John Edwards has started a Podcast. He gets it. It's a simple 'cast done at his kitchen table. Will every future candidate have a Podcast to facilitate interaction with the voters? No, just the smart ones.

Here’s something for anyone who doubts the viability of citizen journalism I wrote and posted this same story Monday night (see below) within one hour of the close of this event. The Scottsdale section of The Arizona Republic ran this today, more than 24 hours after my story posted.

I have said it before—newspapers will have to do more with less. They must embrace citizen journalisms or face them as competitors in the marketplace.

Yahoo! announced that it will expand its mail storage capacity to 1 GB per free Yahoo! Mail user. So, stop and think… what does this mean. You guessed it, Yahoo! and others will be using their email services as delivery channels for rich media—music, movies, TV programs, films… The inbox will be—pardon the metaphor—like receiving DVDs in your physical mailbox. Add an overlay of search and RSS capabilities and you can use your mailbox as a gathering and management point for all of your rich media needs.

Certainly, the other freemail services will follow suit.  I think Google already offers a monster-sized inbox, but the service is not totally public. We'll stay tuned.

Three of the top newspaper groups—Gannett, Tribune and Knight Ridder—have purchased a controlling interest in one of my favorite new media companies, Topix.Net. Topix offers granular, consumer-controlled news and infiormation searches which are far more powerful than anything offered by the leading Web Portals. Actually, AOL (not to mention Ask Jeeves and Citysearch) has a deal in place with Topix, which is one of the reasons I picked AOL as someone to watch over the course of the rest of the year.

Topix has worked with The New York Times in creating a custom news profile for the newspaper company. Will Topix be enough to help newspapers out of their current mess of declining circulation and dwindling mindshare? Not sure, but it sure is a step in the right direction.

Side note: It's ironic or perhaps foreshadowing that Topix has deals with both Ask Jeeves and Citysearch (owned by IAC). Makes you wonder.