The Derbyshire (UK) Chamber of Commerce has launched a podcast series that summarises the latest changes to business legislation. The group purports to be the first UK Chamber to offer audio downloads on legislation updates.

The new podcasts offer details of legislation changes that are applicable to all employers. They are divided into four topic areas: fire safety legislation updates, statutory maternity, National Minimum Wage and removing age discrimination. There is also a combined audio feed that covers all four topics.

“We developed this podcast to test the market and envisage more podcasts being available for our customers in the future,” said Theresa McDermott, director of member services at the Chamber.

UK legislation changes regularly, and employers are required to keep themselves up to speed on these changes to ensure that their employees are being treated fairly.

To access the podcasts, from the Derbyshire Chamber website, be sure to look for the “Audio Downloads” menu option, as searching the site for the term “podcast” comes up empty.

Amazon.com‚Äôs editors picked Tricks of the Podcasting Masters as one of the Top 10 Reference Books of 2006. This was the only book about podcasting to be included in any of the editors’ picks categories.

Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, published by Que Publishing in May 2006, was co-authored by veteran podcasters Mur Lafferty (Geek Fu Action Grip and I Should Be Writing) and Rob Walch (PodCast 411), pictured at right. Podcaster, Senator and Presidential candidate Senator John Edwards wrote the foreword to the book.

The authors teach people how to expand their listening/viewing audience by talking with a variety of successful podcast creators. For people first looking into creating a podcast, the book walks the newcomer through the planning and early production stages. The book also looks at the various ways to make money with your podcast project.

As previously mentioned, the first PodCamp West (un)conference will be held this weekend in San Francisco: November 18-19, 2006, at the historic Swedish American Hall.

The PodCamp Pre-Party will be held at The Mint (1942 Market Street, ph. 415.626.4726) in San Franciso on the eve of Podcamp West (Friday, Nov. 17) starting at 6:30 pm. All are invited.

PodCamp West sponsor Conduit is making an “official PodCamp West Toolbar” available for download from the PodCampWest.org website. Conduit is a marketing platform for creating branded community toolbars for such brands as Major League Baseball, Greenpeace, and others.

PodCamp West – San Francisco is free to attend and you can register for free at http://PodCampwest.org

We were pretty skeptical last year, when podcast pioneer Adam Curry predicted a podcast porn explosion, and even more so when the mainstream media went iPod porn crazy.

Now a statistical analysis of the content on the Web has found that there is actually a lot less adult content on the Web than some may have thought.

The analysis, by Philip B. Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California-Berkeley, consisted of an examination of Internet search queries and a random sample of Web pages taken from Google and Microsoft’s Internet indexes. It found that just 1 percent of all Web pages contain sexually explicit material.

The Stark naked analysis was presented in a federal court hearing last week in Philadelphia, in a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and was obtained Monday by the Mercury News.

“One of the things we think came out of the government’s study is that the chance of running into graphic content on the Web when filters are on is extremely low,” said Catherine Crump, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU said the analysis did not appear to substantially help the Justice Department’s efforts to prove that criminal penalties are necessary to protect minors from exposure to sexually explicit information on the Internet.

Wizzard Software released a shareholder announcement today, highlighting its accomplishments in the first three quarters of 2006.

According to the company, “With the acquisitions of Switchpod and Blast Podcast and the pending acquisition of Liberated Syndication, we now are the largest podcasting network in the world.”

According to Wizard, the combined organizations deliver over 43 million podcast downloads per month to at least 13 million people worldwide. In 2006, the group has distributed over 360 million audio and video podcast downloads.

The full text of their statement follows:

Claire Atkinson at Advertising Age Media Works writes in the “Watercooler” column that, since its July 2005 acquisition of MySpace, “the number of profiles on the social-networking site has zoomed to 130 million from 29 million in July 2005. Profile pages are growing globally at the pace of 8 million a month and are expected to hit 200 million by the end of 2006.”

Intermix Media sold MySpace.com to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $580 million. Atkinson asks:

What’s it worth now? (Cue Mike Myers’ Dr. Evil) SIX BILLION dollars. That kind of valuation makes YouTube’s Chad Hurley look like the Oliver Twist of new media.

This big-money estimate came from Murdoch himself, speaking this week as part of a Q&A session with Credit Suisse First Boston analyst William Drewry in Sydney, Australia. Other Wall Street analysts doubt the accuracy of that estimated value, but still pegged MySpace’s worth in the $3 billion to $4 billion range.

Additionally, we wonder how many of the 8 million new profiles/month are active MySpace users, how many are fuddy-dud businesses trying to be hip and cool, and how many are parents and teachers of adolescents and teens signing up to keep an eye on their kids’ online activities.

PodCampWest.org is being organized by Vic Podcaster, Founder & CEO of Silicon Valley Podcasting Network, a new media startup. The event will take place at 2174 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, from 12 noon-6 pm on Saturday, November 18th, and Sunday, November 19th.

PodCamp West attendees are encouraged to attend an ‘after party’ on Saturday, November 18th, from 6 to 8 pm at the Cafe du Nurod bar located in the same building. Vic Podcaster urges, “Make sure you are registered and on the guest list to attend the party. Folks need to mingle and have some fun.”

PodcastingNews.com will be carrying exclusive coverage of PodCamp West throughout the event weekend.

Print Wear Wholesalers, a New Jersey clothing wholesaler, has introduce a new design of T-shirts that lets wearers work out or hang out with a portable media player safely stowed in a pocket and with wires out of the way.

“mpTees” are designed to be screen printed or embroidered for retail use or as promotional items.

“We saw a need for a garment that affords users of an ear-wired iPod or cell phone freedom of movement along with easy access to the device to change the station or dial another call” Steve Hroncich, President for Printwear Wholesalers. “We believe it makes a great promotional giveaway for any company that targets music lovers or gadget devotees.”

The Zune launch is starting to look more and more like an unmitigated disaster.

PC Magazine’s John Dvorak has joined other analysts saying the Zune Zucks. In his latest article, Dvorak writes that “Microsoft’s music player has no future.”

“If anything is doomed to failure, it is the Microsoft Zune,” writes Dvorak. “I have no idea who is marketing this device within the company, but from what I can tell, this is going to become a major turkey in the product mix. As far as I can tell, Microsoft should simply turn over all its marketing to the Xbox 360 folks‚Äîat least some of the people in that group have marketing skills.”

In October, we identified 7 things Microsoft needs to do to fix the Zune.

It looks like Microsoft now has one more thing it will have to do to fix the Zune: spend millions of dollars to repair the damage that a disastrous launch has done to the Zune brand.

YouTube has sent TechCrunch, a popular tech blog that covers emerging Web sites, a cease and desist letter over TechCrunch’s YouTube Video Download Tool. YouTube claims ‚Äútortious interference of a business relationship, and in fact, many business relationships,‚Äù of committing an ‚Äúunfair business practice,‚Äù and ‚Äúfalse advertising.‚Äù

While there does not appear to be anything in YouTube’s terms of service that forbids using tools like this, TechCrunch plans to remove the download tool anyway to avoid creating problems with Google/YouTube.

“I have no intention of fighting YouTube on this,” said TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington. “If they want it down, I’ll take it down. I don’t want to be put on a black list with Google PR.”

While TechCrunch may be planning to remove their tool, the tool isn’t unique. There are dozens of other sites that provide similar services.