Interest in delivering television over IP networks has hit a fever pitch. In the past week there were more than a dozen announcements about partnerships, trials, or new technologies relating to IPTV.

In the United States, BellSouth will test IPTV in the Southeast, and there were also announcements in India (Microsoft), England (BT), and Australia (Yahoo).

IPTV should make the cable companies nervous (buh-bye local monopolies) as well as TiVo (pause, rewind, repeat). The net-net is that bandwidth is bandwidth, so before long we'll all have one fat pipe into our house, so the monikers "cable company," "telecom" and "ISP" will disappear. These industries should all stop trying to get regulatory protection and start focusing on delivering the best cross-section of services, because like Desperate Housewives, everyone is going to be in everyone else's business.

It's amazing that Microsoft through its many fiefdoms (MSN/WebTV/MSNBC) hasn't made interactive IP-based TV a reality by now. The door is wide open for Yahoo, Rupert Murdoch, or even Google to get healthy slices of the pie. But the advantages of video on demand, interactive shopping, and the ability to link to other content are too powerful to prevent someone from doing this right. According to IMS Research worldwide IPTV market will grow to more than 27 million households by 2010. It shold happen here first, not after Europe and Asia.

Google continues to refine its Gmail service and is creating more opportunities for contextual marketing. The new Web Clips service places a single RSS headline above the message list.

Gmail comes with a default list of feeds which can be customized. It's very clean (unlike Google's RSS reader) and makes it easy to scroll through your list of feeds. Web Clips is now throwing in the occasional sponsored ad amongst the RSS links (eg. for Tupperware), so we shouldn't be surprised when Google starts delivering RSS ads that match the content of your emails.

Another possibity would be to have social networking services like LinkedIn, (or maybe a new Google service) sponsor the contacts section, and automatically adding peers to your Gmail address book would be useful.

Google can use the history provided by your past messages (since Gmail archives everything) to find out the subjects you read and write about most often. For example a book club that communicates via email would be a good bet to see ads from Amazon.

Google has also started tracking people's news searches as part of the search history archive. This gives Google's personalized search even more data to make searches individual specific, which enables targeted ads that should increase click through rates.

And completing today's Google trifecta, lots of folks are up in arms about the company's tweaking its AdWord rankings to now consider the text of the landing pages. Google says the new quality score will benefit users because they will be happier with the results when they click through. Google posted some optimization tips, but advertisers are not happy that their carefully optimized ads may not yield the same rankings. Advertisers can't expect Google to remain static in its ranking formulas forever, and hopefully the tweak will weed out some of those who are gaming the system.

Just how big will podcasting become? According to a survey done by Bridge Ratings (as reported by the Center for Media Research), by 2010 between 45 and 75 million folks will have tuned into podcasts. According to the survey, there are 4.8 million podcast listeners today.

The current podcasting phenomenon shows how important a favorably viewed piece of hardware (and catchy name) can drive demand for content, even if the basic technology has been around for years. Music and spoken word audio downloads have existed almost as long as the Internet itself, and during the Internet boom many technology news publishers including the places I worked (Wired News, TechWeb) began offering news and interviews as downloads.

Startups such as Audible.com launched new business models around selling spoken word content, and even sold devices for playback. Then we had the development of hundreds of models of portable MP3 players that got the Napster generation hooked on listening to downloads instead of the radio.

Along comes Apple (which has had more comebacks Rocky Balboa) with its iPod, and suddenly every publisher, music enthusiast, and wannabe commentator is creating content specifically to be downloaded and listened to offline. And yes, the emergence of RSS as distribution mechanism definitely helped.

So what do we glean from this? Good ideas will eventually become popular, but sometimes they need an external spark to push them over the top. The podcasting hype is probably at its all-time high now, but it won't replace commercial radio or even be as popular as the optimists think. However, commercial radio and the music industry had better figure out how to get a piece of the action, because podcasts are hear to stay (at least until an even catchier name comes along).

CBS gets it. The company is moving from subscription service to ad-supported video streaming for next year's NCAA basketball playoffs, which will greatly expand the viewing audience and most likely the revenue for the network and the NCAA.

The NCAA will continue to make money from its DirecTV all access deal, but now a much larger audience will get to see more of the games. Why wouldn't advertisers want to be seen by an audience of mostly broadband (and therefore more affluent) customers, and where they can structure their fees based on actual viewers, not Nielsen estimates?

