But Saturday's statement from the Obama Administration awakened many broadcast organizations to a strange and, for some, unexplored new question: Is the U.S. truly planning to implement legislation that could shut parts of the Internet off? That's how the Saturday statement truly appeared for some who had not been following the goings-on (such as they are) in the U.S. Congress.

My response may have been a bit surprising, but I tried to be honest: Piracy legislation, particularly with regards to offshore sites, has been a continual focus of debate in Congress since well before Pres. Obama was inaugurated in 2009. The President has always been a supporter of the anti-piracy process, though perhaps not an outspoken one. Saturday's statement had the virtue of not being penned by him, so it enabled the President to continue to stand his ground, while at the same time siding with the rising tide of popular opinion against government measures for disconnecting domain names.

Over on NPR affiliate KPCC Los Angeles, Washington correspondent Kitty Felde was just making herself acquainted with the anti-piracy legislative schedule, only to discover there's now a minimal likelihood that any such legislation will pass both houses in this term. As Southern California Public Radio found itself asking, has the media only now caught up with a runaway freight train of an issue only to find itself in that train's dust?

Web users are likely to see explanations tomorrow, I explained during my appearance on "AirTime with Larry Mantle," from major Web sites that wish to continue their anti-censorship demonstrations. Wikipedia may be the most prominent site to demonstrate how a censored Internet may appear, were the Internet to become subject to American censorship.

However, I explained to Larry's listeners, legal analysis concludes that censorship is not what any of the current anti-piracy legislation is about. Assuming the court order provisions has been left in the current drafts of SOPA and PIPA, they seek to give the Justice Dept. the means to seek a court order to shut off access to sites that apparently violate existing anti-counterfeiting and piracy laws - not violations of "fair use." Prior to the withdrawal of these provisions, the danger as explained to me by technicians, I explained, was that the changes that would be required to the Domain Name System in order to comply with court orders could become exploitable by others, including possibly even foreign governments, with the end effect being perhaps worse than censorship.

KPCC's producers found two listeners for the 20-minute segment, one who stood up as a SOPA opponent, and another who was in favor of some sort of anti-piracy legislation protecting individual artists. The opponent took issue with my statement that we should eventually come to discover that responsibility for the upkeep of the Internet as a market, as well as a delivery service for information, should be distributed among content providers, service providers, and users as well. The listener, calling from West Hollywood, remarked that users should not be expected to foot the bill for more technological anti-piracy measures, since they pay enough for the Internet as it is. It should be up to content producers such as studios and recording companies, he argued, to safeguard they produce effectively, and that the public shouldn't suffer for the industry's technological shortcomings.

My response was to cite Gen. Patton's famous quote about fixed fortifications (artificial constructs to slow down advancing armies on battlefields) as "monuments to the stupidity of man." Any cryptographic or biometric or other technological measure created by the recording or publishing industries, I said, would be at least as permanent as any of the security measures created for Blu-ray Disc - lasting about 18 hours at best, I said, before falling victim to a crack. There is no purely technological solution to the anti-piracy problem in America or the world, I said, just as there is no purely legislative one.

If the player's interface reminds you of Pandora, it's no accident. The team deliberately borrowed from personalized media services like Pandora, Flipboard and Zite when building out the Infinite Player. Its controls are sparse, containing only a few buttons. Among them are a pair of icons for voting stories up and down, much as one would on Pandora. In time, the player learns what you're interested in and plays back content accordingly.

This experience provides more of an opportunity forr what the NPR team calls "distracted listening" - that is, consuming content while doing other things and not necessarily having to make any decisions about it (aside from voting it up or down, if you're so inclined). This is in contrast to the type of "engaged listening" experience that podcasts and audio clips offer.

The player, which launched yesterday, is in beta mode and currently works only in Safari and Chrome. Its functionality is driven by HTML5 and JavaScript, rather than relying on Flash for playback. It doesn't appear to be optimized for the iPad just yet, but it is a brand new feature and presumably the team is working on cross-device compatibility. You can give it a shot here.

Wildly popular public radio show This American Life has released an app for the iPad (iTunes link). The app was built by the Public Radio Exchange, the same organization that built the fabulous Public Radio Player iPhone app two years ago.

How is the iPad app? It's ok. It's certainly worth the $4.99 it costs, if you're a fan. It's a great way to listen to archives of the show. I can't help but be disappointed though, to see that it's read-only. There's no way to discuss the content with other members of the listening community. Can you imagine how great it would be if text or even audio comments could be submitted, enjoyed and maybe voted up or down in an app like this? There's so much potential here to augment the official content with discussion from topic experts and everyday people. Making the app another method of broadcast instead is disappointing. None the less, it's a good app that makes it easy to consume great media.

