The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today sent another new wave of 411 threatening letters to 19 universities nationwide.

The RIAA sent letters to these schools schools:

• Drexel University (17 letters)
• Indiana University (23)
• Northern Illinois University (25)
• Occidental College (19)
• State University of New York at Morrisville (18)
• Texas Christian University (20)
• Tufts University (15)
• University of Alabama (14)
• University of California
• Berkeley (19)
• University of Delaware (18)
• University of Georgia (13)
• University of Iowa (18)
• University of Michigan – Ann Arbor (20)
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln (13)
• University of New Hampshire (30)
• University of New Mexico (17)
• University of South Florida (43)
• University of Southern California (37)
• Vanderbilt University (32).

Each letter informs the school of a forthcoming copyright infringement suit against one of its students or personnel. The letter requests that university administrators forward the letter to the appropriate network user to allow the individuals the opportunity to promptly resolve the matter and avoid a lawsuit.

Universities could help avoid these legal battles by educating students about the widespread availability of legal sources of free music, including free music podcasts and Creative Commons licensed music.

Roland has updated the Edirol R-09 WAVE/MP3 Recorder to be compatible with 8-GB SD High Capacity (SDHC) cards. With the update, the R-09 now also offers manual file splitting—activated by a single button push while the R-09 is in RECORD mode.

“We are always looking for ways to increase the functionality and capability of our products,” states EDIROL Product Manager, Michael Barrett. “This new update gives users the seamless file-splitting option they’ve been asking for.”

This new feature allows R-09 users to easily demarcate unique interview subjects and/or audio subjects without interrupting the recording.

Barrett explains, “For instance, if you are interviewing three people at the same time, each time a new interviewee starts talking, you hit the button to trigger a new file. This takes a lot of the aggravation out of post-production.”

For customers updating from v1.10 or before, the v1.30 added features are included in the v1.20 update.

Research by Scouta, a company that offers a podcast recommendation application for iTunes, suggests that tracking podcast downloads is far from accurate as a measure of a show’s success.

According to Scouta’s Richard Giles, “Only 10% of downloaded podcasts are consumed to any degree, and only 50% of those are consumed over 50%.”

Scouta’s numbers are based on information collected directly from iTunes. The Scouta Agent checks your iTunes library for downloaded podcasts, and then offer personalized recommendations based on what you listen to and watch.

Giles qualifies his stats as being less than definitive, because of the sample size – 117 people and 4329 podcasts. Nevertheless, they highlight the fact that it’s probably more meaningful to track trends in podcast downloads rather than worrying about absolute numbers. It also points out the need to look for more meaningful success measures than downloads.

We’ve asked Scouta to let us know as they have stats based on a larger sample size.

Sprint and HTC Corp. today announced their response to the iPhone, the Touch by HTC, a touch-screen wireless phone integrating Windows Mobile 6 with advanced entertainment features.

The Touch features integrated TouchFLO technology, developed by HTC, leveraging smooth navigation through menus with a finger swipe. In addition, the TouchFLO cube brings a 3D cube interface allowing quick access to entertainment, communication tools and a “Dial-by-picture” photo caller ID screen.

The Touch is based on Windows Mobile 6 with Outlook Mobile, providing email integration, Office Mobile, Windows Live and the ability to run thousands of third-party applications. It also allows users to surf the web with Internet Explorer, send and receive emails, chat on Messenger and send files to their own web space through Windows Live. The home screen provides one-touch access to email, text messages, calendar appointments and contacts, as well as current weather conditions and forecasts for hundreds of cities around the world.

While it doesn’t appear to be as innovative as the iPhone, the Touch shows that Apple’s technology is pushing competitors to introduce more capable and usable phones.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today announced that native third-party apps will soon be coming to the iPhone and the iPod touch.

Here’s the text of his announcement:

“Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers‚Äô hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve”

This is a smart move by Apple – it shows that the company is listening to users and developers. It also is a win-win-win; if the Apple develops the iPhone/iPod touch into a platform, users will get more value for their investment, developers will get a new audience, and Apple will benefit from third-parties developing for Apple’s devices.

It’s turning out to be an interesting day of announcements from Apple. Earlier, they officially dropped the premium for purchasing DRM-free tracks at iTunes.

More discussion at Engadget, TUAW.

