An estimated 63.1 million American households or three-fourth of those online are paying their bills online rather than writing checks, a survey sponsored by CheckFree revealed.

The survey indicates that consumers are more confident about online security as more Americans are gaining experience in using Internet services, making security concerns less of a barrier to online bill payment adoption than in the past. In the latest survey, only 13 percent of respondents cited online security as the top reason for not using the online bill payment service, down from 17 percent in the 2007 survey. Overall, online security ranked third among barriers to online bill payment adoption this year, compared to its number-one ranking in 2007. The primary barrier (15%) in the new study was “I don’t know enough about how it works.”

For the second year in a row, American consumers who go online each month paid more of their household bills online at bank and billing organization websites than by any other method. An estimated 31 million households are using online banking websites to pay bills, 47.9 million households are using biller websites and 16 million are using both online banking and biller sites to receive and pay bills. Approximately 63.1 million of Internet-using households pay at least one bill online in an average month, up from 61 million in the 2007 survey. These households collectively paid 934 million bills in a typical month, according to the survey results.

Online bill payments continued to outpace check bill payments for the second consecutive year. Online bill payments made at both bank and biller websites rose to 42 percent of the total volume of household bill payments made each month, up from 39 percent in the 2007 survey. Online bill payment adoption has significantly grown since the 2002 survey, when only 14 percent reported paying their bills online.

The survey polled 3,031 US consumers who use the Internet, were at least 21 years of age and were at least partly responsible for household bill payments. The online survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent. The results are considered representative of the nation’s 85.1 million Internet-connected households.

Long the butt of insomnia jokes, C-Span, the cable television non-profit, has launched a new Web site that is actually – well – not boring.

Featuring the typical red, white and blue political look, the Web site manages to integrate YouTube and Qik videos and offer a roundup of relevant Twitter tweets.

There are actually two sites.  One for the DNC and one for the RNC.

Access to major political blogs such as Politico, The National Review, Gawker, etc is available.  You can also search for political blogs based on state.

Live streams (in case you’re having trouble sleeping) are only a click away.

When companies like C-Span and AARP can roll out pretty nice looking Web sites, you start to realize that the Web has been embraced by just about everyone.  Evolve or die.  It’s nice to see there are still a few dinosaurs out there.

blinkx announced a partnership with Getty Images that would make its content more easily accessible at www.blinkx.com. Under the terms of the agreement, blinkx will leverage its AdHoc platform to place contextually relevant advertising against Getty Images’ multimedia, and will share resulting advertising revenue with Getty Images.

“We believe our assets deserve wide exposure, and we’re always looking for innovative ways to make our digital content easily accessible,” said Josh Rucci, senior director of multimedia sales, Getty Images. “We’re pleased to partner with blinkx, whose technology enables us to expand our reach further than ever before.”

blinkx has more than 350 partners and 26 million hours of indexed video and audio content, including favorite TV moments, news clips, short documentaries, music videos, video blogs annd more. blinkx uses advanced speech-recognition technology to deliver results that are more accurate and reliable than standard metadata-based keyword searches.

Hollywood Media Corp. has sold its Hollywood.com and Hollywood.com Television businesses to R&S Investments, LLC, an entity owned by Mitchell Rubenstein and Laurie S. Silvers for $10 million. The purchase price includes $1 million paid out to Hollywood Media and earn-out payments of $9 million.

Hollywood Media plans to focus on its profitable online Broadway Ticketing business (including Broadway.com), which currently has an approximate 10 percent share of the Broadway ticket market. Hollywood Media also owns the UK-based CinemasOnline and a minority interest in MovieTickets.com.

Amazon announced that it has acquired Shelfari, a book-sharing site. The announcement was further confirmed by Shelfari co-founder Josh Hug in a blog post.

“It’s an exciting day here at Shelfari. The rain has stopped, the birds are chirping and the biggest news of all – we are being acquired by Amazon.com,” Hug said.

Financial details of the acquisition were not released.

A simplified homepage, designed to get users to the information they seek quicker, has been launched by MapQuest this morning.

Honestly, I’m such a devoted Google Maps user, that I don’t even remember what MQ used to look like.

The new landing page automatically populates a map with your location (according to IP address).  Enter an address for a map, or click the “get directions” button (which is grayed out by default) to get instructions on traveling from A to B.

The streamlined look allows users to get directions, gas prices, construction information and view live traffic cams – all from the homepage.

Below the fold you will find tools to customize your map.  You can plot out the city’s best burgers or locate the nearest coffee shop.

I don’t see myself ditching Google Maps, but I might cheat a little.  You won’t tell, right?

BlogHer announced the launch of its Reach Out Tour to take place in October 2008, stopping in six U.S. cities for lively one-day conferences that will bring highlights of its popular sold-out annual conference to a more local stage. The success of the annual conferences prompted BlogHer to embark on a two-week tour to meet the growing demands of its online community of women, and give local bloggers a more intimate environment to discuss blogging basics, lead sessions on local themes and network with their community.

The three BlogHer co-founders will kick off the tour in Boston on October 11 and then continue on to five additional cities. The tour schedule includes: Washington, DC (October 13), Nashville, TN (October 16), Greensboro, NC (October 18), Atlanta, GA (October 21), New Orleans, LA (October 25)

General Motors will be sponsoring this inaugural event by providing attendees within 200 miles of each scheduled city with Saturn hybrid vehicles for carpools to the event. Participating carpoolers will blog about their experiences with the vehicles on BlogHer.com. In addition, GM will bring back their popular “ride and drive” events at each tour location, where bloggers will have the opportunity to test drive varying cars on site.

The conference agendas will be broken up into three distinct sections including: blogging basics to help newcomers start a blog and figure out what their next steps are once they have one; custom topics per city based on themes that will resonate within existing local conversations; and a Geek Lab, facilitated by Sarah Dopp, a creative professional in the tech industry based out of San Francisco.

Jaman.com has inked a deal to distribute a large collection of premium titles from entertainment studio Lionsgate. The deal makes hundreds movies from Lionsgate library available to Jaman’s broad community of film fans.

A number of these titles will be available for free, ad-supported and instantly streamed in high-definition quality. With a simple click, viewers can watch these films immediately in their Web browser, with no need to download a client. Premium feature-length films from Lionsgate will also be available for download rental from $2.99 to $3.99 each.

Increasing broadband costs for online media companies are showing no signs of abating in the today’s ever increasing Internet-centered world. Fact is, for technology companies delivering online media content over the Internet, traditional server based delivery networks are plagued with high upfront capital expenditures to build out data centers in every region where content is intended to be viewed. This is where ReelTime.com‘s Intelligent Rapid Distribution System (IRDS) come in.

IRDS was created with the sole end-goal of completely “reinventing the way video is delivered over the internet by major video portals such as ABC, Netflix, Vongo, Cinema Now, Movielink and even Google’s YouTube,” says CEO Barry Henthorn.

At present, the company has secured content distribution deals partnerships with Sony Entertainment, LG Sports Marketing, Lightworks NxT and Laguna Productions, TruBlu/At&T and Disney.

Video website Dailymotion is taking an active role in covering the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Each evening, Dailymotion is programming one half hour of political content by showcasing a selection of entertaining and enlightening political videos directly from the convention.
 
Dailymotion’s convention programming includes videos from partners GOOD, Remix America, JibJab and Dailymotion’s Motionmaker program for creative contributors. Tomorrow, August 26th, Dailymotion and partners Barely Political and 23/6 will showcase the best in political comedy.