Nabbit is an application that answers your questions about the songs playing on the radio, in real time. Just grab the application for your phone, add your local stations to your Nabbit Web page, and start getting the information you want from artist and title to lyrics in just a few clicks.

To Nabb a song from the radio using your phone, just text Nabb and include the call letters of the station you are listening to. Nabb will fetch the song information for you and deliver it to your account.  You can also use Jott to Nabb music, or the mobile site at m.nabbit.com. 

As you Nabb tunes from the radio, the information is sent to your MyNabbs page on the Nabbit site. Once it is in your account, you can grab the song itself from a variety of music stores like iTunes, Amazon or Napster, or get the lyrics and album art from a variety of online sources.

Nabbit’s new Facebook application makes your Nabbs more social. The application lets you see what other people in your circle have Nabbed lately, and interact with their music as you would your own, including being able to buy songs from their Nabbs as well as your own.

Nabbit is a free service. You are only charged if you choose to buy a song, or if you choose to get text notifications, in which case you would be charged by your mobile provider according to your texting plan.

My favorite aspect of this is being able to finally do on my Windows Mobile smart phone what iPhone users have been doing for months - grab song info from thin air, right as it is playing. It is a lot of fun, and has worked flawlessly for me since I started using it. Signing up was a breeze, taking only a few minutes, and the service was working on my phone right away. I highly recommend this as a way to handle those “Who sings this?!” moments we all have.

According to the latest government data, China now has 253 million internet users, due to recent sharp growth - 56 percent from last year. The inevitable has happened: China now has more internet users than the USA, which is at 223.1 million with 71% online penetration. The fact that the Chinese government is exercising very strict control and censorship over internet use has immensely slowed down the growth of internet use in this country, but when you’ve got a population of over 1.3 billion, even a relatively small fraction of it is enough to become a global leader.

Yes, the really amazing thing is the fact that the online penetration is China is mere 19.1 percent, way, way lower than the USA and most European countries. Financial facts are even more revealing: total revenues for all of China’s internet companies was $5.9 billion in 2007 while in the U.S. online advertising revenues alone in that same year were $21.2 billion. For companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other giants, this means two words: untapped potential.

Research firm BDA China Ltd. estimates that China’s online population will keep growing by 18 percent annually - a modest estimation, considering that this growth was 56% this year - and reach 490 million by 2012. The US online market suddenly seems small in comparison. Due to strict Chinese government regulation of the internet, financially the Chinese market will not catch up as fast as it could, but with a little (inevitable) westernization and a little globalization it’ll get there, and every online firm will want a slice of the pie. This one growing market might be more important than most other world’s markets put together.

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Source:Mashable!

I know there’s a good portion of you that are going to instantly groan at the headline, either because it’s a territory that’s been hashed out a number of times from a number of different angles or because you’re one of those folks who simply doesn’t believe there are such thing as “killer” technology (I’ve had that conversation with a few folks recently).

But Duncan Riley put out an interesting, if not provocative, editorial this evening entitled “Television will be the first traditional media medium to fall.”  Personally, I have always felt that radio would be the first to falter, though in a neck-and-neck race with newsprint, but Duncan Riley puts some new stats to work in support the prediction today:

The television switch off is real. In the United States, 2.5 million viewers switched off in the spring on 2008 compared to the same time in 2006. Statistically this is only a small percentage of the overall viewing audience, but among those still watching television, the amount of television they watch each day is declining.

The decline in television viewing is stronger among younger statistical groups. In Europe, a 2005 study from the European Interactive Advertising Association found almost half of 15- to 24-year-olds are watching less TV in favor of browsing the web. A study reported in The Guardian in 2007 headlined with “Young networkers turn off TV and log on to the web.” The television switch off in the United States among younger people has seen the average age of a TV viewer increase to 50.

The stats are compelling, and certainly point to an uncertain future for Old Media television, particularly in the face of the ever increasing volume of studies showing that pretty soon we’ll be watching video online more than we’ll be sleeping. Duncan goes on to say that while newsprint and radio have some harrowing times ahead of them, they’ll survive. At least, for now.

I’m not sure that I agree that TV is the first to go, though. Certainly Duncan makes a compelling case, and I’m not one of those folks who thinks new technology incapable of killing old technology (you certainly don’t see a lot of eight-tracks for sale these days, and photograph developing is quickly becoming a thing of the past). But we’re seeing a lot more rapid detioration taking place in the music and radio business than we’re seeing even in newspaper and television. It’s an interesting deathrace between the industries, and it’s difficult to call a ‘winner’ to the finish line.

