The Belkin GoStudio is a portable podcasting studio designed to let you capture high-quality audio recordings on-the-go and then publish directly to iTunes when docked.

Features:

• Dock lets you record directly to your iPod
• Built-in microphone
• Built-in speaker for playback
• Inputs: Dual XLR,  1/4 in
• Battery powered
• Recording meter
• Gain control and a compressor/limiter

The Belkin GoStudio is expected to be available this summer.

We’re fans of Twitter (podcastmama & podcasting_news), but have been surprised by the site’s frequent downtime.

Turns out there’s legitimate reason for concern: Twitter has the worst uptime of all the major social networks.

Availability monitoring company Pingdom.com released availability stats for the major social networks today, and Twitter comes out in last place:

The table is sorted so the sites with the worst availability are at the top. Twitter’s availability is a full percentage point behind sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, & MySpace.

Twitter hasn’t made the leap to mainstream adoption yet. Is the site’s unreliability one of the reasons?

Microsoft today announced new Zune software and online features. Here’s the official info an the updates:

Zune Software Updates

Responding directly to customer feedback, Zune has updated and added features and functionality to address better integration between the software, the online music community and the store. In addition, the updates include frequently requested features such as the ability to sync multiple Zune players at once. Specific feature updates include the following:

• Auto playlists. Users can create an auto playlist that updates itself automatically as new music is added.
• Browsing videos. Consumers can browse their video collection by genre and series, plus they can preview videos before they play them on full screen.
• Editing album and track information. Users are able to edit track or album information (metadata) quickly via multi-select and drag-and-drop. The advanced metadata editing features make it easy to edit multiple tracks or survey albums and artist information.
• Organizing collections. In addition to sorting by artist or album, consumers can now sort by genre. While browsing by genre they can further sort music by artist, album or release year.
• Gapless playback. Consumers will now be able to listen to an album without the brief gap between tracks, both on their Zune and in the Zune software. This is a must-have for live-concert recordings and compilation albums.
• Syncing groups. Zune software now syncs to multiple Zune players simultaneously. Users can prepare which content on their computer to sync even when their Zune isn’t connected. Consumers can create custom sync groups for music, pictures and videos.
• Zune reminders. Experience is improved when a Zune player’s memory is nearing capacity, via an easy-to-use tool.

On May 6, the Zune Spring 2008 update will be made available to all Zune owners.

Here’s what’s in store:

Television On The Zune

More than 800 episodes of television series to download and watch (on the desktop and to sync to the Zune) including “South Park,” “Afro Samurai,” “Witchblade,” “The Hills,” “The Office,” “Heroes,” “30 Rock,” “Battlestar Galactica,” and a bunch more.

Episodes will be priced at 160 points (about $1.99).

The Expanded Zune Social

Syncing Zune cards with devices, reputation badges, enhanced album art, artist reviews and more

An Enhanced Zune Experience

New features here include: Auto Playlists, Better Album and Track Information Editing, Collections, Gapless Playback and Group Syncing.

Podcasts

Unfortunately, there is nothing new in this release for the podcast part of our little media device.

All in all, it looks like there’s still no rudder steering the direction of Zune development. It’s still a second-rate iPod, with useless wireless features and a cumbersome digital store.

As long as Microsoft focuses on imitating an advanced, well-loved, mature competitor, it’s going to remain a second-rate platform in the eyes of most buyers.

via Zuneluv

Universal McCann has published a new report that suggests that new media is rapidly becoming mainstream media around the world.

The comparative study looks at social media trends through three “waves”:

• Wave 1 – September 2006
• Wave 2 – June 2007
• Wave 3 – March 2008

Research highlights:

• Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development.
• Asian markets (not including Japan) are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region
• All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves: Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3
• 57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content: 55% of users have uploaded photos, 22% of users have uploaded videos
• The widget economy – 23% of social network users have installed an application – 18% of bloggers have installed applications in their blog templates
• Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and a collective rival to traditional media (184m bloggers world-wide, China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42m bloggers) – 73% have read a blog, 45% have started a blog
• Social media has strong impacts over brand’s reputation – 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog – 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs

The report offers additional details on Internet media use:

Video Sharing:

• Brazil leads on 68%, Asian countries dominate (not including Japan)
• Significant variation in involvement (Hungary 16% < Brazil 68%).
• High frequency of involvement: 20% are uploading every day

Watching video clips:

• Growth is universal across all countries (31% to 82% global reach seen in all markets)
• Lowest difference between markets of any social media platform (Range 63% – 99%)
• Very high frequency medium: 71% weekly reach

Downloading podcasts

• Growth massive between Waves 2 and 3 (from 21% to 49% world-wide).
• China is the world’s biggest podcast market (74% use, with an estimated 45m users)
• Actively involved medium: 18% listen and download everyday

Storybids today announced the launch of a product placement marketplace, where online video content creators can get paid to feature physical products in their user-generated videos, serial mini-dramas, videoblogs and webisodes.

Yep – now you can do a product placement sell-out like the big guys.

Advertisers can use Storybids’ searching capabilities to find video creators that meet their demographic criterion, such as viewership, subscriptions, and ratings or by genre or age demographic. Video creators can use the site to seek out product placement advertising opportunities by targeting specific advertisers that complement the storyline of future content.

Storybids also works as a social media marketplace for filmmakers by allowing them to connect with other filmmakers for advice and collaboration on film projects

Details are available at the Storybids site.

Synthopia has the first review we’ve seen of Nine Inch Nails‘ new free album, The Slip:

Overall, NIN’s new release The Slip is an excellent release. It delivers all the things you expect from NIN, it builds on their last release, Ghosts I-IV, and it even has some a couple of tracks that are likely to burn up some air time.

The music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. It’s released with a Creative Commons license, so you can share it or use it in a podcast.

Nine Inch Nails has announced that it is giving away its latest album, The Slip, for free:

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options – all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

for those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.

You can download free high-quality MP3s of The Slip via the NIN site. Email registration is required.

Even more interesting – The Slip is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. That’s right – it’s podcast-legal music.

NIN says:

we encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc.

Nine Inch Nails continues to be the most progressive mainstream group at experimenting with new options for releasing and licensing their music. They have already released several hours of music that you can podcast and share legally, and they have an extensive lineup of free music podcasts, too.

Track list:

1. 999,999
2. 1,000,000
3. letting you
4. discipline
5. echoplex
6. head down
7. lights in the sky
8. corona radiata
9. the four of us are dying
10. demon seed

Quommunication has released a premium WordPress theme, Video, designed for video sites.

According to the company, “Once Video is added to your WordPress you only have to find or upload any video you like, go to it’s page and search the embed function and copy the code in WordPress to the body of your new post. To add some description, simply write it below the embedded video.”

A live Demo is available. A site license is $95.

If you know of any free WordPress themes designed for video sites, let me know in the comments.

Nine Inch Nails has released a new free mp3 single, Echoplex, via the music site iLike. You can check it out below.

NIN has become the band to watch, if you’re interested in the future of music:

• The group recently released Ghosts I-IV under a Creative Commons license, which means you can share it or use it in your podcast,
• The group offers an extensive collection of user-generated NIN remix podcasts.
• NIN also is encouraging fans to make and share videos for the group’s tracks.