Mobile social video site Qik has announced that Qik for the iPhone 3GS (App Store link) is now available. The free app lets you video blog directly from your iPhone 3GS.

Upload videos from your iPhone’s Camera Roll

This version of Qik lets you pull videos from your iPhone 3GS Camera Roll and upload them to your Qik account.

If you’ve recorded videos with the iPhone 3GS native camera, you can share those via Qik,your blog, website, Facebook, YouTube, and other networks Qik integrates with.

Other Features:

• Once you’ve stopped recording, your video upload begins automatically – without the hassle of pushing any more buttons or filling out any form fields.
• Shoot video in portrait or landscape mode
• Location sharing while uploading video – Qik lets you share your location while streaming video from your phone.And if you prefer privacy, you can disable this option.

Other Handicaps

Unfortunately, this version of Qik is limited to WiFi networks, and doesn’t stream live video. The WiFi limitation is especially heinous, since it severely handicaps Qik’s mobile sharing abilities.

According to Qik, “we’ve submitted an update to the App Store which will have it working over 3G networks, too. We’ll let you know as soon as that upgrade has been cleared.”

If you’ve tried out Qik for iPhone 3GS, leave a comment with your thouhts!

Microsoft has announced that Zune HD, the next generation of Microsoft’s portable digital media player, is available now for pre-order and will hit store shelves on Sept. 15.

The player, available in 16GB and 32GB capacities, is the first touch-screen Zune.

Both 16GB and 32GB capacities of Zune HD will be available in five different colors with the option to customize your player with one of 10 new engravings designed by guest artists.

PRICING: Zune HD 16GB: $219.99 (estimated retail price); Zune HD 32GB: $289.99 (estimated retail price)

WHEN: Pre-order starting Thursday, Aug. 13. Purchase in stores on Tuesday, Sept. 15.

WHERE ONLINE: http://www.zune.net/zunehd

WHERE IN STORE: Place a pre-order in person at Best Buy beginning Aug. 16. If you want a sneak peek, visit select stores in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. areas on Aug. 22 and 23.

TiVo has announced the addition of hundreds of new free Web videos available directly to TiVo Series3, TiVo HD and TiVo HD XL subscribers. In addition to these new channels, any video podcast provider can now publish video content to TiVo DVRs using industry-standard Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and H.264 video.

Hundreds of new podcast channels are being added to TiVo’s current suite of free Web videos, from mainstream outlets such as CBS, FOX, Oprah, G4 and more. TiVo users can watch any video instantly, or set a Season Pass recording and have new videos downloaded automatically to their TiVo Now Playing List as they are published. Users also have the ability to stream content not listed by TiVo by simply entering the URL for a video podcast they want within the “Video On Demand” menu on their TiVo DVR.

“What makes this announcement unique is that everyone has the ability to publish their content to the TiVo DVR for users to watch on the best screen in the home, using open industry standards such as RSS and H.264 video,” said TiVo’s Evan Young. “With a robust library of Web videos already available through the TiVo DVR, and the ability to enter the URL for other podcasts you want, this announcement puts the control in the hands of the user to search for and retrieve exactly what they want to watch and from the comfort of the couch.”

All TiVo podcast channels and episodes are also indexed in TiVo Search.

If you’re a video podcaster, add your podcast to TiVo’s directory here.

Media research firm IPSOS has found that twice as man Americans are streaming TV shows and movies as were doing it a year ago.

In the past 30 days, 26% of online Americans have streamed a full-length TV show and 14% have streamed a full-length movie. This is more than two times the levels measured in September 2008.

Young adults 18 to 24 years of age are the most ardent supporters of this medium. In the past 30 days, 30% have streamed a full-length movie and 51% have streamed a full-length TV show, which represent dramatic increases from last year.

The Participatory Culture Foundation, a Massachusetts based non-profit, has announced an update to the open source Miro internet TV platform that features faster performance and audio podcasts.

Changes in Miro 2.5 include:

• Miro 2.5 launches 2 – 4 times faster (especially for users with lots of videos and feeds)
• New audio podcast section of the Miro Guide
• Better interface for audio playback
• Button to download from YouTube when you add as sidebar site – also see: 4 ways to download files (including torrents) from websites inside Miro
• Smarter handling of bittorrent files, especially videos
• New Library interface with ‘Video’, ‘Audio’, and ‘Other’ sections
• New keyboard shortcuts for virtually all functions (great for programming a remote control)
• Interface polish and refinement
• Easier hacking: the database layer was rewritten to use a simplified SQLite schema and we’ve created a new developer documentation site: Miro Developer Documentation v2.5

Miro is available for OS X, Windows & Linux. Download Miro here.

Pocketkai’s Podcast TV (App Store link) is a new iPhone app that brings video streams of popular German TV broadcasts to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The Videos, in MP4-Format, are not downloaded or with the PC or MAC symchronized, but are streamed. A list with over 100 Podcast TV broadcasts is already available and is regularly updated. The Podcasts are updated by their provides.

