Losses are growing at the two leaders in satellite radio, XM and Sirius.

Sirius lost $237.8 million for the period compared with a loss of $177.6 million during second quarter of 2005. XM Satellite Radio on July 27 reported a second-quarter loss of $231.7 million, up from losses of $148.8 million a year ago.

One of the biggest issues for both companies is subscriber acquisition cost, or the money each company spends to get a single subscriber to sign up for the service. Sirius’s acquisition costs dropped to $131 in second quarter from $160 in the year-ago period. XM’s, meanwhile, rose to $64 in second quarter, compared with $50 in the year-ago period.

The latest episode of the National Geographic Podcast takes a look inside Hezbollah.Hezbollah means “party of God” in Arabic. But in the West the name Hezbollah has become synonymous with terror, suicide bombings, and kidnappings. Hezbollah was formed in the early 1980s in Lebanon under the backing of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. It has since evolved into a movement with hundreds of trained guerrilla fighters and thousands of reserves.

RNSoft has introduced RSS Replay, a Dreamweaver extension for placing content from RSS feeds into webpage layouts. RSS Replay is designed to let you republish RSS feed content directly from Dreamweaver.

RSS Replay uses JavaScript to collect RSS content from RSS feeds and applies formatting that you can control to present that content in the way that best suits your needs. Using Dreamweaver, you can create HTML and CSS that you can apply to the content you are republishing.

Audio Engineering is distributing a free audio loop editing program, Loop Editor, using a variation on podcasting, appcasting.Loop Editor is a simple (and free) audio loop editor application for OS X. Loop Editor supports all audio file formats that support loop markers.

The idea behind appcasting is that RSS newsfeeds with enclosures are used to let you subscribe to an application, so that you’ll know when the latest version of the program is available. You can even have it automatically downloaded, like you would a podcast.

Samson Audio has introduced two USB mic recording kits, the C01U and C03U Recording / Podcasting Paks.

Bundled with Cakewalk’s Sonar LE digital audio workstation software, the package is designed for people interested in home recording and podcasting.

In addition to the microphones and Cakewalk software, the package comes in a durable, lightweight aluminum case along with the MD5 desktop mic stand, mic clip, SP01 shockmount and a USB cable. The packages include everything needed to record digital audio on a PC or Mac with an eye on maximum portability.

The Washington Post has announced a video mashup contest, the WashingtonPost.com Video Mash-Up, following the lead of vloggers and video podcasters that have encouraged mashups or remixes of their videos.

Earlier in the year, for example, Rocketboom published a kit for making video mashups. The DIY Amanda Dinner & a Website kit featured video of former host Amanda Congdon engaging in half of a conversation, so that anyone could edit in content to create their own versions.

PodWorx, a Las Vegas based podcasting company, has announced that it is offering business podcast production services.

“With the unmatched rise in podcast listenership, all businesses are faced with a tough question,” says Scott Whitney, president of PodWorx, “at what point will the decision not to produce a podcast for their customers, prospects, business partners and various channel associates hurt their perception as a leader in their industry?”

Voting for The People’s Choice Podcast Awards is open through the end of the day August 11.

Podcast Awards creator Todd Cochrane recently announced the nominees, in categories including Best Produced Podcast, Business Podcasts, Comedy, Podsafe Music and more.

The U. S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) has introduced a new podcast, the U.S. Joint Forces Command Newscast, to help deliver information to the public. The Joint Forces Command is one of nine unified commands in the US Department of Defense.”We’re continuing and complementing work we have done with other technologies like our Web site, email news service and news feeds with this effort,” said Gregg Your, USJFCOM command information officer. “Not only are we putting out relevant and timely information, but we’re also reaching out to new audiences by using technology increasingly used among our service members and the public.”

A new service promises to let users create podcasts, without the need for podcasters.

MagneticTime, a text-to-speech software developer, has announced that MT-Podcast, a text to speech application for podcasting, is now available as a service.

According to MagneticTime, MT-Podcast lets anybody produce professional sounding podcasts without needing to have a podcast host. MT-Podcast can streamline the production process by “automatically and accurately converting written scripts to MP3 podcasts without needing a recorded voice.

MagneticTime estimates the cost of its automated approach to be about ten percent of the cost of traditional audio recording.