Newspaper death watch.

For instance, newspaper decline is largely financial in nature.  Certainly, when you’re talking about business, that’s the most important factor to measure a media type’s life span. Is that what we’re really talking about here, though? The death of the media type or the changing of the guard in terms of the dominant companies behind them. In either event, newsprint and text delivery of news is increasingly being dominated by online blogs and news portals. Circulation may be technically up, but revenues for the companies that resist the transition to online delivery are most decidedly down.

Wise newspaper publications are managing some sort of a transition to an online revenue, but most companies that have their base in serialized news in the printed form still have problems adjusting to the new formats that we in the blogging business take for granted.

Duncan is very positive that newspapers will always go the distance because of the need for quality journalism.  Unfortunately (at least for the newspaper industry) I don’t see this as a particularly convincing argument.  Quality journalism can and does take place outside of newsprint, and for a much greater profit. Some traditional text journalism outfits may realize this and make the transition.  Most won’t.

Disclosure: I may be particularly negative towards newspaper futures due to the fact that in a previous life I consulted for several newspapers in their New Media efforts. In my experience they’re generally not a very forward thinking bunch.

TV death and destruction.

As I said, Duncan makes a compelling point for the impending doom of television, and I’d go even further than he in my prognostications of doom for the media type. Again, like I said regarding the newspaper business, when you’re talking about the death of a media, you’re potentially talking about two things: either the media type itself or the industries behind that media production.

In this situation I think it’s silly to say we’ll stop watching video in our livingrooms on television sets.  Where the video that plays on those sets comes from is very likely to change very soon. Just yesterday I talked about a very clear path for Netflix and Roku to make a play for the livingroom very soon, but they’re obviously not the only ones competing for eyeballs.  TiVo, Apple, and a cadre of other set-top device manufacturers are working on taking real-estate in your entertainment center.

Traditional television has something that no set-top box solution has tackled or mastered yet (aside from coverage of live sporting events), and I’ve talked about it in the past here in my editorials on the subject: the “veg-factor.”

To illustrate the veg-factor, think about the type of media consumption you do in the morning, while you’re getting the kids ready for school, or fixing breakfast in the morning while you’re getting ready for work. Morning show format news-ish programs are designed for this low-engagement, veg-factor consumption. They’re, in large part, designed to be background noise that delivers some entertainment and utility to your morning.

Likewise, in the evening, you come home from work, you switch on the TV and catch the local news or a Seinfeld re-run, and leave the TV on through Wheel of Fortune or whatever reality program du jour is on this season. Most people won’t even touch the remote until prime-time starts. That’s the veg-factor in action.

Very simply, no one is doing this for the set-top box experience. Until there is a one-to-one equivalent for this, you won’t see a complete replacement for television.

Radio apocalypse.

The radio business has been even more dominated in recent years by mega-conglomorates and mergers. With this has come the ‘Clearchannel approach,’ that has driven almost all radio towards a formula for profit. Anecdotally, this was hashed out recently in the comments of an editorial I recently wrote about the impending doom for radio at the hands of the iPhone’s on demand music applications. Sean and I talked about this the other day, and the argument is compelling that radio is doing a decent job of killing itself, and requires no new technology to hasten its death.

But the fact remains that new technologies like smartphones and other pocket devices coupled with the impending ubiquity of wireless Internet access makes things look pretty bleak.

I say that, and I can almost hear Steven Hodson’s voice cracking as he crankily reminds me that impending ubiquity of access is anything but certain (most likely because he reminds me once a week on Elite Tech News). He makes a compelling case for it, but recent news like the coming embedded “Internet Chips” from Intel as VentureBeat reported on the other day makes me think otherwise.

Here’s the thing that really makes radio’s future look particularly bad compared to the rest - the record labels.  Talk radio is very ably making the transition to podcasting and other forms of online audio entertainment media types, but the record labels have very famously dug in their heels and made it next to impossible for broadcasters to adapt their business models for the online environment using popular music.

Given that, it isn’t surprising to see radio clinging the hardest to their dying business models. I predicted back in December that we’d see an end to at least one major record label this year, and I stick by that assessment. Given that the mainstream record labels are so integral to traditional radio’s survival (and their demise is key to online radio’s ascendence), I think it’s now more than ever we should be looking to traditional radio as the first to die off.

