The Seattle area is going to get another jobless jolt today, with RealNetworks planning to lay off four percent of its workforce, sources said.

That’s a small number–just about 70 people out of its 1,700-person staff–but the move comes on the heels of layoffs of another 800 employees at nearby Microsoft yesterday.

The software giant has cut thousands of jobs over the last year, part of a move to eliminate 5,000 positions by mid-2010.

While the dismissals–which are likely to be announced by managers to affected RealNetworks (RNWK) employees sometime this morning–will be global, both companies are tech leaders with headquarters in the Pacific Northwest.

According to sources, the reasons for the layoffs at RealNetworks are, as was the case at Microsoft (MSFT), to realign the workforce after the recent economic downturn and to control costs.

But RealNetworks could also hire back some of the laid-off employees, as other parts of the company are expanding.

The company had signaled the possibility of staff cuts previously, but had not been specific.

The last staff cuts at the company, which makes digital media software and tools, were larger, about 130 employees sacked about a year ago.

RealNetworks announced better-than-expected third-quarter earnings last week, barely returning to profitability by cutting costs to make up for weaker revenue.

(Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski contributed to this report.)

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.

Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist. Pittman will also join its board.

Playlist has previously raised several million dollars, said sources, but the new funding is many times that, to total about $18 to $20 million.

The move to Playlist is an interesting one for Van Natta, who has looked at a number of jobs since leaving the high-profile social-networking site earlier this year.

He has talked to a wide range of companies, sources said, including Microsoft (MSFT) and a range of start-ups, as well as with MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS). (News Corp. also owns this site).

Those talks between Van Natta and MySpace to run its new music initiative did not pan out for a variety of reasons.

But he has long expressed a desire to become a CEO of a company, rather than just head to another executive job within a larger company, so the move to run a start-up is not a surprise.

In an interview this afternoon, Van Natta told me he got very intrigued by the possibilities at Project Playlist, which was the first iteration of the start-up and in which he is an investor, due to its viral growth.

And, indeed, Playlist has grown quickly to become one of the larger music communities on the Web, claiming that more than 38 million music fans monthly, sharing playlists via its Web site and also widely distributed embeddable widgets. The site has tens of millions of daily page views, according to surveys.

To get to those big-scale numbers, Playlist essentially has offered users a giant linking service for music, not unlike Google (GOOG) with all information, pointing users to promotional, free and sometimes illegal music and music video tracks all over the Web.

Those links to illegal music have resulted in a lawsuit aimed at Playlist from the music industry, sources said, a sadly typical experience of many online music services.

The usual tactic for the music giants: Sue first and shake down later.

Under Van Natta, I would guess, Playlist is likely to reach out to music companies and strike deals.

The company also needs to settle on its main business plan, which appears to me to have been less important than its explosive growth.

Playlist currently does have some small amount of advertising on the site, and seems to be making most of its scratch from sending leads to ringtone sellers.

Van Natta did not want to reveal specific strategies for Playlist going forward, only noting the opportunity is large.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta. “And the company that does the best job of taking advantage of that is really going to be huge.”

That said, there have been a lot of music-aimed efforts like Playlist in the music space, with a lot of different business plans and varying degrees of success, ranging from the Apple (AAPL) behemoth iTunes site, which sells single songs, to the CBS (CBS) music service, Last.fm, which relies more on advertising revenues.

Other contenders in the space include the Rhapsody subscription service from RealNetworks (RNWK), music discovery service iLike and many others. MySpace has also waded deeply into the music space, and Facebook is also reportedly weighing its own service.

Van Natta was one of Facebook’s earliest and most prominent execs, serving in jobs like COO and also Chief Revenue Officer while there.

He came to Facebook in the fall of 2005, after a stint as VP of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon, and was part of the founding team of A9, the Amazon search company.

“I am excited to be building a company again,” said Van Natta, who has taken many months off since he left Facebook in February.

When he debuted his company’s new DVD copier at DEMOfall recently, called RealDVD, RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser did a video interview with BoomTown about it.

And now that RealNetworks (RNWK) and Hollywood are cross-suing each other over RealDVD–in the latest clash over the still-contentious copyright issue that separates the tech and entertainment industries–it’s time for a replay!

The RealDVD software allows a user to rip all the parts of a DVD, including cover art, onto a computer. It costs about $30.

Hollywood studios, which filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday, maintain that RealDVD is illegal, and one of their reps called it “StealDVD.”

Haw, haw. This is what apparently passes for clever in Hollywood these days.

But before the entertainment giants’ lawsuit, RealNetworks filed its own suit, claiming it was protecting the fair-use rights of consumers to make copies of content they had purchased.

To avoid violating digital rights management schemes, RealDVD has added its own DRM layer, preventing ripped DVDs from being copied and shared and imposing further barriers to piracy.

But there are still possibilities for illegal ripping, of course, because RealDVD users must promise not to copy videos they don’t own.

