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It’s official: Oprah Winfrey will end her famous talk show in 2011. The much speculated rumor was made official yesterday and will come at the end of next year as Oprah readies the new OWN channel for launch. While The Oprah Winfrey Show will know longer air on hundreds of stations via syndication, it will not begin a new on the OWN channel. Instead, Winfrey is set to produce new programs for OWN.

Twitter is set to make premium accounts available by the end of 2009. According to Biz Stone, Twitter will sell businesses “features that allows them to become better at Twitter, show them some of the analytics.” Premium users will most likely get a premium analytics service, along with other customized features it hopes will help other business take advantage of its network without spoiling it.

New Flip video cameras will reportedly come with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities. The new feature will allow Flip video cameras to wirelessly upload videos straight to streaming video sites like YouTube. Social network connectivity and the ability to wirelessly upload footage is already popular with users, exemplified by the popular iPhone 3GS, which can also send videos directly to YouTube.

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The music industry video portal Vevo will launch December 8th. The site, associated with both Sony and Universal, uses YouTube’s platform to host and stream high quality, official music videos from artists. Vevo’s goal is to reclaim the “premium luster” of music videos, which are often low quality bootlegs on video networks.

Microsoft’s new Azure cloud system will be available to customers on New Year’s Day 2010. The new service, which offers customers cloud storage systems and applications, has been in beta testing for a year. Azure will be free to registered users for January, and will begin charging customers for access in February.

Apparently Sony’s new Daily Edition Reader is so popular the company is not sure it will be able to ship all orders before the Holidays. The eReader was expected to begin shipping December 18th, however, Sony could not guarantee the Daily Edition Reader to arrive at Christmas for all customers. The Daily Edition Reader is competing against Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle this year, as the eReader market expands.

While wireless providers like AT&T plan to sell netbooks in the US, don’t look for them be be free. While providers offer netbooks for very little to free with a service plan in Europe, AT&T clearly stated they will not give away netbooks on contract. Unfortunately for customers, netbooks will not be treated like cell phones, often laden with rebates, rather like the flat retail price.

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The new ShopSavvy app for the iPhone allows shoppers to photograph bar codes and identify them. ShopSavvy not only identifies the item, but provides information on the product, while locating other retailers and prices. The app could save you a lot of money, and cost brick and mortar retailers even more.

Open University, a free virtual college, is making its mark on iTunes. The college, which hosts classes and lectures available for download on iTunes for free, recently surpassed the ten million downloads mark. Open University, as well as Stanford, M.I.T and other top name universities, make courses available on iTunes for free.

XBox Live is continuing push its social network connectivity by bringing Facebook and Twitter to the XBox 360. The new capabilities, along with access to last.fm, are now available on the system. After Microsoft announced the news, Sony unveiled an update which would make Facebook and Twitter available on the PS3.

MySpace is reportedly close to acquiring streaming service imeem. The deal would give MySpace a major claim to the streaming music market. The potential deal could come as MySpace mulls whether or not to begin charging users to listen to music on the network.

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Time Warner’s long awaited spinoff of AOL will happen December 9th. The spin off estimates that AOL is worth approximately $3.4 billion, 1/11th of Time Warner’s total worth. The $3.4 billion valuation is two billion less than the company was estimated to be worth in July.

A British report notes that phony Canadian pharmacists are selling counterfeit swine flu drugs online. The con artists, which are suspected to be Russian mobsters, are making millions on the fake transactions. The group behind the survey is telling prospective customers to avoid purchasing H1N1 or Swine Flu drugs online, especially Tamiflu.

A new study by the American Heart Association believes some games on Nintendo’s Wii may actually be making users healthier. The study specifically sites the Wii sports and Wii fit series, saying that users who play increase energy levels by taking part in “moderate intensity exercise.” While the gaming console does not provide any direct health benefit, Motohiko Miyachi, who led the study, said it “may contribute to prevention of cardiovascular diseases.”

YouTube and Univision have struck a deal that will stream long and short form content from Univision on the video network. The parties believe the deal will increase the growing number of hispanic’s streaming video online, a demographic which grew over 80% last year. Viewers can expect programming from all three of Univision’s networks to hit YouTube in the next three months.