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Choosing a radio station was once a right of passage for the American adolescence. It was what bound you to your friends, disassociated you from your parents and attracted to you whatever partner had the misfortune to have you. Regional in range, determined by frequency, traditional radio was completely national in scope, cities to suburbs, Natick to Nashville. And then, like with the overnight successes the medium helped popularize, everything seemed to decline.

Traditional radio has been in a steady fall for nearly a decade. While it still remains a 21 billion dollar industry, the time spent listening to radio has fallen somewhere to the tune of 8 percent since 2000, according to Arbitron, a firm that measure radio audiences. This steady drop in listenership has forced terrestrial radio stations to program music that can appeal to the broadest of audiences, disenfranchising both music fans and emerging artists, and helping to foster the growth of satellite and Internet radio.

“Internet radio has redrawn the whole radio landscape,” said Tim Westergren, a founder of Pandora, a leading Internet radio company. “It provides a more fulfilling radio experience and a mass promotion for artists being shut out of terrestrial radio.”

The metrics are in agreement with Westergren, Internet radio captures 33 million listeners per week, according to Arbitron, and nearly 15 % of 18 to 49 year olds tune in to Internet radio on a weekly basis. Internet radio companies, such as Pandora, Last.fm and Slacker offer a personalized radio experience which gives its listeners access to a greater variety of music and enhanced control over the music being delivered to them. The listening experience is now being offered portably, with Slacker’s offering a for-sale portable player and Pandora delivering an iPhone application.

Internet radio might be an even greater bonanza for the working artist. “For bands that have no shot at traditional radio”, says radio expert Kurt Hanson, “it is one way they can expose their music to fans.” Pandora is home to 60,000 artists, 70% of which aren’t affiliated with a major label. “While some bands are still holding out for that elusive deal,” says Joanna Ifrah, a former artist and repertoire scout for Columbia and Sony records, “Many more emerging bands are working their audience, working their Myspace pages, betting on themselves and getting paid.”

Artists are working comfortably and profitably outside of major labels, getting airtime through Internet and satellite radio, building audiences through social networks, and further being able to monetize themselves through sites such as Los Angeles based startup True Anthem. However, major labels are pushing back by influencing Soundexchange to refuse to renegotiate royalty rates agreed upon last year that could potentially bankrupt the Internet radio industry.

While the numbers can be complicated, it comes down to simple metrics; a now profitable Internet radio site will pay royalty rates that exceed total revenue if the current rates negotiated by Soundexchange are upheld. A company like Pandora, which is paying $750,000 per month to Soundexchange under the current rates, would go out of business under the new rates which increase per year retroactively going back to 2006. (Satellites and cable radio settled for 7.5 percent of revenue with Soundexchange). The idea that Internet radio has to pay any royalty rates, while fair to the artists, legally speaking, is laughable.

Traditional radio doesn’t pay a dime in royalty rates because it is considered promotional. Has there been a greater promotional tool for an artist since the invention of the barker than the Internet? Even with the 50% cut that the artist receive from Soundexchange, for the working musician, according to Hanson, Internet radio is for more valuable developing a fan base than the “single digit cut they get from royalties.” If these rates are enforced and companies like Pandora go out of business, bands that don’t fit in the broad world of terrestrial radio will have a far more difficult time building a fan base and will lose the revenue stream that is Internet radio.

While the negotiations between Internet radio and Soundexchange look grim, companies like Pandora aren’t ready to lower the antennae on Internet radio just yet.

“We are going to plow ahead until we reach a reasonable settlement,” said Westergren.

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DETROIT - Coming soon to a minivan near you: Satellite television. DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group on Thursday announced limited satellite TV service for its 2008 Dodge and Chrysler minivans and several other models, continuing its plan to turn the family cruiser into a living room on wheels.

The company, which invented the minivan, is teaming with Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. to bring three channels — Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network — to the next generation of minivans, as well as the 2008 Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger, Dodge Magnum, Jeep Commander and Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Chrysler said it has the channels exclusively through the 2008 model year, after which Sirius can offer it to other partners.
The feature comes with a price tag, though. It costs $470 and will be packaged with Chrysler’s rear seat entertainment system and Sirius Satellite Radio. The cost includes the first year of service, after which the TV channels will cost $7 per month, plus the satellite radio fee of $12.95 per month.

It’s possible that in the future, more channels and even full satellite service could become available, but for now, it’s limited by bandwidth allocated to satellite radio, said Frank Klegon, executive vice president of product development for Chrysler.
Sirius, he said, has figured out how to send a limited TV signal within the airwaves allocated to satellite radio. "I think there’s certainly some potential in the future for expansion of additional channels," he said. Klegon also said satellite TV is the latest step in a continuation of information technology moving from home to vehicle.

