UK mobile developers Coolgorilla have launched the London Travel Guide, a free travel guide specifically designed for iPods, iPhones and mobile phones.

The London Travel Guide packs over 400 pages of info, along with interactive features, onto your portable media player. The guide is designed to be regularly updated, so you can have the most up to date information about each attraction, including entrance fees, phone numbers and websites.

iPhone and mobile users can simply click on the phone number of the attraction to call them up, or use the website link to go directly through to the attraction’s site to find more information.

Coolgorilla designed the iPod version to be downloaded as a podcast via iTunes and the iPhone and mobile versions have both been optimised so visitors can access the information over the handset’s web browser.

“A recent road trip through California got me thinking about how we could improve on the traditional, paperback travel guide” said Roy Forsdick, Managing Director of Coolgorilla. “By using the content rich features available on iPods and mobiles we can help travelers get the most out of their visit to London. Also, since software isn’t exposed to the same reproduction costs as hardcopy publications, we can distribute the guides for free!”

Coolgorilla is already working on similar travel guides for a number of other cities including Paris, Barcelona, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, due to be released later this year.

The company plans to make money from the travel guides through advertising deals.

Remember Firebrand – the joint venture between Microsoft, NBC Universal and GE to bring you a Internet video destination site made up entirely of commercials?

When Firebrand launched, we said that that Firebrand offered everything that you turned to Internet video to avoid:

Remember commercials?

Those things you used to have to watch, before you got a TiVo and/or you started subscribing to one of the 25,000+ free video podcasts and/or you started losing hours of your life surfing YouTube?

Microsoft, NBC Universal and GE apparently think that you really miss the little buggers, so much so that they’ve invested in a new Internet video startup, Firebrand, that offers nothing but commercials, all the time.

Yep Р24/7 commercials. If you like, you can register at the site and make playlists and favorites. You can even embed videos in your site….so you can add advertisements to your site and not get paid for it.

It didn’t take long, but Firebrand is pining for the fjords.

The Web site Gawker reported Monday that employees were asked to relinquish their Blackberries. And you know people don’t give up their Blackberries for just anything.

A spokesman for NBC Universal, Cory Shields, said on Tuesday afternoon, “we are not putting any additional capital into the company.”

Prime Time Rewind TV is a new video site that promises to make it easy to find and watch the primetime network television shows online.

“We would like to put you one-click away from watching your show,” claims the site.

If that’s their goal, you have to wonder: Why do they present your viewing options on the faces of a rotating cube built in Flash?

Yep – Prime Time Rewind TV takes you on a hyperlinked virtual reality journey into cyberspace, the likes we haven’t seen since around 1998.

Use your mouse to rotate a virtual cube to choose a network. Then click on the show that you want to watch!

Sounds easy, huh?

But…

• There’s no way to know what side of the cube ABC or any other network is on. Is it on the back of the cube? Or is it on the bottom? #@#$! Just give me ABC!
• Each face of the cube only displays 16 shows. Aren’t there 21 hours of prime time? (8-11, 7 days a week) Were do the rest of the shows go?
• The cube has ten sides! Rotate it left to right, and you’ll see six sides for six networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, USA, and TNT. Rotate it up and down, though, and you get four category sides: Reality, Comedy, Drama and Action. Aren’t cubes supposed to have six sides? Normally, you’d have to use a pentagonal trapezohedron to get an object with 10 faces. Prime Time Rewind put 10 sides on a cube through the magic of cyberspace!
• Many of the show names don’t fit in the space allowed on the cube. Check out the screen capture, above, and you’ll find these shows: Late Night C, Lipstick Jun, My Name is E & Victoria Bec.

Now – let’s say that you figure out which side of the cube ABC is on and you click on the icon for Lost. What do you get?

You get ABC’s site, displayed in a frame:

You know what that means – your user experience is different for every network.

You can get an account on Prime Time Rewind TV and set up your own custom “facet” on the cube, but there’s really no reason that you’d want to.

Prime Time Rewind TV is a stinking mess. It collects everything that wrong with the current state of Internet television and adds a layer of garbage over the top. There’s nothing to redeem this site.

The site is currently in alpha. It should not go to beta. It should go back to the drawing board, to avoid wasting any more effort on this ill-conceived venture.

Pitchfork Media, a Chicago-based site that offers independent music news, reviews and other content, announced on Tuesday that it plans to launch Pitchformk.tv, a Web-based music video channel next month that will offer “mini-documentaries, secret rooftop and basement sessions, full concerts, exclusive interviews, and the most carefully curated selection of music videos online.”

The channel, which will launch in beta on April 7, also plans to feature a different feature-length film each week, to include “LoudQuietLoud,” which documents the 2004 Pixies reunion tour, and “Ultimate Reality,” a visual art project by Dan Deacon and Jimmy Joe Roche.

Pitchfork.tv also plans to add features like personal playlists, and will later this year be integrated with its parent site at Pitchforkmedia.com.

Matt Mullenweg, the guy behind WordPress, announced today that he’s hired someone to develop social networking features for WordPress:

Some of you may remember when I wrote about Chickspeak, a WordPress MU-based social network. Andy Peatling, the fellow behind it, later decided to recreate the work he had done as an Open Source effort he called BuddyPress. And it was good.

Today I’m happy to announce that Andy has joined Automattic full-time and we’ll be taking the BuddyPress project under our wing. We will grow it and support it the same way we support WordPress, MU, bbPress, Akismet, and more.

