A little-known Texas firm, Texas MP3 Technologies, is suing Apple, Samsung Electronics, and Sandisk for patent-infringement, based on their use of MP3 technology. Texas MP3 Technologies alleges infringement on U.S. patent 7,065,417, which was awarded in June 2006 to multimedia chip-maker SigmaTel and covers “an MPEG portable sound reproducing system and a method for reproducing sound data compressed using the MPEG method.”

“Because these are such basic patents to digital music, we believe it will be difficult to design around these patents and have a commercially viable player,” SigmaTel said in a statement when it announced the sale of the patent. SigmaTel said it had retained international rights to the patent and has insulated its customers from any legal action associated with the patent.

via IDG News

The New York Times has published an introduction to podcasting authors and audiobook podcasts.

The article focuses on author Scott Sigler, who helped pioneer audiobook podcasting with his sci-fi thriller, Earthcore. Sigler introduced an Earthcore podcast in 2005, describing it at the time as the first podcast-only novel.

After being snubbed by publishers for years, Mr. Sigler began recording his first book, EarthCore, in 2005. He offered it as a podcast in 22 episodes (roughly 45 minutes each) that he posted online and sent free to subscribers for downloading. Before long, Mr. Sigler had 5,000 listeners; by the time he finished releasing his second novel, “Ancestor,” last January, he had 30,000, as he does for “The Rookie,” which is playing now.

With initial printings of novelists’ first books running as low as 2,000 copies, Mr. Sigler has a substantial audience, enough finally to attract a small Canadian publisher, Dragon Moon Press, which published “EarthCore” in 2005 and will release “Ancestor” on April 1.

Mr. Sigler also recently signed with a New York agent, Byrd Leavell of the Waxman Agency, who expects to park his latest, “Infection,” with a major publisher.

Others have turned to the Internet to build their audience, including Cory Doctorow, who offered the text of “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” as a free download in 2003. But Mr. Sigler is among the vanguard of authors stapling their literary aspirations to the iPod.

“A lot of no-name authors like me are getting massive grass-roots exposure, and some of us are going to percolate to the top and get on the best-seller list,” Mr. Sigler said.

According to Sigler, the Earthcore features “killer robots, dismemberments, decapitations, machine guns, actual science, blood, blood & more blood, and a super-hot villainess who dabbles in S&M.” Sigler has since introduced several more novels via podcasting.

March 02: It’s 31 Days of Free Music month at Podcasting News. Every day in March, we’re going to do our best to hook you up a great free music podcast.

If you haven’t discovered it yet, check out DJ Steveboy’s Podrunner podcast. DJ Steveboy is an LA DJ that creates two podcasts, Podrunner, which features pounding non-stop electronica mixes designed to get you exercising, and Groovelectric, which features dance music mixes.

You can find out more about DJ Steveboy at his site, where he has info on his latest mixes. And you can preview Podrunner with his recent Groundpounder mix, below, which has two hours of driving 180 BPM tunes.

iLuv has introduced a new device, the iLuv i182, that is designed to make capturing video for playing on an iPod easy. Videos can be captured manually or in increments of 30, 60, 120, or 180 minutes with resolution as high as 640 x 480, 2.5 Mbps.

The dock connects to any source with an S-video port and records video directly to the iPod’s hard drive. You can also save content to an attachable SD and MemoryStick card reader.

A supplier of tinnitus treatment products, T-Gone Remedies, is calling for warning labels to be printed on MP3 players, especially those with the output capabilities of the Apple iPod, which can reach 120 decibels.

iPods and other portable media players have come under increased critical attention in the last year or so – being blamed for muggings, hearing loss and even killing Scotsman. Now, T-Gone is recommending that players like the iPod get warning labels.

“Initially most of our client√®le were older and middle aged people such as the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation,” said T-Gone CEO, John Currie, “but these days we are increasingly finding our clients to be of a much younger generation.”

Wizzard Software has announced that it has signed the final merger agreement for the acquisition of podcasting company Webmayhem, Inc., dba Liberated Syndication, which the company says creates the largest podcasting distribution network in the world.