1/25/2010
NATPE
State of the Digital Union
Shelly Palmer - Speaker
(Las Vegas, NV)

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YouTube is updating its site to make way for 1080p HD. The online video destination will make the update live this week, with YouTube working on re-encoding the current set of 720p HD videos to the new format. The upgrade is the latest attempt from YouTube to increase the quality of its videos and bolster the strength of its network.

Google is set to bring its Chrome operating system to market this week. The free OS is expected to make its biggest impact on the netbook market, as Google has worked with netbook manufacturers like Acer and ASUS on developing the operating system. While the release will likely be limited, Google hopes to have a version of the Chrome OS available for download on all computers shortly.

Dell is preparing for its foray into the smartphone business. The computer manufacturer announced that it will begin selling its first smartphone offerings in China and Brazil at the end of the month. The Google Android powered phone, dubbed the Mini 3, is expected to be available in 2010 in the US through a deal with AT&T.

After much speculation, Michael Arrington is now promising that the CrunchPad device is still in production and will make a major announcement soon. Arrington said the device, which could be powered by the new Google Chrome operating system, will retail for between $300-400.

Almost every email program lets you automatically add a signature to the emails you send. I’m sure you seen all kinds of interesting ones: flowery ones, very dense ones, and the horrifying and aesthetically offensive ones. What should yours look like? Here are a few simple guidelines:

First, every single email you send should have a signature. It should be plain text, so that it will look the same no matter what device or software is used to read it. When I say plain text, I mean just type (for geeks, ASCII text), no pictures, no logos, no html code, nothing but text.

Why? More than half the corporate world uses BlackBerrys to communicate. Depending on the vintage, they handle HTML over a wide range from, very poorly to marginally poorly. The operating word here is “poorly,” so why set up a signature that’s guaranteed to torture a large number of corporate users. Overly ornate signatures will produce highly unexpected, and possibly unreadable, results on a BlackBerry. This is also true for the body copy of the email. Tabs, bullets, any kind of alignment is all thrown out the window and HTML looks like jumbled computer code when it is displayed as text.

Another, and possibly more important, reason to use plain text is the wide range of spam filters that are currently deployed. Many of these filters look at the ratio of text to graphics as a test. If you’re email is already in HTML format, a logo or a combination of logo and your picture may kick your email into the corporate trash.

Like I said, signatures should be simple, complete and in plain text.

What should you include in your email signature? If it’s your personal signature: your name, email and the phone number(s) that are most relevant to your average recipients. Yes, your email address is in the “from” field at the top of the email. And, yes, they can reply to you by simply clicking “reply.” But what if they want to copy your information into a document or the notes field of a database or an address book program? The goal is to make contacting you and storing your information convenient.

If you have a business account, your signature should include all of your contact data. Name, title, company, office address, your email, your phone numbers and the company website. All text and all neatly stacked flush left.

Why include everything? How many times have you wanted to call someone about an email they sent and, because their phone number wasn’t in the email, you had to stop what you were doing to go look it up. Putting all your contact info into your email communication shows a world of respect for the one thing that everyone needs and has way too little of, their time.

One last thing, it is completely OK to leave the line, “Sent from my blackberry” or “Sent from my iPhone” at the bottom of a mobile email. It lets the recipient know that you are answering their email from your mobile device and that may get you a pass on some small typos and spelling errors. However, do everyone a favor and lose the, “Typing with my thumbs” line. It’s the 21st century; everyone types with their thumbs.

Set up some plain text email signatures and use them. It’s the right thing to do. For more help with your digital life, come visit me at shellypalmer.com

Shelly Palmer is the host of "Digital Life with Shelly Palmer," a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world which can be seen on WNBC-TV’s NY Nonstop Tuesdays at 10p Eastern and online, and the host of "MediaBytes," a daily news show that features insightful commentary and a unique insiders take on the biggest stories in technology, media, and entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group, LLC an industry-leading advisory and business development firm and the President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). Mr. Palmer is the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2009, Lake House Press). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information visit www.shellypalmer.com

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