Wizzard today announced that it recorded 1.4 billion podcast download requests in 2009 through its podcast-hosting service Libsyn, or about 16% more than it delivered in 2008.

Libsyn received an average of 3.77 million requests for podcast episodes per day in 2009. On average, 23 minutes per episode equates to almost 1.5 million hours of programming distributed worldwide every day.

“We know there is strong demand for the podcasts we distribute, seeing downloads grow from 400 million to 1.4 billion in the last few years and monthly audiences grow from 4 million to 18 million,” says Laurie Sims, President of Wizzard Media.

“Now, podcasting becomes a platform that converts audiences to revenue, accelerated by the micropayment billing process that Apple has created with the App store. Unlike most Apps in the App store, podcasters have a distinct advantage to successfully market their App in iTunes due to the fact that they have already built a substantial audience for their podcast show over the last several years. Now it is just a matter of continuing to convert them over and expand the model to the Tablet, Andriod and Palm.”

Rain Computers will debut its LiveBook Studio, a high performance quad-core notebook based on Intel’s “Nehalem” Core i7 architecture, at the Winter NAMM Show.

LiveBook Studio will be available for sale starting in early February 2010 with a trio of quad-core processors, drives up to 500GB and up to 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory.

It also features the new NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250M, dedicating 1GB of video memory to an high-resolution widescreen display, making it ideal for mobile multimedia editing.

Pricing is TBA.

At CES 2010, Ion introduced a £70 QWERTY keyboard for the iPhone – the iType.

This is something that we called out in 2007 as one of the five things Apple needs to do to fix the iPhone:

Fix Typing On The iPhone – Apple has made a big deal about demonstrating how easy it is to type on the iPhone’s virtual keyboard.

With a phone this powerful, though, a phone that can do real email, view Word files and edit Web pages, lots of users will want to use it as a laptop replacement. While the phone makes the cut as a laptop replacement, the virtual keyboard doesn’t. If you’re a touch typist, being reduced to tapping out a handful of words a minute is painful.

Apple needs to work with accessory suppliers to develop Bluetooth keyboards that work with the iPhone. People that want just want to respond to an email can do it with the virtual keyboard. People that want to use the iPhone as a read/write Web device need a decent portable keyboard.

So, seeing the iType introduced is an exciting development.

Unfortunately, the iType is twice as big as it needs to be, puts the iPhone flat instead of tilting it up to make it readable, and is only supported by Ion’s own text editing application.

Let’s hope that Apple takes another look at this and opens up the iPhone to supporting accessories like this system-wide. The combination of an iPhone and a cheap portable keyboard would be a great mobile blogging, video blogging & podcasting platform.

Six Apart today announced the release of Movable Type 5.

Movable Type 5 is puts more emphasis on whole-site publishing, starting with publishing a website and then adding blogs.

New and improved features in MT5 include:

• A new user dashboard for both the website and blogs. This makes it easy for authors, editors, designers and other publishers to easily navigate between the two.
• A new theme mechanism that makes it easy to apply a new theme across a website and blogs with a single click that proliferates changes throughout the published site.
• Enhanced content management features that include revision history and new custom fields. There are five new object types for custom fields: website, blog, comment, template and asset.

Movable Type is available in several versions, ranging from a free open source version to their commercial Enterprise version.

All Things Digital is reporting that Apple has bought mobile advertising platform company Quattro Wireless for $275 million.

Why is Apple buying a mobile advertising company?

Here are four possibilities:

1. Free ad-supported iPhones – Steve Jobs recently applied for a patent for an ad-supported operating system. Combine that with the purchase of a mobile advertising company, and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine a future ad-supported iPhone.
2. “AdSense for iPhone apps” – Apple has created a vibrant free app platform with the iPhone. An “AdSense for iPhone apps” would let them make some money directly off the deal, while encouraging more free app development.
3. Apple sees mobile advertising replacing television ads – in the future, people will watch video anywhere they want to on mobile devices. If Apple can make it easy for video publishers to make money on mobile video, Apple could jump-start mobile television.
4. Apple wants to monetize podcasting – Podcasts are widely considered to be under-monetized.  iTunes is the de facto distribution channel for podcasters. If Apple could make it easy to add location-aware contextual advertising to podcasters delivered to iPods and iPhones, it could be a huge deal.