Hayden Black, creator of the wry video podcast “Goodnight Burbank,” has launched a new video podcast that is completely different and even more irreverent.

“Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary is about a 13 year old girl’s videoblog and her unique take on life,”¬† explains Hayden, “school, friends, parents and living with Bloomberger’s Disease. That’s a genetic condition that doesn’t just prematurely age the body – it messes with it hard. So now Abigail resembles…me!”

The show comes out three times a week. Be warned – while checking out a recent show, we narrowly missed spewing coffee on the new laptop because of a surprising revelation about the Girl Scouts.

Hayden sent this audio postcard, so you can learn more about Abigail:

Apple today announced that it has lowered the price of its iTunes Plus tracks to 99 cents, effectively killing the idea that DRM-free tracks are worth paying a premium for. Other online vendors, including Amazon and Wal-Mart, already offer DRM-free tracks at 99 cents or less.

Apple introduced the iTunes Plus option just six months ago. All iTunes Plus tracks feature DRM-free music with 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality. The iTunes Plus catalog is now the largest DRM-free catalog in the world. But while iTunes Plus removed restrictions on many tracks, it also introduced new complexity to the iTunes store and a premium price tag.

Apple has gone from zero to two million DRM-free tracks in half a year; if this trend continues, DRM’s tracks will be phased out within a year.

Customers can now download tracks from a variety of labels without limitations on the type of music player or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on. iTunes Plus songs purchased from the iTunes Store will play on all iPods, iPhone, Windows or Mac computers, widescreen TVs with Apple TV, as well as many other digital music players.

rollmio is launching a new video and blog promotion system designed to help marketers take advantage of consumer-generated advertising and consumer-generated media. Anyone can participate by registering at the site, and then either submitting videos or embedding videos published by others in blogs and Web pages.
When a marketer wants to launch a rollmio campaign, they post a creative brief describing the project at rollmio.com. Video creators can submit videos to the site, where they will be reviewed by the marketer. Videos selected by the marketer will then be available to “promoters” to view at the site. Promoters can select their favorite videos and embed them at their site for others to view

Pentel Project

For rollmio’s first client project, rollmio members will be requested to create video commercials for Pentel’s Energel Deluxe retractable gel rollers. Here’s how rollmio expects the project to work:

Creator side

• Create video commercial according to creative brief and submit to rollmio
• Submitted commercials are reviewed by client
• Selected commercials are paid a production fee*
• Selected commercials are announced to “promoters”

* average production fee is $50 with top videos receiving additional
$500-$1000

Promoter side

• View selected commercials on rollmio
• Select favorite video commercial and post on blog or SNS page
• Promotion fee* paid to blogs and SNS pages meeting requirements

* promotion fee ranges from $3-$20

While it doesn’t look like anyone’s going to get rich using the site – it looks like an interesting experiment in user-generated advertising.

BlackArrow, a provider of multiplatform ad-management systems, has unveiled a new platform for dynamic advertising across broadband, video-on-demand (VOD) and digital video recorder (DVR) environments. The BlackArrow system is designed to manage, deliver and measure targeted advertising for video, enabling content providers, advertising agencies and distributors to reach on-demand video viewers.

Reaching on-demand viewers over multiple channels with intelligently targeted content is one of the main challenges¬†that new media raises for advertisers. BlackArrow’s system attempts to address this challenge.

“The growth in multiplatform video consumption requires new advertising models to reach consumers who are now accustomed to being in control of when and where they view video content,” according to CEO Dean Denhart. “The BlackArrow system is specifically built to address the complexities of video ad-management, with the flexibility to support evolving advertising business models.”

Using the BlackArrow system, content providers and distributors can dynamically insert advertising  into on-demand programming. The system includes targeting features to let companies target and analyze campaigns across multiple media platforms.

PoliceOne.com today announced that it has launched BLUtube, the first online video community for police officers and departments nationwide. The site is like YouTube for police.

BLUtube offers members of the law enforcement community a secure environment in which to view and upload videos. BLUtube includes law enforcement-only sections with video tips, roll call training segments and in-car videos.

BLUtube also includes a variety of community features, including the ability to create video playlists, subscribe to other members’ content, and rate or comment on videos. BLUtube’s featured topics cover a wide range of law enforcement subjects, from training clips and product demonstrations to dashcam videos.