According to report at StorageProPortal, a team of Scottish Nanotechnology scientists claim that they can cram up to 500 Terabyte worth of data onto one square inch – putting 100 millions songs on your iPod.

Unfortunately, the Glaswegian team’s research is “in the conceptual stages” – which means that these 500 Terabyte iPods probably won’t be available until kids like DJ Ami (above) are in their teens.

As they put it themselves, “We are conceptually pushing the limits by what could be possible – making a molecular switch means that you cannot get much smaller, it starts to push at the fundamental constraints”.

The switching concept is at the root of all electronic storage devices and the Glasgow researchers have managed to get two clusters of molybdenum oxide based molecules positioned just 32nm.

These super-high capacity drives are a long ways off – but it’s interesting to consider their implications. When your iPod can store the entire history of recorded music, both radio and the idea of syncing may seem a bit pointless.

I’m a big fan of Apple TV – but it’s going to be a hard sell unless Apple gets more studios on board and builds up a library of long-tail content. Apple TV & iTunes currently offer less than 1,000 movies  – or about 89,900 less than Netflix:

The version of the iTunes Store reachable from your computer also remains well short of 1,000 movie rentals. When you navigate to the Movies page within the Store and click the All Movies link you’ll find 784 titles. This number includes all movies at the Store, both those that are for sale and those that are for rent. To see just rentals, choose Store -> Search to bring up the Store’s Power Search window, choose Movies from the Power Search pop-up menu, enable the Search Movies That Are Available For Rent option, and click the Search button. As of Tax Day 2008, the resulting number of rentals is 604.

Apple has solved the biggest user interface and functionality problems with Apple TV, but not the content problem. The device will have to offer access to more than your local video store if Apple wants it to compete.

Today through Thursday, I’m in San Francisco to attend ad:tech, one of a series of conventions focused on advertising and digital marketing.

I will be covering the event for Podcasting News, trying to get a sense of what’s happening in downloadable media from the sponsor and advertiser’s point of view.

I’m also here to make a presentation as part of my involvement with the nascent Association for Downloadable Media. Wednesday morning, April 16, 9 am, I will be presenting part of a session on Downloadable Media: The State of the Industry and Success Stories.

I’ve already had a chance to talk with author & podcaster Scott Sigler; I”ll try to write that up tomorrow.

Here’s the rest of my (tentative) schedule:

Tuesday, April 15:

• 3:30 Power Panel: Beyond the Pre-Roll – The State of Online Video
• 4:45 Power Panel: Social Network Marketing – Exploring the Value Proposition
• 7:00 ad:tech awards ceremony

Wednesday, April 16:

ADM Forums, 9am – Noon

• 9:00 The State of the Industry and Success Stories (my session)
• 10:00 Downloadable Media Advertising Standards – New Units Debut for Public Comment
• 11:00 Downloadable Media Audience Measurement Guidelines-

New Best Practices Debut for Public Comment

• 12:15 Publishing in the Digital Age: How Media Companies are Extending Their Reach
• 3:00 ADM meeting at Kiptronic
• 6:00 ADM: Get The Download party at Kiptronic

Thursday, April 17

• 10:45 Publishing in the Digital Age: How Media Companies are Extending Their Reach
• 12:00 The Empowered Consumer: Are We Losing Control of Our Brands?
• 2:15 Traditional Media Gets a Digital Infusion through Mobile -OR- Making Widgets and Gadgets Work for You
• 3:30 The Dynamics of Intent: Consumer Demand in the Digital Age
• 4:45 Internet Superstar, Live at ad:tech, with Revision3 people, and guests from Tiki Bar TV, French Maid TV, WineLibrary TV, Diggnation, and Ask A Ninja

If you happen to be at ad:tech, I hope you’ll say “Hi”. You can also follow/find me on Twitter.

It’s tax day in the US, and it looks like that’s not the only bad news.

Here are a few news items related to new media that aren’t exactly making my day:

• Twitter is adding advertising. Would you like spam with that tweet?
• Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto is sort of optional; they run new projects against an internal evil scale and see how it weighs out.
• The latest Apple laptop runs at only 2.8 MHz.
• Toilet Demon hates you.
• Vloggers are getting new competition – from Britney Spears.
• Microsoft is more dangerous than ever – “The combined force of Danger and Microsoft strengthens the company’s ability to provide innovative mobile experiences to more consumers.”
• You can download high-quality videos from YouTube – with a cumbersome hack.
• YouTube’s monopoly on Internet video is growing.

eMusic, the world’s second-largest digital music service after iTunes, today announced that it has sold more than 200 million downloads since establishing its current subscription model in November 2003.

The total comprises music downloads sold in the U.S. and the E.U., where eMusic has been available in all 27 E.U. nations since September 2006. The company is now selling more than 7 million tracks a month across all territories.

