Rain Recording has announced the latest edition to their LiveBook Diablo mobile audio workstation series. The new LiveBook Diablo quad core audio notebook claims “true desktop level performance” and is outfitted Intel’s Core 2 Quad mobile processors, dual high performance hard drives and up to 8 gigabytes of RAM.

LiveBook Diablo is comprised of “high performance” components engineered for demanding digital audio production, including a 17″ widescreen display driven by up to two ATI Radeon Mobility graphics engines. With Rain’s Quiet Cool engineering, components are balanced and cooled to ensure low heat and noise, and stable performance without audio-dropouts and distortion.

LiveBook Diablo has been tested and certified for use with industry-standard digital audio software and hardware including Pro Tools, SONAR, Cubase and more. The company offers LiveBook Diablo users customer support thorough their RainCare Encompass program.

The new LiveBook Diablo quad core mobile audio workstation is available now from Rain Recording, through select Rain Authorized Dealers and the Rain Custom Shop. It retails from $3,999.

CNet’s Ina Fried reports on Microsoft‘s quiet reorganization of their Zune team:

The software and services portion of the Zune team–the bulk of its staff–will be added to the portfolio of Enrique Rodriguez, the vice president who currently runs Microsoft’s Mediaroom and Media Center TV businesses.

The hardware team, meanwhile, will now report to Tom Gibbons, who also leads the hardware design efforts within Microsoft’s Windows Mobile unit.

Microsoft’s Rodriguez also expanded on the company’s new vision for the Zune:

“Zune the service needs to transcend Zune the device,” Rodriguez said.

But that doesn’t mean Rodriguez doesn’t see a need for Microsoft to keep making the Zune.

“The reality is that will continue to be the one vertical device that we control every…aspect of it all the way to what it says on the box,” he said. “So shame on us if it is not the best.”

Microsoft’s new direction for the Zune isn’t entirely clear, but it looks like they’ve realized that trying to compete with Apple directly isn’t working. It seems that Microsoft wants to merge it’s failed licensed model for media players with its Zune closed system to create a more viable hybrid. 

Unfortunately for Microsoft, though, the company has struggled to define the Zune as something more than an alternative to the iPod, and the Zunepocolypse and plummeting Zune revenues have seriously damaged the Zune brand.

Do you think that there’s a future for Zune as a service, independent of the Zune player?

The Pew Internet Project reports that, as of December 2008, 11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others.

The report highlights the growth of services that, by trivializing the process of posting content to the web, are expanding the scope of what gets published. 

Highlights of the research:

• Twitter and similar services have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have ever used Twitter and its ilk, as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34.
• Use of these services drops off steadily after age 35 with 10% of 35 to 44 year olds and 5% of 45 to 54 year olds using Twitter.
• The decline is even more stark among older internet users; 4% of 55-64 year olds and 2% of those 65 and older use Twitter.
• The use of Twitter is highly intertwined with the use of other social media; both blogging and social network use increase the likelihood than an individual also uses Twitter. 
• Twitter users and status updaters are also a mobile bunch; as a group they are much more likely to be using wireless technologies — laptops, handhelds and cell phones — for internet access, or cell phones for text messaging.

I’ve been skeptical about Twitter’s prospects for mainstream success, because it doesn’t offer the immediate gratification of a site like YouTube or MySpace. But Pew’s research suggests that Twitter, microblogging and mobile updating are going mainstream faster than many expected. 

Do you think Twitter and microblogging in general are going to be adopted by a mainstream audience?

Google video site YouTube today announced a number of new options for content creators and consumers who want to “take their videos offline.” The site has entered into working arrangements with several “partners” to allow sharing their videos “universally” and away from an Internet connection.

Citing an interest among some of their content creators to share their work “far and wide” with attribution, YouTube is offering content creators the option of Creative Commons licenses to permit people to reuse downloaded content (under certain conditions determined by the license-holder).

YouTube is also exploring test options to enable video owners the abilit to allow downloading of their videos via YouTube — either for free, or for a fee paid through Google Checkout. “Partner” video owners can determine their own prices and decide which license they want to attach to the downloaded video files.

The site is currently exploring free downloads of lectures from Stanford, Duke, and UC Berkeley, among others. A handful of other YouTube “partners,” including khanacademy, householdhacker and pogobat, are also participating in this test with download-for-fee videos.

