Pioneering sci-fi podcaster Scott Sigler, creator of the EarthCore and Ancestor podcast novels, wants to kill you.

He’s working on his latest novel/podcast, Nocturnal, and he needs some people to kill off. Here are the gory details:

“I’m running a contest where your name can be the name of a victim in NOCTURNAL. All you need to do is go to the brand-new scottsigler.com and register a full profile,” explains Sigler. “Only complete profiles are eligible to get ‘dat ass killed and be immortalized in the pages of NOCTURNAL when it’s printed in 2010. “

You can find out more in with the promo, below, or at the Scott Sigler site.

Wave Arts has announced the introduction of Master Restoration Suite, a comprehensive set of restoration plug-ins for cleaning up tape, vinyl, and acoustic recordings. The tools are designed to give high quality results with minimal tweaking.

The MR Suite consists of 5 plug-ins:

• Master Restoration‚Äîall-in-one plug-in
• MR Noise‚Äîpowerful broadband noise reduction
• MR Hum‚Äîhum removal, buzz removal, brickwall filters, and spectrum display
• MR Click‚Äîclick/pop removal and crackle/scratch removal
• MR Gate‚Äînoise gate

Features:

• Noise reduction with minimal artifacts
• Noise reduction is low latency (under 20 msec) and can be used in live situations
• Fast noise floor learning time (down to 50 msec), hence noise looping is not required
• All plug-ins can be monitored to hear signal that is removed
• Comprehensive displays for all plug-ins
• High resolution spectrum display lets you see hum partials before you notch them out
• Separate algorithms for clicks/pops and crackle/scratch noise
• User presets are automatically shared between individual plug-ins and Master Restoration plug-in
• Mono/stereo, up to 192 kHz sampling rate, 32-bit processing with 64-bit EQs
• Mac OS X (AU/RTAS/VST/MAS) Universal Binary
• Windows (RTAS/VST/DX)

Suggested MSRP: $499 for Master Restoration Suite, $349 for MR Noise, $99 for MR Hum, MR Click, and MR Gate. Fully functional 30-day demos are available for download.

The 4th Online International Podcasting Expo is looking for submissions for audio/visual presentations for its April 18-19, 2008 free event. Seminars may cover beginning or advanced podcasting topics, but must clearly present easily applicable concepts and instructions relevant to entrepreneurs, web professionals, educators, non-profits, marketers and hobbyists. Seminar presenters will each be featured in the International Podcasting Expo Podcast and blog, including their bio, business links, and main products and/or services.

Current topics and speakers include:

• Leesa Barnes – “Podcasting for Profit”
• Kim Bloomer – “How to Get Sponsors Who Don’t ‘GET’ Podcasting”
• Dr. Peter Beck – “What Medical Professionals Can Gain From Podcasting”
• George Smyth – “How To Find Music To Play In Your Podcast”
• Penny Haynes – “Recording, Editing and Mixing with WavePad & MixPad (free software included)”
• Shelly Brisbin, Editor-In-Chief of Blogger & Podcaster Magazine, will lead an advanced discussion about “‘Cliques’ in the Podcasting Community & ‘Scary’ New Media Language”

The event is a virtual online event, is open to the public and is accessible to anyone with an internet connection and speakers. 8 hours of audio/visual networking are scheduled during the event, and a Speaker may also apply to lead a networking session.

Speakers must submit a full outline of their presentation, along with links to online visuals, or a basic Powerpoint presentation (no transitions). Speakers must also have a computer headset microphone and a webcam. Deadline for public submissions is November 30, 2007.

It looks like Apple’s decision to delay the release of Leopard still didn’t give them enough time to give the operating system update a thorough testing. After four hours+ of updating, the OS X 10.5 install turned my Powerbook G4 into a doorstop.

After doing the upgrade, the laptop is requiring a login, though it was set to log in automatically before. That would have been a minor problem, if the upgraded laptop would just recognize my password.

Unfortunately, this issue is a common problem, and Apple has issued a support doc on it:

Issue or symptom

You may not be able to log in with a user account that has a password of 8 or more characters and was originally created in Mac OS X 10.2.8 or earlier, after performing an upgrade installation of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (the default installation type).

Products affected

* Mac OS X 10.5
* Mac OS X 10.5 Server

The recommended solution is to boot into single-user mode and do a little Unix command-line clean-up. When we tried this, though, the command-line was so painfully slow that we actually baked a batch of cookies while waiting for one command to register. To top it off, the suggested fix didn’t work.

