President-elect Barack Obama pioneered the use of new media in his campaign against John McCain, using it to make his message omnipresent on the Internet. 

Now, new research explains why Obama’s strategy was so successful. 

A  new study conducted by IFC (Independent Film  Channel) and Zogby International has found that most Americans think that media coverage of the Presidential  election influenced the outcome, and that more people trust the Internet than any other new source. 

Key Findings:

• 72.6% believe the news they read and see is biased. 
• 74.8% of respondents agreed that media coverage of the Presidential election influenced the outcome. 
• By a large margin, Americans consider the Internet the most reliable news source:
  • 37.6% said they consider the Internet the most reliable source of news
  • 20.3% consider national television news most reliable
  • 19.6% trust The New York Times, just slightly more than their local newspaper, (19.3%), as the most reliable newspaper outlet on issues that are important to them. 
  • 16% say radio is the most reliable source

It looks like Chicken Little is behind the wheel at Fortune magazine.

Fortune’s Richard Siklos says that “User-generated video under siege,” and that it’s being sidelined by mainstream media’s move into Internet media.

What’s obviously happening here is the beginning of a monumental battle for online video viewers’ attention.

YouTube or someone else may yet figure out how to get rich on user-generated content. But for the most part it’s a cultural phenomenon, not a commercial one.

You – that is, the Time 2006 Person of the Year “you” – will not drive the web video revolution. The pros will still be pros, just as they were in the late 19th century. That’s when, to cite one relevant historical example, the advent of consumer cameras was supposed to obviate professional photographers. The Internet is fantastically egalitarian, but only to a point.

Fortune’s argument, in essence, is that people watch things like sxephil, Fred and HotForWords because there’s so little professionally produced mainstream content on the Web.

In other words, put a little more NBC, CBS and NBC on YouTube, and the little guys are history.

WordPress is a great blogging/podcasting/videopodcasting platform, but there’s always something new to learn. 

If you want to learn more about WordPress, you’ll want to check out Specky Boy’s comprehensive list of 100+ WordPress video tutorials.

He says there are 100+, but we think the 100 jillion number may be more accurate.

Apple today introduced iPhone update 2.2. It’s a free update that adds a variety of new features, the most notable of which are adding street views to Google Maps and support for podcast downloads. 

The updated podcasting features are welcome, but unfortunately Apple’s implementation of podcast downloads on the iPhone is a usability disaster. 

Here’s a walkthrough of how it works.

Lets say you’re listening to Griddlecakes Radio in the iPhone iPod app, and you want to see if there are any new episodes. 

Selecting the Get More Episodes option brings you to this screen:

This screen lets you see what episodes are available and select new podcasts to download. Notice that all the buttons at the bottom of the screen have changed. 

Now, select a podcast and it will start to download……unless it’s too big:

After connecting to a WiFi network, the iPhone will start downloading the podcast:

Podcasts download very quickly over the iPhone’s WiFi connection. 

Everything has been pretty straightforward and usable up to this point – but here’s where things get a bit ugly.

Liz Gannes at New Tee Vee reports on another live streaming deathcasting incident:

In a striking display of the power of live video, Abraham K. Biggs committed suicide on Wednesday while broadcasting himself on video site Justin.tv. As we understand it from various forum posts, the 19-year-old Floridian was apparently egged on by commenters on Justin.tv and fellow forum users on bodybuilding.com.

Biggs overdosed on pills while on camera and appeared to be breathing for hours until watchers realized he might be serious, at which point they alerted the police. The video kept running until police and EMTs broke Biggs’ door down and blocked the camera’s view.

While a lot of people will spin this story like Gannes, talking about the power and immediacy of online video, this story highlights how, even with the greatest communication technologies ever available, we struggle to communicate and understand each other. 

Live streaming sites may need to implement real-time monitoring of videos flagged as inappropriate. In this case, timely monitoring of flagged videos might have saved Biggs’ life.

 

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers today released their latest numbers on Internet ad revenues, and things actually look pretty good for ad-supported new media:

 

Internet advertising revenues reached almost $5.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008, representing an 11 percent increase over the same period in 2007.

“A weakening economy will continue to be a challenge to all forms of advertising-supported media,” notes David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “However, the Internet should be better poised to withstand the storm given its ability to combine performance-based advertising along with broad-based branding.”