But Tom Libby, J.D. Power and Associates’ senior director of industry analysis, questioned whether people would be willing to pay for it. His company recently found that the average new vehicle price has passed $28,000. With the initial cost plus the monthly bills, he wonders whether the feature might only appeal to high-end customers.

Still, he said the feature would be attractive for people who travel with children, and it will help Chrysler differentiate its minivans in an extremely competitive market. "Any advantage they can get, they’ll try to use," he said.

Sirius spokesman Patrick Reilly said the new TV service would have no effect on the company’s audio programming. However, he declined to say how many more channels, if any, Sirius would have the capacity to transmit. "We’ve got the three channels we want there," Reilly said. "We’re programming it for the demographic of the back seat, which is children, and in the cars that will carry it." The TV service has been in the works for several years, and Sirius has demonstrated it at trade shows in the past.

Sirius’ satellite radio rival, XM, is exploring backseat video with its automotive partners but has no plans for an announcement, spokesman Chance Patterson said. "As soon as there is a market opportunity, we will take it under consideration," Patterson said.

Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Thomas Eagan said the video should help Sirius grow its subscriber list, but could have the potential of causing a glitch in Sirius’ plans to combine with its rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. Sirius and XM have been blocked from merging under licenses granted to them a decade ago, but the companies argue that there are now many forms of competition for audio entertainment, including MP3 players, Internet radio as well as terrestrial radio. "My concern is that one consequence could be that regulators could define the market more narrowly and conclude that broadcast radio is not a competitor," leading them to block the proposed combination, he said.

Chrysler and Sirius ran a demonstration of the service Thursday morning in New York’s Times Square. In a Dodge Grand Caravan, the TV system easily was able to switch channels, with a slight delay, and delivered good quality sound and pictures. The driver or front-seat passenger can switch between the TV service, Sirius satellite radio’s audio service as well as regular AM and FM radio via a small video screen installed in the dash. That system, which also includes a navigation service and a hard drive for playing music from MP3 files, is called the MyGIG. The vehicle has three screens — two 8-inch screens for the rear-seat passengers, and the smaller screen in the dash.

Having the Sirius TV service installed in the vehicle requires an additional antenna in order to improve reception, and also a separate video tuner in addition to the satellite radio tuner for audio signals. It also works on a screen in the dashboard, but don’t think for a minute that you’ll be able to watch SpongeBob while driving. For safety reasons, the TV channels won’t show up in the front unless the vehicle is in park.

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A computer and an Internet connection may soon be all that are needed for anyone to hear closing arguments in a corruption trial or listen to the testimony of a mob turncoat. The federal judiciary approved a pilot program this week to make free audio recordings of court proceedings available online. Although a court’s participation in the program is voluntary, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the executive committee chairman of the policy-making Judicial Conference, said he expects the system ultimately will be widely used. "I do hope the Judicial Conference efforts will be looked at as an attempt to see if we can make court proceedings more inclusive and transparent to people," Hogan said in an interview.

News organizations and open-government groups applauded the decision, which will allow the files to be played on television and radio and posted on Internet news sites and blogs. At present, recording devices and cameras are prohibited in all federal courtrooms. However, in some high-profile cases the Supreme Court releases audio recordings of oral arguments. Some federal trial courts, such as the one in Philadelphia, sell daily audio recordings of hearings.

The pilot program, set to launch in the next few months, would put those recordings on the court’s electronic records database for download. "It gets the judges accustomed to the idea that electronic coverage can be beneficial," said Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio and Television News Directors Association. "It makes storytelling more accurate and more compelling." Cochran’s organization supports allowing cameras in federal courts, something some Supreme Court justices have adamantly opposed. All states have laws allowing some camera access to courts but, in practice, the policies vary. States such as Florida, for instance, routinely allow them while others such as Minnesota allow them only if all parties consent.

Hogan said the audio pilot program is not a step toward allowing cameras. Although that will be the normal practice someday, Hogan said the movement to open courts to cameras was hurt by the recent Florida case over custody of former Playboy playmate Anna Nicole Smith’s corpse. In that case, Judge Larry Seidlin was accused of showboating for the camera. On live, national television, he discussed everything from his wife to his morning swim, then sobbed as he issued his ruling. "It was not the dignified judicial proceeding you’d expect in a courtroom," Hogan said.

