Podcast network Wizzard Media today announced an agreement with Ando Media to automate their audio advertising campaigns. “Non-intrusive” advertisements will be “stitched” to the beginning, middle or end of participating audio podcast programming in the Wizzard network.

Wizzard and Ando Media’s first joint ad campaign, already underway, will be for Cisco’s Webex, a digital tele-conference service.

By automating ad serving, Wizzard Media says it will be capable of delivering rich media ads to the mass consumer market while also “capturing revenue from ‘long tail’ customers.” That is, advertisers can specifically target their ads for one demographic group, or niche audience, who make up the broad consumer base of Wizzard’s extensive library of podcast choices.

“Podcast audiences comprise the smartest, most product-aware consumer demographic in the world. We’re excited to work with Ando Media and their ad partners to target specific products to the right buyers,” said Wizzard CEO, Chris Spencer.

“Podcasts [have] become an effective way to reach an engaged and savvy consumer via online audio. These consumers have already ‘raised their hands’ for the content by subscribing to podcasts and are accepting of advertising that is entertaining and engaging” added Paul Krasinski, Executive Vice President of Ando Media.

Startup company doubleTwist today launched a public beta of a new universal media application for the Mac that’s like iTunes for everything.

doubleTwist’s goal for the product is to be “a single, streamlined interface that connects to any device, media source or network.” In other words, they want to make moving your media around, from your computer, to websites, to gadgets, a complete no-brainer.

Here’s doubleTwist’s intro video:

If doubleTwist can get this right, it could radically simplify working with media.

The beta Mac application is available as a free download at doubleTwist (Intel Mac and Leopard required). The Windows remains in private beta but is expected for final release in March.

Details below.

The Nielsen Company reports that the Internet is turning us into mouse potatoes.

According to their most recent data, viewing of video on television, Internet and mobile devices continues to increase and has reached new heights. The average American watches more than 151 hours of TV per month, an all-time high.

Meanwhile, Americans who watch video over the Internet consume another 3 hours of online video per month and those who use mobile video watch nearly 4 hours per month on mobile phones and other devices.

In other words – most people are watching as much TV as ever, and augmenting that with a lot of YouTube, Hulu and video podcasts.

“The American fascination with television and other video content is not easing up, as consumers keep turning to TV, Internet and Mobile at record levels,” said Susan Whiting, vice chair of The Nielsen Company.

“Viewers appear to be choosing the best screen available for their video consumption, weighing a variety of factors, including convenience, quality and access. It is clear that TV remains the main vehicle for viewing video, although online and mobile platforms are an increasingly important complement to live home-based television.”

First adopters have been watching less and less traditional television and more DVDs and Internet television – but the numbers suggest that this isn’t typical.

How is Internet video changing your viewing habits?

Tim O’Reilly has published an opinion piece today saying that the Kindle must open up or die:

Unless Amazon embraces open e-book standards like epub, which allow readers to read books on a variety of devices, the Kindle will be gone within two or three years.

In developing the business plan for the Kindle, Amazon was no doubt influenced by the great success of Apple (nasdaq: AAPL – news – people ) with the iPod: Proprietary hardware and proprietary file formats made Apple into the kingpin of the digital music industry. But what Amazon seems to have missed is the important role that “free” played in the success of the iPod. People didn’t populate their iPods solely with music purchased from Apple. It was easy for them to “rip” their own CDs into the standard mp3 file format and load their entire music collection onto the device.

O’Reilly echoes thoughts we had when the Kindle was announced:

There’s a basic problem with the device: it doesn’t embrace the world of Internet media.

Internet media, in all its random, open, messy glory, is where people’s attention is moving to. It’s where it’s at, in both technology and media.

The Kindle doesn’t make it easy for you to get Internet content; it isn’t a new platform that you can easily publish content for; and it doesn’t play well with the Web.

O’Reilly’s focus, as a publisher, is on books and ebooks – but making the focus of ereaders be books is probably horseless-carriage thinking. 

A successful ebook platfom will be one that does books, in an open way. But that won’t be enough to make it an iPod-like hit.

The successful ebook platform will be a web platform optimized for reading text, fully embracing the Web.

Computerworld’s Mike Elgan has posted an interesting opinion piece, in which he calls podcasting “the most underappreciated, underutilized media ever”:

Podcasting is the most underappreciated, underutilized media ever. Some people never try it. And many who do wind up giving it up unimpressed. Too bad.

A new study (Lecture Podcast Listeners Outperform Class Attendees) found that students who listen to lectures on podcasts test better than those who listen in class. Podcasting is a powerful educational medium, second only to books, in my opinion. But unlike reading books, you can listen to podcasts while doing the dishes.

Podcasting is truly wonderful, if only people would give it the time it deserves. And it’s the best source of edcuation since the invention of the printing press. Better, it turns out, than lectures from top universities.

Podcasting represents the possibility of education without effort, and a universe of ideas, knowledge, information and wisdom that you can listen to while you’re doing the dishes. Podcasts give you a better education than students at the top universities are getting while listening to their class lectures in person.

It’s time to reconsider podcasting. It’s just smart.

Elgan’s praise may be a bit effusive, but it highlights an important point: podcasting is powerful, but it has a long way to go to reach its potential. 

What do you think is holding podcasting back?

Image: el patojo

Erik Rassmussen has released a WordPress plugin that’s designed to make it easy for audio bloggers to use YouTube as a free audio host. 

YT-Audio adds an flash audio player to your blog that streams audio from YouTube. It works by trimming the standard YouTube video player to only show the controls. The above image shows what the player looks like within a blog post. 

Is it a hack?

Yeah – but if you need a free audio host that can handle a lot of traffic, it’s worth checking out.

An article in this week’s New Scientist detailed a recent psychological study from the State University of New York – Fredonia. The study, “Can Podcasts Replace Professors?,” conducted by psychologist Dani McKinney, indicates that students who listen to class lectures in podcast form score better when tested on the lecture material than students who heard the lectures in person.

To examine the effect of podcast-listening on test scores, McKinney enlisted 64 students. Half of them heard a basic introductory Psych 101 visual perception lecture in the classroom, and took home a printout of the lecture slides.  The other half of the group were given the lecture in “enhanced” podcast form: they heard the same lecture, with the slides synchronized to the classroom talk.

Average scores of podcast listeners were not stellar – they averaged a “C” grade (71 %). But this bested the “D” average (61%) score of students who only heard the test material in the lecture hall.

It is worth note that the test score advantage disappeared among podcast listeners who did not take notes while they listened. Those podcast users who did take notes averaged even higher scores (77%).

McKinney thinks these technologies can “buttress” traditional lectures, particularly for young adults who have been surrounded by Internet technologies their whole lives. It may be that students who can access the lectures as podcasts can replay detailed or difficult parts of the class material. And classroom time may be better spent in dialogue among students and instructors, if crucial lecture material is available online for later reference.

McKinney hopes to extend this kind of study with a semester-long look at podcast use and test scores.

photo via Carleton.edu

The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization is now home to a new podcast series. The Sweetest Sounds, hosted by R&H President Ted Chapin, and produced by NPR documentarian Jeff Lunden, will be an ongoing series of audio podcasts about Rodgers & Hammerstein and their music.

The first series features five programs focusing on four great musicals and one great musical composer:

• a history of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s first collaboration, OKLAHOMA!;
• the making of the first complete recording of the duo’s experimental musical, ALLEGRO;
• a look at the Tony Award winning Broadway hit, THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA;
• the story of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” from song to screen to stage; and
• an in-depth interview with Williamson Music’s legendary composer, Charles Strouse.

“Putting together these podcasts has been a wonderful experience,” says R&H President Ted Chapin. “The idea is to entertain and enlighten at the same time. We’ve known Jeff Lunden for many years, and helped him connect with many of the people whose interviews provide an archival base for many of these programs. So when doing a program on OKLAHOMA!, for example, we can include the voices of many original collaborators who are no longer with us. Those interviews give these podcasts a scope that they wouldn’t have in other circumstances. And since Jeff is a wonderful composer in his own right—we represent his musical WINGS—he understands the combination of story and song.”

You can subscribe to The Sweetest Sounds by adding this RSS feed to your podcast client:
http://web.me.com/rnhweb/rsspodcast.xml

The Wall Street Journal has published a decent look at the elements of viral videos.

They identify three main elements:

• Great content – Many popular online videos are short – under three minutes – and have some elements of cognitive dissonance. Excluding celebrity videos, many popular videos are deliberately bizarre juxtapositions, such as HotForWords – a woman in a low-cut blouse talking about etymology.
• Build a fan base – Charlie Todd, the founder of Improv Everywhere, has staged more than 80 events – such as the No Pants Subway Ride 2009 – and posted most of them on YouTube. “We have a pop-up at the end of the video that says ‘Click here to see all of our other videos and subscribe,'” Mr. Todd says. “That’s one thing that everyone should do on YouTube.”
• Search engine optimization – According to YouTube’s Aaron Zamost, “People don’t know how much work uploaders put into this stuff.” Videos should have clear titles, an accurate description and appropriate keyword tags so that they can appears correctly in a YouTube search. He also suggests using YouTube Insight to figure out which blogs are directing traffic to your video and where your viewers live – so, for instance, if your video is popular in Brazil you can add a tag for Brazil so it will pop up in searches there.

The WSJ article doesn’t reveal any “secrets” – but it’s surprising how many video publishers ignore these basics.

Writer and designer Andy Clarke and developer Brian Suda have announced the “soft-boiled” launch of a simple site, TweetCC, to help users set their Creative Commons licensing for Twitter.

Clarke was writing a book, in which he was hoping to include some tweets (posts) and avatars from Twitter. His publisher told him, in order to do this legally, he would need to get permission from each Twitter user quoted in the book.

Suda teamed with Clarke to develop an application where users could license their tweets under a Creative Commons license, “mak[ing] it easy for other people to find out if and how they can use” your Twitter posts.

To make your Twitter things available for re-use, just send this message to @TweetCC: “@tweetcc: I license my tweets under Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication license.”

There are other types of Creative Commons licenses you might consider, such as several Attribution licenses – Share, Share Alike, No Derivatives, Non-commercial, and so on. The license types and what each means are explained here.

You can find out whether someone on Twitter has CC -licensed their tweets here (but you’ll want to change the username= from my username, to the Twitter-er you’re looking for.).