Tuesday's sessions included a positive and interesting session on mobile devices and marketing (see the notes here).  There were also great sessions on best practices in online real estate and print and online redesign research.

Jennifer Johnson, John Heys and others (including me!) posted notes and comments to the Marketing Conference blog today. For new-media specific notes, go to the Marketing Conference blog and click on new media on the right rail.   Melinda Gipson, formerly of NAA and now with Gatehouse Media, posted an interesting bit on the .tv platform. The Virginian-Pilot is experimenting with .tv on their site HamptonRoads.tv, which was a finalist in Sunday night’s Digital Edge Awards. Also, The Virginian-Pilot’s Chris Kouba spoke Monday at the Marketing Conference. (It all comes full circle….)   Tuesday, look for Marketing Conference blog entries on local search and shopping, mobile devices and more.

Bennett Zucker posted a summary and some comments about yesterday's Marketing Conference digital media track session, "Personalization of Your Web Site." "The panel discussed how technology and the trust of the community in the local news brand can combine to give consumers the opportunity to contribute to the creation of their online news sources and to dictate how they would consume its content," Bennett wrote.

I wanted to post a few words about the Online Innovator Award. We revealed the winner during the Digital Media Federation reception at the 2007 NAA Marketing Conference tonight in Las Vegas.                                                   The finalists this year were Steve Yelvington of Morris Digital Works, and Dave Morgan, of Tacoda, Inc.

PRESS RELEASE - Las Vegas – Newspapers’ best online news, interactive communication and advertising programs received acclaim tonight during the presentation of Digital Edge Awards by the Newspaper Association of America’s New Media Federation. The 12th annual presentation of the “Edgies” took place at a ceremony held during NAA’s annual Marketing Conference at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Jan. 28-31.

Friday's Online Publishing Update included a news item about Nintendo's Wii gaming system displaying news and photos from the Associated Press. Someone pointed a camcorder at the gaming system as it was displaying the news -- the quality isn't fabulous, but it's a good peek at the interface (for those of us who don't have a Wii at home... yet.)

WashingtonPost.com's Rob Curley (formerly of the Naples (Fla.) Daily News) is writing a lengthy and valuable three-part series on the makings of the Studio55 vodcast in Naples, Fla. The project is a finalist for Sunday night's Digital Edge Awards in Las Vegas.

The Los Angeles Times is launching a major Web-focused initiative, creating a new editor for innovation position and more. The efforts are in part based on recommendations from an internal committee (see the Oct. 13 Online Publishing Update for more).

Today, the Sacramento Bee launched a new niche Web site focusing on California politics. The site, Capitol Alert, is free for the first two weeks, and $499 per year. (No, we didn't forget a decimal point - it's almost five hundred dollars. There are slightly lower-priced options for purchasing multiple registrations.)

The Politico, Allbritton’s new national politics publication, launched this week. The design is clean (but not boring), Web-driven, and features chats, forums, videos, blogs and several other Web 2.0 elements.

WashingtonPost.com’s Rob Curley has the e-mail transcript of an (English) interview with the Italian publication Corriere della Sera. It's interesting -- Rob Curley, unfiltered.

In case you didn't see it yesterday, The Washington Post has a very good article about how the Web has changed political campaigns -- something we've been talking about here on the Digital Edge for a few weeks. (The headline is: "On the Electronic Campaign Trail: Politicians Realize the Potential of Web Video.")

So this is clear: 2008 presidential hopefuls are jumping on YouTube and other video sites to reach potential voters in the early stages of the campaign season. What’s not clear is how local and regional newspapers plan to use video to enhance their elections coverage in the next 18 months.

The Salt Lake Tribune has an impressive section of their Web site devoted to the Sundance Film Festival, which opened Thursday and runs through Sunday, Jan. 28. The amount of information available is impressive, and the editors there obviously thought about the audience’s ‘jobs to be done.’   Unfortunately, some of those jobs might take a while to do.

The Chicago Tribune's Charles M. Madigan estimated he has read more than 100,000 words about what's wrong with newspapers.In a summary, Madigan wrote, "Having read all of these words about my own business, I'm thinking that a lot of the despair is misplaced...."

A quick post-script to last week's Digital Edge blog post ("Online Video Tips") about video training in the newsroom: The Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday ran an entertaining piece about their experience with online video training.

Things aren't so bad at newspapers and television stations, economically speaking. Research released at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis this weekend revealed “economic prospects are strong for [print] newspapers and TV stations – despite more competition from new media. Their forecasts run counter to a widely held view that digital media and the Internet have dramatically altered the economic landscape for traditional media,” USA Today reported Friday.

I'm attending Media Giraffe's Journalism That Matters conference in Memphis, which is only loosely connected to the National Conference for Media Reform.  So far, it's a very out-of-the-box-thinking oriented session, with lawyers, bloggers, "media reformers" journalism professors and independent journalists talking about the future of journalism (not just newspapers, but all forms). To prepare for the meetings, we were all asked to read a few things that are geared at helping us think about the bigger journalism and digital media pictures.

Earlier today, Micah Sifry wrote on the Personal Democracy Forum about how technology may impact the 2008 elections. His post is a continuation of a thread on MyDD that seeks answers to the question, "What emerging technology or web-based practice do you think will have the biggest impact in 2008?"

Bakersfield.com’s Davin McHenry and Chuck Fadely, a Miami Herald photographer/producer have both written guides and tips for journalists who want to shoot video for newspaper Web sites.  McHenry’s and Fadely’s posts are just the latest in a slew of online video-shooting tips and other information that could be quite helpful to new video journalists. Here are more....

"Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything." Those were Steve Jobs' own words at MacWorld Tuesday morning as he unveiled the iPhone. (And yes, Apple is calling it the iPhone despite Cisco Systems ownership of that name.) Jobs said the iPhone is a combination of three things. "The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. The third is a breakthrough Internet communications device."

If you're still debating whether to join the Newspaper Association of America in Las Vegas for our 2007 conference, here are a few enticements. (And if you are attending, read on so you can learn more about what to expect.)

A few Web sites worth taking a peek at have launched in the past week or so. Some of these may give you ideas for your newspaper Web site, and the last one may help you keep that New Year's resolution.

In the past few weeks, politicians have appeared in Second Life. More politicians are launching blogs (and vlogs!), and online chats are becoming more common. It may seem a little bit early to start preparing for the 2008 elections, but the candidates are already gearing up – and so should your newspaper.

We tend to give a lot of homework here with the Digital Edge blog. But -- really -- if you read nothing else this week (aside from the Online Publishing Update), read this: Steve Outing has a thoughtful, practical column for smaller-market newspapers in Editor & Publisher. Responding to requests that he focus more on smaller markets, Outing presents 10 "things that publishers and editors of small newspapers should be doing, with emphasis on the online side of the business." The advice is practical and tailored to the staffing and revenue limitations of smaller-market newspapers.