Mainstream media is getting savvy to the way podcasts are being effectively used to promote authors and their work.

A Washington Post article looks at how Scott Sigler, J.C. Hutchins and Cory Doctorow are using podcasting an Internet media to get noticed:

Horror writer Scott Sigler, one of the pioneers in this area, began regularly posting readings of his first book in March 2005. “EarthCore,” broken up into 45-minute chunks that he posted on a weekly basis, won an audience of 10,000 listeners. His second book, “Ancestor,” did even better, scoring 30,000 subscribers. A small Canadian publisher signed on to release his third book in a small paperback run.

This month, Sigler’s fourth book debuted in a hardcover release for the first time, from Crown Publishing Group, an imprint of Random House. Crown has printed an initial run of 100,000 copies of “Infected,” Sigler’s bloody tale about a parasite that turns its human hosts violently insane. That’s a high figure for the book industry, where mostly unknown authors usually get an initial print run of only a few thousand.

Sigler’s latest novel is racing up the best-seller list at Amazon.

“It proves that there are smarter ways to getting published than just sending a manuscript over the transom to a publisher,” said Cory Doctorow, a sci-fi author who is also well known as an editor of the popular blog BoingBoing.

As people’s attention moves away from broadcast media to on-demand media, authors and publishers will have to follow.

Rocketboom founder Andrew Michael Baron has announced that he’s auctioning off his Twitter account:

Baron is effectively wanting to monetize the attention that his Twitter account receives. Per the eBay auction:

The winner of this auction gets my account with all of my followers. The account is in my name now, but the winner of the auction can pick any other name that’s available on Twitter for the transfer. For example, you could have http://www.twitter.com/x where x=any name thats not already taken. You can change it yourself at anytime too, one of the cool features about Twitter settings.

So basically it’s like getting a new account with your own name, but having a pre-installed audience.

It looks like Baron is playing the part of the agent provocateur here – inciting others to disrupt the status quo of social networking.

It’s already generating a lot of discussion – and is sure to generate a lot of cheap publicity for Baron, Rocketboom and the buyer.

No matter what the Twitter account ends up going for, and whether or not Twitter allows the sale to go through, the more interesting question is not what Baron’s Twitter account is worth to someone else, but what the value of Baron’s credibility is, and how the sale will affect it.

Many of Baron’s Twitter followers may be happy to follow Baron to another social network or to follow his posts from his Rocketboom account. On the other hand, the sale is likely to piss off a lot of his followers, who may not just opt out of following him on Twitter, but opt out of following him completely.

Kids just got a great justification for getting bigger iPods – PBS & Apple have added a large variety of educational programming to iTunes U:

From The War: A film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick to The Jewish Americans: A Series by David Grubin to Meet the Author, featuring more than 40 interviews with top children’s book authors and illustrators, WETA — Washington D.C.’s Public Broadcasting Station — delivers a rich assortment of educational programming for students, teachers, and parents alike.

And they’re not alone. Educational programming from four other PBS stations, including KQED, WGBH, thirteen, and ideastream can also be seen and heard on iTunes U.

Of special note for Internet media hackers is KQED’s New Media Studies, a collection of short video podcasts which look at topics like digital storytelling, voice-overs, soundtracks and iMovie.

In a paper published in today’s issue of Science, a team at IBM’s research centre in San Jose, California, said they have developed a new type of digital storage which would enable a device such as an MP3 player to store about half a million songs – or 3,500 films – and cost far less to produce. Just as a point of reference, 500,000 songs is about 12 years of listening 8 hours a day.

Today’s biggest-capacity iPod, the 160 gigabyte model, can store approximately 40,000 songs.

While the idea of a half-million song library in your pocket is impressive, what might be more mind-blowing (and useful) is the enabling of a whole new level of capabilities on ever smaller mobile devices. Imagine carrying around an office-worth of information in a device the size of a pack of chewing gum…

Devices employing this “racetrack” memory technology, which uses “the spin of an electron to store data,” would require much less power and operate more quickly than a regular hard drive. These devices could operate on a single battery charge for “weeks at a time”, and would last for decades.

IBM said the technology was still in the exploratory stage, but that it anticipates that devices which used the technology to be on the market within ten years.

What would you do with a mobile device that could hold the equivalent of half a million songs?

