There is lots of talk about a number of new media players which will soon be entering the market to compete with the iPod. Hey, why not, it’s a free market. But, here are some issues that these hopeful entrants must consider:

1.    Any new player must support open MPEG-4, the lingua franca of the videoblogging world.
2.    Any new player must have open MP3 support to facilitate podcasters and listeners.
3.    Any new player company must have some tools to empower community sharing of content.
4.    Any new player company must have some capabilities to empower consumer creators, such as easy MPEG-4 editing tools for videobloggers (like iMovie) and for podcasters (like Garageband).

And that’s just for starters…