Act for Change, the online activism program of Working Assets, is petitioning Steve Jobs and Apple to unlock the iPhone:
“The iPhone uses technology (known as GSM) that should allow it to work on other wireless networks, including overseas. But Apple has configured the iPhone so you’re forced to use it on AT&T. An iPhone purchased in the U.S. will only work on the AT&T network, regardless of what SIM card is placed in it — it cannot be taken to another GSM network such as T-Mobile.
So, if you’re interested in an iPhone but are turned off by AT&T’s corporate policies — such as turning consumers’ information over to the National Security Agency without warrants, their efforts to wipe out...
Social Networking Penetration With Teens Close To 100%
Saturday, 30 June 2007
AdAge reports that social networking sites now reach an amazing 96% of online tweens and teens. 71% of online tweens and teens connect to a social network at least once a week, making them some of the most popular sites on the Internet.
For companies that want to reach teens, the study suggests that social networking sites and Internet media may soon be as important as television.
Highlights of the study include:
Social networking is approaching parity with TV time among 9- to 17-year-olds.
When kids are multitasking, they’re four times more likely to pay closer attention to whatever they’re doing online than to whatever they’re watching on the tube.
Parent’s perspectives on social networking hasn’t been thoroughly analyzed, with most discussion limited to alarmist views (ie., MySpace is full of sexual predators).
Neuros has announced that their open source set top box, Neuros OSD, now supports YouTube. Unlike the Apple TV, the Neuros OSD supports YouTube directly and can view any video in YouTube’s library.
“The fact that the Neuros OSD allows YouTube playback is even more significant when considering the way this milestone was achieved,” said Neuros’ Joe Born. “The YouTube browser was actually developed by open source community members to solve a need that they themselves had.”
Neuros actively encourages these kind of contributions on the belief that the only way a device manufacturer can keep up with the pace of Internet developments is by allowing users themselves to contribute to the device’s functionality.
freeiPodsoftware.com has a free MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter that turns any number of MP3 files into one iPod Audio Book File. The advantage of doing this is that you can make use of the advanced audio book functionality of your iPod.
For example, your iPod remembers where you were listening in your audio book, so you can alway start listening where you stopped the last time. You can also adjust the speed of playback, if you want to listen to the files playback faster or slower.
MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter runs on Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP and Vista. Mac and Linux versions are planned.
Apple has released iTunes 7.3. It adds two main features: the ability to wirelessly share digital photos from any computer with iTunes to AppleTV, and support for the iPhone:
About iTunes 7.3 for Windows
With iTunes, import CDs or download songs and videos from the iTunes Store. Make playlists perfect for any occasion. Burn playlists to CD and play them on your home stereo. Sync with iPod or iPhone to enjoy your media on the go, or play your collection on your TV with Apple TV.
What?s New in this Version
Activate your iPhone service
Sync iPhone with your music, movies, TV shows, and more
Wirelessly share digital photos from any computer in your home with Apple TV
Marketcircle has a free, open-source Mac application, iPhony, that provides a pixel-accurate web browsing environment, powered by Safari, for developing web sites for the iPhone.
Here’s an example screen shot from iPhony browsing the New York Times. Note that the image shows up larger than life on your computer, because the iPhone’s display packs pixels together much tighter than typical computer screens:
If you want to test your blog or podcast site for compatibility with the iPhone, you may want to give iPhony a try. The app is a quick download, is easy-to-use, and has several features that should help with testing sites:
A keyboard command lets you zoom in or out (no multi-touch, yet!).
What If Internet Radio Held A Day Of Silence, And Nobody Listened?
Friday, 29 June 2007
Thousands of U.S. commercial webcasters went silent this Tuesday, June 26, to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that could threaten the viability of stations that broadcast mainstream music. Unfortunately for the broadcasters, it looks like the day of silence fell on deaf ears.
Tuesday’s Day of Silence was observed by Yahoo!, Live365, Rhapsody and MTV and other commercial netcasters to protest rate increases by the recording industry and SoundExchange, the company that collects royalties on behalf of music labels. The rate increases threaten to make broadcasting traditionally licensed music unprofitable or to give the music industry greater control over mainstream netcasting.
The net broadcasters’ Day of Silence made little impression with Congress, though, according to Businessweek:
Apple has appears to be quietly introducing an RSS reader for the iPhone at reader.mac.com.
If you visit the site with a standard Web browser, though, you get a warning message:
Change Firefox’s user agent to something like “Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A542a Safari/419.3″ - and this is what you get:
So no word on what functionality this offers, or if it will support accessing podcast MP3s directly through the browser.
If you’ve got an iPhone and can try this out - let us know in the comments!
PODCASTING NEWS 
Act for Change, the online activism program of Working Assets, is petitioning Steve Jobs and Apple to 
