Massachusetts (USA)-based Revolabs, Inc., a maker of wireless audio equipment, has introduced its new xTag Microphone System. Revolabs is promoting the microphone system for use with a wide variety of applications, including VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), podcasting, voice recognition, web conferencing, panel discussions and lectures, and many more desktop applications.

The manufacturer touts the system’s “Plug and Play” connectivity to Mac and PC’s, and encrypted audio for secure conversations. The xTag microphones clip ¬≠on the user’s shirt or jacket, boast full duplex audio, eight hours of talk time, and a range of 20 meters (66 feet).

Viva le difference!

While US government support of the arts frequently gets bogged down in controversies over the depiction of sexuality and anything bordering on controversial, the European Union is sexing up YouTube to showcase its support for EU cinema:

The European Commission’s Let’s Come Together promotion is intended to highlight the organization’s role in the production of hundreds of European films.

LG Electronics and YouTube jointly¬†announced today an agreement to provide YouTube services on LG handsets. The agreement promises to let users not only view videos on the phones, as on Apple’s new iPhone, but to shoot and upload videos directly to YouTube.

For upcoming YouTube-enabled handsets, LG will introduce a new user interface for accessing and uploading video content. LG’s YouTube-enabled handsets will be available worldwide starting at end of this year.

The announcement suggests that cell-phone mobilecasting support may become mainstream within a few years.

“For the first time, LG customers will be able to film, upload and view videos on YouTube using their mobile phone, just as they would be able to from their home computer,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company.

“People want to be able to capture interesting moments with their cell phones wherever they are and whenever they want,” said Steve Chen, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer for YouTube.

Apple has run out of iPhones at more than half its stores less than a week after introducing the combination iPod music player and handset in the U.S. AT&T has also sold out of the phone in almost all its 1,800 stores.

Buyers emptied Apple stores in 10 states, with 95 of 164 stores reporting sellouts last night, according to Apple’s Web site.

Analysts are estimating Apple’s weekend iPhones sales as between 500,000 and 700,000.

In related news, analysts are estimating Apple’s profits on the iPhone at at least 50%.

On Tuesday, research company iSuppli reported iPhone manufacturing costs to be $265.83, a margin of more than 55 percent for every 8 gigabyte iPhone it sold for $599.

iSuppli is still fine-tuning its report and it now thinks the product’s margin is more than 50 percent, when accounting for factors like royalties and software costs.

The Pittsburgh (PA) Tribune-Review reports that Wizzard Software Inc. “entered into an agreement with four institutional investors for $7.5 million in equity financing.”

Wizzard has, in the past year, acquired three podcast-hosting networks, Switchpod, Blast Podcast and Liberated Syndication (Libsyn). This new batch of financing follows a $1.75 million investment announced last October. That earlier financing round came hot on the heels of the announcement that the company was acquiring Libsyn.

Chris Spencer, Wizzard CEO, issued a statement about this most recent investment: “This capital infusion allows us to continue funding the growth of our recently announc[ed] podcasting acquisitions and will allow us to accelerate expansion of our overall podcasting efforts, in which we see tremendous potential.”

“Management believes that upon an effective registration with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), Wizzard will qualify for a listing on a national stock exchange,” said company Chief Financial Officer John Busshaus. Wizzard’s stock currently is listed on the Over-The-Counter Bulletin Board.

FeedBurner announced today via their blog that their Pro and MyBrand add-on services were now free:

FreeBurner for Everyone

One of the many benefits that FeedBurner publishers will enjoy now that FeedBurner is part of the Google family is a little something we like to call, “more for free!” Beginning today, two of FeedBurner’s previously for-pay services, TotalStats and MyBrand, will be free. Not in the sense of soaring high above the clouds or recently sprung from the hoosegow, but free like you’ll no longer gladly be billed on Tuesday for a burned feed today. We suspect this will be welcome news to the 450,000+ of you using many of our other free services, but understanding that your feed is your feed, you will need to activate these newly freed-up services in order to partake in their awesomeness.

