Teachers at schools across the country are figuring out that iPods make great tools for cheating on tests. iPods and other portable media players can be hidden under clothing and used to play back formulas and other information for tests.

“It doesn’t take long to get out of the loop with teenagers,” said Principal Aaron Maybon of Mountain View High School in Meridian, Idaho. “They come up with new and creative ways to cheat pretty fast.”

Mountain View recently enacted a ban on digital media players after school officials figured out that some students were downloading test material onto the players.

“A teacher overheard a couple of kids talking about it,” Maybon said.

“I think it is becoming a national trend,” said Shana Kemp, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals. “We hope that each district will have a policy in place for technology — it keeps a lot of the problems down.”

Whle kids cheating is nothing new, according to Kemp, it takes time for teachers and administrators to up with the ways the technology can be used.

via CNN

Podcasting community site Podcast Pickle has updated its site, introducing a new look and several new features.

Updates for podcasters include:

• A newly-designed podcast player designed to fit within the margins of blogs.
• A¬†virtual “tip jar” to allow listeners to leave tips for their favorite podcasters.
• A direct link to your Amazon or Ebay store.
• RSS for any blog you wish to feed into your Pickle page.

For listeners, favorite shows can now be played on the “My Pickle” player, located on the Podcast Pickle homepage.

The new features are in beta, and the site is asking for feedback regarding any portion of the site.

A federal court ruled yesterday that music performance and royalty fees don’t apply to music downloads and movie downloads that feature music.

The U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York affirmed a lower court ruling that found that digital music and media downloads aren‚Äôt public performances. Because they aren’t public performances, they shouldn‚Äôt be subject to public performance license and royalty fees.

Performance-rights let music be performed live or broadcast. Music royalty organization ASCAP had argued that song writers and publishers should receive royalties for downloaded music.

“The position of ASCAP was nonsensical,” Entertainment Merchants Association president Bo Andersen said in a statement on the ruling. “Digital downloads are not ‚Äòpublic‚Äô nor are they ‚Äòperformances.‚Äô Had ASCAP prevailed in its attempted end-run around the clear and established definitions of copyright law, additional, non-productive royalty costs would have been added to motion picture and videogame downloads, potentially stymieing this delivery system.”

Unfortunately, the ruling doesn’t really resolve the situation for music podcasters wanting to use mainstream music in their podcasts. While performance royalties may not apply to music downloads, there’s no standard practice for licensing mainstream music for distribution within podcasts.

Sony has introduced three new high-definition camcorders that are making shooting 1080 HD video more affordable than ever.

The Handycam HDR-CX7 model is the world’s smallest and lightest AVCHD high-definition camcorder. It can record nearly three hours of full HD 1080 video on an 8-GB Memory Stick PRO Duo media card (LP mode).

The HDR-SR7 AVCHD high-definition camcorder can record more than 22 hours of full HD 1080 video on a built-in 60GB hard disk drive, while the HDR-SR5 model’s 40GB hard drive can hold more than 15 hours of footage (LP modes).

“Camcorder users are quickly embracing non-linear camcorder formats, such as hard disk drive and flash media, because they make it easy for anyone to view and access footage quickly,” said Linda Vuolo, director of camcorder marketing at Sony Electronics. “Our models offer the added advantages of superior high-definition picture quality.”

Sun Microsystems is introducing a new platform for streaming on-demand video over IP networks that promises to deliver 160,000 streams of Internet television.

Sun Streaming, with a suite of Sun software to manage the system, delivers 160,000 video streams, or 40,000 high-definition TV streams, simultaneously at 2M bps (bits per second). Fifteen of these systems, at about 5,000 titles per system, theoretically could stream the entire library, all at once, of 75,000 DVD titles from Netflix, which distributes DVD rentals by mail.

“The most natural way for people to enjoy video is to download it from a server,” said Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun and designer of the Sun Streaming System.

The Sun Streaming system uses four Sun Fire x4100 servers, one x4500 storage/server and a new product, the Sun Fire x4950 streaming server, based on server technology developed by Kealia Inc., which Sun acquired in 2004.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs indicated Wednesday that he’s unlikely to give in to calls from the music industry to add a subscription-based model to iTunes.

“Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in it,” Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. “The subscription model has failed so far.”

Many in the music industry hope iTunes will ultimately rent music online. But Jobs said he had seen little consumer demand for that.

“People want to own their music,” he said.

Apple Board Members Bill Campbell, Millard Drexler, Albert Gore Jr., Arthur D. Levinson, Eric Schmidt and Jerry York today released the following response to former Apple CFO Fred Anderson blaming Apple’s stock-options woes on CEO Steve Jobs:

We are not going to enter into a public debate with Fred Anderson or his lawyer. Steve Jobs cooperated fully with Apple’s independent investigation and with the government’s investigation of stock option grants at Apple. The SEC investigated the matter thoroughly and its complaint speaks for itself, in terms of what it says, what it does not say, who it charges, and who it does not charge. We have complete confidence in the conclusions of Apple’s independent investigation, and in Steve’s integrity and his ability to lead Apple.

Jobs is widely thought to have “dodged a bullet”, as the SEC has not charged Jobs, despite his involvement in the scandal.

Nearly 30 years after it aired on television, episodes of WKRP, a television show about the antics of a Cincinatti radio station, are being made available on DVD.

Unfortunately for fans, the series, which prominently featured Dr. Johnny Fever (played by Howard Hesseman) playing popular music of the day, has been “butchered”, removing the music that originally drove much of the series’ humor.

The series has been cursed by its use of mainstream music, because the music was not licensed with digital technology in mind. Dozens of songs that were used in the series have been taken out and replaced with generic soundalikes. In many cases, the original music was integral to the scene.

Gary Sandy, who played program director Andy Travis on the show, succinctly sums up the reason for the edits.

“It all has to do with money. I can tell you that,” said Gary Sandy, who played program director Andy Travis on the show. “I think it came down to the point where there was more money to be made off a DVD release than some semblance of syndication again.”

Licensing the music for DVD distribution proved to be prohibitive, forcing Fox to either cut the music, or pay up. The decision to cut the music has fans calling the release an abomination.

The release highlights the risks of using mainstream music in podcasts and video podcasts. Because there are not established standards for using traditionally-licensed music in podcasts, using it could come back to haunt you – even 30 years later.

Apple plans to add new features and capabilities to the iPhone and Apple TV through a series of software updates, the company has confirmed. In an analyst call last night, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer confirmed the company plans to offer new features to both the iPhone and Apple TV.”We hope the result will be to surprise and delight our iPhone customers,” said Oppenheimer.

Apple chief operating officer, Tim Cook, moved to reassure analysts that the delay in the release of Mac OS X 10.5 does not mean the company is under-resourced.

“We have no issue at all on hiring really great people,‚Äù he said. “We always planned on using Mac OS X resources to complete the iPhone since it uses a version of OS X. It‚Äôs taking a few more resources than expected to get it out in June, so we had to make a choice, and we think it‚Äôs the right one.‚Äù

The company has not announced what the new features might be, which could be a brilliant PR move, considering the buzz that the psuedo-announcement is likely to generate.

Apple has announced financial results for its fiscal 2007 second quarter ended March 31, 2007:

• The Company posted revenue of $5.26 billion and net quarterly profit of $770 million, or $.87 per diluted share.
• These results compare to revenue of $4.36 billion and net quarterly profit of $410 million, or $.47 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.
• Apple shipped 1,517,000 Macintosh computers and 10,549,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 36 percent growth in Macs and 24 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.
• Gross margin was 35.1 percent, up from 29.8 percent in the year-ago quarter.
• International sales accounted for 43 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

“The Mac is clearly gaining market share, with sales growing 36 percent — more than three times the industry growth rate,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re very excited about the upcoming launch of iPhone in late June, and are also hard at work on some other amazing new products in our pipeline.”

“We are very pleased to report the most profitable March quarter in Apple’s history,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2007, we expect revenue of about $5.1 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $.66.”