The 200 millionth track downloaded was “Fiery Crash” from Andrew Bird’s Armchair Apocrypha (Fat Possum Records).

“As more choices emerge for consumers in the digital music space, eMusic continues to grow, attracting new customers and selling more music every day,” said eMusic President and CEO David Pakman. “We’ve been ahead of the curve on DRM-free formats and price since day one, and we believe these numbers show that eMusic continues to sell more digital music than any other service apart from iTunes.”

PodCamp South Africa – a free podcasting unconference – will be held this weekend.

Here are the details:

Date

Saturday, 19 April 2008

Time

09:00 to 17:00.

Venue

Orangia Bowling Club, 8 At Horak Avenue, Bloemfontein

Cost

FREE, verniet, niks, mahala!

What to bring

Your laptop, video cameras, digital cameras, audio gear or anything else you want to use to capture the event and most importantly, an extension lead and a multiplug – unless your laptop is fuel cell powered.

To receive updates via Twitter please add us to your twitter feed! http://www.twitter.com/podcampsabloem

To register please visit the wiki and add your name to the list!

If you can make it to PodcampSA, let us know your experiences in the comments!

The latest PodCamp podcasting unconference will be held Saturday, April 19, 2008 in DC.

Here are the details:

Date
Saturday, April 19, 2008

Time
9:00 am ET – 11:00 pm ET

Location
Art Institute of Washington/ Rosslyn Spectrum Theatre
1820 Fort Meyer Drive
Arlington , VA 22209

Map
Google | Yahoo | Mapquest | Microsoft

If you’re going, don’t miss PodCamp co-founder Chris Penn’s unofficial guide to PodCamp DC.

Darren Rouse at Problogger has declared it Blogger Appreciation Day:

On the spur of the moment this morning I declared it Blogger Appreciation day and asked readers to email another blogger to let them know that you appreciate something about them. I also suggested that you could also write a post with your words of appreciation.

Why not make it Podcaster Appreciation Day, too?

Let’s take some time today to thank some of the podcasters, vloggers and video podcasters that you rely on.

Here are just a few of the podcasts that I’m subscribed to:

• Apple Quick Tip Of The Week
• Ask A Ninja
• GeekBrief TV
• Griddlecakes Radio
• Indy Mogul
• Tiësto’s Club Life
• NIN Remixes
• PodRunner
• They MIght Be Giants Friday Night Family Podcast
• Ultima Thule

If you can, let people know about some of the podcasts you love today, thank some of your favorite podcasters and spread the word that it’s Podcaster Appreciation Day, too!

And if you’ve got a great podcast, let me know about it in the comments!

While mainstream coverage may not reflect it yet, podcasting is rapidly moving towards mainstream adoption.

According to a new e-Marketer report, a January 2008 Arbitron-Edison Media Research study found that podcast use is exploding:

• The podcast audience has grown nearly 40% in the last year.
• Podcasting reaches 18% of the US population, up from 13% a year ago.
• Podcast adoption is accelerating. A year ago, we reported that the podcast audience had grown 18%, less than half of last years growth.
• An estimated 23 million, or 9% of Americans have listened to a podcast in the past month.

Note that Edison uses a fairly limited definition of podcasting (radio style audio downloads) and their statistics need to be understood with this context.

“Traditional radio and Internet-only radio must realize that they are now part of an even broader world of online information and entertainment options and respond accordingly,” said Pierre Bouvard, president of sales and marketing at Arbitron.

“Advertisers who want to go where the trends are pointing need to be more involved with the new forms of audio media as they continue to expand,” Mr. Bouvard said.

Image: zengame

Online video site Viddler has announced a new plugin for WordPress 2.5 (currently in beta testing) that lets you browse for and embed videos directly from WordPress.

Here’s what’s new in this version:

• Dashboard widget You can now watch, and help promote, our daily featured videos right from within the WordPress administration dashboard. There is a preference in the options panel to turn this off.
• Viddler videos in Add Media pop-up One of WordPress 2.5’s flagship features is the new “Add media” pop-up window when writing posts and pages. Now, you can add Viddler videos in several ways.
  • Featured videos – Like on the dashboard widget, you are now able to embed featured videos quickly.
  • Your videos – One quick search for your username, and you can page through every public video you have on Viddler and embed them in your posts.
  • Search – The search features lets you find, and embed, any video on Viddler by searching by tag and/or username.
  • Record – Using your webcam, or any camera attached to your computer, you can use Viddler’s recorder to quickly record a brand-new video and embed it in your post, all without leaving your WordPress admin.
• Fixed WordPress 2.5 jQuery conflict Both our plugin and WordPress use jQuery, the state-of-the-art Javascript framework, and version 1.0 of our plugin causes conflicts with WordPress 2.5. Now that is fixed!
• Several other bugs fixes and enhancements.

Details are available at the plugin Wiki.