MySpace today announced the launch of an original scripted web series, Roommates, the first original web series created for MySpaceTV. It’s a fauxality show focusing on hot chicks just out of college.

The first of 45 episodes goes live today on MySpaceTV, with new episodes debuting each weekday at 1:00 pm PT/ 4:00 pm ET through December 21.

Roommates follows a group of eight former college roommates after graduation. The four main characters – Peyton, Violet, Heather, and Sigourney – move to Los Angeles where they are invited to participate in a “reality show” by living in a house wired with cameras and computers to document their every move. In case that doesn’t tell you what the show is focusing on, the press release for the show adds that Roommates features raw and voyeuristic segments, confessionals and romances. And bikinis and cut-offs.

While Roommates’ concept may not be especially new, the way it’s being presented is. The official Roommates profile will be the home for new episodes, profiles for each character, video blog postings from the characters, on-demand archives, and other interactive content. MySpace is also using its platform to host online discussions and polls so that the audience has the opportunity to influence the development of the show.

You can preview Roommates below:

SanDisk Corporation today announced the U.S. availability of the Sansa TakeTV video player, a sneakernet alternative to Apple TV.

According to SanDisk’s Daniel Schreiber, the TakeTV has “No confusing wireless network set-up, no wires running across the living room and no cumbersome burning of DVDs. Just use the Sansa TakeTV device to move your favorite video content over to your TV, and enjoy it on the big screen with family and friends.”

How It Works

The TakeTV brings the sneakernet concept to moving video from your computer to your television:

• Plug the TakeTV player into your computer’s via a USB port.
• Drag video files onto the TakeTV player.
• Slip the player into its TV cradle. The cradle plugs into the standard A/V sockets of most existing TVs.
• Use the on-screen guide to select the content stored on the TakeTV player, using the included remote control.
• Watch the video.

SanDisk’s Sansa TakeTV flash memory-based player comes in a 4 gigabyte capacity, which holds approximately five hours of video, and 8GB, which can hold up to ten hours of video. It is available today for MSRPs of $99.99 and $149.99 respectively.

TakeTV may benefit from its relatively low price point and the technology’s simplicity. However, it makes managing video content a manual process that requires physically moving back and forth between your TV and you computer, which makes it less convenient than alternatives like Apple TV and the XBox 360.

NBC Universal has quietly yanked Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake’s D*ck in a box off of YouTube. Try to view the video, and you get a message that the video is no longer available.

The video removal appears to be part of a larger shift in NBC’s strategy for Internet video.

According to reports, NBC has killed the YouTube channel that it announced with fanfare in June of 2006. At the time, the two companies described the arrangement as “a strategic partnership that will combine NBC’s quality programming with YouTube’s vast audience to enhance the entertainment experience on YouTube while engaging viewers in innovative new ways to promote NBC’s Fall program lineup and other preferred shows over the next year.”

That year is up, and NBC has moved it’s attention to developing its own video sites, where it can control how the videos are used and how they are monetized. The change is bad news for YouTube, which already faces a billion-dollar lawsuit, a coalition of media companies that think YouTube has the responsibility to screen content before it is published, and growing signs that big media companies may get Internet video, after all.

AT&T and Apple have sold 1.325 million iPhones, according to Strategy Analytics, making it one of the most popular mobile devices in the United States.

“The iPhone has become AT&T’s top selling device, commanding some 13 percent of AT&T’s overall handset sales, and the 4th top selling handset in the US market,” according to Barry Gilbert, VP of the Strategy Analytics BuyerTRAX programs.

“Although the iPhone hasn’t had an expansionary impact in the market, the iPhone has quickly assumed a leading market share position and raised the ante for smart devices,” according to Mr. Gilbert. “The sales trajectory we are observing with the iPhone could make it the top selling device in the US over the next 1-2 quarters.”

The trend is especially important to the world of new media, because the iPhone opens up new audiences to podcasts, video podcasts, YouTube and other Internet media. The success of the device is also likely to lead to more capable mobile clients that can handle portable media.

The top selling handset in the US continues to be Motorola’s RAZR V3, however, it appears to be losing momentum to new and more competitive models.

iPhone Users An Extremely Attractive Demographic

“The typical iPhone buyer is upwardly mobile, college educated with a six-figure household income,” according to David Kerr, Vice President of the Strategy Analytics Global Wireless Practice. “While the largest percentage of iPhone buyers is between 20-30 years old, the fact that nearly 25 percent were between 50-60 years old demonstrates that the device attracts buyers across a broad age spectrum.”

According to SA’s research, iPhone users are quite satisfied with phone design and features. However, they are less enamored of the iPhone’s reliability, battery life, documentation and customer support.

A new site, TheFunRide lets you search for videos across YouTube, Google Video, Metcafe, Daily Motion and 70+ other video sharing sites. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do it very well yet.

We searched for a variety of popular video search terms, with terrible results:

• Pamela Anderson – this search returned lots of skateboarding videos, but no Pam Anderson.
• Eva Langoria – more @#$# skateboarding videos.
• Evolution of Dance – didn’t return YouTube’s most popular video ever, despite searching for the title of the video. The site did return a video titled sexy girl shows her ass for YouTube.
• My Chemical Romance – returned a Chemical Brothers video and a video about very nice toes, but no My Chemical Romance.

Even more bizarre, a search at TheFunRide for Paris Hilton returns a bunch of duplicate Hillary Duff videos:

There’s a clear need for video meta search. At this point, though, TheFunRide isn’t a contender.

PodCamp Boston 2, taking place October 26-28 at the Boston Convention and Expo Center, Boston, MA, promises to be one of the most interesting new media unconferences ever.

