Earlier this week, TalkShoe CEO Dave Nelson did a pretty decent (and refreshing) post on reasons to still love audio podcasts. Of course Mashable Conversations listeners (and most Mashable readers) are pretty familiar with our love for the audio format, but there’s still a fair amount of naysayers out there who Internet video is killing the radio star.

It isn’t that we think one form is superior to the other - in fact, we’re pretty in love with both forms of Internet media entertainment. That’s why we’ve been working on a plan for putting together a number of consistent video podcast series here at Mashable. We’re not yet on a consistent release cycle, but we wanted to put a new feed in front of you so that you knew where to tune your podcast clients and DVRs over to once we flip the switch on it.

Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.

If you tune into the feed now, you’ll presently be directed to Pete’s interview with Chamillionaire (embedded below). Keep it indexed in your readers, though, because more video interviews are in the pipe from Pete, Kristen, myself and Adam Ostrow. For those of you still in love with audio, don’t worry, that version of the show won’t be going anywhere, and will still contain a lot of unique content not found on the video feed.

Why are you in love with audio, though? Maybe you share some of Dave Nelson’s thoughts on the topic:

1) Voice is a much richer form of communication. Text does a poor job of conveying emotions, even with smiley faces. I want to actually hear that you’re enthusiastic, or sad, or sarcastic, or whatever. Hey, our DNA has been wired to TALK across 100,000 years, whereas text is a newfangled tool we haven’t yet fully mastered.

2) Voice is immediate and CAUSES new ideas. How many times have you been talking with a group of people and had totally new ideas emerge — ideas that were not from any ONE person? It’s the wisdom of crowds, to cite a great book.

3) It’s easier to talk than type. No explanation necessary, or at least I don’t have the time to write one out here.

4) (This is the most IMPORTANT one) There’s a big difference between our eyes and ears. When we read text or watch video, we can’t do much else, at least not competently. But when we listen, we can still do almost anything else.

For all my various criticisms of what goes on in podcasting, these are just a few of the reasons I keep at it. A couple more reasons? When I get great interviews like I did earlier this week.

Keith Richman, the CEO of Break.com, last week and speak frankly about the state of the business and where things are headed. This is a very valuable chat to listen to, no matter which side of the online video production business you aim to be on. While the business of online video remains very lucrative for a lucky few producers and a wonderfully successful place to put your advertising dollars, for the vast majority of producers and advertisers, it remains a very difficult minefield to navigate.

Keith and I talked not only about the goals and aim of the ROI council, but the state of the indie producers, and when we’ll start to see that boom for them that bloggers see today. For some, that boom is now, with some of the top paid producers on Break earning several thousand a month.

The embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.

In one of the more popular podcasts in recent memory, I had a chance to speak to founder and CEO of New Relic, Lew Cirne, a bit about his organization and exactly where these rumors of unscalability for the Ruby on Rails platform come from.

Rails is known for it’s succinct programming style, where one line of code can be very powerful, and perform very complex tasks. It’s this simplicity that can also be a trap for developers who accidentally can trigger enormous processing tasks with what look like very efficient lines of code.

New Relic’s software as a service offering can analyze these code bits and give exact and graphed out details about what sort of computing time-sinks may exist within the code, and offer suggestions of more efficient ways of executing that same statement.

All in all, it’s a very interesting proposition - if you’re a developer in the Rails environment (or anyone curious about how Rails applications work behind the scenes), you definitely want to catch this episode, as Lew drops some very interesting knowlege on the topic.

The embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.

Another great conversation was one that I had with Canaan Ventures partner Izhar Shay. I was contacted excitedly by the PR folks over there about a company they’d just invested in, something called Prime Sense. This precocious company seems intent on bringing into existence that technology seen most prevalently in Minority Report - that gesture based stuff.

The way it was described to me was that their intention was to make interfacing with entertainment consoles and personal computers as seamless and natural as interfacing with other human beings (think Minority Report, without the goofy Nintendo Power Glove).