FeedBurner Stats PRO

PRO is feed analytics taken to the next level. You will now have access to the number of people who have viewed or clicked individual content items in your feed and ‚ÄúReach,‚Äù which estimates the daily number of subscribers who interacted with your feed content. You can turn this on by signing in to your account, navigating to the Analyze tab and heading to the FeedBurner Stats PRO section. Click the “Item Views” checkbox to activate these PRO features.

MyBrand

The MyBrand service (also PRO-level) is located under the “My Account” tab after you’ve signed in. MyBrand lets you maintain consistency between your feed address and your hosted website’s domain, if matchy-matchy is your thing. For example, rather than using feeds.feedburner.com/MyFeedName, your MyBrand-ed feed address can be feeds.myexcellentdomain.net/MyFeedName. To get started with MyBrand, sign into FeedBurner, click the “My Account” link in the upper left-hand corner, and then click “MyBrand”. Nota Bene: You must be comfortable playing around with DNS entries and own the rights to the domain whose DNS entries you’ll be playing around with in order to successfully activate MyBrand.

Previous “PRO” customers will not be charged for the month of June 2007 and beyond. Also, after newly activating either of these features or services, you’ll notice a nifty new “PRO” badge next to your feed(s) on My Feeds page.

Feedburner is a popular tool with podcasters because of its podcast statistics and feed services.

Soundsnap is a new site for finding and sharing free samples, sound effects and music loops that can be used in podcasts and other multimedia productions.

Designed as a resource and community for musicians, sound designers, producers, film makers and web/video game developers, Soundsnap offers content for use in any kind of media production. Users can freely download and upload content to be legally shared and used in any media project.

“We like to think of Soundsnap as ‘YouTube for sounds” where users not only download sounds for their own use, but submit their sounds and help the library grow organically,” said Tasos Frantzolas, creator of Soundsnap.com. “Free, on-demand, and publicly available audio clips and samples encourage experimentation and creation and makes for better audio within any kind of project.”

The New York Times reports that Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, has notified Apple that it will not renew its annual contract to sell music through iTunes.

It’s too early to tell if this is a negotiation tactic or a change in strategy for Universal, but the company said it would market music to Apple at will, which would let Universal remove its songs from the iTunes store on short notice if the two sides do not agree on pricing or other terms:

In the four years since iTunes popularized the sale of music online, many in the music business have become discouraged by what they consider to be the near-monopoly that Mr. Jobs has held in the digital sector — the one part of the music business that is showing significant growth. In particular, Mr. Jobs’s stance on song pricing and the iPod’s lack of compatibility with music services other than iTunes have become points of contention.

By refusing to enter a long-term deal, Universal may continue to press for more favorable terms from Apple or even explore deals to sell its catalog exclusively through other channels. If Universal were to pull its catalog from iTunes, Mr. Jobs would lose access to record labels that collectively account for one out of every three new releases sold in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan data.

The music industry would like to have more control over pricing in iTunes, instead of the fixed prices per tracks that Apple prefers.

Apple sold about half a million iPhones this weekend, estimates Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster.

Going into the weekend, Munster thought Apple would sell 200,000 on Friday and Saturday. Sunday night, though, Munster estimated that Apple sold about 500,000 units from 6 p.m. Friday through the close of business Sunday.

Jaffray also reported that 95% of the buyers in San Francisco, New York and Minneapolis (home to Piper Jaffray’s offices) purchased the 8GB model. About half were new customers for AT&T.

His royal purple badness, TAFKATAFKAP, aka Prince, is angering the music industry by releasing his latest CD for free with a UK Sunday newspaper.

The Mail on Sunday has revealed that Prince’s 10-track Planet Earth CD will be available with in an upcoming edition of the paper, making it the first place in the world to get the album. Planet Earth will go on sale on July 24.

Prince’s move to distribute his music directly with daily newspaper is a high-profile reflection of a larger trend of artists experimenting with ways to work around the mainstream music industry to get their music to fans.

“The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores,” said Entertainment Retailers Association co-chairman Paul Quirk. “And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.”

Prince’s later career has been dominated by his desire to have control of his music and identity, leading him to work for years with a symbol instead of his given name, because Warner Brothers controlled the rights to his releases as “Prince.”