Virgin America today announced that it is partnering with AirCell in an effort aimed at offering air-to-ground broadband internet service on Virgin America flights in 2008.

Fly Virgin next year and you’ll be able to access the Internet from any seat on their flights. The system is expected to let you connect to the Internet with the AirCell Broadband Service, using either seatback video screens or your own Wi-Fi devices.

While we’re not expecting mile-high podcasting to become popular anytime soon, being able to get news and entertainment podcasts in-flight, instead of the standard airline fare, sounds pretty shagadellic.

Fair Use exceptions to U.S. copyright laws are responsible for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue for the United States, according to the findings of an economic study released today by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA).

The study, which was was conducted in accordance with a World Intellectual Property Organization methodology, suggests that limitations on copyright-holders’ exclusive rights, such as “fair use”, generate substantial revenue, employ millions of workers, and, in 2006, represented one-sixth of total U.S. GDP.

The Fair Use exception to U.S. copyright law, as codified in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 states, “The fair use of a copyrighted work … is not an infringement of copyright.” Fair use permits a range of activities that are critical to many high technology businesses such as search engines and software developers.

Fair Use issues have long been a source of conflict between companies that want to introduce new technologies and content providers that want to control what you can do with their content. Fair Use issues have also become critical to the future of Internet media, as million- and even billion-dollar lawsuits threaten to limit what you can do with music, video and other copyrighted content.

The report (pdf), released today at a briefing on Capitol Hill, quantifies for the first time ever the contributions of fair use to the U.S. economy. The timing proves particularly important as the debates over copyright law in the digital age move increasingly to center stage on Capitol Hill.

TalkShoe today announced the general availability of ShoePhone, a service for unlimited group calling with anyone, anywhere, anytime. The service lets you organize large group discussions over the Internet and to record them as podcasts.

Up to 250 people can participate in a live call, which TalkShoe calls a “Talkcast”. 1,000s more can listen to a live Internet audio stream of the discussion. Users can also simultaneously text-chat, and Talkcasts can be recorded and stored on TalkShoe‚Äôs website for later listening and podcasting. Talkcasts can be done instantly, or scheduled in advance.

ShoePhone is free to use.

Another report shows that advertisers are rapidly moving their spending from traditional media to the Internet. And while Internet ad spending is rising, advertisers appear to be getting more bang for their buck, because their overall ad spending is down.

Internet media’s share of advertising spending increased from 6.4% to 7.6% in the last year, according to research firm TNS Media Intelligence:

Total advertising expenditures in the first half of 2007 slipped by 0.3 percent to $72.59 billion versus the same period in 2006.

“For the first time since 2001, media advertising expenditures have declined for two consecutive quarters,” said Steven Fredericks, president and CEO of TNS Media Intelligence. “While the protracted downturn in automotive spending has been a prime contributor, the overall results reflect weakness across a wide range of industries and advertisers. Given the uncertainties about near-term economic growth and consumer spending, we expect core ad spending will continue to face challenges during the second half of the year.”

The Wall Street Journal has an article today that suggests that iPods and MP3s are ruining pop music.

The idea is that the dynamic compression that has become popular to make music sound louder, combined with audio file compression, which throws away details of the music, have combined to make pop music horrible.

According to the Journal, “because both compressed music and the iPod’s relatively low-quality earbuds have many limitations, music producers fret that they are engineering music to a technical lowest common denominator.” The result, according to the Journal, is music that’s loud and harsh.

“Ten years ago, music was warmer; it was rich and thick, with more tones and more real power,” says L.A. engineer Jack Joseph Puig. “But newer records are more brittle and bright. They have what I call implied power. It’s all done with delays and reverbs and compression to fool your brain.”

The WSJ seems to have forgotten that for half the history of modern pop music, it was engineered to sound good relatively primitive stereos and car radios. Today’s portable media players deliver sound that’s a leap ahead of the AM car radios, transistor radios and Walkmans of the past.

Is It Fergie’s Fault?

While Fergie’s My Humps may be craptaculous, it’s not because of portable media players.¬†

The Wall Street Journal’s argument¬†is one part neo-luddism and one part generational bias. Before they write off today’s pop, they may want to give another listen to past pop wonders, like¬† Judy In Disguise (With Glasses), Hippy, Hippy Shake, Pictures of Matchstick Men¬†or Napoleon Alexander’s They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Ha?

Numark has announced that it‚Äôs shipping the first iPod DJ mixing console that lets you scratch, control pitch, key-lock, and simultaneously play two songs from a single iPod. If you’re interested in recording dj mixes or music shows, you can even use the iDJ to record back to your iPod.

The Numark iDJ2 features an iPod docking system that lets you play two songs simultaneously from a single iPod, without the need for a computer. You can hook up multiple mass storage devices including additional iPods, thumb drives, and external USB hard drives through rear panel USB ports. In addition to USB connectivity with iPod docking and charging, the iDJ2 comes with line inputs for any audio source including a microphone, CD players and turntables.