Could any of these be the reason why Apple is buying a mobile advertising company?

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Nicholas Gramenos came to the Las Vegas Courthouse Monday morning to report for jury duty – but found himself witness to a shootout between court security and Johnny Lee Wicks, who is reported to have been upset over a reduction in his social security benefits.

65 year old Court Officer Stan Cooper was shot and killed in the incident and a 48 year old US Marshal was also shot.

Gramenos was leaving the courthouse when shots broke out.

“I turned around and I saw the gunman running from the area,” said Gramenos. “I saw the gun hanging from his neck.”

Corporate communications guru Shel Holz has posted a lookback at his five years of podcasting – and why he thinks that the 14 hours a week that he spends working on his podcast is worth it:

When it comes to podcasting as a medium, I’m a true believer. No, it never exploded the way microblogging or social networks have, but the number of podcasts, the adoption of podcasting by mainstream media, and the number of listeners continues to grow incrementally, not to mention general public awareness of the medium.

I love the idea of niche-oriented shows that appeal to smaller audiences than are required to support radio or television shows.

I have become A Podcaster and I just can’t imagine not doing it.

Holz and Neville Hobson are up to episode #514 of their twice-weekly podcast, For Immediate Release.

Back when Holz and Hobson and many other podcasters first started, a lot of people had unrealistic expectations for podcasting and the impact that it would have on radio.

Holz reminds us that realistic expectations for podcasting are impressive enough.

Steve Rubel wants to know what’s up with all they hype about the rumored Apple iPad computer.

He speculates that We’re Bored and Out of Shiny Objects:

For the last several months there’s been a ton of interest in the mythical Apple tablet. Just how much? Since July Google searches for the words Apple and tablet are up 400% percent and news reference volume is up 150%.

But there’s a bigger story here: we, the early adopters, are officially bored.

Twitter is out of beta and nothing arguably as innovative is seeming to replace it – although growth maybe peaking. Facebook and smartphones have become mainstream. Everything else – even some significant innovations in the mobile computing space that I am sure we will see at CES – is being (incorrectly) considered iterative. And so we’re left to debate the merits and need for the Apple tablet, a fantastic imaginary device addressing arguably a need and market that does not exist currently, except perhaps in our imagination.

Rubel’s point that first adopters are bored with the current generation of shiny objects is a valid point.

But there’s a reason why we’re bored. The current crop of shiny object isn’t that shiny.

Here is a lookback at social media in 2009, in cartoons

GIF versions and lots more social media cartoons at Rob Cottingham’s site.

via RRW

Apple has announced its picks (iTunes link) for the best podcasts of 2009, breaking them out into four categories:

• This Year’s Audio Podcasts – The Adam Carolla Podcast topped the list. Other noted include Robert Ashley’s A Live Well Wasted, WTF with Marc Maron, The Memory Palace and Norman Centuries.
• This Year’s Video Podcasts – The Suze Orman Show topped the video podcast list, followed by Old Jews Telling Jokes, ROFL, The Rotten Tomatoes Show & IGN’s Daily Fix.
• Classic Audio Podcasts – This American Life topped the list of classic audio podcasts, followed by The Onion Radio News, TWiT, ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption, and Grammar Girl.
• Classic Video Podcasts – Their pick for the top classic video podcast was Onion News Network, followed by Joe Cartoon, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 260, DiggNation and NBC’s Meet The Press.

Their picks are dominated by corporate podcasts.

Think these are the best podcasts of the year? Let me know what you think the top podcasts were in 2009!