A funny thing happened today. Pretty much everyone that’s been roasting NBC for yanking their content off of YouTube and iTunes is eating their words, now that they’ve seen Hulu, NBC’s new video site:

• “I was busy sharpening up the knives at BoomTown HQ to prepare for the debut of Hulu this week,” admits Kara Swisher at All Things Digital. Now that she’s actually seen the site, she’s impressed, saying that Hulu “in concept and tone and aims….is off to a good start.”
• “I mocked the service, and its backers, all through the summer,” admits Om Malik. After actually seeing the site, though, Malik says “I am ready to eat crow. And not just any crow, but rotten, six-month-old crow: I have never been more wrong.”
• “In the months following the companies’ initial press release, we gave the joint venture a lot of grief,” notes TechCrunch. After seeing the site, they are “very impressed by the preview of Hulu’s interface and the bulk of its features.”
• “Hulu….has always been a joke,” according to Salon. After actually taking a look at the site, though, Salon has changed their tune. “Hulu is here, on time! And it’s excellent.”

A lot of people following new media appear to have let their prejudices against NBC, Viacom and other big media firms get the best of them when evaluating traditional media’s response to YouTube.

Podcasting directory and community Podcast Pickle has introduced a mobile version of its site, optimized for Apple iPhones.

Pickle Mobile lets you browse top podcasts at the site, read podcast reviews and create a personal podcast playlist.

UNICEF has published the first in a series of podcast discussions on education in emergencies and post-crisis transition countries, with the participation of leading figures from the academic, development, media and humanitarian communities. Entitled ‘Beyond School Books’, the podcast series highlights the important role of education in countries affected by conflicts or natural disasters or those in post-crisis transition.

Gene Sperling, director of the Center for Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as National Economic Advisor to US President Bill Clinton, comments in the first podcast, ‚ÄúNo one ever sees a ‚ÄòFrontline‚Äô or a CNN camera showing a child dying of lack of education ‚Äì you never see that moment ‚Äì but there is no question that children die from lack of education all the time,‚Äù added Mr. Sperling.”

The UNICEF podcast series emphasizes the underlying belief that education is an integral part of emergency relief efforts. In times of conflict or natural disasters, providing children with schooling provides not just education, but also can serve as a reliable outlet for essential health and nutrition services, as well as providing a sense of predictable routine in the midst of crisis, as well as teaching essential life skills.

‘Beyond School Books’ is hosted by Amy Costello, a former correspondent for Public Radio International and an Emmy Award nominee for her coverage of Sudan. It is being taped at the United Nations Radio studios in New York and is available for downloading on the UNICEF website.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflicts, and Gene Sperling, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, are the guests of the first podcast. Upcoming podcasts will feature The New York Times award-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof, youth activist and best-selling author Ishmael Beah, and others.

via Contacto magazine and UNICEF

UK podcast directory Podcast Nation has announced that it will be expanding its community by offering a new media enthusiasts’ social network, run on the Ning API, at http://podcastnation.ning.com.

Podcast Nation Editor-in-Chief Mark Crook said, “Podcast Nation is a great way for both finding and promoting podcasts, and by developing our community at Ning, which has proved itself as a flexible and reliable system for building social networks, we can put podcast producers and listeners together. We’ve always been behind building communities – we were one of the principal sponsors of this year’s highly successful PodCamp UK – and this takes us further down that path. I’m really looking forward to seeing what people will do with these powerful tools.”

The UK Podcast Forum is also moving to run on the same network.

For a little escapist fun, we (that’s the royal we) have been doing a little reading on England in the 16th century. It’s about as far away from reading about podcasting and new media as we can possibly get, and occasionally that is a good brief distraction for us. With the birth of the Church of England fresh on our minds, this story caught our attention:

Right Reverend Nigel Stock, the Church of England’s new bishop in Suffolk, has announced that he will create podcasts to introduce himself to his diocese. The 10th Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich will be confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury next month.

Bishop Stock launched the weekly podcast, starting Tuesday 23 October, and will continue them for over the next month, until his confirmation. If the podcasts are a big hit with parishioners, they may continue after that.

A spokesman for the diocese has said that the podcasts are a way for the bishop to introduce himself to the diocese before parishioners get the opportunity to meet him in person, and will give insight into his life and philosophy, the BBC reports.

In his first podcast, Bishop Stock says: “Nobody wants someone coming in to tell them what to do before they have begun to understand what a place is like and how it ticks. So I think my first mission is to look, to listen, to learn, to take onboard what is characteristic about this diocese.”

Via ChristianToday.com

Since this Thursday, Apple limits sales of the iPhone to two per person, and has prohibited cash-only sales of the cellphone, presumably to stop people from reselling them.¬† Before Thursday’s policy change announcement, there was no cash restriction and the purchase limit was five per person.