While the first generation of iPod mixers were glorified toys, the iDJ2 looks like it’s moving the category into new territory.

You can manage your music library with visual track-profiling using the iDJ2’s graphic interface. The iDJ2 also lets you record musical performances to the iPod or any connected drive, in addition to offering full control audio play back.

The iDJ2 is available now with a a street price of $599.

We noted earlier Movable Type’s new iPhone blogging support. It looks like WordPress users are interested in the iPhone, too.

Content Robot has introduced iWPhone, a plug in that automatically generates an iPhone-compatible version of WordPress-based sites.

The iWPhone WordPress Plugin and Theme automatically reformats your blog’s content for optimized viewing on Apple’s iPhone. It detects the iPhone’s User Agent and serves up the content with the special theme only to iPhone visitors. All other browsers will get your WordPress blog with your current theme.

We’d like to see the iPhone become a mobilecasting and mobile blogging platform. To do this, content management systems need iPhone-friendly admin pages. The iPhone also needs an accessory keyboard and a way to publish photos and audio files to the Web.

via Seifi via Keith

Movable Type has announced that it now has iPhone blogging support, via the same plugin developed for use with TypePad, their blogging service:

Today we are happy to announce Movable Type for the iPhone and iPod Touch, made possible through a plugin developed by Brad Choate that makes use of the design developed by Walt Dickinson for TypePad. The plugin works by installing an alternate template set that is automatically used in place of the primary Movable Type user interface when the application is accessed via an iPhone or iPod Touch. The integration with Movable Type is totally seamless.

Best of all, the code is free and open source.

Sony has introduced the Rolly, an egg-shaped robotic “audio entertainment player”.

The Rolly plays MP3s from speakers on each end that are normally hidden by dish-like covers. The device has just one button, an on-off switch. Everthing else is controlled b y a pair of rings that circle the player’s body. One ring is used to move from track to track or album to album while the other controls the volume.

If that’s not strange enough for you, the same two rings are connected to motors that enable the Rolly to scoot around a table-top in time to the music being played.

Rolly has 1G byte of flash memory built-in and can playback MP3, Atrac or AAC songs (AAC songs with copy protection from iTunes Music Store aren’t supported). In addition to playing back music from its internal memory the Rolly can also receive music streamed via a Bluetooth connection.

Phillip Torrone, Your MP3 Player Is Here
We’re not sure who this MP3 player is designed for, but it may be Phillip Torrone and the rest of the hackers at Make Magazine.

Rolly’s movements can be programmed into the device for each track. There are six basic movements that the Rolly can be programmed to do, like moving its speaker covers in or out or turning the wheels. By sequencing the basic movements, complex moves are possible.

Sony will supply an app called “Motion Editor” to get you started. Sony also plans to launch an online community where the company and users can share movement files.

Users should get about five hours of audio playback from Rolly. This drops to four hours when the device is in motion and three and a half hours when Bluetooth streaming is also enabled.

No word yet on whether you’ll be able to remotely control it’s robotic brain.

via PCWeek

Since the introduction of the iPhone, we’ve been lamenting the fact that Apple has left its √ºber-phone out of the revolution in user-generated content:

User-generated media is one of the biggest trends on the Internet. So why isn’t there a keyboard accessory for these devices, so people could use them to edit their blogs? Why no support for recording audio and posting it to the Web? Why no ability to browse the drive and upload photos to blogs? Why can’t we use Wi-Fi to sync podcasts both from the Web and to the Web?

It looks like the people at Six Apart, creators of TypePad and Movable Type, would like to use the iPhone and the iPod touch for content publishing, too. They announced today the release of a mobile version of their TypePad blogging application, customized for the iPhone.

TypePad for the iPhone and iPod

“We believe in making it easy to update your blog from wherever you are, and we’re excited to be delivering this new capability to iPhone users,” said Michael Sippey, VP Product, Professional Division at Six Apart.

The TypePad iPhone application was designed from the ground up to be optimized for Apple’s multi-touch iPhone display. TypePad bloggers can create new posts, edit existing posts, manage comments from their community, and configure settings to send photos directly from their iPhone to their blog. The TypePad iPhone application will also work on the recently announced iPod touch.

TypePad users can access the application by visiting http://i.typepad.com from their iPhone. New users can sign up for a TypePad account at http://www.typepad.com.

Support for the iPhone adds to TypePad’s existing mobile blogging capabilities, which include “post by email” and TypePad Mobile, a smartphone application for devices running Symbian, Windows Mobile or Palm operating systems.

If you’ve heard of similar iPhone/touch functionality for WordPress or other publishing platforms, let us know in the comments.