He described the pilot program as a compromise between allowing no recording and turning the court into a set for a TV show. Attorney Nathan Siegel, who represented more than a dozen news organizations last month and won the release of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby’s grand jury tapes, agreed. "As technology becomes more pervasive and access to recorded material becomes more a part of daily life, the courts are moving with the times," Siegel said. Hogan, the chief judge in the Washington, D.C., federal court, made news in the Libby case by creating a media room with a closed-circuit video feed for the trial. He said the response was positive and he received no complaints about the broadcast of the Libby tapes.

With so many high-profile cases, the Washington courthouse is a good testing ground for the audio program, Hogan said. He said he does not yet know how many judges will sign up here or nationwide. He said judges will have discretion over when to turn the recorder off, such as during a FBI informant’s testimony or when a rape victim takes the stand. Ronald Collins, a scholar at the First Amendment Center, said lawyers will haggle over when that’s appropriate. "Inevitably there’s going to be a U.S. attorney who objects on secrecy grounds, a defense counsel who objects on prejudicial grounds or invasion of privacy. There’s going to be a victim who objects," Collins said. "Those determinations will be made on a case-by-case basis but the default position is open."

By MAY WONG, AP Technology Writer

TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition?

Conduit: Conduit is the inventor of the community toolbar concept. Community toolbars are a great new way to engage users and drive loyalty as they put the best of any website directly on the users’ browser. Today’s Web savvy organizations are looking for new ways to connect and engage their users, beyond the boundaries of their Web site.

As an example, Major League Baseball launched a ‘Conduit’ for each team in the league so the fans can stay connected with scores, plays, team information, tickets and breaking news on their favorite team, straight from the browser.

Bottom line, a Conduit community toolbar delivers:

• More Traffic: Drive higher traffic through unprecedented face time, resulting in an average increase of two extra clicks per user, per day
• Brand Presence: Conduit allows publishers to put their brand directly on the user’s browser
• Lower Attrition: Retain customers through engaging content, community chat, contests, and more
• More Revenue per Customer: Monetizing users beyond the boundaries of the Web site. Drive higher spending with more targeted offers and more relevant services delivered via a ‘Conduit’

TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

Conduit: There are several things, but most importantly there are three:

1. Hosted turnkey service approach which eliminates all the challenges of traditional software offerings.

Typical off-the-shelf toolbar building software requires technical resources, constant maintenance staff, and presents issues in regard to user support and security, not to mention their limited component offerings. In the past, these challenges have prevented the majority of smaller websites from building and launching their own branded toolbars.

Conduit dramatically changed the model from traditional software to a hosted, global, turnkey service that is very easy to use, and requires no maintenance or technical skills. This has resulted in Conduit’s community toolbars exploding in less than 18 months to over 5 million users in 112 countries, 125k publishers in 22 languages, and over 30,000 downloads a day. For more details, see our recent milestone news release here.

2. Conduit’s business model is powered by search, which enables us to be completely free to the publisher and yet empower the toolbar with the most required functionality – search.

Conduit monetizes user searches via its Google search partnership, thereby delivering superior user experience despite being a free service for organizations.

3. Conduit supports its customers with a full suite of solutions that walks the user through the entire toolbar creation process:

• Building (Conduit provides easy to use Toolbar Wizards that make building a snap)
• Promotion (Pre-made templates for toolbar promotion include banners and download pages)
• Maintenance (Changes made to the toolbar in the hosted environment are automatically reflected in the toolbar field)
• Analysis (Reports to help optimize the solution for maximum value to publishers and users)

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

Conduit: Conduit is free, hosted, extremely easy-to-use, completely customizable, ready in minutes, guaranteed to be secure, and available in 22 languages. The Toolbar Wizard is easy to use tool for any publisher, despite their level of programming expertise.

There are several key features that have contributed to our explosive adoption:

• Pre-defined components including customizable menus, news ticker, RSS reader, radio, chatroom, NEW video window, email notifier, weather button, and more
• Open environment that allows publishers to develop their own custom components using standard web development technologies
• A set of customizable search tools, powered by Google
• Cross-platform solution enabling publishers to provide instant availability in IE & Firefox
• Pre-packaged marketing templates for deployment and promotion
• Analytics and reports for management of the community toolbar
• Hosted solution enables seamless and dynamic updates of content, components, and updates
• 24/7 free support for publishers and users via email
• Fully localized by supporting 22 languages for the toolbar and its peripheral pages

TechAddress: Who is your target customer or audience?

Conduit: Any webs