Middio is a new site, currently in beta, that hopes to carve out a niche by making it easier to find music videos published on YouTube.

Here’s the description from their site:

Middio is a simple website that organizes music videos uploaded by the public to YouTube. In other words, Middio goes through the trouble of finding and properly tagging music videos already floating around the web so that you don’t have to. No bothersome ads are shown on any page or before any videos begin — Middio gives you only what you ask for.

Middio is the latest site to piggyback on YouTube’s success. A challenge facing Middio is that it based on a third party (YouTube) that depends on other third party (music industry) content. This starts getting pretty tenuous, especially when you consider that:

• YouTube has already been forced to purge over 100,000 videos, many of them music videos. This is over 20 times the number of videos that Middio has indexed.
• Viacom is suing Google/YouTube for a billion dollars for making unauthorized use of videos from MTV other Viacom properties.
• YouTube already has plans to censor copyrighted content.

The Utah Grizzlies announced today that fans will be able to tune into Grizzlies Radio all summer long by visiting the podcast center at utahgrizzlies.com.

Podcasts include the ECHL AA League team’s scoring highlights and player interviews from the regular season games.

“Both on the radio and the internet, we continue to feel that Grizzlies Radio is second to none when it comes to giving our fans the most comprehensive coverage of any sports team in Utah,” said Grizzlies Senior Vice President/COO Michael Schetzel. “We will continue to use the latest in technology to further enhance our broadcasting department.”

The Grizzlies are owned and operated by the Elmore Sports Group and play at the E-Center of West Valley City, which hosted hockey during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

via Our Sports Central

Podcast Hotel, a podcasting events being held April 20-21 in San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall, is offering streaming video of discussions, via UStream.tv.

Billed as “two days of discussion around the intersection of technology, indie music and indie film,” Podcast Hotel will features lectures, concerts and discussions on digital media issues such as distribution, artists rights, the state of the Vlogosphere, women breaking through in the entertainment industry, and Net Neutrality.

Here’s an embedded version of the video stream….

PEHub, a public forum for private equity, reports that PodBridge has raised around $8.5 million in its second round of venture capital financing.

Podbridge offers measurement and ad services for advertisers and publishers; provides advertisers with significant control over the insertion of ads within specific content; and enables targeting to specific demographics.

Sutter Hill Ventures was joined by return backers Mayfield and Worldview Technology Partners. Greg Sands of SHV will join the PodBridge board of directors.

There’s been a lot of skeptical reaction to the deal in the blogosphere. “By most accounts podcast advertising has been very disappointing.” says Alarmclock. Mashable wonders why “People are still throwing money at podcasting.”

Elgato Systems has released EyeTV 2.4, a free update to its EyeTV 2 software which now includes one-click export for Apple TV.

The feature functions in the same way as EyeTV 2’s iPod export button; select a video from the list of recordings and click the Apple TV button in the menu bar. Alternatively, the export can be automated as part of the recording schedule.

Support for Apple’s “Spotlight” search technology has also been added. Users can now enter part of the title or a description of a recording‚Äôs content in Spotlight and quickly find the sought-after recording without opening the EyeTV application.

EyeTV 2.4 offers numerous other important improvements and bug fixes.

Virtual Music has introduced DeliverASong.com, a website that lets you send digital songs to friends and loved ones over the Internet.

Buying a song costs $.99. DeliverASong.com sends an email letting the recipient know of the gift and providing a specially encoded web address to download their song(s) in MP3 format, which is compatible with iPods and virtually all portable MP3 music players.

“Today’s online music vendors typically do not support sending digital songs as gifts. We shift the responsibility for agreeing to a ‘user contract’ to the recipient, which is where it should be,” says Jerry Werner, Virtual Music, Inc.’s President.

The site currently offers music from Austin musicians. “We feature new original music from the most creative songwriters, musicians, and singers, so that music lovers will want to come back often to discover great new songs.‚Äù The company plans to create similar websites focusing on great local talent in other cities and regions.

The majority of the revenue from the sale of songs on DeliverASong.com goes directly to the featured artists. ‚ÄúBy paying for this music, you’ll be supporting the local artist community and ensuring a steady flow of great new music that will inspire, energize, and entertain you.‚Äù

Apple’s soon-to-be-launched iPhone will be irrelevant to business users because it is a “closed device” and does not support Microsoft Office, according to a senior executive at Microsoft.

“It’s a great music phone, and I’m sure it will be fantastic and have an interesting user interface,” Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific head of smartphone strategy Chris Sorenson told press during a recent visit to Australia.

“However, it’s a closed device that you cannot install applications on, and there’s no support for Office documents. If you’re an enterprise and want to roll out line of business applications, it’s just not an option. Even using it as a heavy messaging device will be a challenge,” the executive added.

One hundred and forty phone models already run Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system. Sorenson believes that user familiarity with the Windows Mobile interface and the ease with which companies can buy and develop applications for the platform will help keep the iPhone out of the lucrative corporate market.

When contacted, an Apple Australia spokesperson said: “I am not interested in commenting”.

Sales of Apple Macintosh computers grew 30% year-to-year in the first quarter of 2007, despite interest in Microsoft’s newly introduced Vista operation system.

The growth in units sold for all computer vendors was 2.9%, making the growth in Mac sales 10 times the industry average.

Microsoft’s official consumer launch of Vista in January had very limited impact on overall worldwide shipment demand on a quarterly basis. On a monthly basis, some regions experienced a bubble in demand following its release. Vista adoption was primarily in the consumer and very small business segments of the mature regions.

Q1 ’06 to Q1 ’07 Growth

Source: Gartner Dataquest (April 2007)

Elizabeth Arden is giving away ten limited-edition 30-gigabyte video iPod’s autographed by Britney Spears as part of a three-week promotion of Britney Spears’ Midnight Fantasy perfume.

“Fragrances are one of the many ways I express my creativity,” says Britney Spears. “My fans are so talented and I hope that they enjoy capturing their own creative visions with the Tick Tock Photo Diary Contest.”

To enter, you should take a digital photo that captures your Midnight Fantasy – what happens when the clock strikes twelve. You have to be at least 18 to enter, and no images containing nudity are permitted.

You can “unleash your Midnight Fantasy” (their words) with Britney Spears at the Midnight Fantasy Photo site.

The iPhone is on schedule to hit the U.S. market at the end of June, a senior executive with AT&T Inc. said on Wednesday. The iPhone has received unprecedented attention since Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs demonstrated a prototype of the device in January.

“Our expectations are good. Our testing has been good,” said AT&T Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson. “The iPhone is on target to launch in June.”

Stephenson said more than 1 million customers have said that they would like to buy one of the phones when they’re available for purchase. He wasn’t sure, though, how many iPhones will be available at launch.

“We’re sorting through that right now,” he said. “We got a million people waiting to buy it so we’re hoping we get a million.”

iPhone on target for end of June launch, AT&T says