No surprise–an honor-system product that makes it even easier to copy DVDs was not exactly welcome by Hollywood, which has been trying to protect its movie revenues from suffering the same fate as the music industry via rampant CD-ripping.

Thus, the typical mainstream media reaction to the inevitability of consumers wanting to digitize content: More lawsuits!

In any case, here’s the video of Glaser talking about RealDVD:

At DEMOfall yesterday, RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser chitty-chatted with BoomTown about a lot of things, such as the Presidential race (he is a big Obama supporter), his twins and more.

But in this video interview, Glaser talked about RealDVD, the company’s new “legal” DVD copier, which was launched here in San Diego yesterday.

At an introductory rate of $30, buyers can use the software to rip all the parts of a DVD, including cover art.

To avoid violating digital rights management schemes, RealDVD adds its own DRM layer, preventing ripped DVDs from being copied and shared and imposing further barriers to piracy.

But there are still possibilities for illegal ripping, of course, because RealDVD users must promise not to copy videos they don’t own.

Thus, an honor-system product that makes it even easier to copy DVDs might not be so welcomed by Hollywood, which has been trying to protect its movie revenues from suffering the same fate as the music industry via rampant CD-ripping.

Here’s the video of Glaser talking about RealDVD:

Over the last two days, BoomTown has been enjoying the perfect Pacific Northwest summer weather, visiting several Seattle-based Internet companies and also Microsoft HQ in nearby Redmond.

Seattle is still essentially Silicon Valley North, except a lot more laid back and with much less of an egregiously opportunistic, what’s-the-next- hot-start-up tone one feels any day of the week in Palo Alto.

I used to come to Washington state a lot about a decade ago, while covering Microsoft’s MSN, RealNetworks (RNWK) and Amazon (AMZN)–which continue to be the major trio of digital bigwigs here–as the Internet beat reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

I plan on coming back a lot more over the next year, focusing more closely on Microsoft’s (MSFT) still uncertain Web efforts and also on a wide range of other companies here.

So far, it seems to be off to a good start.

While here I had a blabby dinner with RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser, where we talked about online games and music and Sen. Barack Obama (Glaser is a big supporter).

I also went to see Delve Networks (or, as I like to call it–Not-Brightcove), social networking facilitator WetPaint and the music social networking service iLike (which I really like).

Also on the agenda was a day-long visit to Microsoft, to get updated on some thankfully non-Yahoo products and services and what the company’s research and Live Labs units are working on.

Of course, there was Yahoo talk too, but–even up here–it’s hard to avoid.

All this and more will be part of postings and videos next week in this column on what the geeks in this coffee-inundated city are up to.

Now in its fifth year, it was called “Making a List: The Fifth Annual What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” and took place in Palo Alto, Calif. Our guest were Marissa Mayer of Google and tech consultant Greg Harper.

Walt and I typically show off several devices we think are interesting and try to identify some important trends.

Here’s a video of Walt, Greg and Marissa at the event:

(I still am having problems with the Brightcove player, so I uploaded the video to YouTube.)

For example, Walt showed the new Amazon Kindle electronic book reader (which he did not actually like so much in his review of the device this week), as well as the new version of Sony’s e-book offering. He also showed some new cellphones that are trying to mimic the Apple iPhone. His take: Great software in consumer electronics is key this year.

I showed new robotic devices from iRobot–the new version of its popular Roomba vacuum and its new wireless gutter cleaner called the Looj. We had an actual gutter on stage, full of leaves I made my much-abused assistant Ed Daly collect from a gardener’s truck we found on a suburban street.

And every year, we’ve brought in uber-gadget geek and tech consultant Harper, who always brings in a truckload of cutting edge and sometimes freaky stuff. That included an egg-shaped speaker that dances from, of course, Japan, as well as a solar battery charger, a $400 laptop and a vanity mirror that is a Webcam in disguise. Harper posited that all devices would have to be always connected going forward.

And, also annually, we invite a celebrity geek from well-known tech companies. In the past, we’ve had Google’s Larry Page, Jerry Yang of Yahoo, RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser and Chad Hurley of YouTube–geeky guys all. But Mayer, one of Google’s top execs, proved the nerdiest with a wide range of cool stuff.

She showed off a keyboard whose keys had embedded LCD screens, a wireless rabbit, an alarm clock that can jump off your nightstand and a T-shirt with a wireless signal locator in it. She also did a demo of exactly what the new Google Android operating system for cellphones looks like. Take careful notes: It looks an awful lot like the iPhone.

OK, I am definitely not Princess Grace-worthy (well, who is? But here’s a picture of her, because it just makes life more pleasant).

But I am headed right now to her glam neck of the woods for the Monaco Media Forum, which is set to take place from tomorrow through Saturday in Monte-Carlo.

Hosted by HSH Prince Albert II, its subhead this year is “Leadership for the Digital Revolution,” and the group gathered is pretty heady and packed with American Webheads, as well as from around the globe. It has all been wrangled by Wired’s Spencer Reiss.

