Podcasting network Wizzard Media announced today their selection by Research In Motion (RIM) as a content partner for RIM’s new BlackBerry® Podcasts.

BlackBerry Podcasts is a new app and service that allows BlackBerry® smartphone users to discover episodic audio and video content [that is to say, podcasts] that can be downloaded directly to their smartphone, and played via the BlackBerry media player.

BlackBerry Podcasts users can search the application’s podcast catalog by keyword, category, channel or top downloads, and subscribe [or preview a particular podcast before subscribing]. Downloaded episodes can be stored on a microSD card. BlackBerry Podcasts notifies users when new content from a subscribed channel becomes available.

Wizzard Media is one of the first content providers for BlackBerry Podcasts, providing over 300 shows for the launch of BlackBerry Podcasts.  This includes popular podcasts such as Grammar Girl, Kevin Smith’s The Smodcast, WTF with Marc Maron, The Nerdist, RISK, Dilbert Animated Series, Happy Tree Friends, Hot For Words, Zig Ziglar and many of the other top shows distributed by Wizzard Media.

Rob Walch of Podcast 411 [and an executive with Wizzard] has an exclusive interview with Nick from RIM, which includes links to the submission page for Blackberry Podcasts service and the technical specs for podcasts.

BlackBerry® Podcasts is available today on BlackBerry App World™ to BlackBerry® smartphone users for phones running BlackBerry Device Software v4.6 or higher. BlackBerry® Podcasts comes pre-installed in BlackBerry 6.

Nielsen has released a new report on video and the Internet, based on input from people in 55 countries, and has found that most people, around the world, are now watching online video. Furthermore, interest in Internet-ready TVs is now at 20%.

“The research reveals how connected consumers all over the world are expanding their video experience across screens,” says Nielsen’s Matt O’Grady.

Key Findings

• Online Video: approximately 70% of global online consumers watch online video; but North Americans and Europeans lag in adoption. More than half of global online consumers watch online video in the workplace.
• Mobile Video: is already used by 11% of global online consumers: penetration is highest in Asia-Pacific and among consumers in their late 20s.
• Tablet PCs: are expanding the definition of mobile video. Globally, 11% of online consumers already own or plan to purchase a tablet PC (such as an iPad) in the next year.
• Television: is a universally important platform for video consumption, with connected consumers in many markets spending 4+ hours per day watching television.
• HDTV (High-Definition TV): is improving the TV viewing experience for as many as 30% of global online consumers. Adoption is highest among older consumers and in North America, where HD content has proliferated.
• 3DTV (Three-Dimensional TV): will have a small but important audience: 12% of global online consumers own or have definite intent to purchase a 3DTV in the next year.
• “Over the Top” TV: televisions with Internet connections are gaining interest. About one in five (22%) global online consumers owns or has definite interest in buying a television with Internet connection in the next year.

Research firm Nielsen reports that social media & blogs are now the top online activities:

Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company.

The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.

Here’s how how people’s time online now breaks down:

Based on the Nielsen report, it looks like mainstream Internet users have joined the first adopters, making new media and social media a key part of what they do online.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today announced that it has won three critical exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anticircumvention provisions today.

You now have the right to:

• Rip and remix DVDs for non-commercial purposes;
• Jailbreak your iPhone, or other cell phone, and load up any apps you want; and
• Use your iPhone, or other cell phone, with any carrier you like.

“By granting all of EFF’s applications, the Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress have taken three important steps today to mitigate some of the harms caused by the DMCA,” said Jennifer Granick, EFF’s Civil Liberties Director. “We are thrilled to have helped free jailbreakers, unlockers and vidders from this law’s overbroad reach.”

YouTube has announced a new option for video embeds, designed to support HTML 5 and to fall back to Flash where HTML 5 is not supported.

According to YouTube, “If you use the new embed code style, your viewers will be able to view your embedded video in one of our Flash or HTML5 players, depending on their viewing environment and preferences. In instances where HTML5 isn’t supported (e.g. our HTML5 player can’t play videos with ads), we use Flash.”

This new style uses <iframe> and looks like this:

<iframe type=”text/html” width=”640″ height=”385″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID” frameborder=”0″>
</iframe>

An additional benefit of the new embed style is that it will eventually allow embeds to work on mobile devices, which typically use a built-in player instead of Flash or HTML5.

Note: The new embed code is currently for developer testing and hasn’t replaced the default embeds – but it looks like YouTube may be moving to marginalize Flash sooner rather than later.

I’ve embedded a video both ways below so you can compare them.

flakjakt (Steve Fallows) calls his Cascades music video the “first official iPhone 4 music video”.

There are rivals to that title, but at least this is the first one with hipsters and flamenco dancers.

Fallows says:

In a fun weeklong experiment, my friend Marty and I collaborated on this video for an original song I wrote specifically for the iPhone 4 shoot. The overall goal was to produce a music video you can get down with – first and foremost – regardless of what camera we were shooting with. I think the end result turned out fantasmic! I hope you do too.

The results are surprisingly good – it’s not immediately apparent that this was shot on an iPhone, and it’s hard to tell what’s a video defect and what’s a hipster visual effect.

iPhone 4 video quality is great for a phone – but is limited by the fact that light hand-held video cameras deliver shaky video.

While Tiffen has announced an iPhone Steadicam, you can also build your own.

This video, by Spencer S. Watson, demonstrates how he built a DIY iPhone Steadicam out of a modified Nerf gun handle and $40 of parts from Home Depot.

Check out the demo video, below, to see how it works!

UK radio industry research firm RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) has released the findings (pdf) of its sixth survey on Internet delivered audio services.

According to the organization’s research, audio podcasts now reach about half as many people as Internet radio. 31*% of those surveyed listen to radio via the internet and 16% listen to podcasts.

The RAJAR Measurement of Internet Delivered Audio Services (MIDAS 6) was conducted during June 2010 by Ipsos MORI.

Highlights of the survey below.

Several readers were incensed last week when we highlighted InfoWorld’s early negative impressions of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

InfoWorld’s take was scathing – suggesting that Microsoft should kill the project.

Now Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky has offered his in-depth preview of Windows Phone 7, and he’s also skeptical about the viability of the platform:

What we’ve been presented with here doesn’t exactly feel like a complete mobile operating system in many ways.

On one side, we’re still really excited by the prospect of Metro as a viable, clean-slate approach to the mobile user experience, and there are lots of smart moves being made that could lead to greatness. On the other side, Microsoft has to turn this into a viable retail product that can hang with the fiercest competition in the history of the cellphone in just a few months’ time, and there are some serious issues that need to be addressed. Frankly, it’s a little scary.

By any measure, Microsoft’s got its back against the wall in the mobile game, and becoming competitive quickly is vital to the company’s success — and in that regard, we understand why they’ve been so adamant about getting Windows Phone 7 on shelves in time for Holiday 2010. The thing is, putting out a product that’s half-baked risks alienating early adopters at the worst possible time, especially considering that we see a clear-cut (and pretty painless) path to fixing the most egregious shortcomings. Seriously, if the WP7 team put their heads down and added a clipboard and some rudimentary multitasking, Microsoft could have an exceptionally solid version-one product in Windows Phone 7 — especially when coupled with the company’s fierce outreach to developers.

While Topolsky’s preview uses a lot of negative language, he does see Windows Phone 7’s Zune media player capabilities as one of the platform’s key features:

Do you need proof that Old Spice may be the first brand to really “get” new media?

Then look no further than this video of the Old Spice man explaining how to defeat pirates and ninjas.

Or his personal response to Rose McGowan: