WiredPen

If you have a photoTunes, iPodWay says it can turn your iPod into a driving aide. iPodWay takes the directions from Yahoo! Maps and saves the files in <zip> format. Extract the file into your iTunes photo folder and sync. That’s the published process, but when I tried it … the site scripts were unable to compile the zip file. The iPod can view  bmp, gif, jpg, png and tiff files (plus PSDs if you are on a Mac). Why not do the screen capture yourself? And how much detail will you get on that small screen, anyway? Curmudgeon-ly yours …

A new study from ACNielsen Europe suggests that only about 10 percent of the world’s population (more than 627 million people) has shopped online at least once. Books appear to be the most commonly purchased item (thank you, Jeff Bezos) followed closely by DVDs. It’s no surprise that first world countries would have the most online shoppers. What is a surprise is that the study ranks the US eleventh with "only" 89 percent of those surveyed saying that they had bought online. In Germany, Austria and the UK, the tally was more than 95 percent. 

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As the nation makes a slow march towards high-definition TV (digital transmission), what role will the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have in regulating content — given that TV will be freed from the crutch of “public airwaves”? The latest step in the journey is a Senate Commerce Committee action to set 7 April 2009 as the light-switch moment for analog transmission. In addition, the bill includes $3 billion to help non-satellite/cable consumers buy the converter box; the sale of the airwaves (sale?!? don’t these guys know the business model this day and age is subscription/lease/rent?) is expected to generate $10 billion. The House bill does not contain the subsidy and has a different end date.

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JD Lasica points us to this great German site where you can create your own Southpark likeness. His post suggests the site had been taken down - but it’s back up today.

I concur with his assessment: there is no harm here and a lot of viral marketing potential. Southpark -> take note of your Comedy Central “neighbor” The Daily Show on sharing digital content.

Where to begin? I feel like I’m drinking from a firehose on this subject … so here goes.

Engadget has a realtime notes from the announcement. The new iPod records in stereo. Apple has cut a deal with ABC : they will distribute prime time Disney/ABC programming via iTunes for $1.99 a download (the day after the broadcast). Blackfriars specultates that Apple may now have its sights set "on the mess that is home theatre today."

The next big thing: writing the software to make it easy to move your Tivo/Replay recordings from the setbox to the iPod to easily "watch TV" on the bus, train or plane. Disney’s jumping into the distribution game suggests they, like Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart, may be less concerned about "digital rights management" than they are about eyeballs and buzz. After all, it’s not the same experience at 320×240 as it is in your media room. Will "TV viewing" morph from a social endeavor to a solitary one? 

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Chris Pirillo has released Gada.Be, a tagged metasearch, to public beta. In picking the domain name, Chris focused on mobile devices: gada.be is 4232.2233 on most cell phones. Time saving bonus: enter your search at the same time as the site URL. For example, politics.gada.be will search gada.be for all references to politics.

You can narrow your search universe to blogs or photos, for example, or go for the whole sheebang (there are 12 subjects). To save time (especially on cellphones), just add the filter to the initial string: delay.gada.be/b will search only the "blog" sources. But wait! There’s more. You can search with phrases or "and" — it all depends on your punctuation:

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BitTorrent has expanded its The Daily Show with Jon Stewart clip library, based on this Wired interview, where Stewart and TDS executive producer shrug (If people want to take the show in various forms, I’d say
go.) at online clip sharing. Wired writes:

Between blog links and BitTorrent downloads, hundreds of thousands of people watch clips online each day rather than on TV. In other words, in form if not in tone, Stewart’s Daily Show offers a glimpse of what all TV may one day become: something we can consume in many distillations, at a time, place, and device of our choosing.

In addition, TDS Executive Producer and Stewart offer their views on digital convergence. Excerpts from the interview:

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About one-third of British youth aged 14-21 who are online at home have their own blog or website, according to The Guardian. This age group spends about eight hours a week online, with about half that time spent in online communities or IM; another hour is spent on e-mail. The poll suggests six in 10 have net access at home. They download an average of three ringtones per month for their cellphones and spend five hours a week on video game consoles. Tip to SmartMobs.

On Friday, cNet reported that Google is testing an RSS (and Atom) Reader (gmail account required). [Check out the big-picture.] With this entry, Google is taking subscription ease to a new level.

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The Seattle PI details examples of citizen journalism shared at October’s We Media conference, held at the New York headquarters of The Associated Press. Examples included photo sharing, critiques of the newspaper itself, personal journalism. The concerns: accuracy, reputation and liability. Examples are OhMyNews (Korea - english version) and OurMedia.org (US). JD Lasica, who co-founded OurMedia.org, observed that these enterprises require rethinking "the entire traditional news process, and that’s hard for news organizations to do."