CBS probably looked at the success that America Online had with Live8 this year before making its decision. Like March Madness, Live8 had multiple performances going on at the same time, so streaming the alternatives enabled the company to maximize the number of viewers by enabling people to choose their stream. CBS is already committing the resources (cameras, announcers etc) to produce each game, so opening up the streams is a no-brainer.

Because fans are more likely than ever to live outside of their market, other sports should follow the NCAA's lead. For example, Fox could stream the Saturday baseball games of the week, as well as the playoff games that aren't shown live on TV. And every Sunday, there are a dozen NFL games that are NOT shown in each local market.

Watching games on TV is preferable to the PC, so many hard core fans who pay for the DirecTV package will continue to do so. Perhaps streaming NHL games online would be a way to create revenue and excitement to resurrect the struggling league.

There has been considerable discussion lately about making RSS feeds self-supporting by integrating advertising. I agree this can work as long as the ads are very appropriate to the feed content.

For example, like AdWords, people who set up a custom feed through Yahoo for "Yankees" would be pitched baseball wares. I don't believe that random ads will work in this space because people sign up to RSS feed to reduce clutter and maximize their time online, so stuff that is not of interest won't be tolerated.

There are a growing number of services for delivering RSS to mobile devices, and this is one area where ad-supported services could really pay off. As this article wisely states, you have a captive audience, and I bet they would accept some appropriate ads for the convenience of receiving continuously updated feeds.

Many mobile phone users are accustomed to paying for additional services, but a service that's free to try would get many more eyeballs. Also, RSS ads through mobile phones gives access to people who are otherwise out of reach.

According to Coremetrics, the number of visits to retail sites driven by online marketing increased by 33 percent between the weeks before and after Thanksgiving. Conversion rates similarly jumped 24 percent, which can be attributed to better messaging or just a more eager audience.

However, traffic to retailer sites overall increased too, at a somewhat slower pace (24 percent), so let's not give marketers too much credit. Also, the study doesn't mention how these number compare to last year, so we don't know if this is unusual or not.

This survey got me to thinking: As more of us do substantial percentages of shopping -- or at least shopping research --online, wouldn't it make sense for retailers to take advantage of wish lists? Baby and wedding registries are popular, but wish list promotions are lagging. Is getting what you want seen as too tacky during the season of giving? Take it from a guy who owns a few dozen sweaters, getting what you really want is better for everyone.

Amazon, Walmart and Shop.com provide wish lists, and Yahoo Shopping has the slickest interface for saving gifts to your list while also displaying comparative prices. I didn't see anything similar at Target, Overstock.com, Buy.com. Retailers should market the heck out of wish lists starting in November, and offer an incentive for people to sign up.

I would think that with all of the recommendation features for buying books, music or DVDs, that people would be more comfortable in sharing that type of information. However, rather than having to search by name as you do on many of these sites, the wish list should be referred to by email address, which is inherently unique.

Retailers get valuable information by tracking what a girl (or guy) wants, and here's an idea for a promotion -- after the holidays offer 20 percent off the items on the wish list that people didn't receive as gifts. It could push folks (who may have holiday cash) to buy for themselves.

According to The New York Times TimeWarner is now more interested in partnering with Google or MSN than selling off a piece of the business. This is smart because there would be too many control issues about direction (in Google's case), and too much competition (in MSN's case).

Tightening the relationship with Google is smarter since AOL is already using AdSense. Also, Google's strength is in searching content and wrapping ads around it, and AOL has considerable amounts of unique content to exploit.

AOL finally abandoned the sinking ship of subscriptions from dial-up customers to embrace ad-supported content, so continuing on with Google is a no-brainer. Maximizing AOL in Google's search results (instead of MSN) would be a boon to both companies.

MSN's content properties are too much in competition with AOL for that to work, so don't hold your breath.

Actually the best deal for AOL would probably be Comcast to rejoin the negotiations. Comcast is a natural upgrade path for newbie AOLers, and AOL's content would help Comcast immeasurably in becoming an online publishing entity. But the best deals don't always happen.

The just-released Activision/Nielsen study on advertising in video games says that when product placement is appropriate, gamers actually enjoy being exposed to higher doses of advertisements.

The study also reaffirms what we already knew about getting the message out -- repeat, repeat, repeat, and when you finish that, repeat again. Increasing brand awareness is important, but how do advertisers interject transactions into the games that will increasingly be connected to the Internet?