There's no better way to see Tweets about the Middle East than by following NPR Senior Strategist Andy Carvin. He's curating, verifying when possible and reporting on Tweets from and about the contentious region day and night.

How diverse are the Tweets Carvin is curating? We used the handy web app Needlebase to scrape, analyze and map the Twitter community Carvin is bringing into the streams of his own community of followers and found some interesting data points. He's retweeted 186 distinct Twitter accounts over the last four days alone.

Many more levels and types of analysis are possible and of course locations aren't verified. But for now it's nice to know that the people watching Andy Carvin's Tweet stream (I sure am) are getting a diverse stream of messages with a solid percentage of those sources coming from the region in question.

Thanks for all you do, Andy!

Below: As Carvin adds value on Twitter, his own community grows.

Previous years' winners include Ushahidi, Global Voices, MobileActive, the Public Radio Exchange and of course the MSNBC-acquired hyper-local news site EveryBlock.

The inclusion of an established media leader like Thomas in the Challenge selection process is a nod to the strategic outlook characterizing NPR and Etsy, two substantially innovative online organizations. Thomas led digital media at NPR when the organization launched its first mobile app to rave reviews (including ours). She was responsible for the organization's early adoption of podcasting and for developing its online music efforts. She was named one of the 25 most influential people on the web in 2008 by Business Week. She began her career at Amazon.com and the World Bank and acts as an advisor to four technology startups and the MIT Open Courseware Initiative.

"The disruption the internet can bring to any industry is very painful. NPR is an example of how it can go well," Thomas told ReadWriteWeb today. "Likewise, Etsy is disintermediating galleries and other taste makers. I get jazzed up about the idea of making things more accessible, transparent and in doing so, creating valuable businesses."

Thomas can be found on Twitter here.

Today, National Public Radio (NPR) became the latest media group to join Tumblr, and I spoke with senior strategist Andy Carvin to find out how the organization plans to leverage the quickly growing platform.

"Part of what we do is experiment on different platforms, and it seemed apparent to us that there was a sizable number of NPR fans on Tumblr," he says. "It's less about pageviews and more about engaging a community that enjoys NPR."

Carvin says NPR is taking a very experimental approach to Tumblr in terms of curating content to share, engaging one-on-one with followers and determining how to voice the blog. He adds that he is eager to get feedback from fans, but that there is no "grand plan" for what they intend to accomplish.

Tumblr and the Media

By joining Tumblr, NPR also joins a growing list of traditional media outlets - including Newsweek, Life Magazine and Rolling Stone - attempting to reach fans on the popular service. But why is Tumblr such an attractive new medium for these organizations? Carvin says it's all in the visuals.

"Tumblr is a visual medium. Photos and snippets of quotes really stand out, while Facebook might have a sentence or two in a wall post and thumbnail with a link to a story," he says.

Why not use Posterous? "Who's to say we won't," Carvin says.

He believes Tumblr has attracted a media presence because of the ease at which a variety of media can be quickly presented on a site. It's this established media presence that led NPR to chose Tumblr over Posterous, at least for now.

"It's important to pick and choose your battles. It's easy to overextend yourself on every single platform rather than figure out sweet spots," he says. "We recognize that there's a large group of people online that love what we do [...] It's important for us to stay engaged with these folks at a personal level and not just a 50,000 foot level."

According to a blog post today by NPR Director of Application Development Daniel Jacobson, the API delivered more than 1.1 billion stories last month, and almost 5 billion since tracking began six months ago.

According to Jacobson, "The big jump in total API requests from July to August are due to the launch of many new products in July. Among them are the new NPR.org, the NPR.org Flash Player, the NPR News iPhone app, WBUR's new web site, and Minnesota Public Radio's new site."

Next, we see the number of stories delivered, which turns out to be an equally impressive chart.

NPR's API allows outside parties to have access to audio content dating back to 1995, consisting of more than 250,000 stories in more than 5,000 different aggregations. The results are returned in a number of formats, from RSS, MediaRSS, JSON and Atom to NPRML, a specialized format that accounts for 86% of content distribution. Jacobson notes, however, that an overwhelming majority of content delivered by NPR's API is being sent to affiliated sites and stations.

While some media companies, such as News Corp, attempt to block their content from distribution, the NPR API seems to be making access to its content widespread. Jacobson includes a slideshow at the end of his post that shows just how many places and ways NPR content is being accessed as a result of its API.

