Everywhere you turn these days, folks are popping up with their own internet radio stations and podcasts. One group in Berlin, Backyard Radio, is taking things to another level…

Backyard Radio snatches the radio from tv towers and broadcasting agencies and instead of showering down on the city, the radio waves beam out of the districts and neighborhoods. A liberalization of the law allows everybody to run a tiny radio transmitter covering the own block and everyone who passionately cares about her neighborhood adopts the medium and populates the ether - laptop-workers, street artists, urbanists, ipod-kids, handicraft enthusiasts and precarious hedonists alike. Not a decadent experiment in self-reference and individualism, Backyard Radio maintains a collective channel: This is the place where the sounds of the different neighborhoods hit each other. Have you booted your node?

The map pictured above shows all stations that are currently broadcasting in and around Berlin.
(via PSFK)

If you’re a member of the popular social networking site, Facebook, I’m pretty sure that you’ve witnessed more than a few of your friends/associates living out their lives via “status updates”. You know the types (you may be one of them). They update their “status” every hour on the hour with a single word, sentence, or quote from their favorite song/movie/tv show of the moment, all the while, giving us a quick glimpse into their personal and professional lives. Well, there’s a social networking site built entirely around this concept…Twitter.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Its quite intersting. And for those that wish to “talk in color”, there’s Tumblr. It works almost the same as Twitter, but allows users to incorporate pictures, audio and video into their updates. Over the weekend, the NY Times explored the attraction behind both sites in this article.

No, not really. However, if you’re looking for full length shows and a little more than just viral videos, then Joost and Hulu may be the sites for you.

We’ve been onto Joost for some time now, back when the invite only/beta testing period started a couple months back. The concept was great and the content was pretty cool for starters (their offerings have grown considerably since then). This week, however, NBC Universal and News Corp. jumped into the ring with Hulu. Its their answer to Joost and a shot at Apple/iTunes all rolled into one (remember this?). Our only gripes about the sites at this point: Joost isn’t Mac compatible, and Hulu is still only a private function at the moment (although you can sign up for an invite on their homepage). So are these sites, and the others that will soon follow, the future of the television? Its not too unlikely. In the meantime, check ‘em out and decide for yourself.