Jim Rosenberg | jerotus.

It’s no secret that Americans are working longer hours now than they were 20 years ago. And globalization is extending this time-shortage to other parts of the planet; consider today’s lovely NPR story about Chinese singles trying to meet up at a gigantic social event.

Given that the (scarcity of free time) + (proliferation of media choices) = desire for user control…it’s not surprising that on-demand technologies came out on top in a new comprehensive survey by Arbitron and Edison Media Research. Credit here to the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher for blogging about this:

What does it all mean? Advertising-supported media are in a bit of a panic, because it’s clear that Americans are eagerly taking advantage of any technology that allows time-shifting and the ability to skip ads. So we’ll see ever more advertising insinuating itself into the content that we’ve decided to watch without ads. And the popular culture will become ever more atomized and disparate, which is both good (more opportunities for high quality fare to find an audience) and bad (it will become much harder to create and maintain a civil society with shared values and knowledge.)

My own response to this is that such time-shifting is only going to increase. In fact, public radio stations have been doing time-shifting of their own for years by taking national programming feeds and then delaying or slicing up those feeds (and inserting local content) to customize the content for their local communities. What happens if this happens on a widespread but completely individualized scale?

Read the survey here.

FastCompany’s got a write up about a group called Business for Diplomatic Action, which is distributing information on how Americans working and traveling overseas can be ambassadors – trying to offset the often negative image that many people have about the United States.

Business for Diplomatic Action, which seeks to educate Americans working abroad that being better world citizens translates into increased success in business, has started distributing “World Citizen’s Guide,” a booklet to help curb many of the faux-pas Americans are prone to when traveling overseas on business. (You can download a free abridged version here.)

Forgive the jargon-laden headline, I’m a bit coffee-deficient today.  BoingBoing posts today on a 20 story parking garage in Germany where Volkswagen buyers get their car fetched for them by a big robotic arm, then their new car is delivered through glass doors and they get their photo taken. It just sounds really…well… cool.  More on the issue of customer experience…over here.

Google has a new toy on offer this morning – Google Trends. It shows search patterns, as well as geographical data related to the searching. Correlating news stories are displayed as well. As an example, I ran the name of my hometown, Scottsdale.

Even this fairly benign search shows you some interesting things about Scottsdale. One of the top news stories, for example, involves Mike Tyson (one of the fair town’s more notorious residents). If you click on the languages tab, you find German the distant second for searchers (perhaps nodding to the city’s huge tourism economy and the draw it has for Europe’s most prolific travelers).

Tivo announces it will offer web video…the wildly popular video site YouTube goes mobile…Warner decides to go with BitTorrent for downloads…and recently, the New York Times ended its partnership with Discovery – ostensibly to focus on growing its own broadband offerings. Who is going to help us sort through this maelstrom of images?

BusinessWeek is blogging today about journalists getting behind-the-scenes with AdWords and AdSense. I had a modest introduction to AdWords while a communications consultant at the World Bank, and now am paying the bills for my humble web site with AdSense.  Which reminds me to remind you to please visit my advertisers!

Every May, just before Columbia’s Journalism School sends off another crop of bright, hardworking, indebted graduates, there is a “Booze Cruise” around New York Harbor. It’s fun, and ours (including post-party in the Village) went until something like 4 a.m.
Of course, in 1997 there were no blogs and we were just starting to tinker with the web (I was a freelance editor at a now-defunct site with this guy)…so there was no Gawker post to lampoon this Booze Cruise ‘ness. Things have changed.

There’s been substantial hand-wringing for the past, oh, DECADE or so about how the web is eroding newspaper readership. New figures out show that such concerns are warranted. In the U.S., circulation is down, on average, 2.5% over this time six months ago, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Rob Corddry from the “Daily Show” will host the Webbys awards in New York City…with five word limits on acceptance speeches! This year’s winners are not surprising, though I do have to tip my hat to former World Bank colleagues for garnering a Webby for their Youthink! site. Read coverage by Wired.