To use NPR content via API, all you need to do is register with NPR and agree to its terms. The company says that "we want you to use, enjoy and share the journalism and programming produced by NPR and participating NPR member stations, but it is also important to respect the rights and integrity of the work and of the dedicated people who created it."

Folksy as it may sound, our history is driven not strictly by the polished content produced by a class of citizens with a slew of degrees and many years of training - a surprisingly amount has been generated in a largely unfiltered form by the masses.

Necessity meant that user-generated content was packaged and presented through very structured channels. That's not that different from today, where the stuff that we produce is presented through some slick content management system on websites like Blogger or Square Space or through podcatching software like iTunes.

Talk Radio

Click and Clack (Tom and Ray) are two brothers from the very funny and very informative nationally syndicated NPR call-in show, "Car Talk." Since the 1980s, these guys have done nothing but take calls from real life people who are having trouble with their cars, and then attempt to give good advice and be funny at the same time. It works. While the actual talking is done by these two grease monkeys the fodder is all provided by real people who call in with real automotive woes.

Dear Abby

Think that newspapers are being killed by user-generated content? Well it's about time we returned the favor since so many advice columnists made a name for themselves using our pitiful problems to advance their fame, dispense advice, sell a few newspapers and make some dough to boot.

One of the most famous and recognizable names in the advice column game was started in 1956 by one Pauline Phillips using the pen name Abigail van Buren or Dear Abby to dispense her "uncommon common sense". Without the contribution of hundreds of thousands of users over the years, Dear Abby and her twin sister, Eppie Lederer (a.k.a Anne Landers), would never been able to produce such a voluminous supply of folksy advice.

America's Funniest Home Videos

With the invention of the hand-held Super8 film camera and the video tape recorder, average people could tape themselves doing all sorts of silly, stupid, dangerous, profound or mundane things. Sometime in the late 1980s, television producers saw a goldmine in the stockpile of footage the average American had been recording for more than two decades.

In closest precursor to YouTube that anyone can probably point to, AFV consisted of the serendipitous slapstick of the average American man and beast. From sledding into the side of a house to a cake in the face, American viewers are still not tired of this shows format even though much more of the same can be found on YouTube every day.

Fanzines

Of course, the geeks rule in this very early form of user-generated content. In the 1930s, amateur magazines were produced by science fiction fans as a way to connect with other like-minded people. This became a massive network of people who produced, collected, commented and held conversations about science fiction. Some of the early fanzine publications even consisted entirely of letters sent in by subscribers - a publication with a cool sort of self-generating content paradox!

The preeminent SciFi convention, Worldcon, even instituted a best Best Fan Writer and Best Fan Artist category in the mid fifties to recognize the best of fan made content. Technological innovations like mimeograph and photocopy machines allowed for faster, quicker reproduction of fanzines to a global audience but unfortunately it wasn't until bulletin board newsgroups and blogging technologies came about until that information could be transmitted faster than the postal system allowed.

Late-Night Television

David Letterman had some wild antics by decidedly non-professional persons and animals with the Stupid Human Tricks and Stupid Pet Tricks segments on his late night show.

Along with fellow comedy writer, Merrill Markoe, Letterman hit on success with these two segments that invited the public to showcase their talents (and the talents of their furry friends) on national television. There were others who followed the David Letterman model of plumbing regular people for content to display on big media outlets.

We invite you to enjoy some tex-mex, margaritas and live music with us! Also you'll network with the smart, cool people attending SXSW from ReadWriteWeb, PBS, NPR, Frontline, ITVS and Futurestates. This event is free to attend for all SXSW Interactive or Film badge holders.

Nicole Atkins & The Black Sea

Band of Skulls

SXSW attendees, calendar this event and let everyone know you are coming on Facebook and on Plancast.

When, Where and How to Get There

When: Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 9:00pm until Monday, March 15, 2010 at 1:00am
Where: SXSW, Austin City Limits @ KLRU Studios

Shuttle buses will run throughout the night between the Austin Hilton (5th street entrance) and KLRU.

While I'm willing to admit here that I went to yearbook camp and computer camp as a kid, this one might take the cake as far as camps that don't include S'mores and Kumbaya go.

The organizers hope this was the start of a series of "unconferences" for public media outlets around the country, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Public Media Camp is the latest in a slew of events and projects pushing the public media agenda forward on the Web.

Recently, NPR gathered its executives, including CEO Vivian Schiller, in San Francisco to meet with Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs and funders. The Columbia Journalism Review reported on the conference, called NPR Digital Think In. And the ongoing Engage project at PBS, funded by the Knight Foundation, is creating social media tools for PBS stations and producers, such as a chat series with PBS personalities and a map showcasing projects at stations around the country.

