Please click here to Digg this story!

Apple, Inc. released the Apple TV (formerly iTV) on January 9, 2007 and the iPhone on June 29, 2007. One device can bring Apple to your 60″ HDTV. The other can bring it to a 3″ phone and iPod combo. What do these both have in common?

iTunes.

iTunes is the driver behind both iPhone and AppleTV. If you are participating in audio or video content production in New Media, and you are not leveraging the iTunes economy (iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, and the iLife suite), you will be invisible to Apple’s new user base.

Facebook? Nope.

MySpace? Nope.

Flickr? Nope.

If Apple’s devices sell well, meaning that they are adopted on a large scale by populations not currently using New Media, content producers will be invisible to these populations. While some may scoff at Apple, ask yourself this: can you afford to take the risk that Apple’s new devices won’t take off?

So, how do you leverage the iTunes economy?

You already may be.

Top 5 Things You Need to Know:

1. iTunes is not as closed system as many believe it to be. You do not NEED to have audio or video content in the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) in order for it to play in iTunes. Things like the itpc:// and pcast:// URL handlers work fine outside of iTMS.

2. Shareable content will be more important than ever. iTunes is still driven by a host computer, even if the iPhone and Apple TV both have Wi-Fi. Make your content shareable by having a brand, domain, and Internet presence that can be spread by word of mouth with ease. Remember, things like Apple TV might be set up for someone who’s not technically adept. You get one chance to get them to your content. See New Comm Road 22 and Managing the Gray 20 for more on these topics.

3. Rigorously obey Apple’s specs for content. Make sure that your content will play in iTunes. It’s a free download, so there’s no excuse not to test. You can still distribute on MySpace video, YouTube, and Flickr, but if you don’t have content compatible with the iLife suite, you’ll miss out on audience. You may need to use converters like Visual Hub to create multiple versions of content, but if your goal is to reach the widest audience possible, you can’t afford to marry yourself to just one platform.

4. Make your content obvious above the fold at small sizes. Remember, devices like the iPhone will be browsing with nearly thumbnail-sized versions of your web site. Try this trick. Take a screenshot of your Web site. The iPhone’s widescreen resolution is 480 x 320. Open your screenshot in Photoshop or the graphic editor of your choice and resize your screen shot to 480 pixels wide. This is what your web site will look like on the iPhone. Is the call to action that you desire still legible? The iPhone is touch-screen. Can you easily touch the call to action?

Here’s the Financial Aid Podcast at 480 x 320.

Here’s a Podshow+ page at 480 x 320. (thoughts.podshow.com)

From where you’re sitting right now, reach out to your screen and touch each page. Which one can you touch and one-click subscribe to?

5. If you have Web-based services like student loan consolidation applications, make bloody sure your applications work flawlessly with the Safari browser now. Safari is the native browser of the iPhone. If your application fails using Safari, you can kiss those customers good-bye. Now that these customers will be mobile and able to make impulse decisions with a full web browser quickly and easily, once you lose the impulse opportunity, you may never get it back.

Update: Thanks for stopping by, Diggers. Please share the love and give the podcast a listen.