Apple today started shipping Apple TV, a new class of computer peripheral that turns your HDTV into a big screen iPod.

Apple TV connects physically to your television and wirelessly to a Mac or PC running iTunes. The device then lets you play iTunes content on your TV, including movies, TV shows, music, photos, podcasts and video podcasts.

Apple TV turns your HDTV into a huge iPod

Many analysts seem to be confusing Apple TV with time-shifting devices like TiVo, or comparing it to playback devices like DVD players. It’s neither of these. It’s really more like an iPod that you can attach a big screen to.

Apple itself positions Apple TV as a member of the iPod family:

“Apple TV allows you to wirelessly play your content from your PCs or Macs using your existing WiFi network as well as the newest and fastest version of WiFi-802.11n,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.

Apple TV makes Internet TV a powerful, mainstream platform

The new device promises to ignite the world of Internet video. While Internet video consumption has exploded in the last year, most video downloads have been videos of a few minutes or less in length. While longer videos are available, most people would rather watch longer videos on their television than on the relatively small screens of their iPods or computers.

By bringing HDTV to the wildly successful Internet media platform of iTunes, Apple is turning it into a much more powerful platform.

Apple TV could be the start of something huge. The combination of iTunes and HDTV means that anyone in the world with an HDTV camera and a Mac can now create HDTV television shows and deliver them directly into people’s homes, without studios, without networks and without local stations.

Here’s one we didn’t see coming….

Self-described Internet biz woman, marketing and sales pro from way back, start-up advisor and self-described “fun, fun gal” Suz Bratton, along with serial entrepreneur, pilot, kite boarder, and surfer Tim Bratton, have announced a new podcast/blog network, Personal Life Media.

The network publishes podcasts and blogs targeting 35-65 year old “cultural creatives”, with an emphasis on sexuality.

Debut podcasts include:

• A Taste of Sex – a podcast that looks at life in an “orgasm-based community”;
• Tantra & Kama Sutra, a podcast to help you live your life in total sensuality;
• Sex, Love and Intimacy, which looks at topics like the art of inimacy and managing chemical sex with Viagra, Cialis and L-Arginine; and
• Expanded Lovemaking, which features professional ballroom dancer, Taoist Instructor and certified Tantric Sexual Healer Richard Anton Diaz, right, discussing ancient sexual cultivation practices that develop greater capacities for pleasure, health, and personal transformation.

In addition, the network offers both male and female sex advice podcasts, and podcasts about sustainable living, new music, cosmetic surgery, wealth creation and spirituality.

“People on the leading edge of culture, especially those in the 35-65 year old demographic are clearly underserved in podcast content today,” said Susan Bratton, co-founder and CEO of Personal Life Media. “We are using podcasting technology to enable experts, authors, PhDs and innovators from anywhere in the world to bring their voices and inspiration directly to the issues of adults.”

The Corporate Podcasting Summit, being held March 19-20 in London, UK, kicked off today. We’re in London to cover the event and to participate in some of the sessions. (disclaimer: Podcasting News is a marketing partner for the Summit).

Show organizer Anita Yaa Ageyman has put together two very densely-packed days, with sessions ranging from corporate podcast case studies to panels addressing challenges facing podcasters in large organizations.

Highlights of today’s sessions included:

Edison Media Research‘s Vice President Tom Webster gave an update on their latest podcast research. According to Webster, awareness of podcasting is way up in the last year, jumping from 22% in 2006 to 37% in 2007. He also explored the demographics of podcast listeners, noting that they are above average in income and education. Podcast users are also very active consumers of media, spending more than average amounts of time on the Internet and being more likely to own HDTVs, DVRs and video game systems.

A remix of Apple’s famous 1984 ad that places Senator Hillary Clinton in the “big brother” role is causing a stir in mainstream media.

The video, below, is being called “groundbreaking”, and “a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising”.

The video represents “a new era, a new wave of politics … because it’s not about Obama,” said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute. “It’s about the end of the broadcast era.”

Whether or not the video has any political impact, or if it just turns out to be a mildly humorous YouTube video, remains to be seen. After just a few days, though, the video has been seen nearly half a million times.

YouTube today confirmed that it was announcing the first-ever YouTube Video Awards, a significant award established to recognize popular YouTube videos.

The 2007 YouTube Video Awards commemorate the site’s most popular user-created videos of 2006.

The company is only offering winners a trophy, despite the fact that the popular user-generated content the award highlights has contributed significantly to YouTube’s $1.65 billion valuation.

The categories and the nominees are:

• Most Creative ‚Äì Innovative And Cutting Edge Video
• Most Inspirational ‚Äì Things That Make You Think Or Feel
• Best Series ‚Äì The Best In Serial Entertainment
• Best Comedy ‚Äì They Had Us In Stitches
• Musician Of The Year ‚Äì Celebrating YouTube‚Äôs Home-Grown Musical Talent
• Best Commentary ‚Äì The Bloggers Who Caught Our Attention
• Most Adorable Video Ever ‚Äì So Cute It Hurts

You can vote for the “So Cute It Hurts” video and others starting today and ending on Friday, March 23. YouTube Video Awards award winners will be revealed on YouTube on Monday, March 25.

Winners from each category will be featured on the site and will receive a trophy to honor their achievement.

“We want to honor and celebrate the individuals who helped foster the community through their creativity,” said Mia Quagliarello, director of programming for YouTube. “We hope that this recognition will continue to inspire users to create content that entertains and informs.‚Äù

YouTube plans to launch the YouTube Video Awards, an event to honor the best user-generated videos, acccording to a report at Mashable.

