Writer and new/social media guru Shel Israel announced this morning that he will be joining his Naked Conversations co-author Robert Scoble (late of PodTech and former Microsoft blogger) at FastCompany.TV.

Israel’s new video podcast, GlobalNeighbourhoods TV (GNTV), debuts March 3. The program will detail “social media’s impact on culture and business.” Israel comments, “While my primary focus will be business, I’ll also look at government, academia, education, youth and assorted institutions.”

While Israel is new to the medium of video, he is a well-respected voice in blogging and new media. By hiring two high-profile bloggers to dedicate themselves full-time to video blogging, Fast Company is signalling both a shift in its focus and a dedicated commitment to video.

As for Israel’s commitment: “We are bringing reality back into video, at least in many cases. We are more like the [print] reporter of my youth than the TV guy. But we add yet another asset. We don’t intrude on the scene but we participate in it. We use our cameras to extend it. To let others who are geographically seperated participate and as I am about to demonstrate, almost anyone can do it.”

(photo via JDLasica’s flickr pix)

Tom Dickson of the Will It Blend video podcast isn’t letting the Writers’ Strike slow him down.

One more reason why a video podcast about a kitchen gadget is one of the top twenty channels on YouTube.

Michael Geoghegan is kicking off a new series of articles at his blog on podcasting professionally.

Geoghegan’s an award-winning podcaster, the author of several books on podcasting and a consummate professional – so podcasters at any level could probably learn something from him.

Here’s what he has to say about the series:

After publishing two books, producing the live Podcast Academy events, 3 years of consulting, creating the 2006 Podcast of The Year winner and giving a good number of presentations on the subject, I get emails all the time asking about the equipment we use, work flow, techniques, contracts etc.

I’ve decided to post some of the “Professional Podcast” lessons I’ve gathered over the last few years. I’ll post the answers to the most common questions I receive. Whether you are a podcast consultant, obsessed about quality or are just looking to hire someone to produce your organization’s podcast, I hope you’ll find these posts helpful.

My goal is simple: make these short and to the point. These posts will be easy to understand and provide a good starting point for your further investigation.

The net is abuzz with talk today about Qtrax, another service that promises free ad-supported music.

The Qtrax service offers to let you use an ad-supported program to search for and download DRM’d music that you can play on a PC and on some media players.

Unfortunately, it looks like Qtrax will be as dead on arrival as the rest of the music industry music download sites and iTunes-killers have been over the last few years.

Here’s why Qtrax is D.O.A.:

• Qtrax solves a problem you probably don’t have – paying for music. The average iPod owner has spent about $20 bucks on music downloads. That’s not a problem worth fixing.
• Qtrax forces you to watch ads – people generally hate ads and haven’t shown much interest in ad-supported software like Qtrax, as a result.
• Qtrax requires a proprietary application that you have to install. You’ve probably got at least three or four media apps on your computer already, between Windows Media Player, Real Player and iTunes. Do you want to dink with downloading and patching and updating another app just to save a few bucks on music?
• Qtrax is making promises it can’t deliver. They promise to offer music from the big four music labels, but at least three of the big four labels – Warner, EMI & Universal – haven’t agreed to let Qtrax distribute their music.
• Qtrax’ music is DRM’d – DRM’d music is on the way out. Apple has been the only company to successfully establish an accepted DRM standard for digital music, and the music industry doesn’t want to have all their eggs in Apple’s basket. The industry’s strategy to control the music business now is to offer a limited number of partners, like Amazon, the ability to sell DRM-free MP3s.
• Qtrax doesn’t work with iPods – this is the WTF? bullet point. Why is anyone excited about a digital music service that doesn’t work with iPods?
• Qtrax is managed by the guys who ran Spiralfrog, the last free music service that bombed – remember Spiralfrog, the free music service that offered DRM’d tracks incompatible with most people’s media players? The company that went on to lose $3.4 million on revenue of about $20,000? The Qtrax press area hypes that former Spiralfrog executives joined Qtrax in April.
• Qtrax is not Mac compatible – it might be compatible in March! Or….it might not be.

In other words…..Qtrax wants you to download software to watch ads to get DRM’d music that probably won’t work on your media player.

While some seem to think this is a recipe for success – we think it means that Qtrax is D.O.A.

Update: Ars Technica offers another skeptical take on the service: “I can’t see many of today’s P2P users opting for a “legal” service that sends them DRMed files, not when DRM-free music can be so easily obtained from the very same P2P network. The Zune-style approach of taking a Gnutella P2P song, wrapping it in DRM, and then enforcing a certain set of usage rules is a turn-off.”

While we were out covering the NAMM music industry convention last week, we had a wonderful lunch meeting with Gigavox Media’s Michael Geoghegan (with me in photo, right).

Michael told us lots of great stories about his work creating the Disney podcast before we headed over to play at Disneyland (shh! don’t tell our kids we went without them).

