Nifty, a leading Japanese Internet provider, announced on June 28 the results of its latest research on podcasting users in Japan.

The company surveyed 3,449 people who subscribe to its Japanese podcasting portal, Podcasting Juice. The results show that the majority of users are men in their 30s. Of those, 30% earn 6 million yen ($52,000) or more annually, and more than 50% live in the Kanto area.

Fatman, a tube-based music electronics, has announced plans for the Fatman iTube Valve Dock.

The £299 system puts the iPod’s music collection through its built-in valve amp to create a deeper, richer sound. The system is compatible with all iPods (except the shuffle) and ships with a remote control.

Remember when media outlets couldn’t seem to figure out podcasts, so they dismissed them?

Now that podcasting is rapidly being adopted by mainstream publishers, the technology critics appear to be moving on to abusing vloggers.

The Washington Post describes vlogging as the Amateur Hour On Video. That appears to have been too generous for Valleywag, which describes vloggers as self-obsessed, self-righteous, awkward sell-outs.

Podcamp Boston will be held on September 9th and 10th, 2006, in a venue to-be-named in Boston, accessible by public transportation, and readily reachable via the train.Podcamp is a free unconference in the tradition of BarCamp. People register at the website (the secret group password is: nepod), and everyone can participate in some form or another.

In an unconference, attendees are the experts and the organizers. Sessions get organized on the fly the morning of the event, and there are all kinds of ways to participate: hold a 30 minute session or demo, a 5 minute lightning talk, or participate in a panel discussion. Join an informal round table talk, participate in podcasting demos and actual live podcasts as well!

Free refreshments, including meals, will be served throughout the day.

Vloggercon has published the Video Archive of events at the recent video blogging conference.

Once a year, 1000 people are invited to the acclaimed TED Conference in Monterey, California, to share ideas.Now the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference has introduced TED audio podcast and a TED video podcast series of the best talks delivered at the conference. The talks, which feature Al Gore, Bono, and more than 30 other distinguished speakers are available for free download.

“At the heart of TED is a belief that ideas can change the world. For years we’ve witnessed powerful, inspiring talks there,” said Chris Anderson, Curator of the TED Conference. “They’ve had huge impact on those who’ve heard them. Now, thanks to the take-off of online video and podcasting, we can share them widely for the first time. This is incredibly exciting. Each of these unique voices has the power to inspire, to change someone’s views, or even someone’s life.”

Peter Davis, via Scoble, asks “Why listen to a podcast when you can get ten times the content when you read?”

Davis questions the growing popularity of podcasts. “This is an inefficient means of receiving information. In the time I can listen to an average podcast, I could have caught up on my 50 favorite blogs, or read a chapter in a book, or read the latest issue of Red Herring magazine. ”

This idea, that listening to a podcast is a waste of time when you can read things so easily on the Web, is one that people have raised since the early days of podcasting. When people ask this, they aren’t really questioning the idea of podcasting so much as they are questioning the perspective of those that do like podcasts.

In many ways, podcasts may be an inefficient way of getting information. But books are an inefficient way to find out a story when you can watch the movie version. And watching the movie is inefficient when you can read a professional review and find out what the movie’s about and what to think about it.

For that matter, meeting someone and falling in love is an inefficient way to procreate.

There’s more to reading, listening, watching and life than “getting content.” Podcasting is growing rapidly not because it’s an efficient way to get numbers or facts, but because it’s an efficient way of delivering content and ideas can’t be reduced to a blurb, a summary or a blog post.

It looks like Apple is giving its MacBook pages an update….to remove the word “laptop”.There have been reports of Apple notebooks burning users’ skin, and even Apple laptops bursting into flames.

Apple is apparently concerned enough to warn users not to put MacBooks in their lap, and has removed some references to laptop use from their site, in case images like the one above might lead to confusion.

Etiquette alert! In recognition of National Cell Phone Courtesy Month in July, Sprint is releasing a wireless etiquette podcast (MP3), encouraging cell phone users to tune in and brush up on their manners.

The podcast is an episode of Sprint’s The Communications Insider podcast.

Sprint’s etiquette spokesperson, Jacqueline Whitmore, founder and director of The Protocol School of Palm Beach and the originator of National Cell Phone Courtesy Month, is featured in the interview-style podcast. “The best way to change behavior is to equip consumers with the knowledge they need to balance etiquette with the convenience provided by wireless devices. That’s why Sprint has been a leader in promoting courtesy awareness,” says Whitmore.

The St. Louis Art Museum is using iPods to enhance visitor’s experience of Remote Viewing, an exhibit that looks at how contemporary art can transform the chaos and information overload of our daily lives into invented worlds that exist somewhere between abstraction and representation.The museum is distributing iPods, along with a 40-minute multimedia tour. (The museum describes it as a podcast, but it does not appear to be publicly published.) iPods will be given to each gallery visitor who can provide a credit card for security purposes.