The Public Broadcasting Service, PBS, has joined the ranks of YouTubers, using the site to highlight and promote its programming.

YouTube is “a great way to get in front of a broad variety of audiences,” said Kevin Dando, PBS Director of Education and Online Communication. “It’s where the market is headed.”

The PBS clips, 21 so far, focus on delivering previews and programming excerpts to the YouTube audience.

The biggest hurdle to getting more clips up is securing rights to the clips. It’s likely that online promotion will ultimately change the way PBS content is produced and licensed. According to Dando, PBS is having conversations with producers, pointing out to them that allowing the streamed video will drive viewers to their shows and surfers to their show sites.

By putting their content on YouTube, PBS is also encouraging users to embed their content into blogs and other Web sites. This could prove to be effective at promoting shows that cover controversial news stories and recent events.

via Broadcasting & Cable

A large survey of web professionals has found that many are planning to use podcasting, blogs and wikis in the next 12 months to help build communities.

Highlights:

• 38 percent of developers intend to use blogs in their development projects
• 25 percent aim to use podcasting
• 20 percent mean to use wikis
• Syndication will also jump by 36 percent.

The report, The State of Web Development 2006/2007, analyzes the responses of 5,000 web developers. The survey consisted of 15 questions, including queries about web developers’ current and intended use of specific web technologies, ranging from established technologies, such as Flash, to emerging technologies, such as AJAX and microformats. AJAX was by far the biggest gainer with 46 percent of web developers planning to adopt the technology in the next 12 month.

The survey, by Ektron and SitePoint, suggests that technologies aimed at improving the client-side interface and building communities are gaining momentum among web developers.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has announced a new educational program to raise awareness about the value of copyrights among the over 52,000 Boy Scouts in the greater Los Angeles area.

The MPAA worked with the Los Angeles Area Boy Scouts to form a curriculum that met the approval of troop leaders. The curriculum is designed to teach participants about copyright theft and various forms of piracy, how to identify counterfeit CDs/DVDs, the consequences of film and music piracy, and why protecting copyrights is important to them and to the local economy.

‚ÄúThe Respect Copyrights patch is a fun way for young kids to learn more about the what goes into making movies while garnering a deep appreciation for creative works and the importance of copyright protection,” said Victor Zuniga, Los Angeles Area Council Public Relations Director for the Boy Scouts of America.

Jack Black, international sensation, has created a special infomercial on the subject of music piracy.

“Look, super mega rock and roll gods and superstars are just regular dudes like you guys. We punch the clock, we put on the pants and we then we blow people’s minds,” according to Black. “And then these pirates come, and they steal all our Internets!”

Kirk Bundy, a Capistrano Unified School District teacher for 11 years, asked students to apply a new idea — podcasting — to a classroom tradition: the school project.

Bundy recently received a 2006 Unsung Heroes award from finance company ING.
The company recognizes kindergarten through twelfth-grade teachers nationwide for innovative teaching methods.

Bundy, in his first year as a technology teacher at Newhart Middle School in Mission Viejo, says the $2,000 prize associated with the award will be used toward upgrading computers for his classes.

All right. We’re bracing ourselves for your catty comments, but we just can’t help ourselves. We’ve been sitting on our hands all day, knowing that we’ll be mocked mercilessly for mentioning this momentous event…. but it *is*, after all, five years since Apple’s Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPod.

And even though it pains us that Apple’s domination of the podcast world sometimes serves more as barrier than help in getting wider adoption of the technology…. we just can’t help it. We really love our iPods.

After spending the morning being deluged with stories and commentary around the Internet, all about the big birthday, we thought maybe we could post… a little something.

So, here’s a little sampling of what “the media” are saying about iPod reaching the half-decade mark:

• PC World’s Harry McCracken has five lessons [the iPod’s] success has to teach us
• MacWorld takes a look back at the early days of Pod, along with a podcast interview with Newsweek Editor Steven Levy, about his new book, The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness.

Speaking of Levy and his book, we’ll be reviewing that new tome very soon, having just gotten a copy late last week (thank you, Simon and Schuster). It’s too early to tell whether it’s a lovingly researched collection of essays on the impact of “shuffle” on our personal, cultural, and business lives, or a rambling fanboy paean to the ubiquitous personal music player. (Stay tuned).