I’ve seen a number of attempts at gesture based interaction, though, and most of them fall flat. The problem, generally, is in the object recognition. To fix this, Prime Sense has done a lot of work in what is essentially compositing and green screen technology. During the development process, they’ve as a side-effect of their work created what Shay described as professional level green-screen technology that will be made available for consumer level prices.

This has the net effect of putting in the hands of independent video producers the technology that has generally been only available to folks with the budget for a $10,000 lighting set-up and a $5,000 Tri-Caster. This is definitely one company to keep an eye on, and definitely one you want to hear more about.

The embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.

Twing is a relatively new forum search tool that launched back in mid-March. Kristen recently reviewed them, and came to a lot of the same conclusions I did this week, as I sat down with Scott Germaise on an episode of Mashable Conversations this week and gave it a good once over:

As I said at the beginning of our conversation, too, I’m not typically excited or enthralled with vertical search offerings in general, but just sitting down and playing with some ego searches and some brand searches for Mashable, I was able to find a wealth of conversation that previously had been undiscovered by any of my present brand-management feeds I have set up.

Interestingly enough, through their category selection process and the natural self-policing nature of forums, they’ve also a remarkably spam free set of results.

Scott explained a bit of why that is, and gave me an in-depth tour of the features and history of the website, which you can hear in the embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.

Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.
Add directly to iTunes here (or give us a rating).
Add directly to your Zune here.

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The cyclone which hit Myanmar (Burma) last weekend caused an indescribable amount of damage to the nation’s people; the ill effects of the storm have been vast extended by the ruling military junta’s resistance to both substantive and logistical aid from outside sources.

View Larger Map

And while Google has spend the past few days offering its users quick access to two financial drop-boxes established for a duo of international relief organizations, UNICEF and Direct Relief International (to which Mountain View has pledges a $1m donation, presumably to be made through it’s philanthropic arm, Google.org), the company has gathered a collection of Google Earth layers through its Outreach program to help any and all interested to observe visual data of the region in the aftermath of the disaster.

The information comes by way of organizations that Google purports to work with, including ReliefWeb. They’ve chosen to publish their materials in the Google Earth-friendly KML format, to be easily distributed to as many people as may choose to run the software program. While Google has made available any data it has garnered through affiliate sources, it has already collected a number of revealing layers, which include:

- Myanmar Ministry of Health Facilities
- Satellite imagery from a selection of providers
- Satellite flood analysis from MODIS
- Satellite flood maps from ZKI/DLR
- An animated storm track with category designation and wind speed
- Animated storm clouds

While some may understandably feel that observing the results of Cyclone Nargis dealt upon the people of Myanmar from afar is disturbingly voyeuristic, the fact of the matter is this: the more knowledgeable and aware the world is of what has happened and will happen henceforth, the better. No option in this case is good, but one can certainly make out the differences between bad and worse.

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Honoring mother’s day, we thought it would be nice to do another round up. This time, we have some of the most popular social networking sites for women. This is not a definitive list, but rather our choice of what’s good out there; feel free to add your favorites in the comments.

Also don’t forget 20+ tools for the best Mother’s Day ever.

(...)
Read the rest of Top 10 Social Networking Sites for Women (778 words)

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We’ve seen the IFPI, or the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, make numerous headlines as of late. There are have been a multitude of stories concerning copyright infringement suits and allegations. There are the seemingly routine efforts to stifle or halt BitTorrent traffic, regardless of its technological legitimacy. And recently reported was the effort by the group, in conjunction with the youth-minded charity Childnet, to promote legal music downloads through the release of a brief education guide which delineates what’s okay and what’s not okay as far as audio consumption.

We mentioned as much in a recent post, but what we didn’t do is pry open the list of recommended download sites. Today, Ernesto of TorrentFreak, delved in. And what he found was quite surprising. In short, he discovered that the initial set of half a dozen links for his place of residence, the Netherlands, to be little more than vapid domains with little legal substance and maybe even a some slices of adult content thrown in. In error, we presume.

