodic, subscribable content, we feel strongly that we are in a position to generate substantial revenues and profits in the future through advertising as we continue to execute on our business plan,” said the company. “We have several repeat advertisers – a true testament to our methodology – and we have seen a significant increase in requests for proposals and closed deals including Panasonic, SpikeTV and Puma.”

The company also noted that it plans to release a flash media player that will support social networking, and stated that the company believes that “Wizzard has now become the definitive name in podcast distribution and is at the vanguard of the online digital media movement.”

Teens are skipping the Olympics this year, according to Wired, because the Olympics aren’t available where they are watching video:

“Only 46 percent of teens surveyed by Harris Interactive showed any interest in watching the Olympics.

Why won’t they watch? According to Harris, it’s ‘Because it’s not convenient for them.’

‘Teens want quick-hitting videos,” says Bill Carter, a partner at youth marketing agency Fuse Marketing. “They don’t want the lead-up and they don’t want the analysis. They just want the video.'”

Last week, we noted some of the barriers that face people wanting to follow the Olympics online:

• The Olympics and its partners are restricting what you can watch online, because they’d rather have you watch it on broadcast television.
• The Olympics and its partners restrict where you can watch, limiting viewing based on geography.
• The Olympics and its partners restrict how you can watch – NBC, for example, forces you to install Microsoft’s Silverlight before you can view videos.
• The Olympics has banned podcasting, video podcasting and other forms of citizen media from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

These restrictions may limit teens more than others, because:

• teens are heavy YouTube users, and YouTube users watch less TV;
• teens are leading the way in abandoning broadcast television; and
• when teens do watch regular television, they are paying less attention because they are multitasking.

If teens really are skipping the Olympics because it’s not available where they spend their time, this could force major changes to how future games are covered online.