NBC Universal's iVillage women's online community and Penton Media's New Hope Natural Media, which provides information on natural, organic, and healthy products, teamed up on research showing that a majority of women are more focused than ever on buying healthy foods.

The two parties said the full study will be released at New Hope's Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, Calif., Saturday, to be presented by iVillage senior vice president of marketing Catherine Balsam-Schwaber and New Hope Consumer Portfolio director of content and research Nancy Coulter Parker. The study surveyed 4,898 iVillage members 18 and older Feb. 15-24.

Highlights from the findings:

A total of 73 percent of respondents read labels carefully, as they are concerned about specific additives, such as high-fructose corn syrup.

Approximately 50 percent look for specific health benefits such as high fiber, reduced fat, and low sodium, rather than general claims that food is "organic" or "natural."

A total of 71 percent are very interested in buying healthy products at mainstream grocers.

While 57 percent believe organic food is better for them, only 26 percent will actually go out of their way to purchase it.

And 39 percent find that time is the biggest impediment to eating right, closely followed by willpower and motivation.

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John Hockenberry, host of public radio's "The Takeaway" opened a discussion with AP president and CEO Tom Curley and Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibarguen at the We Media summit Wednesday with that thesis.

More and more consumers don't know where they're getting their daily headlines, because of the Web's "river of news" from which most of us now get our information -- including from services like this.

It is that "river of news" that continues to chip away at the traditional service provided by the nation's oldest news co-operative, the AP, founded in 1846.

"We're owned by U.S. newspapers and that is a gift and a treasure," says Curley. "Being able to aggregate and work with the industry is what makes us special, the fact that the consumers don't understand that, is not a problem. What matters is that we're able to get our funding and support our journalists going forward at the rate everyone expects."

With so much information flowing down the river, Ibarguen had this warning: "The first amendment is about to come under serious attack because of the amount of speech being protected."

Despite the warnings and the uncertainties associated with the transformational state of the media, Curley and Ibarguen are bullish on the future of media.

Asked what their favorite new media tools are, Ibarguen talked up Spot.US, the open source project that funds community-powered reporting. Curley was most excited about new cameras -- still and video -- being put "in the hands of the consumers." The AP worked with Canon, buying up the production line of one model, then dispatching dozens of them to the Vancouver Olympics. Those cameras captured some of the most memorable shots of the games, including the one above taken by the AP's Chris O'Meara of Canada's game winning, overtime goal to win Ice Hockey gold.

The We Media conference continues today at the University of Miami.

Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia Foundation board member Jimmy Wales spoke with Bloomberg Television's Betty Liu Wednesday morning, with their conversation touching on Wikia, Wales' new online company, as well as Wikipedia's relationship with Google.

On Google and the $2 million grant The Wikimedia Foundation received from the search-engine giant, Wales told Liu:

We've always had a good relationship with Google. It's an unrestricted grant, so I think they just wanted to give something back. Google benefits a lot from Wikipedia's existence.

We have a strategic planning process that's underway to figure out the future of what the foundation is going to be doing. We're really focused on the languages of the developing world -- that's a really important thing to us. Our annual budget is $10.5 million, so it's a charity, it goes into an operating fund to keep the site running.

Video courtesy of Bloomberg Television:

We're attending a live taping of the BBC's "World Have Your Say," an interactive radio and online program. The host of the program, Ros Atkins, not only calls on participants [doing his best Phil Donahue climbing over seats] in the audience here at the University of Miami but those who've phoned in, or taken part in an online chats from around the world, on Twitter and on their personal blogs. Topics on today's show include Israeli settlements, and the balance of working from home vs. working in an office.

Someone at political blog The Right Scoop must have really ticked off someone at FOXNews.com: The blog claims that the news site is blocking it from embedding its video content.

From a post on The Right Scoop:

I was trying to post clips made available from Fox News earlier today since it's obvious they don't want me recording and uploading their content to YouTube. I decided to oblige them and just use their material.

But the clips wouldn't post. I investigated and found they are blocking me in their code from video.foxnews.com!

The embed code looks like this:

I took the actual source link itself and pasted it in the address bar of my browser:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=4096274&w=400&h=249

Go ahead, click the link above. It outputs their code with my domain in it ('therightscoop'):

I'm not a JavaScript expert, but my guess is that the above is saying not to embed the video if the domain is therightscoop. Dang, I guess I really pissed them off!

I wonder if they knew I would find this? hmmmm.

MySpace co-presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones hosted Mashable for a long question-and-answer session at the social-networking site's office in Beverly Hills. Highlights follow:

Hirschhorn on the future of MySpace:

(The strategy is based on the) pillars of broadcasting, discovery, self-expression, and making content a part of all those experiences. We want as many people here to be people who build, and who create, and who have top-notch engineering talent.

Jones on core metrics:

If someone's inside the company, we want to give them complete transparency in regards to what they're working on it, why they're working on it, why it's important, and if what they did actually came to a good effect.

Hirschhorn on whether MySpace is a social network or a destination:

You need to be a platform where your audience has a voice. I think a lot of people say "content portal" -- it isn't just about putting up channels that broadcast this stuff one-to-many. It's about putting up a platform that's totally accessible to anyone who creates content, whether it's big media or not.

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We're at the We Media conference in Miami where new media innovators are gathering to talk about the next big thing. After the Game Changer awards were given out, Fast Company founder Alan Webber sat down for a chat with author, media critic and Newser founder Michael Wolff. The session began with Wolff's take on some of the biggest names in media today, pulling no punches in the process:

Rupert Murdoch: I think Rupert has gone off the reservation. I think he's raging against the darkness. All of the Murdoch kids are really smart, really talented and they really wish their father would go home.