"In many communities, public broadcasters are among the few news outlets that are weathering the financial crisis intact. As more news outlets close due to economic pressures, our public service mission is going to be more important than ever, creating a powerful opportunity to provide accountability journalism at both the local and national level," Carvin says.

Having been a part of many of these projects, I'm excited to see the changes that have happened in the public media sphere online, from the This American Life/Planet Money collaboration taking on a life of its own, to CPB 2008's collection of election projects like Video Your Vote and Twitter VoteReport.

Some of the most exciting projects happening in public media include:

Local Aggregation Sites

The Economy Project at the University of Missouri and Public Media Texas are two new local public media sites that are aggregating stories using blogging software and encouraging public participation in the news conversation at the local level. WBUR's Commonhealth blog covers health care issues in Massachusetts by tapping doctors, lawmakers and citizens to help report. And WNYC's Brian Lehrer show is crowdsourcing "Uncommon Economic Indicators" - from the price of pizza to for-rent signs.

Economy Coverage

Covering the economy is a major focus of public media this year. Station and producer projects are drawing a line between local and national coverage in new ways. EconomyStory.org aims to collect these stories and feature exciting new projects from around the country, and EconomyBeat.org features user-generated content about the economy.

PBS NewsHour's Patchwork Nation map incorporates statistics and stories from 12 types of communities around the country and compares how they are coping with various economic issues.

Facing the Mortgage Crisis asks users to share their experiences in dealing with foreclosure and other recent real-estate woes, as well as provides community resources to help cope. A variety of public stations nationwide are involved in this project at a local level.

NPR's Social Media Guidelines for Reporters

This list, released last week, includes concerns about expressing political views online and how reporters should present themselves on Twitter and Facebook. It's a great starting point for other organizations concerned about similar issues. Carvin says that while NPR reporters are using online tools more and more, it still can be a challenge.

"The one thing I never do is show up and insist that they use a particular tool simply because lots of other people are using it," he says. "People are often resistant to learning new tools simply because they don't seem relevant to them, so you need to figure out with them what may or may not be relevant."

Guest author: Laura Hertzfeld is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. She has worked in public media in several capacities, including her current role as managing editor of EconomyStory.org, a Public Radio Exchange (PRX.org) project aggregating public media coverage of the economy. She previously produced PBS.org's coverage of the 2008 presidential election.

The app was made by a non-profit organization called Public Radio Exchange (PRX). PRX was founded and is run by Jake Shapiro, a man who used to be an associate director at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Shapiro used to produce an NPR radio show with Christopher Lyndon and before that he was one of the first tinkerers with web distribution of music for his band Two Ton Shoe.

Two Ton Shoe didn't find a lot of success in the United States, but thanks to the long tail of the web Shapiro says they somehow found a big fan base in Korea. The band toured there and Korean bands have covered some of their songs. "I'm a Korean rock star," Shapiro says, "and I believe there's a 'Korea' out there for everybody."

About a year ago Shapiro says he called around all the major players in public radio and argued that they had a unique opportunity in the iPhone platform if they could collaborate and create a really strong offering. An organization called American Public Media decided to contribute the work they had done so far on their own iPhone app to Shapiro's project and NPR and Public Radio International agreed to lend their support to what would become the Public Radio Tuner, today renamed the Public Radio Player.

Funding Local Radio on the iPhone

Public Radio Player could facilitate that long tail experience for obscure local public radio content by making it far more available on the iPhone. But PaidContent's Rafat Ali worries that by freeing radio listeners all the more from their local radio station, the Player could sever the loyalty and fund raising connections that keep public radio alive.

To that concern Shapiro has two interesting responses. First, he says that survey data shows most users prefer listening to their local stations on the app, along with a variety of favorites from elsewhere.

Even more interesting is the project's collaboration with Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Doc Searls. Searls is at Harvard's Berkman Center now, developing a framework for what's being called Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) - a customer-based response to the business paradigm of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The VRM project and Shapiro's PRX are developing ways for Public Radio Player users to track what they listen to on the player and make financial contributions to the radio stations they've consumed from the most.

Shapiro says that part of the project faces a major roadblock from Apple. Though Apple introduced in-application payments last month, the feature is only available to paid apps (Public Radio Player is free) and charitable contributions through the iPhone are strictly prohibited. They can't even be talked about, Shapiro says, because Apple doesn't want to deal with the possibility of charity scams, there's tax complications, the platform's standard 30% fee for payments isn't tenable in a non-profit context and Apple has no financial incentive to solve this sticky complex of problems.

