Donna Bogatin at Insider Chatter is questioning the importance of Twittergram, podcasting pioneer Dave Winer’s latest concoction.

Winer’s unfortunately named Twittergram service (how long until the cease & desist notice is delivered?) is a sort of mashup between Twitter’s short-text message broadcasting and audio podcasting.

Here’s how Winer describes a Twittergram:

A TwitterGram has a title and a small MP3 file. The title explains the gram, it must be no longer than 75 characters, to allow room for the URL of the MP3, which is about 50 characters.

Underlying this is the idea that...

Creative Commons Canada has published the Podcasting Legal Guide for Canada.

More than just an adaptation of the original U.S. Guide, this version required an almost complete rewrite of the copyright sections to describe Canadian law, as well as substantial changes to the discussions of trademarks and publicity rights.

Kathleen Simmons and Andy Kaplan-Myrth co-authored the publication with help from the Creative Commons Canada team and the faculty at the Law & Technology group at the University of Ottawa.

The Podcasting Legal Guide for Canada is available for download in html format and pdf format. It’s licensed...

JazzMutant has released Dexter, a new multi-touch computer controller that’s sort of like an iPhone for mixing audio.

The laptop-sized control surface features a multi-touch display and is designed to be used as a flexible Digital Audio Workstation control surface. JazzMutant has partnered with leading audio workstation software developers to offer visual feedback and two-way communication with their applications, including Sonar, Cubase & Logic. The state of your project is mirrored on Dexter’s screen: track and effects names fully displayed, with no abbreviations, level meters, timecode, as well as precise surround position and exact EQ curves updated in real-time.

Here are the details…..

The sonic chair is an unusual new chair designed to provide “a unique audio experience, allowing you to sit at the very centre of a sound system.” It has input jacks for connecting iPods and other MP3 players, stereos and gaming systems, and according to the designers, provides an excellent listening experience without disturbing others.

The chair also promises to let you relive scenes from the cult television classic The Prisoner, which featured a cryptical character, Number 2, that favored a similar chair:

Features:

• open design for a highly resonant sound environment
• passive and...

Can’t afford an iPhone? Then get your mom to knit one!

That’s what Greg at daddytypes.com did:

My mom was insanely cool even before she knitted an iPhone. Last week, as the hype was peaking, I braced for reports of kids across the country grabbing for their parents’ new iPhones; it was a drool-soaked disaster waiting to happen, like all those people who flung their Wii controllers into their flatscreens because they didn’t think they really needed that wrist strap. Obviously, I thought, a kid needs his own iPhone so he won’t play with his dad’s. So I asked my mom if she could knit one. And she did. Frankly, I think it’s cooler than the Steve Jobs version.

It may be sort of...

CD sales are taking a dive this year, as more and more music fans get their music fix from free music podcasts and digital music services like iTunes.

229.8 million albums were sold in the United States from Jan. 1 to July 1, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures. That is a 15 percent decrease over the same period last year. In the same period, sales of digital tracks were 417.3 million, a 49 percent increase.

While digital sales are growing rapidly, they aren’t growing as fast as album sales are dropping. The decrease in album sales is 9.2 percent when digital sales are included. The gap is attributed by many to the fact that many people are now buying hit singles instead of an entire CD.

It’s beginning to look like the cell phone industry may be iPwned by Apple’s iPhone:

• iPhone reviews have been nearly universally glowing.
• Other cell phone introductions, which might have generated some buzz a short time ago, are suffering in comparison to Apple’s new mobile phone.
• Unofficial reports put iPhone sales at over one million in less than a week, which would make it one of the hottest technology introductions in history.
• iPhones are sold out at most...

The Open Mobile Video Coalition has issued an open letter to technology companies urging them to adopt a single standard for digital TV signals for cell phones, PDAs and other mobile devices.

The coalition is made up of mainstream broadcasters, including Fox, Gannett, Telemundo, NBC, Tribune and others.

The current terrestrial digital TV system was designed to maximize broadcast coverage to fixed locations in homes and isn’t optimized for mobile use. Broadcasters are looking for a single mobile technology standard that will be backward compatible with the existing digital TV signal, instead of using other spectrum requiring an entirely new digital TV infrastructure.

Broadcasters are racing to speed the development and adoption of mobile broadcast TV, as other options, including video podcasting and YouTube, are already bringing digital video to mobile devices like iPods and the new

AOL has launched an update to its AOL Video portal.

New features include:

• A redesigned main page that makes it easier for consumers to discover, search for and find millions of videos from across the Web;
• A redesigned video search experience that leverages Truveo video search technology and features better presentation of Web search results to help users more easily find what they are looking for and;
• A new embedded playback experience where consumers can find and watch videos from other popular video sites on the AOL Video site.

“Consumers want just one place where they can go to find and watch all of the videos they?re looking for,” said Fred McIntyre, Senior Vice President, AOL Video, ”and our new AOL Video portal gives them just that: a single website that brings together millions of videos from across the Web.”

According to the...

You can rename your iPod using the iTunes application by following these steps:

1. Select the iPod in the Source list.
   

   

2. Click its name again. iPod's name is highlighted.
   
3. Type a new name.
   
4. Press Enter.