Tina Brown: For so long I have been Tina's nemesis. It's hard not to walk away from a joke at Tina's expense. But I've turned a new leaf. I think she's doing a really good job at The Daily Beast. And she's spending a Tina-ish amount of cash.

Arianna Huffington: I've never seen anybody work as hard as this person. Every minute of every day she is on the job.

The Sulzbergers: Just the stupidest people who have ever walked the earth. They are not just hopeless, but hapless. The people who run [The New York Times Company] are ill-equipped to do it.

The Grahams: Donny Graham is the nicest guy in this business. Certainly among the more intelligent people and I'm tempted to say 'give The Washington Post a chance.'

Then Webber asked about Zucker -- bergs and mans. "More Zuckers than we can count. Then there's Jeff Zucker," said Wolff. Webber shot back, "That's another disaster." About the Facebook founder and the New York Daily News owner, Wolff adds:

Mark Zuckerberg: I think he has decided he wants to be in that pantheon that includes [Bill] Gates and [Steve] Jobs.

Mort Zuckerman: He's not a bad business partner, and he's always there when you need him.

As for the age old question about paying for content, Wolff says don't count on it. "[Consumers] will not pay for general interest news, because they never have. Never, never, never have they paid. And never will they pay."

As for the financial health of his own 2+ year old site, Wolff says Newser.com is, "on the threshold of break even. We can probably get to break even the next couple of months if we cut our costs more."

Michael Wolff after his appearance at the We Media conference, as organizers prepared for the next session, a live broadcast of the BBC program "World Have Your Say."

Radian6 previewed the launch of the Radian6 Engagement Console, a desktop client built on Adobe AIR that allows brands and agencies to track and engage in social conversations on sites including blogs, videos, forums, boards, Twitter, Flickr, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, Facebook Fan Pages, public discussion groups, and news sites, TechCrunch reported.

The Radian6 Engagement Console also features a work-flow manager that allows users to tag, assign, and route posts to team members, and then to track their status, according to TechCrunch, which added that Twitter conversations can be recorded, and the console permits users to tweet, reply to tweets, retweet, send direct messages, browse user profiles, and follow new contacts.

As for Facebook, users respond to status updates, wall posts, comments, and likes, as well as viewing news feeds for Facebook friends, and viewing photos or videos uploaded from within the console, according to TechCrunch.

The client also allows for unlimited accounts and provides a URL shortener, TechCrunch reported, adding that it provides analytics from within the console, such as post volume and engagement statistics.

The Federal Communications Commission will unveil its National Broadband Plan to bring high-speed-Internet connections to all Americans next Tuesday, and YouTube is taking questions for FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.

The chairman will answer the top-voted questions in an interview next Tuesday, and the Google-owned video site said the deadline for questions is Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Questions can be submitted via CitizenTube in seven topics: Access and Affordability, Mobile and Wireless, Security and Privacy, Digital Economy, Internet in Schools, Open Internet/Network Neutrality, and Others.

YouTube head of news and politics Steve Grove posted on the YouTube Blog:

Access to the Internet has transformed almost every aspect of our economy and society. This is your chance to press the FCC on how the National Broadband Plan will work and ask your questions about improving the Internet in America. We're looking forward to seeing your questions and hearing what the chairman has to say.

Del Harvey, who leads Twitter's trust and safety team, announced on the Twitter Blog that the microblogging service launched a new anti-phishing feature that will allow her team to monitor links in direct messages and emails for potential attacks.

Twitter users have been the victims of recent phishing attacks such as this one and this one.

Harvey posted:

Today, we're launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we'll be able keep that user safe.

Since these attacks occur primarily on direct messages and email notifications about direct messages, this is where we have focused our initial efforts. For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind-the-scenes, but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in direct messages and email notifications. Special thanks to @wfarner and @ram for building this service and helping keep us all a little safer!

Chief software architect Chris Bissell, chief systems architect Dan Farino, and development manager Robbie Coleman left social-networking site MySpace to join start-up Gravity, according to TechCrunch.

Gravity was founded by three former MySpace employees: chief operating officer Amit Kapur and senior vice presidents Steve Pearman and Jim Benedetto, TechCrunch reported.

Introducing Gravity! from Gravity on Vimeo.

TV news icon Dan Rather used his column in The Huffington Post to discuss a comment he made during The Chris Matthews Show and the reaction to it on Twitter.

While discussing President Barack Obama and the nation's health care dilemma on Sunday's show, Rather used the analogy of "selling watermelons by the side of the road," and the news veteran, who currently hosts Dan Rather Reports on HDNet, started his column on HuffPost with, "I must confess that until recently, I had no idea what Twitter was." Highlights from HuffPost:

It started this past Sunday, when I appeared on Chris Matthews' syndicated talk show. I've known and respected Chris for many years, and I enjoy doing his show. I take the train down from my home in New York to Washington, D.C., and as I approach Union Station, my thoughts often turn to the years I spent covering the Johnson and Nixon White Houses. It was a turbulent time for the country and a formative period for me as a reporter and a young father.

New forms of journalism have emerged that were unimaginable when I lived in Washington. The online and cable world has allowed a freer exchange of ideas and more access to news. People can scour The New York Times (or the Times of India, for that matter) in real-time around the globe. If someone reads a fascinating article, he or she can share it easily with friends. When news breaks, eyewitnesses have a forum for relaying their observations and insights.

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