Requirement:

• WLAN Internet connection
• iPhone and iPod Touch from 2.0 or 3.0

The Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s Corynne McSherry has published a blog post that explains why the group is taking part in a lawsuit against Amazon over the Kindle:

Customers who shell out $300 for a Kindle are not getting the product they expect: a device that will let them do electronically most of the things they expect to do with physical books — e.g., read them (and re-read them), mark them up, carry them around, and share them with others — without worrying that a bookseller might reach through and not only delete their books but also monitor and record their activities. It is this combination of powers (tracking, recording, erasing) that makes Amazon look like Big Brother — and made this act particularly ironic.

The trigger for this lawsuit was Amazon’s recent decision to remotely delete George Orwell’s 1984 & Animal Farm off the Kindles of hundreds of people.

She goes on to explain that EFF is looking for Amazon to settle and to:

• Leave Content on Kindles Alone
• Be transparent about both the information it tracks and the control it retains for the Kindle. T
• Change its privacy policy, which currently gives it broad rights to disclose the information it collects about Kindle users to the government or others without a warrant or a court order.
• Commit to advising customers of any changes in the terms of service by showing a pop-up screen describing the change, in plain language whenever the device first connects to Amazon after a change.
• Respond to customer expectations by adding language to clarify that all books, magazines and newspapers are not licensed but rather sold, and may be disposed of at the purchaser’s discretion.
• Allow Kindle users to choose which “updates” they wish to install.
• Provide users with the option of creating a personal backup copy of their annotated books for their laptops.

EFF’s demands seem reasonable from a buyers’s perspective.

There’s a huge gap between reasonable buyers’ expectations, though, and what Amazon is actually selling.

As a result, the lawsuit forces Amazon to either rethink their practices with the Kindle or face another PR disaster.

PodCamp Boston 4 kicks off this weekend at 8am at the Harborside Campus Center.

The event runs August 8-9 and offers podcasters, bloggers, YouTubers, social networkers and anyone interested in new media an opportunity to learn and network.

PodCamp Boston 4 Schedule

See the Podcamp.org site for a list of upcoming podcamps.

Print Media Deathwatch: The Newspaper Association of America has released its latest numbers on Web traffic to newspaper sites, and while the numbers sound impressive, they reveal a fundamental challenge facing the industry – getting your attention.

Highlights of the NAA’s stats:

• The total U.S. unique Internet audience: 195,974,309.
• Of these, 70,340,277 or 35.89 percent visited a newspaper Web site.
• The average person visited 2,569 Web pages. That adds up to 503,457,999,821 page views.
• Of those 503 billion page views, less than 1 percent  (3.5 billion) of people’s page views went to newspaper Web sites.
• Nielsen says the average page view (in that universe of 503 billion) lasted 57 seconds.*  That translates to 40 hours, 40 minutes and 33 seconds per person per month.
• Off people’s time spent online, less than 1 percent was spent at newspaper Web sites (45,022,485 hours.)

For perspective, you can compare the NAA’s 70 million visitors per month, for all newspaper sites combined, with top media properties:

• Google (147,778,000)
• Yahoo! (133,139,000)
• MSN/WindowsLive/Bing (111,352,000)
• Microsoft (96,071,000, AOL (92,705,000)
• YouTube (87,686,000)
• Facebook (87,254,000)
• Fox Interactive (72,724,000).
• All NAA newspaper sites combined (70,340,277)

Note that social media site YouTube gets more attention than all newspapers sites combined.

It’s clear from numbers like these that the biggest challenge to newspapers online is just getting people’s attention. If newspapers move forward with plans to start charging to read news online, this challenge is likely to turn into a pipe dream.

via Niemanlab

We’re still skeptical about the prospects for the Microsoft Zune HD….but CNet’s Donald Bell recently geeked-out with a pair of the new Zune HDs and came away impressed:

I am tentatively reaffirming my faith in Microsoft. This thing was worth the wait, folks.

Mind you, it’s not going to crush the iPod Touch–a product that for all intents and purposes is more mobile computer than media player–but it’s safe to say that the Zune finally has the power to make good on the promise of delivering one of the richest music experiences on a portable device.

This isn’t the first positive take from a Zune HD sneak preview, but Apple and Microsoft tend to limit early sneak previews to analysts that they can expect good reviews from, not critical curmudgeons like me.

Previously, CNet analyst Matt Rosoff called the Zune HD solid, while Gizmodo called the Zune HD’s hardware “tight and beautiful.”

We’ll have to see this to believe it. As we said in our initial take on the Zune HD:

The Zune HD is two years behind Apple’s iPhone/iPod touch platform – and Microsoft has the liability of the Zune platform’s history. The one distinguishing feature, HD Radio, is a refinement of a feature that most people have shown zero interest in.

The Zune HD may be “tight and beautiful”, but Apple has sold over 200 million tight and beautiful iPods, while Microsoft’s best known for delivering the blocky & buggy brown Zune.

And while Microsoft is trying to steal Apple’s portable media player business, Apple has established a new portable computing platform with 65,000 apps.

The bottom line? Even if Microsoft executes the Zune HD perfectly, they’ll have to compete with Apple based on price.