The obvious problem that offered Ernesto such a foul experience? Bad organization. Links run from A to Z. Which can perhaps be good news for US consumers, given the availability of Amazon MP3. But the browsing process could certainly turn sour depending on alphabetics in foreign lands.

Be that as it may, there’s really no sensible excuse for the IFPI or Childnet to deliver anything less than a reliable directory. They both wish to promote good digital manners (we joke, of course) and offer children ways in which to cut into their parents’ or guardians’ paychecks. (We joke again.) Why not go the extra mile and prove to consumers that they care about making money as much as they wish consumers to care about the fortunes of those that truly matter (artists/musicians) in the music industry? This discovery seems nothing more than a continuation of the negligence exemplified by big business forces for the past several years, which, as with many past instances, will ultimately lead to those companies’ ill effect.

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MyItThings.com, a so-called “leading publisher of user-generated content” with a focus on fashion, has announced the Monday debut of a portfolio feature to offer aspiring designers the option to display their creations in an active, social venue. The site, which our own Kristen Nicole mentioned briefly last autumn, considers itself as playing host to a growing community of trendsetters and tastemakers, all connected via the Web.

The launch of the new feature coincides with the start of a contest, scheduled to conclude in October, that will choose among all participants a trio of finalists who will then be featured on a runway show in NYC. All submissions for the contest will be judged partly by the MyItThings community, and partly by a panel of five critics: Malan Breton of “Project Runway” fame; Sheryl Berk, editor-in-chief of Life & Style Weekly; Nathan Cooper, executive editor of C Magazine; designer Keith Lissner, and Yuli Ziv, editor-in-chief of MyItThings.com. The influence of voters and panelists will purportedly be an equal 50/50.

The rules for anyone interested in the contest, which will be documented to great extent on MyItThings through a mixture of blog posts, videos, and photos for full promotional effect, are quite simple:

Entrants are invited to show off their pieces online for a chance to win the grand prize. Entries can be submitted today through July 15. Each designer is asked to submit five previously created looks. Site users will vote for their top 10 favorite designers. Then, the three finalists will be awarded $1,500 to work on their looks for a Spring 2009 collection.

Given the heightened attention devoted by the public to the fashion industry as a result of the emergence of contest-based television programs like “Project Runway” and “America’s Next Top Model,” it is likely safe to assume that MyItThing’s efforts in establishing a gateway for relatively unknown designers by which to reach a heightened level of fame and recognition will prove somewhat fruitful. All really depends on whether the network can successfully orchestrate the contest to be a legitimate outlet for new faces and undiscovered talent.

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How would you like your emails, tweets, and Web searches delivered? Slowly? Really slowly? If the latest sign of the next-generation iPhone is to be believed, you’ll have a choice.

According to a discovery by Chronic Productions, published earlier this weekend, and relayed by MacRumors, Engadget Mobile, et al., prospective users of the next iteration of Apple’s most ambitious mobile device will be given the option to browse the Internet via 3G broadband or by way of the now-standard 2.5G/EDGE connection. All you’ll have to do is flip a software-based switch, similar to how iPhone users currently transfer between EDGE and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Good deal? Perhaps. Ideally, sure. Of course, it’s well known that 3G chipsets routinely consume more battery power than their EDGE-based equivalents. Therefore, presenting users with an either-or option would make sense.

Now it is important to note that most iPhone users several months from now will continue to be required to subsist on less-than-3G speeds for their Web data demands, regardless of whether they own a first- or second-generation device. AT&T’s mobile broadband network simply has not achieved the ubiquity that the company has managed to accomplish with its EDGE network, thus it will still be some time before the mobile technology typically found only in major metropolitan areas in the US makes its way to all four corners of the nation, as it were, and thus entice large quantities of consumers seduced by Cupertino to splurge.