Speakers include Google’s ad guy Tim Armstrong, RealNetworks’ CEO Rob Glaser, CBS interactive guru Quincy Smith, pundit Esther Dyson, Babelgum Chairman Silvio Scaglia, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, NetVibes CEO Tariq Krim and News Corp.’s British Sky Broadcasting CEO James Murdoch (whose father is BoomTown’s new bossman).

I will be doing a one-on-one interview Friday morning with InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller with the title “Reality Check.”

Videos to come, of course, as BoomTown gets some European class.

Using the software, you can download online videos from Web sites with one click, organize them and burn them to DVD and CD. Copyright issues are interesting here, of course, but Glaser said protected material would not be able to be sucked up by the technology. We’ll see.

By way of background, D: All Things Digital, the annual tech and media conference Walt Mossberg and I host, has been sold out with a long wait list every year we have put it on.

That has meant only a few hundred people can see the interviews and also demos we do live onstage with some of the tech and media industry’s most interesting and important players and products.

The lineups have included Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, as well as Eric Schmidt of Google, IAC’s Barry Diller, Meg Whitman of eBay, Cisco’s John Chambers and many others.

And we’ve demoed stuff like the Treo when it first came out, as well as digital toilets, Wi-Fi phones and much more.

We usually post the photos and videos of the interviews and demos six or more months after they take place on a separate conference site. This year, our Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski live-blogged, and we also posted video highlights from all of the sessions immediately on our newly launched site here.

Now, we are posting videos of every session of the 2007 conference here, in full, and we have made all our photo galleries, hosted by SmugMug and mostly shot by our fabulous Asa Mathat, public too. You can also access our videos via the site’s master player here.

Every day, I am going to highlight a different interview or demo from the conference.

Here’s the RealPlayer 11:

Hey, we live in “sunny” San Francisco, as Ryan (the name of Orange Google Guy) says in the video, so we don’t judge.

So, Abayomi-Paul can now immortalize Orange Google Guy using RealNetworks’s beta software of its RealPlayer 11, which allows users one-click downloading of non-DRM-protected video from the Web. It is being offered to selected AllThingsD.com visitors to try out before it is released later this month.

CEO Rob Glaser debuted the new version of RealNetworks’s flagship product at the D5 conference last month, which you can read about here and also see a video of the demo.

Along with downloading, you can also bookmark videos and organize them using the software. And once saved, you can then rip those videos onto any CD, DVD or, eventually, any other storage device like an iPod.

Abayomi-Paul is in the early stages of a Web video channel for small businesses and thinks the RealPlayer would give her something neat to demo.

“I want to make some Google how-to videos downloadable for my small-business audience at www.freetraffictip.com–with permission only!,” she wrote. “The collection would be free, but then lots of the time-crunched ones could watch offline.”

Adding that she is home sick in bed, she noted that, “the computer is my only love! I’m a geek, a currently bedridden geek. Please help me not to die of boredom!”

Glad to help.

Check it out:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Gallantly, he sent us another one, embedded below, which is called “How To Crank Dat Soulja Boy,” a hip dance video that we can certainly handle in Silicon Valley.

And Cetoute can now download as he pleases, using RealNetworks’s beta software of its RealPlayer 11, which allows users one-click downloading of non-DRM-protected video from the Web. It is being offered to selected AllThingsD.com visitors to try out before it is released later this month.

CEO Rob Glaser debuted the new version of RealNetworks’s flagship product at the D5 conference last month, which you can read about here and also see a video of the demo.

Along with downloading, you can also bookmark videos and organize them using the software. And once saved, you can then rip those videos onto any CD, DVD or, eventually, any other storage device like an iPod.

Said Cetoute in his email about why he wanted the player: “I am not one of those tech freaks that will download CNET videos cuz that’s dumb and a waste [of] time. I want videos from YouTube/Google video. And I promise to use the account well, and not get it just to be in on all the latest tech. (Loser) lol.”

He is in luck, as RealNetworks is offering the beta software of its RealPlayer 11, which allows users one-click downloading of non-DRM-protected video from the Web, to AllThingsD.com visitors to try out before it is released later this month.

CEO Rob Glaser debuted the new version of RealNetworks’ flagship product at the D5 conference last week, which you can read about here and also see a video of the demo.

Along with downloading, you can also bookmark videos and organize them using the software. And once saved, you can then rip those videos onto any CD, DVD or, eventually, any other storage device like an iPod.

Most of Rajagopal’s selections were musical, many of street buskers and musicians, which were uniformly delightful. I selected three to show here. The first is of the Swingle Singers doing their unusual version of the “Mission Impossible” theme song; the second is of another group using Nintendo as an inspiration; and the third is a face-off of the music from “Star Trek” and “The Simpsons.”

Writes Rajagopal: “My views are pointed and fierce (some call them prejudiced). If this is indeed a beta version, I am sure I can send my point across and it would be meaningful.”

He adds: “My PC has 26 instances of beta software.”

Now, 27.