Amazon has announced that it plans to cripple one of the features of the new Kindle 2, its text-to-speech feature, to avoid angering publishers wanting to sell audio books: Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are […]

The final edition of the Rocky Mountain News is captured in this Vimeo video. After 149 years and 311 days, the Rocky Mountain News published its final edition on February 27, “Stop The Presses” now sounds pretty pathetic. What newspaper do you think will go next?

The Commons Video is a 3 minute 46 second animation (licensed under CC BY), making the case for an expansive conception of “The Commons” as a means to achieve a society of justice and equality. From the video’s description: In a just world, the idea of wealth–be it money derived from the work of human […]

I’m not a fan of gossip sites, but Perez Hilton is a force of nature to be reckoned with. Yesterday, Perez Hilton (Mario Armando Lavandeira) announced that his site had its busiest day ever – getting an astounding 13.9 million page views in one day. Meanwhile, the Hearst corporation announced huge layoffs at the San […]

Startup company doubleTwist today launched a public beta of a new universal media application for the Mac that’s like iTunes for everything. doubleTwist’s goal for the product is to be “a single, streamlined interface that connects to any device, media source or network.” In other words, they want to make moving your media around, from your […]

The Nielsen Company reports that the Internet is turning us into mouse potatoes. According to their most recent data, viewing of video on television, Internet and mobile devices continues to increase and has reached new heights. The average American watches more than 151 hours of TV per month, an all-time high. Meanwhile, Americans who watch video over the […]

Tim O’Reilly has published an opinion piece today saying that the Kindle must open up or die: Unless Amazon embraces open e-book standards like epub, which allow readers to read books on a variety of devices, the Kindle will be gone within two or three years. In developing the business plan for the Kindle, Amazon was no […]

Computerworld’s Mike Elgan has posted an interesting opinion piece, in which he calls podcasting “the most underappreciated, underutilized media ever”: Podcasting is the most underappreciated, underutilized media ever. Some people never try it. And many who do wind up giving it up unimpressed. Too bad. A new study (Lecture Podcast Listeners Outperform Class Attendees) found that […]

Erik Rassmussen has released a WordPress plugin that’s designed to make it easy for audio bloggers to use YouTube as a free audio host.  YT-Audio adds an flash audio player to your blog that streams audio from YouTube. It works by trimming the standard YouTube video player to only show the controls. The above image shows […]

The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization is now home to a new podcast series. The Sweetest Sounds, hosted by R&H President Ted Chapin, and produced by NPR documentarian Jeff Lunden, will be an ongoing series of audio podcasts about Rodgers & Hammerstein and their music. The first series features five programs focusing on four great musicals […]