Interesting report on podcasts and consumers

This archived audio/slide presentation with PDF is very interesting, it gives some numbers on usage of downloadable media by consumers. It's by Edison Research.
Just skimming it, I was struck that 57 % of Americans haven't heard of podcasting. That's based off a phone survey done this January of 1858 random Americans. And 22 percent of people have listened to at least one podcast in their lives. The presenter, Edison's Vice President of Strategy and Marketing, Tom Webster, said this number was an indication that podcasting has hit the mainstream. To me one out of five people is not mainstream, but maybe I need a lesson in relativity.
Anyway, the slides are very interesting and I'll try to take an hour, maybe at lunch breaks at my desk, to listen in.

Map mashups

I'd really like to see mashups of public-interest databases with mobile devices with mapping and geolocating. For instance, you've got the standard state sex offender databases online.

This application has wanted sex offenders with mug shots and info on each person, including a Google map where the person lives. Now what's needed, (and this may be out there but I don't have an iPhone or Blackberry to test it,) is a iPhone app that determines the user's location, queries the sex offender database, and displays "hits" of sex offenders within a given distance of the user's iPhone.

It's about taking databases and making them useful to people. By itself, the sex offender Web site is nice, but I'm guessing a parent would actually pay money for getting that intelligence in a user-friendly medium.

Another app would be a restaurant review database. I'd love to make one of these but don't quite know how yet. Say you're in an unfamiliar city and you're hungry. You take your iPhone or G1 or whatever and geolocate yourself with an app, then the app searches the local news outlet's database of unbiased restaurant reviews, letting you pick one by cuisine, rating, price, whatever. You could incorporate user reviews too thru google or yahoo or citysearch or the news outlet's own site. I see some programs out there but this is an opportunity for news outlets to get more mileage out of their own content, in a program that is optimized for mobile devices.

Now if only I could program...