Google Watch reports that Google plans to release Google AdSense for Audio sometime this quarter.

“Earlier this year, Google contracted with several podcast engineers to help them develop Google AdSense for Audio. According to one source the product was originally slated for a 3Q release, but apparently it slipped behind a month or so.

Scuttlebutt is AdSense for Audio will involve, in part, contextual advertising around podcasts and I would imagine in the podcasts too, but I dont have any more information on that.”

A variety of companies are working on the challenge of dynamically inserting audio advertising into podcasts based on keywords or analysis of the content of the podcast itself.

Horizon Wimba, a provider of collaboration tools and software applications to the online education market, has released Wimba Voice Tools version 5.1, which includes two new voice tools – the Wimba Podcaster and the Wimba Voice Presentation Tool.

Wimba Podcaster is designed to make it easy for teachers to add audio files to their online courses so that students can subscribe to them as podcasts. To subscribe, a student clicks a single button on the Wimba Podcaster interface to sign up for the podcasts in iTunes or other podcast-ready software.

Wimba Podcaster will also allow audio that has been recorded outside of the Wimba Voice Tools – such as a recording of a lesson, interview, or music file – to be distributed as a podcast.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is fighting a self-help group’s subpoenas that seek to identify anonymous users of several video sharing sites.

According to EFF, San Francisco-based Landmark Education, known for its Landmark Forum motivational workshops, is trying to suppress an investigative television news piece critical of its methods. Citing alleged copyright violation, Landmark subpoenaed three websites hosting the video — the Internet Archive, Google Video, and YouTube — seeking the identities of the anonymous uploaders.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows a content owner to issue a subpoena for the identity of an alleged infringer without first filing an actual lawsuit.

“Sharing videos on the web is the latest example of free speech flowering on the Internet,” said Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “Unfortunately, it is being met by a simultaneous rise in the use of baseless legal claims as an excuse to pierce anonymity and chill speech. This kind of intimidation has to stop.”

For EFF’s objection to the Internet Archive subpoena:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/landmark/eff_letter.pdf

via VPN

Sling Media has announced the immediate availability of the SlingPlayer for Mac OS X, a software download for Slingbox customers who wish to view their home TV natively on an Apple Macintosh computer.

The Slingbox allows users to watch their cable, satellite, or digital video recorder (DVR) programming from wherever they are, turning any Internet-connected laptop, desktop, PDA, or smartphone into a personal TV.

Using SlingPlayer, OS X users now have the ability to watch and control their home TV from any Mac laptop or desktop located just about anywhere in the world.

In the seventies, Erich von Daniken’s best-selling book Chariots of the Gods speculated that ancient civilizations were visited by space aliens, and that pyramids and Incan ruins were actually signs of extraterrestrial intervention in human history. According to the author, Andean astrological markings were actually alien landing strips.

One has to wonder what von Daniken would make of this satellite landscape photo, described as a Native American listening to an iPod:

On Google Maps (50¬∞ 0¬¥38.20″N 110¬∞ 6¬¥48.32″W) via Geekzone

The Halloween Videoblog Festival has a collection of Halloween-themed vlog episodes

The videos range from the silly to some “vlogoween” creepiness, with a surprising number of puppet hosts along the way.

In Ernesto Loves Halloween (.mov), RSS News’ culture and sex correspondent Ernesto shares his love for Halloween and sexy senoritas.

Ad Age reports that Dove Evolution, a 75-second viral film created by Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, for the Unilever brand, has reaped more than 1.7 million views on YouTube and has gotten significant play on TV talk shows “Ellen” and “The View” as well as on “Entertainment Tonight.”

Its also brought the biggest-ever traffic spike to CampaignForRealBeauty.com, three times more than Doves Super Bowl ad and resulting publicity last year.

via Advertising Age

Podcasting‚Äôs hillbilly savant Wichita Rutherford, host of the 5 Minutes With Wichita podcast, has announced that he’s been signed to create his own TV show.

Rutherford signed a deal last week with Blue Highways TV. According to Rutherford, he’s the first podcaster to get his own television show.

“I’m so happy I can’t hardly stand it!” says Rutherford. “Stan Hitchcock and them over at Blue Highways TV have been so good to me and they’re my kind of people. I’m proud to be a part of what they’re doing.”

Macworld Expo 2007 will feature Podcasting Day, a day-long series of sessions for podcasters, hosted by Dusty Wright and Richard Burns, the owners and hosts of the” smart culture” audio and video podcasting site Culture Catch.

The Podcasting Market Symposium will take place Jan. 12, 2007, in San Francisco at MacWorld. This series of sessions cover several different technical and business-related aspects of podcasting throughout the day.

Speakers and panelists taking part in the day’s sessions include Emily Morse, founder and host of SexWithEmily.com; Paul Vogelzang and the hosts of the MommyCast; Sam Levin of Inside Mac Radio; Andrew Baron, founder of Rocketboom.com; Scott Beatty of Podcast.com; and Steve Starr, CEO of Revver.com.

WildVoice, a personal broadcasting community, has developed a Halloween-themed podcast player, right, that anyone can use on WildVoice, in their MySpace page or other blogs to play their audio recordings.

It’s configured so that, once Halloween is over, users only need to switch the player to a new skin and it will automatically update on WildVoice and all other sites carrying the player.

The community has been taken over for Halloween, too, featuring holiday themed graphics and spotlighting spooky podcasts from Ron Nasty and others.