The seven categories are Most Inspirational, Most Creative, Best Series, Best Comedy, Musician of the Year, Best Commentary and Most Adorable Video Ever. Voting will take place from Monday to Friday. Winners will be announced on March 25th, and trophies will be awarded.

The nominees list will be familiar YouTube visitors: Renetto, Geriatric1927, Barats and Bereta, Smosh, Lonelygirl15, OK GO, and Ask a Ninja.

While YouTube follows many others with awards for user-generated content, it will be the first of these awards to bring with it the type of visibility and awareness that a site like YouTube offers.

Companies are spending more and more online, a trend that is backed by figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Internet advertising revenues for 2006 are estimated at $16.8 billion, a 34 percent increase over the previous year, when revenue was a record $12.5 billion.

“The increase underscores marketers’ understanding that Interactive advertising can engage consumers, build brands and sell products and services,” said IAB CEO and President, Randall Rothenberg.

“Results for 2006 confirm a very healthy environment for online advertising,” said David Silverman, partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers. “All signs point to a steady increase in the level of spend by traditional advertisers that are using online advertising as an important part of their media mix.”

The trend bodes well for podcasting and video podcasting. As more money and attention flow into Internet media, podcasters are getting a bigger and bigger slice of a growing market.

Internet media advertising is also shifting from companies testing the waters to companies using Internet media as one component of their media mix. This shift has brought with it an increased emphasis on accountabiity.

“The maturation of the Internet as an effective advertising medium is directly tied to its ability to deliver qualified audiences to marketers,” said Peter Petrusky, director, PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Moreover, online advertisers continue to test how to use the Internet with other media to leverage a combination of consumer touch points across different media.”

March 18: We’ve looked at many types of music podcasts this month as part of our 31 Days of Free Music, ranging from free classical music shows to barrages of noise.

Some of the most interesting music podcasts that we’ve found have been ones that use podcasting as a new medium. A great example is John Maxwell Hobbs‚Äô Daily Ambience project. Hobbs created a new piece of ambient music every day for a year – 365 days straight – and shared it with listeners via the Daily Ambience podcast.

Hobbs’ podcast is straight music, and offers an amazingly intimate and deep look into his work.
You can preview the podcast below, or subscribe to the podcast by adding this feed URL to your podcast client:
http://www.cinemavolta.com/daily/complete.xml

While Hobbs wrapped up his year-long project in 2006, he still creating music and sharing it, with his Sporadic Outburts podcast.

In an opinion piece in the New York Times lawyer and free culture advocate Lawrence Lessig offers his take on Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube:

The complex balance of interests within any copyright statute are best struck by Congress.

But 20 months ago, the Supreme Court reversed this wise policy of deference. Drawing upon common law-like power, the court expanded the Copyright Act in the Grokster case to cover a form of liability it had never before recognized in the context of copyright — the wrong of providing technology that induces copyright infringement. It announced this new form of liability even though at precisely the same time Congress was holding hearings about whether to amend the Copyright Act to create the same liability.

The Grokster case thus sent a clear message to lawyers everywhere: You get two bites at the copyright policy-making apple, one in Congress and one in the courts. But in Congress, you need hundreds of votes. In the courts, you need just five.

Lessig goes on to explain how the Court’s Grokster decision led to the current case:

The content industry was a big supporter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998. Viacom is apparently less of a supporter today. It complains that YouTube has not done enough “to take reasonable precautions to deter the rampant infringement on its site.” Instead, the Viacom argument goes, YouTube has shifted the burden of monitoring that infringement onto the victim of that infringement — namely, Viacom.But it wasn’t YouTube that engineered this shift. It was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As the statute plainly states, a provider (like YouTube) need not monitor its service or affirmatively seek facts indicating infringing activity. That burden, instead, rests on the copyright owner. In exchange, the law gives the copyright owner the benefit of an expedited procedure to identify and remove infringing material from a Web site. The provision was thus a deal, created to balance conflicting interests in light of the technology of the time.

Whether or not that balance made sense in 1998, Viacom believes it no longer makes sense today. Long ago, Justice Hugo Black argued that it was not up to the Supreme Court to keep the Constitution “in tune with the times.” And it is here that the cupidity of the court begins to matter. For by setting the precedent that the court is as entitled to keep the Copyright Act “in tune with the times” as Congress, it has created an incentive for companies like Viacom, no longer satisfied with a statute, to turn to the courts to get the law updated. Congress, of course, is perfectly capable of changing or removing the safe harbor provision to meet Viacom’s liking. But Viacom recognizes there’s no political support for the change it wants. It thus turns to a policy maker that doesn’t need political support — the Supreme Court.

While take several years for this to play out, Viacom’s lawsuit is already changing the world of Internet video.

Internet video companies now have to put systems in place to deal with massive copyright infringement, something that they have been slow to do. Whether they they will have to do it proactively or reactively is one of the things that the Court will help decide.

Ze Frank has wrapped up The Show, his weekday video blog conversation with viewers. He posted the final episode (below) on Saturday.

Frank’s Show has been amazing for many reasons, but what’s impressed us the most is Frank’s honed sense of how to use video podcasting and the Internet to build a community. Fans of the show felt like they belonged to something because they could contribute images, songs or videos of themselves demonstrating their power moves and feel like they might end up on the show.

You can get a feel for the show from its episodes – but to really understand it, you need to look at the tens of thousands of posts in the forum, The Show Wiki, and the thousands of images in the Sports Racer Gallery.