Google Phone announcement coming September 23rd!

According to the New York Times Bits Blog, Google and T-Mobile are planning to unveil the first phone for the Google Android platform on September 23rd (Dear blogosphere: mark your calendars, prep your blogs, get ready to rant) which is being built by HTC (who?) rumored to be called "Dream" according to Wikipedia (whatever that means). Given the fervor and grandness associated with Steve Jobs' events this will undoubtedly be an underwhelming affair. But all press and blog coverage aside, it could be pretty cool since the very idea of the Open Handset Alliance is very cool and (hopefully) there should be a few features that illustrate what this concept is capable of. Given the number of cool iPhone apps that integrate with Google Maps alone, there is no excuse for Google to not a have a few game changers up its sleeve (i.e. apps that integrate with Earth, Sketchup, Analytics, AdSense, etc.)

Last Week in Digital Media

Late last week the Association of National Advertisers sent the U.S. Dep’t of Justice a letter outlining its objections to the pending Google/Yahoo search agreement.

Two separate news items this week both point to the shifting relationships in traditional publishing. First, The Star Ledger (Newark, NJ) went to press on Wednesday with ZERO stories from the Associated Press. This may be the first indicator of how publishers may react when the AP’s recently announced new rates go into effect next year. In related news, online news site Politico has introduced a reverse-syndication model where THEY WILL PAY for publishers to run their ad-supported stories. (Wired article)

Seth McFarlane (The Family Guy) launched his “Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy” on the new Google Content network on Wednesday.

Also in Google news, they’ve signed a deal with NBC Universal to begin brokering some spot TV ads on NBCU cable networks including Sci-Fi, Oxygen, and MSNBC. It’s Google’s first partnership with the one of the networks in its quest to extend its online ad empire into television. (AP story)

In other NBCU news, they’ve finally kissed and made up with Apple. NBCU shows will be coming back to iTunes this week. The fight was over price control. They’ve settled on $2.99 for HD shows, $1.99 for non-HD (the normal iTunes price), and $0.99 or free for old and classic television shows (a win for NBCU). (Adweek article)

In other Apple news, at their “Let’s Rock” conference this week Steve Jobs unveiled iTunes 8, the first major update to the popular program in awhile. The big new feature is Genius, which has two aspects to it, both of which are accomplished using special intuitive algorithms. If you click on a song in your library the Genius Sidebar will display songs in the iTunes store that are similar to it. If you highlight a song and then click the Genius button it will create a playlist of other songs in your library that complement it well. This is very similar to popular social music services like Pandora and Last.fm. (Fuller explanation available on Lifehacker)

The new Michael Moore film “Slacker Uprising” will be distributed as a free download on September 23 on the blip.tv website. (dedicated site)

Family friendly ION Television unveiled a new rebranding campaign with the tagline “positively entertaining” (Press release on Futon Critic)

P2P video pioneers Joost, from the creators of Skype and Kazaa, are pulling the plug on their desktop client software in favor of a browser based plug-in. I'm sad to see it go, in spite of having some great content, it never offered the quality and CONSISTENCY in the end user experience that you need if you're going compete with regular television for eyeballs.

Old Facebook has been phased out altogether. 30 million of folks had already switched over to the New Facebook that’s been available for testing for a few weeks now. Which is, in my opinion, vastly superior due to the way it integrates applications.

LonelyGirl15 is everywhere! Jessica Rose (aka LG15) is the star of two new high profile web video series. The first, “Sorority Fever,” from the creators of “Prom Queen” is now on TheWB.com and other sites including MySpaceTV. The second, “Hooking Up,” isn’t finished yet, but it’s already notable for being HBO’s first attempt at doing an original series for the web platform. (HBO Lab blog post teaser)

AT&T and Verizon both released social networking platforms for mobile devices that integrate with MySpace and a few other lesser known social sites. I know you can post to Twitter and Facebook among others but I'm unsure if it's any different than just navigating these sites with a mobile browser. I'd love to pass judgement on this one as lame, but don't have enough info yet.