Ann Summers, a UK sex toy site, is getting a massive load of free publicity courtesy of the lawyers at Apple.

According to reports,¬† Apple lawyers claim that Ann Summers’ advertising for its iGasm iPod sex toy, right, is a blatant rip-off of Apple’s iPod advertising. Apple has sent a cease and desist letter, warning “We hope this request to remove it immediately will prevent us having to consider further action.”

The iGasm hooks up to your iPod, MP3 player, laptop or CD player and vibrates in sync with the beat.

The ¬£30 iGasm joins the iBuzz and other sex toys piggybacking on the iPod’s popularity.

TechCrunch is reporting that Google is buying RSS feed management company Feedburner for about $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.

“The information we have is that the deal is now under a binding term sheet and will close in 2-3 weeks, and there is nothing that can really derail it at this point,” writes TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington.

Feedburner has become a popular tool for bloggers, podcasters and video podcasters because of its ability to translate one feed into many different types of feeds and because it offers a wide range of statistics.

The deal promises to create synergies between Feedburner’s feed management features and Google’s advertising technologies.

Not everybody is taken with the deal, though. “Adam” comments: “They should just rename the Internet to Google.”

SoundExchange, the group that collects performance fees on behalf of hundreds of major and independent record companies, said Tuesday that it would give “small” Webcasters the option of paying “below market” royalty rates on the songs they play. Their offer would keep royalty rates essentially the same as they are under a 2002 law called the Small Webcaster Settlement Act.

“The net result of this proposal is that small Webcasters would be guaranteed no increase in royalty payments for 13 years, from 1998 to 2010,” SoundExchange general counsel Michael Huppe said in a statement.

Small webcasters would pay 10 percent of all gross revenue up to $250,000 and 12 percent for all gross revenue above that amount. Those rates would hold until 2010 and be retroactive to 2006, SoundExchange said.

The proposal has been rejected by several groups representing webcasters.

SaveNetRadio said the idea of offering privileges to companies that keep their revenue below government-set caps would stunt the growth of smaller firms and gut the Internet radio industry.

“Under government-set revenue caps, Webcasters will invest less, innovate less and promote less,” SaveNetRadio spokesman Jake Ward said in a statement. “Under this proposal, Internet radio would become a lousy long-term business, unable to compete effectively against big broadcast and big satellite radio–artists, Webcasters and listeners be damned.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is pushing for laws more favorable to webcasters.

“The offer announced today would essentially extend the much more reasonable statutory licensing terms that small webcasters have relied on for the last five years,” said EFF in a statement. “But commercial services like Pandora and Live365 are still in deep trouble, as are small webcasters that may want to expand their business over time. And when SoundExchange’s offer expires in 2010, small webcasters may once again be threatened with extinction.”

EFF is backing the Internet Radio Equality Act as a way to help sustain music webcasting and fix the statutory licensing process on which most nonsubscription, noninteractive music webcasters rely.

Gameloft has expanded the range of iPod games with Lost, a game based on the hit television series. The game is designed to work on 5th-generation iPods, and is $4.99 to download.

Description:

Join your favourite castaways in their quest to seek truth and survive in the official iPod game of the hit television series, Lost. Help Jack search for dynamite, tend to the wounded, and avoid the black smoke. Relive the crash scene, open the hatch and ultimately try your best to escape from the Others. Immerse yourself into their mysterious world with authentic settings and a genuine storyline created by writers behind the hit show.

A new plugin for Apple TV called “A Series of Tubes”, now in advanced hacking stage, promises to bring YouTube to Apple’s media set-top box. The YouTube plugin isn’t available yet, but its author “XDog” has published a video that shows how it will work:

The plugin delivers a number of playlists, including spotlighted YouTube videos along with most commented and most-viewed content (week/month) from the popular video-sharing site. Settings also enable users to cache video content for optimal playback.

via MacNN

Wallstrip, the Rocketboom of financial news, has been purchased by CBS Interactive for a price in the millions, with a multi-year commitment to continue show and enhance its site.

“You can make money from blogging!” said Wallstrip’s Howard Lindzon.

The show, described as “Cramer with breasts” by its creator, is a short (about four minute) video podcast. Host Lindsay Campbell covers the ups and downs of the market and interviews people about financial issues.

XM users appear to be experiencing a massive outage. According to reports, one of the XM’s satellites is down, and its repeaters are down due to a “software update.”

An XM Spokesman has provided this statement regarding the issue:

“We are experiencing a temporary degraded performance issue, which has affected some of our customers. We expect to return to normal service levels this evening.”

Maharashtra-based bloggers Debashish Chakrabarty and Shashi Singh have announced the launch of Podbharti, India‚Äôs “first pure Hindi podcast.”¬† Their podcast is targeted toward the Hindi audience in India and abroad.¬† The duo aim to provide a comprehensive coverage of news and opinion about Indian-language blogging, technology, news and current affairs and the entertainment industry. Podbharti.com also declared a partnership with the popular English-language podcast The Indicast.

The UK Podcasters Association, a non-profit organization promoting podcasting, has announced that it has come to an agreement with AIM, the UK-based Association of Independent Music, which allows members preferential access to AIM’s podcast license.

The AIM podcast license covers over 30,000 tracks licensed by the UK independent music industry and includes labels such as V2, XL Recordings, Studio !K7, Cooking Vinyl and Beggars Group.

UK podcasters will have unlimited access to full length music tracks from top artists such as The White Stripes, Paul Weller, Bloc Party, Echo and the Bunnymen, Dizzee Rascal, Mylo, Basement Jaxx, Editors, Stereophonics and Coldcut to use in their podcasts.

“This is a step forward for the whole of music podcasting in the UK,” said UKPA Chairman Dean Whitbread. “It raises the bar for music podcast programme making. ”

You can listen to a podcast discussion between Whitbread and the Chair of AIM’s New Media Committee, Simon Wheeler, below. Details on the license are available at the AIM site.

It looks like the good people at Soundtrack.net have figured out one of the tried and true ways to get covered by Podcasting News: do something that involves pirates and podcasting.

Their latest podcast looks at the music for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

In our longest podcast to date, SoundtrackNet talks with Academy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer to discuss his latest soundtrack, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END. He talks about the new themes, the evolution of the PIRATES scores, and even gives us a little insight into his approach for THE SIMPSONS MOVIE!

You can listen to the podcast using the link below, or subscribe to the podcast by adding this URL to your podcast client software:
http://www.soundtrack.net/rss/podcast.rss

via Hans Zimmer