It’s clear that the future is social. Connections are key. WordPress MU is a platform which has shown itself to be able to operate at Internet-scale and with BuddyPress we can make it friendlier. Someday, perhaps, the world will have a truly Free and Open Source alternative to the walled gardens and open-only-in-API platforms that currently dominate our social landscape.

We wrote about BuddyPress in December, but the project had been mothballed since then, because of lack of time on Peatling’s part. This should give Peatling the time and the resources to develop the project.

What’s this mean for WordPress users? A year from now, you should have the option to have your site not just be a blog or a podcast, but an extensible social network, based on open standards.

When we talked with the guys from Ask A Ninja recently, they were excited about adding a third-party social network to their site. BuddyPress should eventually make it just as easy for indie podcasters and bloggers to create custom, self-hosted social networks.

When we were checking out Nine Inch Nails’ site for their new release, Ghosts I-IV, we noticed that they are doing some really interesting things with podcasting, remixing and Creative Commons.

• Many of their tracks are available with Remix-ready Garageband files.
• Ghosts I-IV is made available with a Creative Commons license and with multi-track stems for remixing.
• They’ve got a site devoted to fan remixes.

They also provide good information on using RSS feeds, and offer podcast feeds for their fan remixes:

To use RSS feeds as podcasts with iTunes, simply drag the icon for the feed you want into iTunes. iTunes will then automatically download MP3s when new remixes are added – you can even sync them to your iPod.

REMIX SITE FEEDS (RSS/XML)

NEWS

NEWEST MIXES

HIGHEST RATED OVERALL

HIGHEST RATED TODAY

MOST LISTENS TODAY

MOST LISTENS OVERALL

MOST COMMENTED TODAY

MOST COMMENTED OVERALL

LOWEST RATED TODAY

LOWEST RATED OVERALL

NIN is making smart use of new licensing and podcasting to promote their music. And, if you want to use Nine Inch Nails’ music to score your next project, they’ve got you covered.

Another musician working intelligently with the Internet is Moby.

It starting to look like geeking out with new media may be good for your social life.

First, Cosmo revealed that the Apple Store is a great place to meet people “for a fun fling or a long term relationship”:

Most guys are natural gadget lovers, and with sales of iPods and MacBooks skyrocketing, more men than ever are stopping by Apple boutiques. The vibe at the stores is conductive to man meeting too: You can check your email among cuties, take a free workshop on anything from Photoshop to podcasting (a great opportunity to strike up a conversation), or just survey the, ahem, good-looking merchandise.

Yep – the Apple Store is the place to meet those podcasting hotties.

Now, scientists have found that blogging improves your social life:

Researchers James Baker and Professor Susan Moore have written two papers investigating the psychological benefits of blogging, regularly updating personal web pages with information that invites others to comment.

The research, from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, found after two months of regular blogging, people felt they had better social support and friendship networks than those who did not blog.

Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.

All respondents, whether or not they blogged, reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking.

What do you think? Can blogging and podcasting improve your social life?

This is about the best thing I’ve seen in days – Katrina & The Waves’ Walking On Sunshine made out of video-sampled car-crashes.

It’s created by video remixer Eboman.

More of his Sample madnesS videos here.

Robert Scoble left PodTech in mid-January to work for business magazine FastCompany. His new videoblogging gig, FastCompany TV, launched today. In his welcome video, Scoble lolls around on the beach in a seaside frolic (not kidding), and explains the company’s initial two video channels.

FastCompany Live, the more immediately interactive of the channels, will feature video shot with a little Nokia N95 cell phone/camera and Qik.com. Viewers can watch the broadcast live and post comments, which show up on the screen. As one might expect, the quality of these live videos is, as Scoble puts it, “intimate, but brutal to watch,” jerky and blurry. Viewers are invited to submit their own videos and video responses.

The second channel is ScobleizerTV, more polished interviews and profiles of technology and business innovators. These will be shot with HD cameras, decent microphones and lighting. One of the more interesting things (for me) about this channel is Senior Producer Rocky Barbanica, who is described as a guy who “Used to be a software developer at NASA before going to film school,” who is putting together the production and media team at FastCompany.TV.

The jury here is still out on what we think about FastCompanyTV. The FastCompany Live content (like a test-drive of the experimental $98,000 Tesla electric sportscar) is compelling, but the quality of the sound and image are awful. The Scobleizer channel has some interesting upcoming interviews. We are cautiously optimistic that, as Scoble (and, in two weeks, “Naked Conversations” coauthor Shel Israel) make the foray into Fast Company’s more mainstream business publishing, they’ll keep talking to, and listening to, innovators both in and outside the corporate fishbowl.

Two thirds of all Americans are dissatisfied with the current state of journalism, and most now regard the Internet as their most important source of news, according to a new Zogby International survey.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Other highlights of the research:

• Nearly half of respondents (48%) said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, an increase from 40% who said the same a year ago.
• 55% of those age 18 to 29 say they get most of their news and information online, compared to 35% of those age 65 and older.
• Overall, 29% said television is their main source of news, while fewer said they turn to radio (11%) and newspapers (10%) for most of their news and information.
• Just 7% of those age 18 to 29 said they get most of their news from newspapers, while more than twice as many (17%) of those age 65 and older list newspapers as their top source of news and information.
• Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets – 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important. Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news, although fewer than say the same about blogs (38%).

The survey has clear implications for podcasting and new media – people are looking to the Internet for news and information, but may not be ready to trust new news sources. The onus is on new media sites to establish a track record and build that trust.

Overall, the survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources – nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).