What’s more, it may be unlikely that subscribers of 3G services for the iPhone will be treated to a discounted payment plan, as they are today through a special arrangement made between Apple and AT&T. Currently, iPhone users are required to pay roughly $20 per month on top of standard voice and SMS rates. Yet 3G subscribers must often pay $39+ for unhindered Web data access on any compatible devices. So there may logically be fewer 3G iPhone subscriptions registered upon delivery of the new handset. (Which is widely expected to occur sometime next month.)

As an iPhone owner subscribed to the most inexpensive corresponding voice/SMS/data plan available ($60), I personally find the EDGE data access to suffice for most tasks. Email, Twitter, the occasional request for news stories through Safari, Google Maps searches, and the everyday stock and weather checks come through relatively easily. Some pages take 15-30 second to pull through, but the iPhone is a mobile machine, so I usually find myself willing to “walk and wait.” In short, 3G may hasten those data transfers somewhat, but my impression is that the advent of 3G iPhone services won’t be enough for most present subscribers to willingly relinquish another $20 per month for the privilege of faster speeds.

My sense is that the iPhone’s browsing capabilities - which are clearly very appealing to many users - matched with a popular flat-rate $20 data plan is what has enabled Apple to achieve the sales it has so far secured. And since there is likely to be less incentive for AT&T to follow iPhone’s current data rate special with an equally attractive 3G pricing structure, considering the relative youth of its wireless broadband network, I dare say Apple would be smart to maintain an option for a potential customer to purchase the 3G-capable iPhone sans a premium 3G subscription.

(Image sources: Flickr user juliegomoll; Macrumors)

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RSSmeme, a project that has been described by our own Mark Hopkins as a “less colorful competitor” to the recently re-launched ReadBurner (a service which, we should note, was also purchased in March 2008 by Mashable editor-in-chief Adam Ostrow), just last month introduced an update in the form of language filter, meant to aid users in seeking links to stories whose contextual languages they can understand and which are aggregated as shared items in Google Reader. And today we hear from the creator of RSSmeme, Benjamin Golub, that the service has received yet more backend attention in the past few days.

According to Golub, the framework of RSSmeme has been “completely overhauled,” a process which has resulted in the creation of an API. What does the API do? In Golub’s words, it offers the ability to “get feeds for any type of filter. A basic example of this is something as simple as an English-only feed. Or more specifically, users can sift RSSmeme for stories that, say, are published by Mashable and associated with stories pertaining to Google in one way or another. The API is also promised to allow bloggers to “pull notes out of RSSmeme and put them back on their blog(s).” Golub explains that one need only write a plugin to accomplish that task, as all necessary data can be easily accessed through the API.

Already Golub has created something of a starter example of the API’s external utility in the form of a “most shared stories” widget for one’s blog. You can see the widget employed on his personal site.

Furthermore, he has established a mobile version of RSSmeme, for users interested in browsing shared stories on the go. It is quite elementary in nature, having purportedly been created with some 50 lines of code. It can be accessed at: ‘http://m.rssmeme.com.’ Of course, ReadBurner has offered a website designed exclusively for mobile-access for about a month now. It too is openly accessible. Simply direct your phone’s browser to: ‘http://m.readburner.com.’

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It’s well known that kids and young adults of many ages have taken up the trade of blogging, either for personal or professional reasons. But how many of the generation born in the era of global interconnectedness can say that their mothers in particular have had their hands in social Web services and publication platforms? Not many, one might think. And one might be right. But of course there are exceptions to every rule.

In celebration of this Mother’s Day, Ellen Lee, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, documents a few such cases involving methods by which mothers of the world have utilized the coterie of connectivity options ranging from blogs (both standard-sized and micro) to social networks in order to document the process of pregnancy to parenthood. Services such as Typepad, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have all been applied to the momentous time of childbirth.

One example given is that of a Facebook employee sharing alerts and photographs chronicling moments of motherhood with a personal network of some 400 individuals, including a nonagenarian grandmother-in-law. As might be expected, her Facebook page in turn flooded with virtual gifts to mark the occasion of the birth of her son. Another case in point: a co-founder of the blogging stalwart Six Apart by the name of Mena Trott spent her hours in labor documenting her stay at the hospital from her cellphone. (Nevermind that cellphones aren’t generally allowed to be used around some medical equipment. As we say above, exceptions can be made, right?)

