A fall 2008 survey of 5,500 U.S. Internet users suggests that almost two-thirds (62%) watch “online video” each week, making online video more popular than time-shifted television (38%). However, almost half (47%) who watch online video choose “short-form” video, so it’s not fair for my brain to compare that consumption pattern with DVRs. Only 15 percent watch “long-form” video online; 14 percent watch both.

But it sounds like Starz (the data source) is using a more encompassing definition of “online” than mine. Theirs appears to be everything that is not TV, which includes iPods, xBox, PS2 and Netflix streaming — as well as Current.tv and Hulu. So this universe is much larger than YouTube or GoogleVideo. Read more…

If you’re interested in the future of journalism and news, you might be interested in a “strategy session” that is being live-streamed Thursday and Friday from the University of Missouri Reynolds Journalism Institute.

I say “might” because after a half hour poking around the website (after receiving a 1 am email — promoting the remote access — that said the event was starting today), I still didn’t have a clear idea of the project. Moreover, given that most of the event seems to be facilitated small group sessions, I’m not sure how well live-streaming is going to work.

Here’s the promo blurb from the email — then I’ll comment: Read more…

Want to play Carnegie Hall? Audition on YouTube.

You have until 28 January 2009 to submit two video entries on YouTube: one that reflects your musical talent and one that provides an interpretation of an original work, Internet Symphony No. 1, by composer Tan Dun.

A panel of experts will reduce the entries to a manageable number (does this process sound familiar?) and then we get to vote. Winners will be announced 2 March 2009. They will be flown to New York in April for a three-day workshop with Carnegie Hall conductor Michael Tilson Thomas prior to the 15 April 2009 performance.

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Last month, the Christian Science Monitor announced that in April 2009 it would transition from a five-day-a-week daily to a weekly. The 100-year-old publication plan to expand from a 20-page daily (delivered by USPS) to a 44-page weekly that still feels “newspaper-y.” Concurrently, The Monitor is shooting for 25 million page views a month, a five-fold increase in its web traffic.

This week, Ziff-Davis announced that PC World will print its last magazine in January. Thereafter, it will be an online publication only. Reportedly the PCMag Digital Network has seven million unique visitors a month and “reaches in excess of 10 times the circulation of the print publication.”

This post first appeared at WiredPen.com.

If themes (26, including “default”) haven’t yet arrived as an option in your gMail account, check out the screenshots on Flickr!

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AdAge details a weekend backlash on Twitter that brought down a questionable ad campaign from Motrin. (I missed it; I was at a Soaring Crane Qigong workshop.)

You can see the ad, and a great spoof, on YouTube. (And below the fold!) Watch the latter if you don’t get the stupidity of the former.

After reading Motrin-related Tweets today, I think that responses to the ad may reflect a generational — and gender — divide. There are a lot of “Move On” and “Get over it” and “Stop the Hating” comments …. from men and women whose pix suggest that they are very young. Just a thought, and worth a bit more analysis.
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Yammer piggybacks on the popularity of Twitter. Its stated goal: help companies and organizations become more productive through the exchange of short (140 characters) frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you working on?”

Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. Network privacy is obtained by limiting access to people with a valid company email address. Founders are former executives and early employees of PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe.

I’m the fourth member of the University of Washington network. Care to join? [You'll have to use your UW email address.] If tweets (erh, “yammers”?) are marked with the #MCDM hashtag, it will be easy for the group to have a more private space than on Twitter. Only other members of the UW network would be able to see the posts.

Like most networks, there are positive network effects. That is, the service is more valuable when the network grows, although there could be a point at which the effects become negative. That’s when hashtags will be even more important as a means to set up sub-groups.

Twitter provides a barebones help page for folks who want to customize the look of their Twitter profile pages.

In July, BoinBlog (a French entrepreneur) offered two Photoshop templates to jumpstart any custom background image project. His template seems to be based, at least in part, on these instructions at Techie-Buzz from July.

See his Twitter design in action … as well as my variation on his design and my “derived” psd file. Remember to change the colors of your righthand sidebar to match your new design!

This post first appeared at WiredPen