Company spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said that limiting purchases to two per person will ensure adequate iPhone supplies for those who would buy the phones for themselves or as a gift.  “We’re requiring a credit or debit card for payment to discourage unauthorized resellers.”

More than 1.4 million units of the hybrid cellphone-iPod have been sold since it was introduced June 29, according to Apple. In an earnings conference call earlier last week, Apple Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook estimated that 250,000 of those phones (approx. 15% of the total sold) have not been activated with exclusive iPhone US mobile service provider AT&T.

One presumes that this quarter million iPhones have been purchased in order to modify or unlock the phones so that they might work on other, non-AT&T mobile networks.

Satellite radio company XM revealed this week that in the third quarter, its losses were up a whopping 70 percent over last year.  Analysts blame the losses on a 22 percent drop in sales at chain retail outlets like Best Buy.

On a more positive note, XM announced an increase in subscribers to their satellite radio service: 315,000 subscribers, compared with 286,000 during this same period last year.  At the end of last month, XM counted 8.5 million subscribers, up from 7.2 million last year.

XM Satellite Radio Holdings is pushing for regulatory approval to merge with its only industry competitor, the smaller Sirius Satellite Radio.

According to an article in the Washington Post, much of the increase in new subscribers comes from the customers whose automobiles come outfitted with XM radio receivers, and XM has been working actively to make deals with car manufacturers.

At the same time, however, the company is experiencing a precipitous drop in sales through retail channels, and is spending heavily to cover merger-related costs.  As yet, the company has never earned a profit.   With their quarterly report, XM reported a loss of $145.4 million, compared with a loss of $85.5 million in the third quarter the previous year. Revenue was $287.5 million, up from $240.4 million.

Last year’s inaugural PodCamp Boston was a wildly successful experiment in un-conferencing, a self-organizing kind of convention in which the participants themselves set the agenda and lead the breakout sessions. Not knowing whether to expect any attendees from outside Massachusetts, PodCamp co-founders Christopher Penn and Chris Brogan (and their friends and co-organizers) were happily surprised when over three hundred people turned up for the event.

Flash forward to this year. Registrations for this year’s PodCamp, which kicks off Friday evening in Boston, have surpassed 1,200. One of last year’s attendees, Jeff Pulver, the organizer of next week’s VON (video on the net) Boston, has sponsored conference space at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Even with scores of PodCamp veterans returning for this year’s event, more than half this year’s attendees are newcomers to podcasting, and to new media.

PodcastingNews caught up with PodCamp Boston co-founder Christopher Penn, creator of the Financial Aid Podcast (among several other podcast projects), on Thursday afternoon. In this podcast, he talks about the beginnings of PodCamp, gives a preview of this year’s gathering, and talks about how podcasting and new media help us discover our superhero powers (really!).

Mobile communications provider DiGi Telecommunications, announced this week the debut of D’podCast, an on-demand service for mobile phone users, the first of its kind in Malaysia.

D’podCast is the result of a collaboration between DiGi and digital media company Stanton Technologies, and is part of DiGi’s ongoing efforts to widen its range of mobile internet services.

D’podCast users may choose from six broad categories of popular podcast “channels:” entertainment, lifestyle, news and business, recreation and sports and technology. Within those six categories, D’podCast offers nearly 300 video and audio programs. The company says that more shows will be added in time.

The podcast service costs 3 Malaysian Ringgit (RM), (about $0.89 US) for a Daily Pass; a monthly pass is 6 RM or just under $2 US. Streaming of video and audio content is free and users only need to pay for normal data charges when browsing WAP pages. D’podCast content can be streamed live anytime and anywhere as long as there is GPRS/EDGE connectivity.

The podcasting unconference PodCamp Boston 2 begins this evening with a pre-conference meet and greet at Tequila Rain in Boston, followed by a concert downtown at the Bullfinch Yacht Club, featuring podsafe artists Munk and Matthew Ebel (who was great last month at the Podcast and New Media Expo).

The conference-y part of the weekend begins Saturday at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, and features seven different “tracks” during each of seven Saturday time slots:

• Lessons in New Media;
• Business, Trends and Issues;
• Video and Community;
• All Things 2.0;
• Intro/101;
• Focus Topics;
• and Focus Topics.

Individal session titles range from a Teen Podcasting Panel, to Transparency Manifesto, to Intellectual Property Law for the Creative Class. More about Sunday’s offerings (and Saturday night’s wing-ding) coming up soon.

A complete look at the weekend schedule can be found in the (43 page!) PodCamp Boston Guide. One special highlight mentioned in our interview yesterday with PodCamp Boston co-founder Christopher Penn included the Saturday morning session by Twist Image’s Mitch Joel, on “Building Your Personal Brand.” Penn says that even we unfortunate souls who have to stay home and mind the hearth while everyone else is having fun at PodCamp can still catch up on audio recordings (and in some cases, video) of each session that will be available at the PodCamp Boston site.