The Wall Street Journal has an interview today with Steve Jobs and AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson about the debut of the iPhone.

One of the highlights is Jobs not-so-humble take on the iPhone’s interface:

“One of the things we feel is this is the biggest breakthrough in user interfaces in 23 years. Since the Mac in 1984 brought us the mouse and bit map displays and folders and icons, there really hasn’t been much except for the evolution of that in the last 23 years. This is a revolutionary user interface [on the iPhone] — multi-touch, direct action. It’s pretty remarkable. I’m very excited.

I remember the week before we introduced the Mac. We knew every computer would work this way once we had the Mac. You couldn’t talk about ‘If,’ you could debate about ‘When.’ That’s how I feel about this. I feel this is the direction mobile devices are going to have to go. I don’t think it’s a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. The first and most breakthrough one of them is going to be on the market tomorrow.”

Jobs doesn’t make any promises about the possibility of using iTunes songs as ringtones, or purchasing songs over the air, saying only that “One might imagine a lot of things down the road.”

The pair are also featured at USA Today and the New York Times.

U.S. video rental spending is well off its 2001 peak of $10.3 billion, but revenue from online subscriptions is beginning to put some steam back into the rental industry, according to Adams Media Research (AMR). AMR projects online subscription spending to increase by 41% to $1.9 billion in 2007.

‚ÄúThe five-year decline in the video rental market will finally end in 2007,‚Äù said AMR Senior Analyst Eric Wiener, ‚Äúdue, in part, to an acceleration in the growth of online subscription rental fueled by consumer interest in Blockbuster’s Total Access program.”

“It’s a rare 20-year-old business that gets a chance to reinvent itself the way video rental has through online subscription services,” said AMR president Tom Adams, “but the appeal to the consumer of unlimited rentals with no late fees is now clear.”

In addition to short-term competition from Internet offerings, the traditional video rental industry faces long-term competition from Internet movie downloads for devices like Apple TV and from the growth of video podcasting and Internet video.

A new report from JupiterResearch shows that, while millions of people are buying multimedia phones, few are using the phones’ music capabilities.

Highlights of their report:

• 27.9 million US consumers are expected to have music phones by the end of this year;
• The music functionality of these phones will remain largely underutilized;
• Only about five percent of users report sideloading songs onto their phone (i.e., transferring digital songs from a PC to a phone);
• Only two percent report downloading songs over the air.

The introduction of Apple’s iPhone will bring iPod functionality to mobile phones, which is likely to dramatically increase the number of users sideloading songs via their PC or Mac. However, Apple does not currently support downloading songs over the air, probably because it would be impractical over AT&T’s slow network.

Movavi has launched Movavi Online, a web-based service that lets you convert video from one format to another – for sharing, podcasting, cellphones, iPods, and more – for free.

The new service generates video files specifically tuned for viewing in email, on mobile devices, for video blogging (vlogging) and video podcasting. Options include encoding video in H.264 format for the new Apple iPhone.

Movavi also offers at no charge six different video conversion widgets which can be embedded into blogs, Web sites and social networking pages.

While the service may be useful option for casual users, the online conversion process can take up to a day, according to Movavi.

Is there anything currently hotter than the iPhone?

If Hugh Hefner gets his way, it will be the iPhone plus iPlayboy, a collection of downloadable multimedia features. Hef’s multimedia offering includes photos, audio and video, all formatted for the iPhone.

“We have always tried to stay ahead of the curve by delivering the fun, sophistication and sexiness of Playboy to our fans on the newest and hottest media platforms,” said John D. Thomas, editor of Playboy.com. “And with so much buzz surrounding the all-in-one Apple iPhone, we knew we had to develop something specifically designed just for this device.”

Previously, the company has introduced iBod, described as “a veritable ocular orgy” for the iPod, and it’s own take on podcasting, bodcasts.

Apple today announced that all of its 164 retail stores in the US will stay open until midnight to handle the iPhone introduction. Customers will be limited to purchasing two iPhones, on a first come, first served basis.

Beginning Saturday morning, Apple will be offering free, in-depth workshops on the iPhone throughout the day at all Apple retail stores. Every Apple retail store will offer support for iPhone at the Genius Bar and personal training through Apple’s new One to One program.

Apple PR is describing tomorrow’s introduction with religious zeal:

“Apple retail stores were created for this moment—to let customers touch and experience a revolutionary new product,” said Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of Retail.

Feed-based search service Feedster has announced a “Web 2.0” style makeover for its site.

On first look, this appears to mean that they made the site slow and ugly. Here’s their take on the changes, though:

To start with the obvious, the site looks completely different. When comparing the old with the new, it’s quite apparent that we decided to keep only the name from the old design. Everything else we set aside, in favor of our newer, shinier self.

Another obvious change is that our content channels, labeled “Feed Buzz”, now occupy a much more prominent place on our site. Each channel has been built from hand-selected feeds that match the general topic. The criteria for selection were as follows:

1) Frequent updates
2) Widely read
3) Largely and consistently confined to one topic
4) Valuable information

Hitwise reports that YouTube traffic is way up since its acquisition by Google. YouTube now gets 50% more traffic than all other video sites combined.

Hitwise traffic data shows that the market share of US visits to YouTube has increased by 70% when comparing January 2007 to May 2007 (this only includes site visits, not streams or streams from views on embedded videos). In comparison, the market share of visits to a custom category of 64 other video sites increased by only 8% in that period.

Is Google Search Traffic Favoring YouTube?

Hitwise also reports a 300% increase in the amount of traffic leaving search engines and going to video sites in the past year. In fact, a graph of YouTube’s share of visits over time suggests that its integration with Google has resulted in a big jump in visits, while hurting other video sites.

YouTube traffic spikes around January of this year – around the time that Google announced its plans for YouTube. The market share of other video sites began to decline at the same time.

Source: Hitwise

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that it is against network neutrality regulation, suggesting that it would hamper competition among Internet access providers.

The FTC’s Internet Access Task Force issued a report yesterday, Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy, which summarizes the Task Force‚Äôs findings in the area of broadband Internet connectivity and, in particular, so-called network neutrality regulation. Based on these findings, and FTC staff‚Äôs experience with the operation of myriad markets throughout the economy, the report identifies guiding principles that policy makers should consider in evaluating proposed regulations or legislation relating to broadband Internet access and network neutrality.

According to Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras, “This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access, which generally is moving toward more – not less – competition. In the absence of significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area.”

The US currently has relatively slow Internet access, with speeds less than 1/30th of Japan’s.

Kiptronic, a technology service for downloadable media, announced today that it now offers dynamic ad insertion and campaign management for video content.

Kiptronic’s service is currently in production with several media organizations including CondéNet, an Internet unit of CondéNast Publications.

‚ÄúThe growth in Internet audio and video consumption requires unique content services that [don’t disrupt] the existing processes of the publisher,‚Äù said Michael Greeson, principal analyst and president at The Diffusion Group. ‚ÄúThis means developing entirely new revenue models that take into account the behavioral personalization of ads, something which Kiptronic‚Äôs ad insertion technology delivers.”

Kiptronic representatives say that their services require no changes to content producers’ publishing processes. Advertisers using Kiptronic can create and execute scalable campaigns across a wide range of topical content. Furthermore, Kiptronic is “device independent — Kiptronic can deliver video content across a wide range of devices, from smart phones to iPods.

Jonathan Cobb, Founder and CEO of Kiptronic, said, “Our production-ready video technology represents the next step in the expansion of Kiptronic’s strategy to help rich media publishers monetize new and archived content.”