The Open Rights Group has an in-depth look at Magnatune, a pioneering record label that licenses its releases under Creative Commons licenses.

This means that Magnatune’s music is:

• Shareable: Users are invited to share their purchased tracks with up to three friends, can listen to the entire catalogue for free via the website’s 128kbps streams, and can download any song as a 128kbps MP3 file.
• Available as “source code”: Ten per cent of the catalogue is also available in its component parts, e.g. scores, lyrics, MIDI files, samples or track-by-track audio files.
• Derivative works: The CC licence used by Magnatune explicitly permits users to make derivative works – such as remixes, cover songs and sampling – for non-commercial purposes, which is further facilitated by the provision of the “source code”.
• Free for non-commercial use: Users can download songs for non-commercial projects, such as a home video soundtrack or compilation album intended for family or friends.

The article has a case study of the company and an interview with Magnatune founder John Buckman, and looks at the economics of free music and how podcasting can be used to promote music.

If you want to rip DVDs to use on your iPod or iPhone, the free OS X app Instant HandBrake makes it a no-brainer.

Instant Handbrake is a stripped down version of HandBrake, a general video ripping tool. Stripping away the extra options makes the app a lot less confusing for casual users.

Here’s how you can use Instant HandBrake to rip a movie….

Blockbuster is working on an Apple TV-killer, according to reports.

The home video giant is developing a set-top device for streaming films directly to TV sets and is expected to announce the offering sometime this month.

Blockbuster declined comment, but a spokeswoman for the company said: “We’re talking to numerous companies and vendors about products, services, alliances and initiatives that can help us achieve our mission to transform Blockbuster into a company that provides access to media content across multiple channels — from our stores, by mail, through kiosks, through downloading, through portable content-enabled devices– so it’s not surprising that there are rumors out there.”

The device is believed to be a stand-alone product akin to Apple TV as opposed to embedding a Blockbuster-branded service in such existing devices as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or TiVo.

The device would join a growing number of devices that connect HDTVs to the Internet or your computer. The technology may still be too early for mainstream adoption, though, because none of the devices has been a hit with buyers.

comScore has updated its Video Metrics offerings, adding the UK, France, Germany and Canada to its current US offering.

Of the five countries currently reported by comScore Video Metrix, online video had the highest reach in Canada, where 19 million viewers viewed a video online in December, representing 89 percent of the total online population age 15 and older. The U.K. was next with an 87 percent reach, followed by France with an 84 percent reach and Germany with an 81 percent reach. Bringing up the U.S., where online video reached 78 percent of the total online population.

Canada’s online video audience also viewed more videos than any of the other reported countries, averaging 112 videos per viewer for the month of December, followed by the U.K. with 108 videos per viewer, Germany with 92 videos per viewer, and France with 89 videos per viewer. Again, U.S. activity was slightly lower, averaging 77 videos per viewer in December.

Why do you think the US is lagging in adopting Internet video?

Here are the details:

The BBC has announced that its iPlayer video service will soon be available via the Nintendo Wii.

iPlayer is a video download and streaming service that lets people catch up with BBC programming. An early version of the service should be available starting today but more polished software will be released as the service is developed.

If you’ve had a chance to give this a try, let us know in the comments.

“The BBC’s catch-up TV service can now be accessed on an increasing number of different platforms – from the web and portable devices to gaming consoles,” said Erik Huggers, BBC’s group controller for Future Media and Technology. He added that the iPlayer will also soon be available on television

The iPlayer will be accessible via the internet channel on the Wii console. The BBC said a message would be sent to Wii owners to alert them to its availability.

Veronica Belmont, former host of Mahalo Daily, has ‘fessed up about her next gig:

Most of you guessed that one of my new projects was over at Revision3 as the new co-host of Tekzilla with Patrick Norton. And yes, you are correct! In fact, I was over there yesterday shooting for Friday’s episode. As I’ve said before, I love working with everyone over there, and I think it’s going to be a blast.

However, there’s still another project that I can’t say anything about just yet! A girl’s gotta have her secrets, right?

Says the folks at Rev3, “Not only does Veronica fit in well here because she’s got the brains (oh, the brains!), but she’s just an all-around cool person, too. We’re honored to have her with us…”.