We’re scheduling a trip to the Apple Genius on this one.

Large numbers of users are having problems updating to OS X 10.5. Other problems that appear to be fairly common are the Mac equivalent of the blue screen of death and networking troubles.

Update: I spent two hours with an Apple Genius working with this – most of the time spent with reboots. It’s still bricked, hosed, locked, unusable, playing hard to get…..whatever you like to call it. I left it with the Geniuses.

Update 2: The Geniuses were extremely friendy, but ended up reinstalling the OS using the archive and install option, and the Powerbook. This got me logged in, but the OS was acting so strange that they recommended a clean install. After a clean install and a lot of reloading files from backup and tweaking settings, it’s¬†getting close to usable again.

Creative Technology, makers of the Zen portable media player, is struggling.

The company, which delisted from the Nasdaq earlier this year, posted Q1 2008 (through Sept 30th) sales of $185 million. That’s down 24% since last year. Income was actually up for the quarter, though, which the company attributes to improvements in operations.

Apple saw iPod revenues increase 4% last quarter, and unit sales increase 17%.

It’s looking more and more like Microsoft’s Zune is a Zen-killer, having little or no effect on iPod sales but cranking up the competition for second place.

In the midwestern (US) city where we live, there is a sixty-year, very goofy tradition of not sending the children out to beg for treats on Halloween. Fearful of what might happen if 1940’s era trick or treaters mixed with older “hooligans” on October 31, our community decided to sugar-ize the little ones on “Beggars’ Night,” October 30.

This leaves the Podcasting News staff a quiet Halloween evening tonight — without the responsibility for answering the doorbell, handing out candy, or traipsing through the chilly neighborhood in the dark. We’re looking forward to some scary podcast listening and viewing.

Here are a few treats we came across:

Project man Bre Pettis has a MAKE magazine weekend project with Eric Skiff: making well fitting, realistic vampire teeth. Not a project to be attempted by little kids (stinky plastics, dremel tools, and gag-reflex diy dental molds), the end result looked really, really cool. This week they also have a video on convincing zombie makeup. Very gross.

Final Taxi‘s Ron Nasty is telling real-life stories about the scary, creepy, and deadly all week, a variation on his usual tales of real-life (not so scary and creepy) notables. A far cry from last week’s entries about the late Deborah Kerr and the actress who was 007’s Miss Moneypenny! Not suitable listening for small humans, but you probably already knew as much.

A favorite TV show of our misspent youth, MTV’s Headbangers’ Ball, features this week a special Halloween podcast with scary Danish metal musician King Diamond and his scary latest solo album.

Cool As Hell Theatre has a half-hour audio adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Mad Decent Radio has a frightening “Kill Yourself Again” Halloween hip hop podcast featuring, among other artists, last year’s music Oscar winner 3 6 Mafia.

Expert storytellers Brian and Gene over at Hometown Tales often have chilling stories to tell (or sometimes to demystify), regardless of the season. They have a wonderful discussion of werewolves that’s more thought-provoking than frightening. For super scary stories, take a listen at Pseudopod, all year long.

Finally, while many cultures celebrate some kind of festival of all souls (or all saints) at this time of year, many western traditions have grown from very old pagan observances of Samhain. The podcast A Darker Shade of Pagan has a Samhain-themed podcast this week (mostly of themed music). Stacy Simmons’ The Witching Hour has an excellent overview of Samhain, “the veil of the year.”

If you’re doing something special for Halloween, let us know in the comments!

MessageLabs reports that spammers have introduced MP3 music files into their expanding toolbox of stock spam techniques, with 15 million emails identified in October 2007.

We’ve been concerned for a couple years about the potential of audio spam. With the rise of speech-to-text based search in products like PodZinger, it’s only a matter of time before spammers start packing audio files with popular keywords in order to get noticed. This could cause major headaches for podcast and video search sites.

At this point, though, spammers are using audio files as a way of getting through email spam filters.

On October 17, MessageLabs intercepted the first copies of an estimated 15 million email spam run which lasted 36 hours and used StormWorm infected computers to disseminate the emails. Purporting to be a legitimate music file, the MP3 file names were all music-related such as beatles.mp3, Britney.mp3 and elvis.mp3, and contained a rusty-sounding, 25-second voice-over touting the latest stock offering from Exit Only Incorporated. The voice was synthesized using a very low compression rate of 16 kHz to keep the overall file size small, at around 50 KB, to avoid detection.