Back to the iPod’s birthday:

• Playlist magazine has a couple of birthday articles, including Christopher Breen’s “what now?” column, fantasizing about what new capabilities he’d like to see added to the iPod. Another Playlist story, by Jim Dalrymple, reflects on the wide-reaching effects the iPod has had on Apple’s fortunes since its debut.
• Engadget has a cute illustration of the iPod “family tree” (or evolutionary timeline, if you prefer)
• On public radio, the Marketplace radio show also commemorates the anniversary. Just last week, Marketplace joined a host of other American Public Media programs that have launched podcasts — which, of course, you can subscribe and listen to using said iPod.

What stands out today in our mind is the timing of the debut of the iPod. October 2001 was an anxious, grim time, just weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Public events were being cancelled right and left. People were in the throes of fear over anthrax-laced correspondence. The US had just invaded Afghanistan. One would have thought that the iPod would have seemed overly frivolous, another capitalist call to consume (remember the entreaty to go out and buy cars and other durable goods?).

How surprising that the fearful climate of that moment in history could also nurture the popularity of such a happy little gadget. Five years ago, we could not imagine having to spend so many hours at airports, going through the indignities of endless security lines and screenings. And today, we cannot imagine enduring such long and indignant waits, without a portable entertainer like the iPod.

Are you commemorating the iPod anniversary in your podcast? If so, please leave the link in the comments, below:

Denver Pediatric specialist Dr. Steven Rothenberg is taking his surgical techniques and sharing them with other doctors around the world, via medical video podcasts. The surgeon says this makes “the surgical world a lot smaller and more capable of saving babies worldwide.”

For example, Chloe Faith Smith was born prematurely, and suffers from a severe form of reflux, resulting in stomach acid scorching her food pipe and even damaging her lungs. Dr. Rothenburg is among only a handful of doctors internationally who know how to repair this damage through a small laparascope.

Sharing this technique via video podcast, the doctor is teaching surgeons all over the world from the operating room at Denver, Colorado’s Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center. Rothenberg has done five podcasts to date.

“One cast we had viewers from 60 counties,” he said. “Some of these techniques are very new and it’s difficult for surgeons to learn them.”

The University of Washington has published UW Podcasting: Evaluation of Year One (PDF), a report on the University’s experiences with educational podcasting. The report found that both students and instructors find podcasts to be a useful educational tool and think that podcasting use should be expanded, especially for courses with large class sizes.

Key Findings:

• Most students (87%) listened to the podcasts on a computer rather than an MP3 player, indicating that mobility may not be the driving factor behind student use.
• Students reported using podcasts in conjunction with other online resources, such as lecture notes and PowerPoint slides.
• The majority of instructors reported little or no prior exposure to podcasting. The automatic recording model allowed instructors to use this technology with no reported difficulties.
• Students and instructors both found podcasts to be useful tools for helping students catch up when they missed class.
• Both students and instructors expressed concern that the adoption of this technology could lead to higher rates of absenteeism; however, the availability of podcasts had no impact on most students’ attendance.
• Both students and instructors indicated that podcasting should be incorporated in courses with 100 or more students.

According to report author Cara Lane, “The UW is not only an early adopter of podcasting, but also a pioneer in early efforts to gather student data and evaluate the current use and future potential of this new educational technology.”

Podcast Solutions, by Michael Geoghegan and Dan Klass, is a comprehensive introduction to podcasting. The book is bylined “The Complete Guide to Podcasting,” and does a good job of delivering on this promise.

A powerhouse of podcasting talent is behind the book. The authors, Geoghegan and Klass, are podcasters that pioneered the production of podcasts at a professional level. Geoghegan is the creator of several well-respected podcasts, including Reel Reviews and Grape Radio. He also helped create the first Fortune 100 podcast, The Disneyland Podcasts.

Klass has been involved in interactive entertainment for nearly 20 years, and hosts two podcasts, Old Wave Radio and The Bitterest Pill. The book’s technical reviewer was Doug Kaye, a podcasting pioneer himself, and the creator of the IT Conversations podcast network. The icing on the cake is Adam Curry, one of the creators of podcasting, who contributes the forward.

Podcast Solutions has eleven chapters, plus a glossary of podcast terminology and a collection of podcasting resources. In addition, the authors have put together a CD of podcasting software. The software is useful, but most of it is software that is freely available online.

The guys at Smash Some Stuff, a site devoted to smashing electronics, thought it would be interesting to see how long an iPod Nano could last in a microwave.

The result? 10 seconds.

via Axehole