Australian Anthill, a great publication for anyone in business in Australia, published a great article about Scouta today (Issue 21).

I spoke with Paul Ryan, Anthill’s Editor, a short while ago, and he spent a bunch of time playing with Scouta. So it turned out to be a great article that highlights exactly what Scouta is about.

Giles and business partner Graeme Sutherland recently launched Scouta, an online video and podcast recommendation service that Giles describes as like having your best mates always online, offering media recommendations based on their intimate knowledge of your personal taste.

“Community sites have always been focused on the community as a whole,” says Giles. “We’re focused on an individual and what they love - that could be anything from sport to entrepreneurship. We’ve stayed away from top-ten lists. We’re the anti-top ten, if you like - the epitome of long tail.”

The article spends some time explaining what Scouta does, and also a bit of the business background. A nice summary. Grab a copy from your local news stand, and you’ll also find a bunch of other great material in the magazine.

Thanks for the great write up Paul.

I met the latest Celebrity Scouta after asking if he and his partner, Carla Sinclair, would be guests on my old Gadget Show podcast a couple of years ago. We then met face-to-face at last years ETech, where he was showing the audience how to “make” craft.

The time I’ve spent with this Celebrity Scouta has shown that he is an incredibly nice guy, who has time for everyone, even though he must be inundated with requests for his time. Especially when you realize he runs one of the world’s most popular weblogs, boingboing.net, is the editor- in-chief of MAKE, and an illustrator. He’s also an author with his new book, Rule The Web: How to Do Everything on the Web, Faster, Better, Easier, due in June.

Thanks for compiling your list of favorite online audio Mark.

I bought an Apple TV today.

Since early last year we were aware that Scouta’s vision included providing recommendations directly to the lounge room. This was fast tracked when we heard that Apple was releasing their Apple TV, and fortunately for us it works out of the box.

So after a short while of using the Apple TV I realized that I desperately needed more content, video and audio, to play in the lounge room. Not so much needed, but I realized that I can now, quite literally, replace broadcast television with all of the podcasts and videocasts that are on the Internet: Chaser’s War on Everything, The Scoble Show, Tiki Bar TV, etc.

This is where Scouta becomes hyper-useful. All I needed to do was subscribe to my Recommendations, and a few of my Groups in iTunes via Scouta’s RSS feeds. I’ll now receive a bunch of new content daily that is relevant to me, and I can watch or listen at my leisure in the lounge. It becomes My TV Channel: a bunch of content that is really specifically aimed at me, because Scouta is learning what I like.

When we release Scouta’s iTunes Agent, it’ll also take into account what I watch on my Apple TV, and provide relevant recommendations based on that also. It’ll all happen automatically, because I’ll simply watch and listen to content, and I’ll magically receive new stuff.

I can see that I’ll be replacing a large slab of television time with my Apple TV in the short term.

Today we welcomed Gilbert, our latest release of Scouta.

We’ve added a few new features in this release, including Friends, an embedded Quicktime player, extended the Member Profile, and tidied up the way some things are displayed, like the members of a group.

As of today, when you view another member’s Scouta page, you can add them as a friend by selecting the “add this person to my friends list” button. Once you’ve added someone they get added to your list of “My Friends” on your My Scouta page. If someone adds you, they’ll appear in your “My FansFollowers” list.

In the future we plan to extend this feature in a few interesting ways, so start adding your friends, because we think this will become very useful.

You can now add favorites that link to a .mp4 files, such as this JTV episode, and Scouta will embed a player in the page so you and others can watch it right on the site. Scouta is much more than just YouTube videos, and so we’re striving to add a range of players that mean you can watch other content like videocasts, and of course listen to podcasts right in the site. If you’d rather watch it in another player, you can always subscribe to the RSS of your Favorites or Recommendations, and it’ll automatically download any content it can.

We’ve also added a range of extra fields to your Member Profile, and split out all the site options to Account Options. This gives members the opportunity to add extra details, and in the near future we’ll have a few ways of connecting with others with similar interests or profiles.

All up, we’re very happy with the way Scouta is shaping up. We’ve still got plenty more to do, and you’ll continue to see some great features being added, but as alway, let us know if you think there are changes or features that you’d love.

Fellow Internet startup Tangler, were kind enough to add Scouta to their group of features web applications. They’ve included a discussion group for Scouta Feedback, and we’ve already had some great suggestions come through.

We know we have plenty of things to add and improve, and Tangler’s discussion network is an awesome way to gather everyones suggestions. We’d really appreciate it if everyone dropped by Tanglers network and gets involved in the discussion.

We’ve mentioned it before, but we’re a big fan of reacting to members feedback, and the only way you can have an influence is if you let us know what you’re thinking.

While you’re at it, it’s worth joining the Scouta HQ group where you can add to the conversation.

Most people that use Scouta will know about our Celebrity Scouta. Every so often we update it with a celebrity, who lists there favorite online audio and/or video. So far we’ve had Cameron Reilly, and Chris Pirillo.

Now that I’ve the trip to China out of the way I’ll be aiming to get a few people on the list. I’m already speaking to a few people.

The aim is to vary the list. So far they’ve been the geek-elite, but one day we’re aiming to have people like Bono and Oprah.

However, we’d love to hear if you know of a celebrity who would be great to add to the list. We’re happy to hear who you’d love to hear from, but we’d also love you to help us. So, know any people who should be on the list? Would you introduce us?

In our Freddy release, we’ve added a bunch of extra navigation options, so now when you land on a typical Scouta fave page, you can browse off in lots of different dimensions…

• There a couple of instant recommendation paths you can follow to other faves that are clustered close to this item.
• You can go and find the member that added this fave, and look at all their stuff, and you can also see the last fave they recommended.
• You can browse by groups or tags as well, as you could before.

Problem: now we’re getting distracted browsing away in our own web app because it is so much fun following the path of recommendation to recommendation.

Remember, when you encounter something you like, rate it Good. Then it ends up in you own favorites and you can find it later easily on your MyScouta page and it also will get downloaded if you have iTunes or another RSS reader reading you favorites feed.

Have a browse. Why not start here, or here, or here. You don’t even need to be a member to play like this.