Our conversation ranged widely, but this tidbit is worth repeating: one of Michael’s other podcast projects, fine wine podcast Grape Radio, has sold the rights to run episodes of on American Airlines starting next month. An assortment of episodes will be available on the in-flight personal entertainment media players in both Business and First Class.

Says Michael: “I think this is another great example of the kinds of opportunities overlooked by most ‘podcasters.’ As I mentioned in my PNME 2007 presentation, you are more than just a podcaster. Once you stop focusing solely on your RSS feed and start to see yourself as a Digital Media Entrepreneur all sorts of other opportunities for building your brand, your distribution and monetization appear.”

The third annual Podcasters Across Borders is still several months away, but podcaster and event co-host Mark Blevis has let us know that early (discounted) registration for PAB2008 will be taking place for one week only, today through Saturday, February 2.

PAB2008 is happening June 20-22, 2008 in Kingston, Ontario (Canada). The cost of registration includes three days of workshops and sessions, social events, lunch, a boat cruise and more. Conference space is limited to 160 participants, but Blevis encourages podcasters to bring their families to Kingston, “a great family-oriented town,” for a vacation. As such, the boat cruise event at PAB is open to PAB families.

The early registration is available this week only, at the rate of CDN$90. For those who miss early registration, regular registration will open on March 15, 2008 at a rate of CDN$125/perso.

Information on the past two years’ conferences is available on the Podcasters Across Borders website. From there, you can view a summary of attendees and speaking sessions. There is also a catalog of (publicly available) recorded sessions from PAB2006 and PAB2007. You can email the conference organizers at podcastersacrossbordersat gmail dot com with any questions.

The Super Boom Box is a $1,895, built-to-order tank of a boom box that plays radio, CDs & MP3s.

Here are the specs:

• Play music from AM, FM, CD, or a USB Flash Drive source.
• Up to 65 hours of unique music can be stored on a 4GB Flash Drive (based on our benchmark tests, 1000 songs fit on a 4GB Flash Drive when the average song is 4 minutes long). ed for poor lighting conditions.
• Audio amplifier power output is rated at 20 watts RMS X 4 channels at 4 ohms (50 watts X 4 maximum).
• The two 6‚Äù X 9‚Äù 3-Way Pro Series speakers use a waterproof material for the external portion of the speakers. They feature a 13mm neodymium tweeter, a 51mm midrange, and a powerful 6‚Äù X 9‚Äù carbon cone woofer for wonderful sound reproduction.
• Speakers are capable of handling 100 watts each.
• Battery operated by a high capacity 12 volt rechargeable gel cell. A new, fully charged battery, operated the SuperBoomBox at almost full volume for over 12 hours.
• The SuperBoomBox is designed to be weather resistant. Marine grade speakers, designed for the demanding boating industry, along with a clear splash cover for the radio, and a weather resistant box keeps your SuperBoomBox blasting tunes even during rain showers.
• Wireless remote control is standard with every unit
• SuperBoomBox is assembled in the U.S.A.
• Formats played from USB Flash Drive:
• MP3 (MPEG1/2 audio layer 33, max. bit rate of 320kbps)
• WMA (Windows Media Player, max. bit rate of 192kbps)
• Flash Drive format is FAT 12/16/32, one partition type

It’s big, it’s stupid, it costs nearly two thousand dollars and it’s made in the U.S.A. You got to love it!

Amazon.com has announced plans for an international rollout of Amazon MP3, a DRM-free MP3 digital music store, in 2008.

Amazon MP3 is currently the only retailer that the four major labels are allowing to offer customers DRM-free MP3s. As a result, it can offer over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists in DRM-free MP3 format.

Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device; organize their music using any music management application, such as iTunes or Windows Media Player; and burn songs to CDs for personal use.

The company is not disclosing a specific launch timeline for individual Amazon international websites.

The Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) has published an excellent primer on fair use and copyright in the context of new media.

These are topics that podcasters, indie video publishers and bloggers continually struggle with. A recent example is the controversy over the Richter Scales unauthorized use of Lane Hartwell’s photos in a video for one of their songs.

The Richter Scales ultimately reworked their video to eliminate the unauthorized photo and to provide attribution to other photographers whose work they had used. Unfortunately, they were still stuck with an invoice from a Hartwell.

Five Ways To Minimize Your Risk Of Copyright Liability

To avoid this sort of problem, the Citizen Media Law Project recommends five things you can do to minimize your risk of copyright liability:

1. Use only as much of the copyrighted work as is necessary to accomplish your purpose or convey your message;
2. Use the work in such a way that it is clear that your purpose is commentary, news reporting, or criticism;
3. Add something new or beneficial (don’t just copy it — improve it!);
4. If your source is nonfiction, limit your copying to the facts and data; and
5. Seek out Creative Commons or other freely licensed works when such substitutions can be made and respect the attribution requests in those works.

Here’s CMLP’s full take on copyright and fair use in new media:

Barack Obama delivers the Top Ten list on the Late Show with David Letterman:

# 4 may be the best fake campaign promise yet!