The Internet is now a more popular source of news than newspapers, according to a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The internet is now the third most-popular news platform, behind local and national television news and ahead of national print newspapers, local print newspapers and radio.

Other interesting new media statistics from their survey:

• 75% get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites;
• 52% share links to news with others through email or posts on social networking sites;
• 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter; and
• 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.

Readers of Podcasting News should take a moment today [February 27], to look at online auction “The Boom Effect“, which is going on throughout the day. The auction’s proceeds will benefit Sonic Boom, young daughter of podcast pioneer and Podiobooks’ co-founder Tee Morris.

The brainchild of the Kiwi podcast and Erotica a la Carte author Philippa Ballentine,  The Boom Effect auction was inspired by a tragic event earlier this year:

“Tee Morris is a beloved founding father of the podcasting community; co-creator of Podiobooks.com, writer of four social media books, and the first novelist to serialise his novel as a podcast.

On the 5th of January 2010 Tee found himself facing raising his daughter (with the alias of Sonic Boom) alone, after the sudden, shocking death of his wife Natalie.

The podcasting, writing, and social media community gathered around and within days had raised over $10,000 to cover funeral expenses and other pressing bills Tee was facing. This response was incredible, and showed just how much Tee has touched the lives of others.

However now, as a community we are turning our attention to Sonic Boom’s future. She is only five now, and relying on Tee to provide everything for her. We have the aim of providing a trust buffer for her, so that she can go to college if she wants.

Nothing is going to replace her mother, but the funds raised will give more opportunities . So writers, podcasters and creative types of all stripes are offering up items for auction.

This event will be a webathon run by Podcasting’s very own Rich Sigfrit, with a plethora of special guests and fun. It will take place live online at 10amEST  February 27th 2010.”

Items up for bid run the gamut from custom hand-knitted hoodies, to autographed manuscripts by podcast book authors including Ballentine, J.C. Hutchins, and others…. podcast editing and theme song creation services, jewelry, t-shirts, a custom fitness regimen, and more.

The auction is already underway — it’s all for a good cause, and you can follow the proceedings, and maybe join in yourself, by going here.

Tired of Apple’s “Apple TV is a hobby” attitude?

Boxxee wants to help you “pwn your AppleTV” and run Boxxee – a free Internet media platform – on your Apple hardware.

Here’s Boxxee’s instructions:

Installing Boxee on Apple TV

In order to install Boxee on the AppleTV you need to do the following:

1. Download the ATVUSB-Creator
2. Insert a “bootable” USB drive into your Pc/Mac
3. Run the ATVUSB-Creator
4. Click on Create Using /or Patchstick
5. Remove the USB drive and plug it into your Apple TV
6. Power on your Apple TV and the patchstick will run the ATV bootloader
7. After the bootloader finishes, remove it and restart your Apple TV
8. It now has options for Boxee / XBMC on the main menu
9. Click on Boxee, then select update launcher and  then update Boxee Beta
10. Once boxee is done installing, restart your Apple TV
11. Click “Boxee”

Note: Patchstick Creator Guides

Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, speaking today in San Francisco, explained why he believes the Apple TV is a great product, but there just isn’t a large enough market to make the hardware worth a great deal of concentration from his company.

The product is a “hobby,” he said, because it doesn’t compare to the phone, computer and MP3 player markets in terms of sales.

“Apple TV is still a hobby,” he said. “We’ve been very clear about that.”

But he also suggested the company’s set-top-box device wouldn’t necessarily lay dormant. It may just take time for the potential market to grow.

“Because our gut says something’s there, we’re continuing to invest in this,” he said. “But today, it’s still just a hobby.”

Apple TV’s adoption has stymied by Apple’s inability to get workable content deals for the device.

But this may be a chicken or the egg issue. Content providers are going to be hesitant to make deals with Apple unless it can make Apple TV a platform to be reckoned with.

This isn’t going to happen unless Apple opens up the platform to applications and lets Apple TV develop into a social platform for interacting with Internet content.

via AppleInsider

Apple’s recently introduced iPad has been criticized by many analysts as being just a big iPod touch.

A new survey, though, suggests that people are really interested in a handheld computer that’s basically a big iPod touch.

RBC/Changewave found that 13% of the people they interviewed were very likely  or somewhat likely to buy an Apple iPad when it comes available:

Even more interesting is the fact that this is nearly 50% higher than the percent of people that were interested in the Apple iPhone when it was announced.

Longtime video blogger and media consultant Steve Garfield has a new book out, Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business, that takes a look at vlogging and video podcasting from the viewpoint of an pioneering indie content creator.

The book:

• Examines success stories of how companies have used online video;
• Presents a series of plans and tools that businesses can follow as they expand onto the social web; and
• Provides step by step directions on how to record, edit, and export videos, where to post them, how to build a community around their content, and what to do to increase views by making it go viral

We’e embedded Garfield’s overview/infomercial on Get Seen above.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Garfield’s book, you can read the first few pages of Get Seen on Amazon.
You can also subscribe to a podcast that features Garfield’s interviews for the book by adding this URL to iTunes or other podcast software:

http://getseen.blip.tv/rss/itunes

via RRW

Old Spice’s latest commercial, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, is awesome in a dozen different ways – but it’s also a great example of corporate viral video that works.

How many ads get two million views in two weeks on YouTube?

Old Spice doesn’t have to have to put a URL in their ad or ask you to Tweet this – they’re confident enough in the ad to put on the Web and let the Internet do the rest.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like is viral because it’s a great idea, brilliantly executed. It grab your attention and leaves you wondering just what the hell you just saw.

British comedian Ricky Gervais has translated his popular podcast, The Ricky Gervais Show, into an animated series for HBO.

The animated series takes the audio of the podcast and puts animation to it, intercutting retro-styled animated scenes with animated versions of Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington.

See the HBO site for details.

Google has updated its free podcast client for Android devices, Google Listen.

Here’s what’s new in version 1.1:

• Subscriptions are stored by Google Reader in the “Listen Subscriptions” folder.
• Subscribed feed items are fresh, no longer limited in size, and are available offline (and more quickly).
• Screen “My listen items” shows queued and most recently subscribed item, with refresh button for subscriptions.
• Subscriptions screen is a list of subscribed feeds instead of the most recent item in the feed.
• Better control of listened state: “Mark all..” on details screen and context menus.
• The queue is now ordered by time added (instead of publication time).
• Settings has a “Check for new items” interval that periodically fetches new subscription items.
• Subscriptions screen has an “Add a subscription” button since the menu item with this function was regularly overlooked.
• “More episodes” screen now includes a “Queue new” button.
• Help screens and splash screen have been combined.
• The item title in the “Now Playing” mini-view is now clickable.
• Added voice input button to search bar.
• Play controls in landscape mode now take up less space.
• Add “Play” to context menu.
• Search subscriptions has temporarily been removed.
• Share an episode function has temporarily been removed.
• Various minor bug fixes.

*To preserve your currently subscribed feeds, please make sure you install from Market without uninstalling the previous version. Your feeds will automatically be integrated with Google Reader.