“The MP3 spam tactic is a natural progression for cyber criminals following runs of image, PDF and Excel junk mail earlier this year,” said Mark Sunner, chief security analyst for MessageLabs. “As users become wary of certain file attachments, scammers will move on to their next tactic, ever hopeful of finding the key which will easily open all inboxes rather than having the door slammed in their face by anti-spam filters. Video spam and PowerPoint are both well anticipated so watch this space for the next format du jour.”

MessageLabs experts believe that it is only a matter of time before the spammers apply the same approach to audio spam and upload the message to free multimedia hosting sites such as YouTube, Google Video, MySpace or any number of sites competing in this new media market.

via ZD

Dayton, Ohio-based Wright State University is among the first schools to make available rooms dedicated to podcasting.

“We wanted to bring what’s up-to-date, fun and common for today’s students to the library here at Wright State,” says Sue Polanka, who is the head of references and instruction for the Dunbar Library. “Myself along with a few others came up with the idea so students can create digital files, make Power Point presentations or create videos using our server at the library.”

While Wright State is not the first university to adopt podcasting on campus, they are one of the first schools to have a facility dedicated to the creation and consumption of new media. “We are definitely setting a trend for university libraries,” said Polanka. “By having our own separate room dedicated just to podcasting, we are able to give the students a nice place to come and try out the new software.”

The room itself is now open to users on a first-come, first-served fashion. “We plan to hold an open house for the students in the coming weeks, so we can formally show the room off and explain just exactly what podcasting is to those students who are unfamiliar with it,” said Polanka. The room will be equipped with computers and the necessary plug-ins for a student to come and get started with their very own podcasts. “One of the things that sets us apart is the sound walls we have in place that will allow students to talk or even make music in the most quiet environment we can provide,” says Polanka.

The podcasting room gets its official grand opening in November.

via Wright State Guardian

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. announced a smaller loss in the third quarter (ending at the end of Sept. 2007) as the company added subscribers. It still hopes to gain regulatory approval in order to close its deal to merge with XM Satellite Radio this year.

Sirius lost $120.1 million in the quarter that just ended, compared the $162.9 million loss, or 12 cents per share, over the same period a year ago. The loss was in line with analysts’ expectations. Earlier last week, XM also announced its quarterly earnings and losses.

Sirius announced earlier this year that it had agreed to combine with its (only satellite) rival XM, and the deal is undergoing regulatory review. The FCC had originally said the two satellite operators couldn’t merge, but the companies argue that there is far more competition for audio entertainment now from (non-satellite) portable music players, Internet radio and other media (like podcasting). If the merger is approved, the companies have said they would offer pricing plans that would allow customers greater choice in which channels they receive.

The deal is still facing scrutiny from the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission.Sirius said it plans to hold a shareholder vote on the acquisition of XM on Nov. 13, the same day XM’s shareholders are expected to vote.

Sirius added 524,938 subscribers for a total of 7.7 million, 50 percent more than this time last year. The company said it is on target to have 8 million subscribers by year’s end. XM is the larger of the two competitors, at 8.6 million subscribers, but their customer base has been growing more slowly than that of Sirius.

Both XM and Sirius have been attempting to broaden their subscriber base by striking deals with automakers to outfit new cars with the satellite receivers; in the meantime, retail sales of the hardware continue to soften. According to the Washington Post, Sirius’ new subscribers resulting from car sales nearly doubled in the quarter to 462,749, while new customers added via retail store sales slumped to 64,101 (from 205,899).

Chris Penn, one of the organizers and creators of PodCamp, announced at the end of PodCamp Boston that the “rules” of the unconference events are changing.

A large number of people registered for but didn’t show up at last weekend’s event. Because of the high number of no-shows, organizers have hundreds of unused shirts, badges and other materials. 1,357 people registered for PodCamp Boston 2. Approximately 650 attended, a 52.1% no-show rate.

Because of this, future PodCamps will be allowed to charge a registration fee, in order to cut down on the no-shows.

Here are the updated PodCamp rules:

1. All attendees must be treated equally.
2. All content must be released under Creative Commons.
3. All attendees must be allowed to participate.
4. All sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet.
5. The event must be new-media focused.
6. The financials must be fully disclosed in an open ledger.

Despite the high percentage of no-shows, the event was largely successful. Attendance was double the previous year’s, and the event was one of the biggest unconferences ever.