Lonely Planet, best known as a traditional travel guidebook publisher, is announcing a new U.S. head tomorrow, as it increasingly moves to reposition the company as much more of a “cross-media” platform.

John Boris–set to take over today as new managing director of Lonely Planet Americas, based at its Oakland, Calif., office–comes to the company from Zagat Survey, where he was the SVP of marketing and interactive.

Previous to that, Boris worked at 1-800 Flowers and Fresh Direct.

“I’m thrilled to be joining one of the world’s best-loved travel brands at such an exciting time, with Lonely Planet rapidly evolving as a cross-media travel player,” he said in a press release.

As the paid versus free content online debate gets louder over the next year, how well known brands like Lonely Planet–which has a strong reputation among consumers–handle the fallout will be more and more interesting to watch.

Indeed, in recent months, Lonely Planet has been escalating its digital content efforts, which was the initial promise when BBC Worldwide bought 75 percent of the Melbourne, Australia-based company for about $200 million in late 2007.

But the digitization of Lonely Planet’s business, as with many traditional media publishers like it, has been slow going, with 75 percent of its revenue still in print.

While that business remains profitable, the breakdown between print and digital will be changing sooner than later, since digital is where much of the growth is coming from, said CEO Matt Goldberg to me over a recent dinner in San Francisco.

Goldberg–who came to Lonely Planet early this year from Dow Jones, where he was SVP of digital strategy and operations, including for WSJ.com–noted that Lonely Planet’s digital businesses have doubled their revenues to $20 million this year via premium pricing and advertising.

Besides the obvious use of Twitter and Facebook, Goldberg flagged a number of the more promising and innovative digital initiatives now at work at Lonely Planet, especially in its key U.S. market.

They include:

* Leveraging the 700,000 registered members of Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree community,

* The announcement this week of putting all or part of 600 of its travel guides on the international release of the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle e-reader.

* Work on collaborative trip planning for its “Trippy” gadget, as part of the Google Wave beta launched last week.

* A compass application for Google (GOOG) Android handsets that make use of augmented reality technology to highlight points of interest in cities. As Goldberg described it in an email, travelers will be able to “pan a city destination using the video on their handset and see Lonely Planet recommendations (points of interest from our City Guides) as virtual sticky notes above real live points of interest.”

* Over 500,000 downloads from around 70 premium-priced apps on the iPhone from Apple (AAPL), as well as various location-based guide apps for Nokia (NOK) and BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM).

* Travel music collections featured on Spotify and other online music services.

Goldberg highlighted other interesting ideas, such as an online travel video contest and even a “hack” day in Australia recently, which will be followed by one in the U.S. in the late winter.

While not all of it is going to work, this kind of endless experimentation at Lonely Planet is probably the right way to keep figuring out how to deal with the seismic media shifts that show no sign of abating.

Former Bebo CEO Joanna Shields and Shine Group Chairman and CEO Elisabeth Murdoch have formed a content start-up to produce across media platforms, both online and offline, with a focus on social engagement, according to sources.

The new venture, which does not have a name, is being financially backed both by Shine and by Shields, who left AOL this summer after running its community and communications division.

Shields engineered the sale of social networking site Bebo to the Time Warner (TWX) online unit for $850 million in early 2008.

Sources said this new company, based in London, will invest, develop and partner to create a variety of content offerings that also incorporate interactive and social networking elements. It will also help the vast array of Shine content in interactive efforts.

Shields will be CEO of the start-up, which will operate under Shine, an independent and private television production company with programming in 24 countries.

In the U.S., for example, its Reveille unit is responsible for such shows as “Ugly Betty” and “The Biggest Loser.” (Both of which are BoomTown faves.)

Shine’s fast growth has been spearheaded by Murdoch, who is the daughter of News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch.

But Elisabeth Murdoch has struck out on her own in forming Shine, which already has shown a strong interactive bent for a television company.

The combination of television and Web content is an arena that many are once again jumping into, aiming at creating branded interactive content, fueled by advertising.

Former NBC Universal exec Ben Silverman–who sold Reveille to Murdoch, in fact–has recently left his programming job at the television network to start a similar kind of company with longtime entertainment and Internet kingpin Barry Diller of IAC/InteractiveCorp (IACI).

And former ABC programming and Yahoo exec Lloyd Braun also runs a television and Internet production company with longtime Hollywood player Gail Berman, including recently creating the Wonderwall celebrity news site for Microsoft (MSFT).

In addition, Yahoo (YHOO) and a spate of small content start-ups, as well as big media companies, are all trying to figure out how to create and monetize content online in a multimedia effort that bridges all kinds of distribution vehicles and more deeply involves viewers.

Bebo was actually trying to do that too. Under Shields, it had been a pioneer in creating a variety of innovative online original content, including “KateModern” and “Sofia’s Diary.”

But new management at AOL, now headed by former Google (GOOG) exec Tim Armstrong, has sidelined Bebo to its new ventures division and is likely to try to sell it. Company execs at both Time Warner and AOL now say the purchase was a costly mistake.

That might be true, but it was clearly a financial coup for Shields–who has worked at both Google and RealNetworks (RNWK)–and Bebo investors.

And, given the track record of both Shields and Murdoch, it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Last night, the News Hour With Jim Lehrer aired a piece on PBS on “how technology companies are innovating amid the recession by designing popular new smart phone applications.”

BoomTown was asked to reprise my recurring role as a naysayer to tech hyperbole that always comes with the latest trend.

This time it was about how perhaps not all of the 65,000 apps being created by legions of third-party developers for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone–as well as for other smart phone platforms such as Google (GOOG) Android and Palm (PALM) Pre–will result in gold, diamonds and unicorns raining down on innovative entrepreneurs.

Well, except for the iBeer folks!

Oddly enough, I somehow went all Jules Verne at the end and started talking about ubiquitous screens on coffee tables, referencing the movie, “Minority Report” (which I love, despite the ever-annoying Tom Cruise).

So, I am obviously just as bad.

Here’s the video from the News Hour and, if you prefer, here is a link to the transcript:

In addition, here is a lovely clip from “Minority Report,” just because I like to embed stuff and it features that cool interactive mall scene and the USA Today e-newspaper (plus Portuguese subtitles!):

One of my favorite “world-of-the-future” videos recently has been one done by Microsoft Office Labs, because it does not seem ridiculously fanciful or impossible to imagine actually happening sooner than much later.

Part of an “Envisioning” series, the “Productivity Future Vision” video below sketches out a world of smartphones, touchscreens everywhere and a whole lot of innovative interacting.

The look is sleek and smooth–which is unusual for Microsoft (MSFT)–with a bit of “Harry Potter” whimsy, and all without falling into the trap of a lot of such imaginings and making the way we live someday seem like “The Jetsons.”

But, of course, the folks at IGN.com’s Sarcastic Gamer managed to find the perfect way to poke fun at the video from the software giant in a spoof that hit the target deftly.

Watch each and enjoy: