If you have only five minutes to spend with “The Newspaper Online Shopping Report,” be sure to read Part I: The Broad Definition of ‘Online Shopping’. It will release you and anyone on your staff focused on your shopping site and on retail advertisers from a narrow and outdated view of online shopping.    

I've been on a streak of positive energy these past few weeks, so to keep the streak going, I thought I'd point this out: Mark Glaser (who's also on a positive streak), has a blog entry today headlined "10 Reasons There’s a Bright Future for Journalism."

Part of my job is reading, writing and editing case studies on best practices from Newspaper Association of America member newspapers. We’ve published a ton of those this year, and many times it’s really inspiring to read them. Positive energy from the newspaper industry: call it a job perk.

Okay, so the Digital Edge didn’t make the list of PCWorld Magazine’s top 100 blogs. But, lots of other media blogs did make the list. In a world where, according to Technorati, there are upwards of 70 million blogs out there, this is a real honor for those who were named.

The Web site for the Tahoe Daily Tribune in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., is running a bit slow this morning. It's understandable, since people who live in the area or have vacation homes there are closely following a major forest and brush fire.  

I attended the Digital Media Conference in Silver Spring, Md. (put on by Digital Media Wire) Friday. Among the several interesting presentations was a panel discussion on the top five trends to watch in digital media (consumer trends, mobile and more).  

I attended the Online Publishers Association research presentation “Eyes on the Internet ‘07” today in New York. The research focused on online video advertising and consumer behavior; with more than 400 people in attendance (this was one of eight presentations), it was clear online video advertising and consumer behavior is one of the hot topics right now.   Here's the one (run-on) sentence summary: Running 30-second pre-roll advertisements with a companion static banner or box ad that is related to the main video content provides the highest return on investment for the advertiser by increasing brand awareness and likeability.

MediaShift's Mark Glaser released his YourTake round-up on whether the journalism industry's glass is half full or half empty. Glaser wrote, "When I put the question to you, MediaShift readers, you largely came out on the positive side of the equation."  

I've been very slightly slacking off on the blogging this week, so I thought today I'd help you slack off, too -- in an entirely online journalism way with links to a few interesting video clips.  

Local Onliner blogger Peter Krasilovsky wrote a very thorough, interesting and useful white paper for the Newspaper Association of America. The report focuses on how the e-commerce landscape is changing and what those changes mean for newspapers. Krasilovsky offers analysis on where newspapers' strenghths and weaknesses are in online shopping, and how newspapers can best position themselves in the online shopping arena.  

MediaShift blogger Mark Glaser is seeking input for a YourTake roundup column on if the glass is half full or half empty for journalism.  So here's my take: The glass is more than half full.  

Years after receiving my last “required summer reading list” from school, I still associate summer with books. In honor of that, I’m providing a list of books you may (or may not) want to consider picking up this season.

In the first day or two after Henry's op-ed appeared, I thought the piece hadn't gained much traction or attention because not too many people were writing about it. It turned out, though, that a a lot of bloggers just waited (stewed and steamed) a few days before releasing their frustration.    

It will be interesting to watch how people use the iPhone. If it's really as sophisticated as Apple makes it sound and the adoption is as fast as the iPod, will we see a spike in mobile Internet use?  

For those of us who aren't in South Africa at the moment, Vincent Maher and Matthew Buckland are both live-blogging the World Association of Newspapers Congress this week in South Africa.

Gordon Borrell wrote a thoughtful opinion piece, which he has allowed us to post on The Digital Edge, in response to Walter E. Hussman's Wall Street Journal op-ed that ran in May.  

I just wanted to point out a very well-done multimedia article in today's Washington Post, focusing on the buying habits of teenage girls. I'd be surprised if this isn't a real traffic-generator: All the teens in the project will be linking to it from their social networking pages.... And parents of teenagers are sure to check it out, perhaps looking for a better answer than "I don't know" when they ask what happened to the last $20 they gave their kid.