Its April Fools early at Think Geek! (Digg)

CNET looks at Youtube & Hollywood (CNET)

Teens go to the library! (To play video games) (MSNBC)

AdJab is reporting that MySpace is cleaning up profiles to aid marketers/advertisers who are otherwise reluctant to showcase their messages in light of some of the content that appears on user profiles. To date, they have removed 200,000 profiles that include “questionable material.” This will be interesting as MySpace will have to balance the content wishes of users and advertisers - especially as other Social Networks decide (or not) to follow suit.

More on the pay per email kerfuffle (Slashdot)

YouTube, E! Team up for a Mashup (Hollywood Insider)

Like a bad dream, Google deletes its own blog (Information Week)

If you haven’t had a chance yet, or someone hasn’t forwarded the link to you yet, check out the “Putting the We the Web” piece in Newsweek, one of the best explanations (with examples) of Web 2.0 I’ve seen for a while, and even better - its understandable for both the Web 2.0heads and those of you who might just be hearing the phrase.

Is eBay a tool for measuring Ad ROI? (Fast Company)

Web 2.0 Reviews/Cateorization…by hand! (Web 2.0 Awards via Digg)

Want the most popular podcasts? Sort by Popularity. (Micro Persuasion)

Google: Music Store or Not? (CNET)

Demonstrating the growing power of social networking sites, Essembly was just created as a non-partisan politically focused networking site. The idea is an interesting one - especially wondering how they plan to keep it non-partisan, depending on who uses it more. Expect more of these “special interest” social networks to keep a-popping as companies realize that not everyone wants to join a one-stop shopping “general” social network, such as MySpace, Friendster and their ilk.

Ever wonder how to pick your horses for the Kentucky Derby with better accuracy?  Well now you can – a brand new digital database launched by the Lousiville, Kentucky Courier Journal has facts and history on more than 400 horses eligible for the Triple Crown.  Secretariat is rolling over in his grave!

Facebook, the trendy college social networking site, is on the block for $2 billion, according to Business Week, while passing on a $750 million offer. “I think they should have taken the $750 million,” says Om Malik. Why? Well, Facebook’s stats “are stagnating like my new year resolution to lose 50 pounds” and “the company is considering opening up its network to the non-core audience,” which would dilute brand.

When researchers from the Michigan and Harvard did fMRI imaging tests on subjects to see how they would respond to branding suggestions that would apply positive personality traits to things like hamburgers and airlines, they didn’t. People only responded to personality traits assigned to people. “Advertisers should keep in mind that when they use personality terms for a product—reliable, trustworthy, cheerful—consumers are not associating those purely human qualities to the products in question.” So, what to do? “It could be that associating an actual person with a brand is the only way to get those human characteristics to stick.”  Via Seed Magazine, AdPulp, and Consumerist.

CNET showcases ten years of Palm handhelds (ahhh…memories) (CNET)

36 million users watching video by 2009? (Mediaweek via Jaffe Juice)

Alert Bear - An interesting RSS Reader (Digg)

(Edited because we clearly don’t know what day it is….)

An article in WSJ came across the old inbox a few days ago, highlighting a new product from BigChampage, called BCDash which “will bring together data from partners including Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, Yahoo Inc.’s Yahoo Music, Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes, as well as traditional retailers with online stores such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. also incorporate estimates of illegal file sharing activity for specific titles. ”

In the age of file sharing and downloading, as well as the multitude of digital download options (of the legal variety) this sounds like an excellent idea. Have to wonder, though, how the estimates are estimated, as well as which illegal file swap services they’re referring to.

Are personal media portals the future?  According to San Francisco’s Plum, which is releasing the beta format of this very service later this week, they just might be.  The service’s basic concept is that it not only allows you to “mash” your desktop favorites (be it word documents, e-mails, music, etc.) with the interesting items you find online in one place, but it also allows you to share that mixture of mediums with your friends and family.  Think of it as a working scrapbook of your life – all the information and items that you want to remember/keep tabs on, in one place.  Or alternatively, choose a subject, passion, or upcoming event, such as a wedding, and use the plum page as a repository of knowledge and fodder for planning for the future.  Like personal blogs, the success of this concept depends heavily on individual’s commitment and lasting interest in building their “plum page” over time…whether that will come to pass remains to be seen.

Cell phones, iPods, IM…Oh My!  Time’s cover story delves into the teens of Generation M(ulti-task).

Nielsen to measure Computer TV watching (AdJab)

iTunes sorts podcasts by popularity (Micro Persuasion)

“The new widescreen [Apple iPod], which will be released as soon as April, will have Bluetooth headsets,” according to MacNN and Lost Remote.

According to arecnt article in AdAdge, the best-performing marketing firms put less weight on the MBA and more resources into “attendance at industry conferences and seminars, involvement in industry associations and peer-share groups, internal training groups, formal mentoring programs and graduate-level seminars.”

Hollywood Reporter’s analysis of the upstart internet phenom offers these interesting tidbits:

• YouTube currently attracts two times Yahoo! Video’s traffic and more than x3 that of Google Video and AOL Video.
• Keep an eye out for potential competitors vids.myspace.com, ifilm.com, and NBC’s latest purchase, iVillage.

YouTube is getting a lot of attention this week, as it is also the featured interview/focus of this weeks Inside the Net, in the form of an interview with o-founder and CTO, Steve Chen.

Tough Times for TV Tracking (Wired)

Podcasting: Not a “Flash in the Pan?” (Adverblog)

Larger Screen Video iPod? (CNet)

Selling eyeballs is no longer good enough for advertisers, who want more science and less voodoo in their metrics. “Advertisers and agencies are progressing far beyond the standard arithmetic of counting clicks and page views. They’re tracking the to-and-froing of the mouse on Web pages, and they’re finding new ways to group shoppers by age, Zip Code, and reading habits,” according to Business Week via Slashdot.

Tired of watching TV shows on your actual TV or video iPod? There are two new options:

• A new service from AOL called In2TV – a free online on-demand classic TV service. With great video quality and a range of 30 different shows guaranteed to bring out the nostalgic in you (Sisters, Eight is Enough, Welcome Back Kotter, Growing Pains, Lois and Clark, and other TV shows from your childhood)

• If you don’t mind a bit of delayed gratification, ABC is planning to test the idea of streaming episodes of its shows 8 hours after they air in April. No details yet as to which shows would be included, but if this venture is successful, it would have significant implications for current middle-man iTunes. (Of course if you are like those of us at New Media Sense, you might just watch the stream, then buy the episode for iTunes to watch later, and then buy the DVD set when its out. But we’re completists.)

Both options add a new layer of intrigue to the process of figuring out how TV and the internet will continue to interact…but to find out how if they’ll have a long term impact, its still up in the air.

With Windows Live Expo’s free, local classified ads and the capability to use MSN’s messaging, mapping and blogging services to help facilitate the process of selling, does CraigsList have a true competitor? Or will people stay with what they know? (NY Times)

NBC plans to capitalize on the online popularity of TV show “The Office” this summer with 10 new “webisodes” – can we wait that long to see Dwight in his summer best? For those of you who remember webisodes back in “the day” (by which we mean “1998″) its great to see a tie in with a popular show.

IBM says the “next big thing” isn’t happin’ again (CNET)

Jaffe’s ‘A World Without Advertising’ available online (Jaffe Juice)

As CBS prepares to broadcast March Madness games for free online, Techdirt reports that CBS has already booked ads worth more than revenues generated from past subscription based systems.  Will this likely be the model for other online media providers such as bloggers and podcasters as well?