Lee goes on to offer statistics gleaned from the Internet researcher eMarketer of the rising number of mothers that have ventured online. It is said that some 80% of mothers in the US make their way onto the Web “at least once a month.” The researcher estimates that some 35.3+ million mothers will spend a portion of their time on the Web in 2008. That carries over from about 32 million in 2006. What for? To research baby products, of course. And to connect with family and fellow matriarchs, or even just to build and maintain a sort of digital diary and scrapbook of the early life of their newborn(s). One particular service which we here at Mashable recently highlighted, called Kidmondo, is indeed purposed specifically to enable parents to maintain personal sites for their young children.

According to a BlogHer report referenced by Lee published this year, mothers familiar with the ways of blogging are very much invested in social services, with 71% maintain profiles on MySpace, 44% on Facebook, and 1.8% on Twitter. Naturally, most activity among those users is centered around the sharing of photographs, with a smaller, yet still sizable percentage of individuals sharing videos.

All in all, the trend of female adoption of online services is headed nowhere but up. For about two years or so, it has increasingly been understood that girls outnumber boys as far as registration and active use of blogging software and social networks. Now it seems that older female demographics have taken note of the usefulness of such things, and adapting them to serve their wants and needs in ways that.

So to mark this holiday we say this any and all mothers out there on the Web: keep blogging, keep networking, keep Twittering even. Most importantly, keep sharing. The fact that the Web 2.0 space is evolving to encompass more of the general populace, and not only the geek class, goes far in proving its ultimate legitimacy. And hey, who doesn’t love baby pictures? The more the merrier.

(Image source: Flowerpowernetwork.com)

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Having already had a pretty stellar 2007, Wizzard Media is seeing 2008 shape up to be an even bigger growth year.

Overall, Wizzard racked up an impressive $1,668,478 in revenue for the first quarter, compared to $725,926 for the same quarter last year. This tops even their largest quarter to date, the fourth quarter of 2007, which was reported to be $1.5 million. The good news is that not only was the revenue growing by a staggering 130% for quarter-over-quarter, but the gross profits grew by an even larger percentage, clocking in at 159%

According to a press release published on Fox Business, every aspect of Wizzard’s operation is growing by leaps and bounds with a record number of shows now being published, and an ever growing user base using their publishing platform. They have also signed a content licensing and advertising deal with YouTube, that will allow them to launch their own branded channel, and will allow them to share in a portion of all ad revenues generated from the channel.

As with any business, it is always wonderful to see such growth, but maintaining such an explosive amount can be difficult for a company. Wizzard Media do seem to be on the right track, though, and if they keep on this pace - which is also highlighted by strong consumption of its hosted content in Canada, Great Britain, China, and to a lesser extent Japan and Germany - we will be writing about them quite a bit more in future.

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Tom Cruise had his eyes scanned in “Minority Report,” which was creepy but still kinda cool. And even though we have things like thumb and finger print scans for security clearance, but there aren’t many options when it comes to your personal or work computer.

XID Technologies has recently made a new option available for protecting your own computer: a biometric PC access application called Face LogOn Xpress. In plain English, that’s a face scan. Now, instead of limiting your PC security to a password (or a fingerprint scan, for some devices), you can install a program that scans your face in order to provide security clearance for logging on to your computer. This can be used for home or work computers.

Of course, a webcam is necessary, and there are a few other things you’ll need to be aware of in order to use this service. Things like lighting will affect the Face LogOn Xpress application. That means that the lighting from your initial face scan will need to match subsequent scans for logging on. This isn’t too much of a hassle, however, as the application will eventually learn small nuances like lighting differentiation, which will minimize future issues.

As many other video-related services like MyFaceID and eyealike, XID has services for both security and/or search and entertainment purposes. XID has a feature called Entertainment Theater, that’s a bit similar to fix8.

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