For now the app is funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That funding is up for renewal this summer. Shapiro says that a second round of funding would be used to create "showcase apps that would break new ground and create new technology." He says the company is particularly interested in technologies that represent a hybrid of digital and broadcast. "With radio," he says, "there is still a tremendous amount of reach that you don't want to give up on when you move into the digital space."

Fixing the App

That hybrid paradigm is very well represented by the new version of the Public Radio Player. The previous version, called Public Radio Tuner, was one of the most popular free apps in the iPhone store but it didn't really work that well. Radio streams got dropped a lot. That's no longer a big problem with version 2.0.

The new version of the app tackles the problem of dropped streams by making the buffering settings much more sophisticated. Remember, the App doesn't host any of the audio, it just points to the live streams or podcasts stored on public radio stations' own servers. Project manager Matt MacDonald says the app now determines what kind of bandwidth the receiving phone has, then buffers the inbound stream accordingly before serving it up to listeners. The end result is a radically more usable radio app on wifi, 3G or Edge connections.

It's still not perfect; this like every app is at the mercy of AT&T's wireless network, but dropped streams appear to be much, much less frequent than they used to be. The interface sometimes hangs when loading menus, but Shapiro says that with the new release today bug fixes are a top priority and though crash reports are appearing infrequently, they are being closely watched. "Just shake the phone," he jokes. "Then it will work better."

More Than One Kind of Content

The new app brings a whole lot more radio to your iPhone. In addition to pointing to hundreds of radio streams, PRX has co-ordinated a number of different sources to pull show schedules down to be stored locally on your phone. "Scheduling data has been a big effort," Shapiro says. "It never existed in one place and is still a moving target."

A company called Public Interactive (recently acquired by NPR from Public Radio International) has a metadata tool that originally captured music playlists but now publishes radio show schedules as well. NPR and many radio stations also display schedules on their own websites. PRX aggregates all that data, stores it on your phone, syncs it with the radio stream links and then checks for changes each time you launch the Public Radio Player app.

Having the particular show that's playing displayed along with a station name makes a very big difference in the user experience.

The 2.0 version of the app also includes support for "on demand" or podcast listening. Hundreds of podcasts are navigable by featured shows, category or alphabetically. Podcasts are integrated into some of the show schedules as well. When listening to a streaming station, you can view the rest of the day's schedule and see what other shows will be broadcast later. Then you can choose to listen to previous recorded editions of those shows. It's a pretty seamless experience.

Search is No Small Matter

The new search functionality integrates all of the above, letting you search for keywords or topics and finding both recorded and currently live shows that match your search. MacDonald says the company used an open source program called ThinkingSphynx on the back end, worked closely with the NPR API team and is still working on teaching local radio stations about the importance of standards-based content titling. Listening to streams and podcasts on iTunes or an iPod may not have been so difficult with incomplete file names, but show a radio station how broken its content looks in a dynamic iPhone directory and the message comes through loud and clear.

There have been other efforts to index all the public radio streams online; Public Radio Fan is the most notable and is more international, but is less sophisticated and is based on the desktop and browser. (After listening to some international broadcasts via Public Radio Fan it's hard not to be a little disappointed with even Public Radio Player's extensive but exclusively US menu.)

As a media technology, Public Radio Player offers a unique blend of content aggregation, focus on both real time and recorded content and extensive data integration on the back end. All on the iPhone. Its design and performance continue to improve. It's a very impressive offering in terms of content delivery; if it can find a way to use the new platform it's on to transcend the public radio paradigm of on-air pledge drives, that would really be remarkable, wouldn't it?

Jake Shapiro says that offering Public Radio Player on other platforms, including a web interface, is a logical next step. You can follow the project's progress on the Public Radio Player blog and download the application here.

The user experience is great and we think it makes NPR podcast content immediately more compelling. You get an instant preview of what will be in your feed and it's really easy to use.

There's some rights issues with a couple of the big NPR shows but that's not the end of the world. It's pretty great that this new custom configuration is now the default setting for the Podcasts page.

We would also love to see these custom podcasts made accessible through the great year-old NPR mobile site.

We hope the innovation over at NPR will continue fast and furious, especially now that there's a new CEO in town. Former head of NYTimes.com Vivian Schiller was just named the new CEO of NPR last month.

We're excited about it from a technology perspective, but media industry analyst and RWW Jobwire guest editor Sam Whitmore discusses the move in terms of what it means for the Times as a business as well over in the Jobwire Featured Hire of the Day (sponsored by VisualCV).