WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg has announced that WordPress is throwing itself behind RSS Cloud, a step that could put millions of bloggers and podcasters one step closer to real-time updates:

Today we turned on support for all 7.5 million blogs on WordPress.com something called RSS Cloud, which is basically a way for people to get push notification that your feed has updated.

Why is this important? Right now how most people interact with feeds is by checking that it updated every now and then, usually about once an hour. Can you imagine waiting an hour to get your emails? (The world would probably be more productive.) RSS Cloud is an extra element in your RSS feed that allows subscribers to say “Hey, let me know as soon as you’ve updated, kthx.”

Real-time updates could lead to faster propagation of news, a greater focus on discussion between bloggers and more timely updates for feed-reader users.

All WordPress.com blogs have this enabled now. Support for hosted WordPress blogs is available as a plugin.

The announcement won’t have immediate impact for most people, because support is limited to Dave Winer’s River2 aggregator.

However – with millions of blogs now supporting the idea of cloud-based notification, expect to see lots of experimentation and innovation soon.

Sonic Labs’ Nick Batt takes a look at the Samson Go Mic USB Microphone – an inexpensive, but good quality USB-powered microphone that could be a good option for podcasters.

Features of the Samson Go Mic:

• Plug & play MAC and PC compatibility
• USB interface for high-resolution, digital audio streaming
• Custom design clips to a laptop or sits on a desk
• Compact, folding design allows easy storage in a brief case or laptop bag
• Condenser transducer with pressure gradient USB digital output
• Frequency response of 20Hz – 18 kHz
• Selectable cardioid or omni directional polar recording pattern
• Available in black or white

The Samson Go Mic retails for $59 at Zzounds, but you can occasionally find it as cheap as $49.

This video, via Socialnomics, looks at the social media revolution.

Watch it – you’ll find out some facts that will surprise you, no matter how engaged in social media you happen to be.

Marketing guru Mitch Joel addresses radio DJ’s in his latest post, saying that there’s hope for people displaced by turmoil in the radio industry – podcasting:

You do not need a radio station or any other mass media channel to give you permission to broadcast your talk-radio show to the world. It is called, “Podcasting” and you can do it for free (or close to it), and your loyal audience can now (finally) extend well beyond the borders of your previous employers limitations.

If you love what you do, and you do not know what your next professional move is, there is no reason not to keep your show going in Podcast format (people like Adam Corolla and Kevin Pollak are doing it). You’ll suddenly have a global audience, you can do your show for as long as you like and release it as frequently as you wish. All of the content you will now create will be findable, searchable and listenable… forever (unlike radio where what you say is forever lost in the ether the moment it comes out of your mouth).

Joel makes some great points.

What you don’t have with podcasting (or video podcasting or even blogging), is clear answers about where things are going or how quickly we’ll get there.

Do you really want to wait around until this is all settled, though?

A major WordPress hack has been creating headaches for bloggers, podcasters and anyone else using WordPress for their content management system.

If you’re using anything other than the most recent version of WordPress, your site is apparently ripe for the plucking by hackers. If you haven’t already, update to the most recent version now.

WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg explains the vulnerability like this:

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.

Unfortunately, WordPress makes it easy for hackers to find vulnerable installs, by embedding an advertisement of your vulnerability on every page of your site.

If you view source on a page at a WordPress-based site, you’ll see something like this:

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.8.4" />

This is there, presumably, to make it easy for WordPress to identify WordPress-based sites, and also to see what version you are using.

The problem is, the same meta tag makes it a no-brainer for crawlers to automatically find sites that are vulnerable.

Here’s how you can fix this problem in about 1 minute.

PiperJaffray analyst Gene Munster is predicting an update to Apple‘s close-but-no-cigar Internet TV device Apple TV at the company’s September 9th event.

Munster notes that lead times are extending for the entry-level 40-GB $229 Apple TV, but unchanged for the higher-capacity 160-GB model.

“We now have reason to believe” that an AppleTV update may be part of next week’s news, notes Munster.

While the Associated Press and newspapers around the US debate to compete against online news sources, they may be missing an even bigger threat: you and your iPhone.

The New York Times reports that Fwix – a local news aggregator – plans to enlist mobile social media creators to generate realtime local news coverage:

Fwix, will release an iPhone application this week that enables its users to file news updates, photos and videos, live from the field. The items will appear on Fwix’s year-old Web site, which also collects links to local news articles from newspapers and blogs in 85 cities.

“We believe we are the real-time local newswire,” said Darian Shirazi, Fwix’s 22-year-old founder.

When you consider the flow of information on a site like Twitter, it’s not hard to imagine social media being harnessed to generate localized real-time news.

The biggest challenges are filtering posts to find the real news and getting people’s attention.

“If it could be like The A.P. and be widely distributed,” notes social media researcher Peter Krasilovsky, “that could be fantastic.”

Do you think “social news” syndication, powered by individuals with mobile devices, are ready to replace traditional news syndicates?

The TV industry has as little as two years to get their online act together.

Otherwise, it’s going to face face an “iTunes moment” and cede its online future to Apple, according to Microsoft’s Ashley Highfield.

“The industry has about two to three years to adapt or face its iTunes moment,” said Highfield, the managing director of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival. “And it will take at least that long for media brands to build credible, truly digital brands.”

“The traditional television business has to aggressively move its content online, build a critical mass of content that the traditional buyers of airtime will understand and buy into,” he added. “They want to see TV-like reach and impact.”

Do you think Internet media is going to do as much damage to television as it’s done to radio and print media?

With the launch of the Zune HD coming up September 15th, podcasters may be thinking about revisiting the Zune platform.

Microsoft podcasting guru Rob Greenlee offers these tips on how to get more Zune podcast listeners:

Here are a few things that you should do as a podcast content creator to reach as many Zune podcast users as possible.

• If your podcast is already in the directory then visit the below link and search by your podcast title to get link code and Zune icon to add a deep-link to your podcasts page in the Zune Marketplace software and to the podcasts page on our official Zune.net website at  – Click here to get the link code
• If your podcast feed is not already in our catalog, then you can submit it to us on our web-based Zune podcast directory at http://www.zunepodcasts.com, it is a link that says “Submit a Podcast”.  You could also create a “1-Click Zune Podcast Subscription” link for your podcast feed URL by following these directions – Click here

Got other ideas on how to get more Zune podcast subscribers? Leave a comment below!

Google has announced plans to AdSense-up one-off viral video hits on YouTube:

Today we’re excited to announce that we’re extending the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos on our site. Now, when you upload a video to YouTube that accumulates lots of views, we may invite you to monetize that video and start earning revenue from it (see “Enable Revenue Sharing” in the screen capture).

To determine whether a particular video is eligible for monetization, we look at factors like the number of views, the video’s virality and compliance with the YouTube Terms of Service. If your video is eligible for monetization, you will receive an email and see an “Enable Revenue Sharing” message next to your video on the watch page, as well as in other places in your account:

Once you’ve chosen to enable revenue sharing, YouTube will sell advertising against your video and pay you a revenue share into your Google AdSense account each month.

Is Google Giving Up On Monetizing The Long Tail Of User-Generated Content?

Trying to make money from the wild west of user-generated video has been one of YouTube’s biggest challenges.

Google is moving its focus from monetizing all user-generated video to monetizing the tiny fraction of videos that actually generate a lot of views. This is good news for the rare Jill & Kevin (JK Wedding Entrance Dance), but suggests that Google is finding it impossible to monetize most user-generated YouTube content.