PodCamp Boston 2 is a three-day event focusing on blogging, podcasting, social networks, video on the net, and new media. More than 1,200 people are expected to attend.

The list of people planning to attend reads like a who’s who of podcasting and new media.

“It has been amazing to watch the global community of PodCampers grow in the year since the first one last September,” said C.C. Chapman, Podcaster and PodCamp Boston 2 Organizer. “I am looking forward to welcoming a lot more people to the community.”

Details about the event are available in the official guide (pdf).

Ambrosia Software has released the latest version of their WireTap audio application, WireTap Studio, bringing a whole new batch of features and functionality. Ambrosia calls the upgrade to the older WireTap Pro product “a breakthrough in audio recording, editing, and management.”

WireTap Studio takes up to two disparate audio inputs (a Skype phone call and a DVD, for one strange instance), from any software or hardware source you use with your Apple computer, hijacks them, normalizes the tracks, and saves them in Apple lossless format.

The software has a live preview feature that lets the user hear what the finished audio at different bitrates and sample rates, and see how large the finished file size will be at that setting.¬† Lossless audio editing features mean that the user’s original source material is always available to revert back to.

The folks at the Mac Observer were gushing about this product at the Podcast and New Media Expo last month, and we talked with the Ambrosia guys on their recommendation.¬† Watching John and Evan’s demo of the new product, it really did seem to live up to the buzz — easy to use, very powerful.¬† We’re looking forward to getting our own hands on a copy and checking it out here in the office.

WireTap Studio retails for $69, but a $30 upgrade is available for former WireTap Pro users, or for coverts from Audio Hijack Pro.

Several of the world’s leading Internet and media companies today announced their joint support for a set of copyright guidelines for user-generated content designed to protect the intellectual property of content owners.

According to the companies, the principles offer a comprehensive set of guidelines to help user-generated content (UGC) services and content creators work together to bring more content to more consumers through legitimate channels. The companies supporting these principles include CBS Corp., Dailymotion, Fox Entertainment Group, Microsoft Corp., MySpace, NBC Universal, Veoh Networks Inc., Viacom Inc. and The Walt Disney Company.

Notably absent is Google, whose YouTube video sharing site led to these media companies coming together.

The principles call for copyright owners and UGC services to work together to protect intellectual property. They include:

• Implementation of state of the art filtering technology with the goal to eliminate infringing content on UGC services, including blocking infringing uploads before they are made available to the public;
• Upgrading technology when commercially reasonable;
• Cooperating to ensure that the technology is implemented in a manner that effectively balances legitimate interests, including fair use;
• Cooperation in developing procedures for promptly addressing claims that content was blocked in error;
• Regularly using the technology to remove infringing content that was uploaded before the technology could block it;
• Identification and removal of links to sites that are clearly dedicated to, and predominantly used for, the dissemination of infringing content; and,
• Promotion of content-rich, infringement-free services by continuing to cooperatively test new technologies and by collaboratively updating these principles as appropriate to keep current with evolving developments.

Is This The Beginning Of The End For YouTube?

While these principles seem quite reasonable on the surface, they pose multiple challenges to file sharing services. The principles place the responsibility on video sharing sites to keep copyrighted material from being shared.

The unusual show of cooperation between these media companies doesn’t bode well for YouTube. Viacom is already suing YouTube for $1 billion for copyright infringement. Earlier today, Viacom’s Comedy Central demonstrated that it could beat YouTube at its own game by introducing a legitimate video sharing site for The Daily Show that’s actually pretty cool.

The Daily Show site demonstrates that mainstream media content is coming to the Web in a legitimate, comprehensive and fairly user-friendly way. If other media companies follow suit, it’s likely to lead to an explosion of video content on the Web and a decline in the importance of sites like YouTube.

Viacom has unveiled a new site for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart that’s designed to offer an alternative to YouTube and other video sharing sites.

Viacom is also demonstrating that it’s figured out how to compete with YouTube: give people what they want. The new site offers 13,000 high-quality clips, from episodes dating back to 1999. Plans are in place to include the show’s entire video history.

It’s about #$#*in’ time!

The site is chock-full of “Web 2.0” goodness, featuring tags, comments and you can even embed videos in your blog or Web page. The site will also feature “The Wayback Randomizer,” which will randomly pick a clip from any show 1999 to present with a click of a button; games, a wiki and a public forum.

We’d like to see an ad-supported daily podcast of the last night’s show, but this is a giant step in the right direction for Viacom, Comedy Central and The Daily Show.

Viacom previously sued YouTube for $1 billion.

Bloggers, podcasters, and assorted online enthusiasts are gathering at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University in Greensboro, (NC), Oct. 19 and Oct. 20 for ConvergeSouth, an annual conference focused on enhancing creativity online for everyone. Exploring “the online revolution in personal expression”, ConvergeSouth focuses on digital publishing, videocasting and podcasting.

Friday’s topic is “The Fifth Estate,” and will feature several panels on the impact that blogs and other online media have had on newsgathering and the traditional media.

Saturday’s topic is “The Making of the Fifth Estate,” and will look at podcasting, videocasting and the impact digital media can have on people’s lives. Saturday night’s schedule features small intimate dinners with creative leaders from the local community. Concerts at the Green Burro (get it? in Greensboro?), a film festival, and a barbecque hosted by the Aycock Neighborhood round out the weekend.

Thanks to various sponsorships, ConvergeSouth is free, but registration is already full. If any Podcasting News readers attend the event, we would like very much to hear about your experiences there.