The Chronicle of Higher Education has an off-the-record explanation from an RIAA official on how they identify colleges and universities to target:

The official explained that one way the RIAA identifies pirates is by using LimeWire, a popular peer-to-peer file-sharing program that is free online and used by many college students (there is also a more-robust version of the program sold for a small fee).

Here’s how the process works: The RIAA maintains a list of songs whose distribution rights are owned by the RIAA’s member organizations. It has given that list to Media Sentry, a company it hired to search for online pirates. That company runs copies of the LimeWire program and performs searches for those copyrighted song titles, one by one, to see if any are being offered by people whose computers are connected to the LimeWire network. For popular songs, the search can turn up dozens, if not hundreds, of hits. A search on Madonna’s latest release, “4 Minutes,” turned up more than a hundred users trading various copies of the song.

The LimeWire software allows users who right-click on any song entry and choose “browse host” to see all of the songs that a given file sharer is offering to others for download. The software also lists the IP address of active file sharers. (An IP address is a unique number, assigned by Internet-service providers, that identifies every connection to the Internet.) While the names of the people associated with particular IP addresses are not public, it is easy to find out which IP addresses are registered to each Internet-service provider. Using public, online databases (such as those at arin.net or samspade.org), Media Sentry locates the name of the Internet-service provider and determines which traders are located at colleges or universities.

There’s nothing especially surprising about this scenario, except possibly how unsophisticated it is.

The RIAA’s tactic of targeting colleges & universities is likely to continue as long as students use file-sharing software; it’s may be time for colleges & universities to fight back.

They could do this by promoting free and legal music downloads from artists like Nine Inch Nails that offer their music with Creative Commons Licenses, or by making students aware of the thousands of free music podcasts that are available.

What do you think? Should colleges just pay the RIAA to go away, should they install filters on their network, or should they try something new – educating students about legal free music?

Addonics has introduced a 1.8″ ZIF – CF Adapter kit that you can use to make your iPod faster and more shock resistant.

The adapter (ADZIFCF) supports several types of Compact Flash media including PIO, DMA, UDMA4 for up to a 40MB/s transfer rate. In addition to iPods, the adapter supports any laptop computer or portable device that uses a 1.8-inch ZIF connector. It has a MSRP of $23.99.

The upgrade is not for the timid. Install instructions are available.

Features:

• Install Compact Flash into a device which uses a 1.8″ hard drive with ZIF connector
• Can be used like a 2.5″ hard drive using the optional ZIF to 2.5″ IDE connector converter
• Compatible with Apple iPOD
• Can be installed into laptops which use 1.8″ ZIF connector
• Current Compact Flash speeds support up to 40MB/s with UDMA4
• Supports PIO, DMA, UDMA depending on type of Compact Flash installed
• OS independent
• Fully RoHS compliant

iPhone apps are quickly going mainstream.

Payless Car Rental has announced an iPhone-formatted version of its site for the iPhone and iPod touch:

We recently launched a slimmed-down version of the Payless website for iPhone and iPod Touch users. Simply point your iPhone or iPod Touch to PaylessCarRental.com (or PaylessCar.com).

The iPhone and iPod Touch optimized website also features a “Call to Book” button that, when pressed, will quickly connect you to a reservation agent who will gladly assist you in the booking process.

For your convenience, we have included links to our Store Locations, where you can view a store location’s map and contact information while on the go!

While I probably won’t plan my trip around what’s compatible with my iPhone, it’s another sign that companies see catering to iPhone and iPod touch users as an important opportunity.

Advertisers are spending more at niche, or “long tail” web sites, and less at large sites, according to figures from PubMatic, a advertising service for publishers.

The PubMatic AdPrice index shows that, while average ad rates are falling, rates at niche sites are actually on the rise.

eCPMs (effective cost per 1000 ad impressions) for large Web sites (more than 100 million page views per month) dropped by 52 percent from 38 cents in March to 18 cents in April. Medium Web sites (1 million to 100 million page views per month) were nearly flat, with monetization dropping from 34 cents in March to 33 cents in April. Meanwhile, small Web sites improved their monetization, increasing from $1.18 in March to $1.29 in April.

Here are the details:

Television content available through Apple’s iTunes Store continues to grow.

HBO and Apple today officially announced that programming from HBO is now available for purchase and download via the iTunes Store. Programs include The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Deadwoo, Rome, Flight of the Conchords and The Wire.

“We’re very excited to make these legendary HBO programs available on the iTunes Store,” said Henry McGee, president of HBO Video. “Whether catching up on Sex and the City in anticipation of its upcoming movie release or reliving a favorite Sopranos episode, we think viewers will love being able to watch these shows on their iPod or iPhone.”

Television shows purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store can be viewed on a Mac or PC, iPod nano with video, iPod classic, iPod touch, fifth generation iPod, iPhone or on a widescreen TV with Apple TV.

With the announcement, Apple also introduces more variation in pricing for TV shows. Sex and the City, The Wire and Flight of the Conchords are $1.99 per episode, and The Sopranos, Deadwood and Rome are priced at $2.99 per episode.

At this point, the biggest hole in Apple’s iTunes Store offerings is movie selection. While Apple’s offerings are steadily increasing, they still are a tiny fraction of what’s available via NetFlix.

The Guardian reports that BT PodShow, an online TV portal, is getting its full consumer launch:

The service is a joint venture with US-based Podshow (now Mevio), in which the backers of Google and YouTube have invested, and which has been running for several months. It has over 1m hours of content.

The two companies signed their original deal in September 2006 and, since then, Podshow has been looking for British talent and helping with production costs.

“We are what we call a brand-safe network,” said BT Podshow president Adam Curry. “There is an expectation about what is going to be delivered, an advertiser won’t just find themselves next to a video of someone shooting a firecracker out of his bum.”

Highlights of the network include an alternative healer and the self-styled sex therapist Dr Cockney.

Google Reader got an update today, but it’s more than an updated news reader – it’s a taste of the future of the Web:

We on the Reader team are heavy mobile Safari users. To make our (and your) Reader iPhone experience better, we wanted to really take advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities.

Today we’re releasing a new beta version of Reader designed for the iPhone and other mobile phones with advanced browsers. You can use it by visiting http://www.google.com/reader/i/ on your phone.

This new version is designed to offer many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. If you’ve used list view, then it should be familiar to you. Scan the titles for an item that interests you, tap and it expands in place. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. We think it’s a very fast way to power through your reading list.

The overall iPhone experience is years ahead of its competition, but iPhone Web apps have lagged behind.

Google’s update brings us an important Web app that’s carefully tuned to the capabilities of the iPhone. It makes better use of the screen space, there are fewer wait times, and it’s clear that the people that designed the app are eating their own dog food.

How long will it be until mobile content creation apps catch up with this? Don’t be surprised if, within 6 months, there are iPhone blogging, podcasting and vlogging apps as sophisticated as this.

DreamCatcher has announced the release of iPhone Video Recorder, an iPhone video recorder.

iPhone Video Recorder records audio and video at a frame rate of up to 15fps to the compressed mpeg4 format.

Because of the CPU overhead, iPhone Video Recorder encodes at the end of a recording session, and the encoding can be paused anytime and then resumed when convenient. While it is possible to record and encode on-the-fly, the frame rate will suffer. You can customize the image quality, the brightness and the audio bit rate options.

Here’s a video demo:

iPhone Video Recorder works on iPhone firmware 1.1.x, 1.2.x, 2.0. A limited-functional trial version (recording up to 30 seconds) is available for download.

U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos in March 2008, a 13-percent gain versus February and a 64-percent gain versus March 2007, according to figures from ComScore.

All Your Views Are Belong To YouTube

In March, Google Sites ranked as the top U.S. video property, with more than 4.3 billion videos viewed (38 percent share of all videos), gaining 2.6 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites.

Other highlights:

• 73.7 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• 84.8 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer).
• 47.7 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (8.4 videos per viewer).
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.

Here are the details:

Google has released a new free Mac OS X app, Vidnik, that’s designed to make it easy for users to record video, add a Title, Tags & Description and upload it to YouTube:

You can use Vidnik to create a video diary, or just to quickly record a video comment to attach to an existing YouTube video. Vidnik works with the built-in video cameras on recent Macs, with Firewire video cameras, and with many USB video cameras.

To use Vidnik, run the app, then click the record button to start recording. Click it again to stop. Trim to just the golden moments you want to keep, as in the screen shot above. Fill in the required title, description, and so on. Click the upload button. That’s it.

Or you can drag movies made in other programs onto Vidnik’s column of movies, then click the upload button. And to use another program to do a little post-production, use the Gear menu to show Vidnik’s movie file in the Finder. Edit the movie in the other program, then upload it.

In other words, it’s designed to work with your built-in video camera to make filming and uploading movies trivia – the same territory Seesmic covers.

Google’s entry suggests that user-generated Internet video is going to get easier fast.