James Melzer, creator of the podcast novel The Zombie Chronicles, has landed a three-book publishing deal with indie publisher Permuted Press.

In one of the most heartfelt and gracious announcements I have ever read, Melzer says:

“I will treasure this moment, the moment I put pen to paper in order to finalize the deal, for the rest of my life. When I think back on it I will not only think back on all the hard work it took to get here but also on all of you for helping to make my boyhood dream come true.”

Permuted, a self-described “horror and apocalyptic book publisher,” has inked an agreement that Melzer says “is a first for podcast fiction,” because the first book in the trilogy “isn’t even finished yet!” The publisher bought the series based on the initial episodes of the story podcast.

Melzer is the latest example of podcast producers who have parleyed the success of their podcast into opportunities in other media. Scott Sigler is turning his podcast novels into hardcover books (via Crown) and movies. Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine have published an Ask-A-Ninja book, and will be writing and directing a remake of a classic movie. Michael Geoghegan’s Grape Radio wine podcast garnered a prestigious James Beard Award and has been contracted for use on American Airlines.

Publication date of the first volume of The Zombie Chronicles has yet to be determined, as the book is not finished being written at this time. In the meantime, the feed to subscribe to The Zombie Chronicles is here.

Microsoft today announced a new “landmark agreement” (Microsoft’s words) with major and independent music labels to “bring significant new value to the subscription music model.”

The Zune Pass subscription service currently gives consumers on-demand access to millions of tracks for $14.99 per month. Starting today subscribers will also get to select 10 tracks per month to keep and add them to their permanent collection (an estimated $10 value).

This is a nice bonus for Zune Pass subscribers, but Apple figured out how to sell 10 songs for 13 bucks a while back, and people didn’t bite on that, either.

To potential customers, Microsoft’s rent to own “subscription music model” is a ball of confusion. It’s going to take something a lot more creative than this, or fire sale prices, to make the Zune an interesting platform. 

Microsoft: it’s time to make the Zune the best platform for finding free music, watching movies, discovering podcasts or something new. And once you figure out something cool to do, figure out how to explain it to people in language that they can understand.

It’s the Kindle’s first birthday, and, it still hasn’t become the iPod of eBook readers, as some predicted.

Now Silicon Valley Insider’s Dan Frommer is wondering what Amazon can do to turn the Zune into a hit. 

Here’s the answer: the Kindle needs to become a new media device.

The Kindle is a basically an expensive device that lets rich people get access to a store that lets them buy other expensive stuff. 

It’s a solution to a problem that most people don’t have. 

To succeed, Amazon needs to follow the iPod’s example and make the Kindle a new media device, giving you access to a world of Internet content and making it portable. 

When the Kindle was introduced, we said:

Without podcast support, the Kindle will be a relatively boring, closed system, like the first-generation Zunes. It will be a Sony Reader on steroids. An interesting gadget.

If Amazon embraces podcasting, though, the company could quickly establish the Kindle as a new platform for consumption of Internet content. Users would have access to 100,000+ audio podcasts, on all sorts of topics. And because podcasting can be used to deliver all sorts of payloads, such as PDFs, it could be used with the Kindle to let you subscribe to daily news updates, online magazines and other free Web content.

Imagine how much more interesting the Kindle would be if it embraced new media and made it easy to load up with Internet content?

Yahoo! has introduced an new search site, Yahoo! Glue, that promises to “glue together the best content on the web”:

We’re starting with a limited set of topics (more will be added over time), pulling together content from the best places on the Web onto one Yahoo! Glueâ„¢ page. These pages are built using an algorithm that automatically places the most relevant modules on a page, giving you a visually rich, diverse page all about the topic in which you’re interested.

To see it in action, check out some of the Glue pages on some popular people, places and things: New York Giants, Henry Paulson, Electoral College, Hugh Jackman, etc.

The idea is that Glue will bring together the best content from all the major types of Internet media, including video, news articles and blogs, and aggregate them on one page. 

Sounds like a good idea, but at this point, Yahoo! Glue is like Mahalo Lite, with limited search results and poor usability. And minus the Jason Calacanis fireworks. 

Check out the results for a search for podcasting:

You’d think that Yahoo! might have some information on a 4-year old technology used by tens of millions, wouldn’t you? And if they don’t have Glue results for podcasting, they could at least fail gracefully and include the Yahoo! search results for podcasting!

While some are impressed with Yahoo! Glue, they may want to take a deeper look.