The Podcast & Portable Media Expo today announced that Grape Radio and Leo Laporte, right, are the 2006 recipients of the conference’s “Podcast of the Year” and “Person of the Year in Podcasting” awards, respectively. Winners will be recognized at a special reception next Friday, September 29, 2006 at 5 p.m. at the Ontario Marriott.

Grape Radio, Podcast of the Year, was launched in January 2005, and provides wine enthusiasts with interviews, wine news, and industry trends. People involved in its creation inclulde Brian Clark, Co-Host; Eric Anderson, Co-Host/Editor; and Michael Geoghegan, creator. The 2005 “Podcast of the Year” recipient was Eat Feed.

Leo Laporte, Person of the Year in Podcasting, hosts and produces several podcasts, including This Week in Tech (TWiT), Security Now!, Inside the Net, The Daily Giz Wiz, and FLOSS Weekly.

“The magic of podcasting is that it gives everyone a chance to be heard,” Laporte said. “It’s not about any one person, or any dozen podcasts, it’s about the birth of a new medium that gives us all a voice.”

Laporte will also deliver one of the keynote addresses at the Expo next Friday morning.

Organizers John C. Havens, Laura Allen and Eric Skiff have announced their intent to stage a PodCamp in New York in Spring of 2007.

They are looking for people that are interested in organizing and attending PodCamp NYC. More information is available at the PodCamp NYC wiki.

Pioneer has introduced a new whole-house digital music system that delivers music through your household power lines.

The MT-01 Power Line Sound System comes with one 2 x 25W Network Speaker, and one small 5W Network Speaker, and provides support for up to six speakers. The Sound Station is the hub, and contains five input sockets: two USB A and B terminals, one front audio input and two analogue inputs.

The system can play back music from multiple sources, and support streaming from iPods to other rooms via your electrical system.

Nike + iPod owners have run over 1 million miles, equivalent to circling the world more than 40 times, in the 10 weeks since Nike and Apple launched the Nike+iPod Sport Kit.

Almost 8,000 people logged runs yesterday on nikeplus.com — including an almost eight-mile run in New York, two and a half miles in Boston, five miles in Boulder, two miles in Miami, six miles in Nashville, four miles in Phoenix, three miles in Seattle and two miles in Peoria. Top times so far: 27 minutes and 43 seconds for a 10k run, and 13 minutes, 47 seconds for a 5k. The farthest total distance: more than 600 miles.

While sales of the Nike + iPod kit make it a niche product, Nike emphasizes the social networking aspedt of the product.

“Nikeplus.com is fast becoming the world’s biggest online running community,” said Trevor Edwards, Nike’s chief marketing officer. “Nike+ is a new running experience, a new way to train, a new way to connect with other runners, and a new way to bring music and sport together like never before. A million miles in 10 weeks is just the beginning. We’re looking forward to the billionth mile.”

KOCH Records, a top US independent record label, has signed an agreement with SpiralFrog to make its catalog available for legal downloading worldwide via SpiralFrog’s advertising-supported service.

According to SpiralFrog, the agreement, “reinforces SpiralFrog’s belief that offering the broadest possible choice to its target audience, people between the ages of 13 and 34, will benefit everyone, including music lovers, participating labels, advertisers, and SpiralFrog.”

KOCH Records is the market leader among independent labels in the United States and had the largest number of Billboard charting albums among independents from 2001-2005. The KOCH roster includes artists such as Jim Jones, Xzibit, Earl Klugh, Bob James, The Wiggles and many others.

The Corporate Podcasting Summit has announced that it is coming to London on 19 – 20 March 2007. Hot on the heels of the inaugural summit that took place in San Francisco, June 2006, the European summit will explore how podcasting and social media can help companies create dialogue with their customers, engage with employees and boost bottom line profitability. Some of the speakers already pencilled in to speak at the show include:

• Leesa Barnes,who will outline how you use a limited edition podcast to prompt word of mouth excitement about your product or service;
• Laurence Lennard of Yada Yada Productions, who have produced podcasts for The Mayor of London, Guardian Unlimited, Sony BMG Records and Random House Publishing; and
• Karin H√∏gh, the leading podcast-evangelist in Denmark

A new podcast, Talking Robots, features interviews with high-profile professionals in robotics and artificial intelligence for an inside view on the science, technology, and business of intelligent robotics. The podcast is created by the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, EPFL, Switzerland.

The initial episode (MP3) features an interview with Dario Floreano, a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, about the roots, the current trends and the future of robotics and artificial intelligence.

Floreano’s work include the areas of evolutionary robotics and electronics, bio-mimetic engineering, biology reverse engineering, and computational intelligence (evolutionary systems, neural networks, swarm intelligence).

Disney has sold 125,000 digital copies of films through Apple Computer’s iTunes store in less than a week, generating $1 million, Disney chief executive Robert Iger said Tuesday. iTunes lets users purchase movies online that can be downloaded for viewing on a computer or on video iPods.

“Clearly customers are saying to us they want content in multiple ways,” Iger said.

Iger also said that selling shows online has not cannibalized sales of DVDs, nor has it hurt traditional TV viewing. Disney expects revenue of $50 million in the first year from its iTunes partnership.

YouTube today announced its first major music promotion, the YouTube Underground contest, and a major sponsorship deal with Cingular Wireless.

YouTube is calling all unsigned musicians to enter. Bands can submit original videos that best represent their talents from October 2 through October 18 and the YouTube community will vote on their favorite YouTube Underground artists.

“We strive to find unique ways to help our community be recognized and this promotion is the first of many such online events. Becoming a part of The YouTube Underground will help the independent musicians that broadcast to the YouTube community rise up and be discovered as some of the greatest music talents today,” said Julie Supan, senior director of marketing at YouTube.