Liberated Syndication’s customer base consists of nearly 6,000 independent and commercial producers of radio and television style internet shows. In the month of January, these podcasting pioneers distributed an estimated 10 million hours of media programming.

‚ÄúWe believe we are the first and only publicly-traded podcast broadcasting company, and now, by joining forces with Liberated Syndication, we are the largest podcasting network in the world,‚Äù said Chris Spencer, CEO of Wizzard Software. ‚ÄúLibsyn is considered the de facto leader in the podcasting distribution business and as we introduce our speech technologies to their services, we will be strategically positioned to maximize revenue generation for the shows we broadcast. Advertisers and consumers alike want relevant, focused advertisements, something clearly lacking in today’s digital media offerings, which can be accomplished using our combined technologies and skills.‚Äù

Gizmodo has put out a call to boycott the RIAA during March.

We thought that we’d support their boycott at first. But then we realized that spending a month thinking about the RIAA doesn’t sound like much fun, and is probably pretty pointless – especially when there’s already so much music legally available as free downloads.

Instead, we’re going to use March to highlight 31 Days of Free Music.

Every day this month, we’re going to highlight a free music podcast. There are all sorts of music podcasts – so you’re sure to find something you like.

March 01: It’s 31 Days of Free Music month at Podcasting News.

Every day in March, we’re going to do our best to hook you up a great free music podcast.

The first podcast we’re going to highlight is the Forgotten Melodies Podcast. The podcast features beautiful, but largely forgotten piano music, performed by Daniel Grimwood, a classical pianist from the UK.

In each episode, Grimwood performs several classical piano works that you probably haven’t heard before, and then discusses the music with his cohost, Mike O’Har.

To subscribe to the podcast, add this URL to iTunes or your favorite podcast program:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForgottenMelodies

You can preview the podcast below.

According to Zune Insider, Microsoft’s Zune portable media player is getting a firmware update in March, but there’s still no date for when or if the Zune will offer podcast support.
Zune Firmware Update 1.3 will primary fix problems from the initial release:

• They‚Äôre fixing a skipping problem that some users were experiencing ‚Äì that is, content acquired from Zune Marketplace should no longer skip when played on the device.
• The update should offer better device and software reliability and improved sync’ing.
• They‚Äôve made some changes to the FM Tuner so it no longer drains the battery when in sleep mode.

HDTV pioneer and Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban thinks it’s time for media companies to start filling YouTube with spam.

Cuban highlights the fact that YouTube may have received as much traffic from people viewing Oscar clips as Oscar.com, and asks “Do the Oscars benefit or are they harmed by their video being seen on Youtube.com rather than Oscars.com?”

“The last thing you ever want is for another entity, that is completely out of your control, becoming the defacto manager of your brand,” argues Cuban.

Cuban makes a good case for content owners wanting to control their content, but his suggested solution is counterproductive, at best.

He argues that content owners should invest in spamming YouTube with incomplete versions of their videos, and use these videos to promote the company’s own site:

To capture Youtube viewers, the first step would be to OVERWHELM Youtube with partial clips of full length that tease Youtube users and point them to Oscars.com. For this Will Ferrell clip, I would have created a video that showed the first 10 secs of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said ” Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com”

IN addition to the billboard in the video you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldnt post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times.

And i would do the same thing for EVERY moment and segment in the Oscars.

Cuban’s recommendation fails to take into account two things:

• the way social networking sites work; and
• spam + advertising = brand suicide.

YouTube is a social networking site – so a few people can quickly relegate a post to obscurity, but a lot of people with positive feedback are needed for a post to really get noticed. If the Oscars, or anybody else, systematically spams the site with partial videos and teasers, the videos will be quickly forgotten, even while unauthorized complete versions of the videos get hundreds of thousands of views.

For Cuban’s plan to have any hope of working, you’d need to have a huge, networked array of trained monkeys giving the spam videos positive ratings.

The second, more significant issue, is that people really hate intrusive advertising, and they hate spam even more. Investing in spamming video sites with ads will anger people that might otherwise be interested in you content, and send them looking for an alternate way to get what they want.

Unfortunately, it looks like content owners are going to be protecting their content the old-fashioned way – suing – and there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage.