• 115,000 the total number of movie screens in 57 countries; 85 percent don’t have digital projectors yet
• 4,000 the estimated number of projectors that can be made yearly; demand has never been higher source

• No. 1 biking trails’ rank on the
  most-requested Google Maps
  features list (hiking is next)
• 150 number of cities that will
  finally be getting bike trails
  of their own source

• “We do not want to stay at 100 million (users) or 120 million. We want to grow to 200 million or 300 million.” MySpace, which has had a bit of a rough year, with management shakeups all over the place and a significant decline in influence, plans to relaunch its site to focus on media and music. The goal? To recover some of the audience that it lost. They want to be the first social networking site that regains its popularity. Our take: Don’t call it a comeback, because it’s not happening. source

• To us, this year’s Oscars seem completely ho-hum. All the obvious winners are winning. All the obvious losers are losing. Hey, wait a second, that’s new! It’s an iPad ad. And it somehow makes the iPad look awesome again! Nice job, Apple!

• Because we are a technology site, we have a very large base of ad blockers. Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn’t pay. In a way, that’s what ad blocking is doing to us.
• ArsTechnica writer Ken Fisher • About an experiment that his site tried with ad-blocking that appears to have backfired to some degree. Fisher says that while some people white-listed the site, many more complained about it. Apparently, most of their readers are heavy tech users, the very type of people who will turn off ads despite the fact that they pay for the content people read. It’s all the more stark considering it’s something most non-technology companies can’t stop thinking about. source

• The iPad represents the first real opportunity to create a paid distribution model that will be attractive to consumers. The psychology of payment on tablets is different to the psychology on a PC.
• Penguin Books CEO John Makinson • Regarding what he sees as the future of books. What’s that future of books? Well, in the case of the children’s books he used as an example, a really fun, educational experience, the kind of thing everyone was hoping for with the iPad when it was first suggested (but Apple forgot to show when announcing it). This looks really awesome, Penguin Books. source

• After hearing from Rich Pearson of Attributor, we think it’s at least fair to articulate what we think a content-licensing agreement should be like for bloggers. Because it seems like, while Attributor has a good point (and is apparently following a don’t-be-evil pathos), their business model comes across almost as a debt-collector role regarding the copyright of content. As far as content-charging goes, what we’d like to see is a storefront approach as a way to add value to the proposition. A bit of explanation:

How newspapers get wire content:

• This is AP Exchange. We have access to this resource due to the fact that we have a day job. We don’t use it (or link to any AP content, preferably) on ShortFormBlog because recent statements from the wire service have raised a lot of red flags for us about the usage of its content on blogs. Anyway, your mom-and-pop bloggers don’t have (and may not need) access to something this elaborate, but there are things that many bloggers could really use – budgets of upcoming stories (allowing for planning, not reaction), high-resolution photos, and graphics in vector format which can be easily reworked. Unfortunately, it requires a huge contract and newspapers have to give years-in-advance notices if they choose to quit the wire service. Most blogs aren’t that big – unless you’re HuffPo, you can’t afford it.

Business model points of comparison:

• » Photoshop Elements: Not everyone needs the full version of Photoshop, an incredibly complex product with a lot of knobs to twiddle. So Adobe created Photoshop Elements, which offers many of the features at a cheaper price. Simpler, cheaper – that’s what we’d suggest.
• » Lala/Spotify: iTunes isn’t exactly the model we’d suggest for this. An all-you-can-eat model like Spotify is nice, while an ultra-cheap micropayment distribution model like Lala might be ideal. Many news stories don’t have a ton of currency beyond the first day.
• » Typekit: Typekit, which is trying to do something similar for typography, has a very polished interface on the developer’s end which makes it incredibly easy to find the right font to use. Their use of javascript is a little annoying, but ultimately, it strikes a good balance between making rights-holders happy and giving Web site owners more options.

What we’d like to see:

• one We think bloggers need an interface for content-gathering on a wire service, something that they could use as a resource just like Google News and Twitter.
• two We think Automattic or Six Apart (or Publish2, even), which already have significant ties to the blogging community, would be great choices to run a site like this.
• three And – this is the important part – it needs to be done well, in a way that doesn’t talk down to them, that emphasizes quality, not assuming the worst of its users.

Why we think Reuters will come up with this:

• I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting.
• Thomson Reuters President of Media Chris Ahearn • From an article he wrote back in August. We wrote about it then, too, and we think it suggests that Reuters will figure this out before the Associated Press. The AP is more beholden to its newspaper partners, and companies like News Corp. and Tribune Corp. have too many interests in their own products. We think offering diverse options would be great for bloggers and would help take much of the stigma away from what they do. But not everyone’s there, sadly. Fingers crossed that the concept behind Attributor is a good first step, not a bad last one. source

• $300M the amount EchoStar owes TiVo for essentially ganking their idea
• 8M the number of DVRs that could be affected by the court’s decision
• 52% the amount TiVo’s stock went up as a result of the massive ruling source