Gamers won't tolerate anything slowing down the speed of the action, so the best place to connect with potential customers is when they advance to a new level of the game. Let's say you've just completed a mission of Grand Theft Auto: Amsterdam where you saw a dozen Domino's ads, and you are offered $2 off your order if you make an interactive purchase. No need to grab the phone, and since your credit card info is already stored online, pizza nirvana is within your gamepad.

Other similar opportunities would be to buy the 50 Cent t-shirt your player was wearing during Street Hoops, or the copy of the Fantastic4 DVD between rounds of the game.

Players could earn some of the "money" used to buy gear through competitions or by clicking on ads, similar to what Microsoft is doing with Xbox Live.

ShoutWire sincerely likes Digg.com, if you believe the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Today popularity-driven Digg announced it is expanding from covering just tech to include other areas of news as well as someday audio and video.

Now Digg will have even more in common with ShoutWire, a site that launched after Digg and has a similar premise of ranking articles based on reader approval and popularity. Several Digg fans are kvetching that ShoutWire is an unfair ripoff.

While it's not hard to see the similarities in the user interfaces of the two sites, most "new" sites are highly derivative of others, and that trend is probably only going to increase as ideas are hard to patent and websites easy to code. Digg is similar in many ways to Del.icio.us, and both of them can trace their roots to SlashDot and about a thousand other news compilation/commentary sites.

As soon as someone finds a promising niche, the copycats will come out in force and try to do it even better. How long did it take for dozens of legitimate and phantom P2P networks to appear? If companies clearly cross the line in stealing a good idea, the public will likely let them know about it. Also, generating content from user input is only in the beginning stages.

The easy at which similar destinations and services can be cobbled together means that companies looking to lead a category have to react fast to competitors, which should increase the quality of the product for everyone. First mover advantage isn't what it used to be, but throwing stones doesn't make sense. For a good idea to last, it must be backed by continual innovation and dedicated resources.

The folks at ZoomInfo are adding social networking to their people search site. ZoomInfo generates a profile based on publicly available information, and uses that information to link to others who have worked at the same places.

ZoomInfo's guesses at my social network were about one-third accurate as I've never met the majority of my supposed former co-workers. Social networking sites reinforce the importance of maintaining good relations and the advantages of having experience and personal connections. I've had several leads for work from my LinkedIn profile, and it has helped me to say hello to friends from years past.

ZoomInfo collected a fair amount of information about my employment history, although the search algorithm needs some tuning as a Google gives you a more accurate picture of my current projects. ZoomInfo also caches content from pages that have been taken offline years ago. So folks who work in public arenas won't be able to hide from jobs that may have ended badly. This is a plus for prospective employers, but maybe not for individuals.

I'm happy that ZoomInfo doesn't list my phone number or email address even though finding such information isn't difficult. I would bet that algorithms for collecting all of that information is already in the making.

The spread of blogs, social networking and community sites are tightening the bonds of community over large geographic areas, but they are also widening the distinction between the groups of those who do or don't actively participate online.

Everyone reading this is by definition what I call a "Craigslister," someone who gets how the Internet is used to stay steps ahead of people who rely on TV and print for their news and personal and professional growth. While the circle is growing larger, for those outside, it is becoming harder to compete. For example, why should a company seek to hire strangers when a posting on LinkedIn or Friendster can find someone with connections to its universe? It's the 21st century version of the "old boy" network.

While you can find out much about my ideas and experiences online, according to the Google and ZoomInfo, I have many friends and family members who don't exist. We should keep this in mind as we refine our message and assume that the world at large is watching.

In the future, historians may use the Internet Archive to record humanity's evolution based on the cached pages of our generation. As always, what's left out can be as important was what is inside.

Ok, I've officially had it with Expedia. They are a worthless bait and switch company with a stupid jingle. Now I'm not just bad mouthing them because of some shoddy service or I couldn't find the getaway I wanted. It's deeper then mere frustration with their inadequate site they are running a shady business and I have proof of two separate occasions they tried to stick it to me. Well Expedia, you messed with the wrong blogger I'm letting the world (or at least the people that read this blog everyday) know what is up! For the sake of time I will cut to the chase. The first occasion was when I was flying to the left coast to visit a friend of mine. I had booked a flight a month in advance to leave at 7am on Friday, well being the smart traveler that I am, I decided to confirm my flight 2 days prior and make sure nothing had changed. Well what do you know my 7am flight now was 7:30pm which wouldn't put me at my friends till well after midnight and really shortening my vacation time. I decided to call Expedia.scam and figure out what had happened and maybe see if the system had made a mistake. After waiting on hold for 18 minutes and 22 seconds, a nice lady comes on the phone and I briefly explain the situation. After a few minutes of looking it up, she comes back to me and this is how the conversation went:

Expedia Lady: "I'm sorry sir we had to change your flight to the evening flight" Me: "When did this happen and Why?" Expedia Lady: "We needed to do this in order to accommodate other travelers and its in our policy the flights are not guaranteed until the week of the flight" Me: "That doesn't seem right. Can I get back on the earlier flight or cancel my reservation" Expedia Lady: "Sure....[a few minutes later], Ok sir the 7am flight will be an extra $435 how would you like to pay for that?" Me: "With Monopoly money, I shouldn't have to pay for your company's mistake." Expedia Lady: "I'm sorry sir it's company policy" Me [dejected b/c they are messing with my vacation: "Ok, please cancel my reservation and I will go elsewhere." Expedia Lady: "One moment....To cancel your reservation, you will have to pay a cancellation fee of $250, how would you like to pay." Me: "That is insane, the cancellation fee more then the cost of my ticket! (which was $235) Expedia Lady: "Sir, it is company policy since the trip is less then 2 days away."

Frustrated I hung up and ended up calling the airline who worked out the change for $20, which I should have made Expedia pay. What I concluded, was since I got a good deal on the ticket well in advance, the resold it for $200 more at the last minute and tried to scam me. You would think after one horrid experience I would have learned my lesson, but as I was attempting to plan a batchelor party trip for a friend of mine to Las Vegas I thought, 'ok, I'll just go to Expedia.com and check the prices." After some searching around, I found this great package for a price much better then any other site, so I decide to get it. I click on 'book now' and get this screen which says "The Previously quoted price for this package has changed please note the adjusted price shown below." The package price went up a matter for $150 in the 3 seconds it took for me to click on 'book now.' I figured ok maybe it was an error, so I went back and checked other packages to other destinations but I kept getting the same message. Maybe they have just placed a cookie on my computer that says "Scam this guy" but from now on I am sticking with the Gnome from Travelocity, who actually guarantees all their trips EXACTLY as you booked it. If anyone else has had bad experiences with Expedia please let your comments be heard below!

The Wall Street Journal has a piece today about how piracy is likely up because the ratio of iTunes purchases to iPods is going down. This supposes that more people are stealing music, although it could be that the audience is expanding beyond music maniacs to people who are less passionate about buying music.

The article also says more people are likely to be watching downloaded TV shows on their iPods. Anheuser-Busch is shifting more of its ad budget from TV to online, and adding two and two together tells me that there is ample ad money to support increasing consumer demand for watching video content online or through mobile devices.

Now is the time for media companies to cash in by including ads within video streams. When online music piracy first exploded, illegally swapping songs was basically the only way to easily download a track to a hard drive or handheld. While there is still lots of piracy, legimate music downloads are doing quite well.

Video is different in that it is "free" as part of your cable bill, so the ad-supported model works better. Media properties such as CNN and Comedy Central have been much more aggressive in making segments available online, but inexplicably sans ads. We know that the 18 to 34-year-old male audience is what makes advertisers salivate, so who are the primary people downloading The Daily Show?

TiVo is going after this market with its TV to iPod solution, but downloading will always be easier for transferring content. Also, if ads are streamed online, people can't skip them. Google has its video search up and running, but the content is sparse and ad-free (for now).

Moshe pinged me about a new feature in Amazon he discovered today. Moshe wrote a book called The Pebble And The Avalanche and as an author he's obviously interested in how many books he sells so he checks his Amazon stats often. As part of checking them out he discovered this new feature Amazon calls a concordance.

Those in the blogosphere that love using the web as our platform rather than the operating system know this as a tag cloud. How on earth can Amazon so blatantly rip off the blogosphere and not pay any homage, that just ain't right.

Here's Amazon's description of Concordance

"Concordance is an alphabetized list of the most frequently occurring words in a book, excluding common words such as "of" and "it." The font size of a word is proportional to the number of times it occurs in the book. Hover your mouse over a word to see how many times it occurs, or click on a word to see a list of book excerpts containing that word."

You can submit feedback to sitb-feedback@amazon.com and I encourage you to do so... geesh, some people!