The video watch pages of the participating partners link to the download option below the left-hand corner of the video. To help consumers keep track of the videos they have previously purchased, YouTube has created a new “My Purchases” tab under “My Videos.”

Video creators interested in joining this distribution initiative can find more information here, and general information and discussion about “taking YouTube offline” is over here.

Talk throughout the business world seems certain that satellite radio behemoth XM/Sirius filing for bankruptcy in the coming days. If this indeed comes to pass, what’s to become of those big-name, big money radio personalities who stand to lose a hefty salary?

Howard Stern left terrestrial radio (and an estimated 12 million listeners) for satellite, where he commands a staggering $100 million/year salary. If satellite radio goes “poof!”, what happens to him?

It’s been suggested that maybe he should consider syndicating his show as a podcast.

In an exchange with Entertainment Weekly, marketing expert and Stern show fan Ernest Lupinacci suggests that Stern produce the show on his own, and, in the business model of Ricky Gervais, sell it to paying subscribers as a premium podcast.

“In the new digital age, distribution is fungible,” Ernest wrote, adding that if Stern builds himself a studio, he can record a daily show and then easily distribute it to subscribers. Let’s say he has 3 million listeners willing to pay just $3 per month for daily podcasts. (As compared to Sirius XM’s $12.95 monthly rate.) That’s $108 million in revenue a year. And, Ernest adds, “he could hire a competent sales guy, and if they can generate (conservatively) another million a month in ad revenue — that’s $12 million more.” It ain’t Sirius money, and he’d likely have to pare down his staff, but it’s enough to keep his core group of cohosts and producers happy, with a little money left over…

There are plenty of advantages to this idea, both for Stern, and for his audience. The costs of producing and distributing a show this way is small. There’s some cost involved in outfitting a recording studio, but if he’s making $100 MM/year, he can probably afford a modest setup.  The Internet is already there as a distribution method, and there are no multi-billion-dollar satellites required for creating a delivery network.

Most audience members presumably already have a computer (and portable listening gadgets like iPods, Zunes, and multitasking mobile phones), as well as Internet connections. Listeners wouldn’t have to shell out for additional hardware (as Stern’s satellite subscribers have had to do). And charging a subscription fee would probably cost listeners far less than the $12.95/mo charged by satellite providers.

Stern might be able to woo back more listeners with a modestly-priced show, listeners who did not follow him to satellite due to the cost. And his audience would likely appreciate the opportunity to time-shift their listening to the show to suit their own schedules.

What disadvantages or roadblocks might there be for big-name satellite radio hosts (Martha Stewart, Bob Edwards, Howard Stern, even Bob Dylan) to shift their XM and Sirius shows to a premium podcast medium?

YouTube comedian and video guru Kevin Nalts has posted his take on the importance of topicality and timing for the success of Internet media:

Want lots of views on your video? Timing and topicality is important. The reason sxephil and whatthebuck are two of the most-subscribed YouTube amateurs is partially because they vlog about what’s hot. That means the next day, their videos are found when people search YouTube (and even Google, which is rather kind to videos).

The implication to marketers? Be ready to approve a campaign quickly. And for video creators? Stay current, create quickly, and tag your videos with the keywords that are hot. My Superbowl “top 10 commercials of 2009″ video is among my most-viewed videos now (2.7 million) in part because I posted it just as the game was starting. That placed it above other videos when people searched, and the result was primarily because of topicality and search. The booby thumbnail didn’t hurt.

Nalts has a following, a track record and experience – which means he’s got a jumpstart on others wanting to get their videos seen. 

There are millions of people now creating podcasts, blogs and Internet videos whose audience plateaus with a few hundred or a few thousand people.

But Nalts knows the secret of sailing against the wind; he understands the power of millions of people searching for popular topics and uses it go wherever he wants to go. 

Here are YouTube’s top 10 search topics for 2008:

• Britney Spears
• WWE
• Barack Obama
• Miley Cyrus
• RuneScape
• Jessica Alba
• Naruto
• Lindsay Lohan
• Angelina Jolie
• American Idol

Does this mean that you need to talk about Britney Spears, Barack Obama & WWE?

Probably not. Unless you can offer really unique perspective on these topics, your work is likely to get buried. 

What it does mean, though, is that there’s a huge opportunity to expose your work to more people, if you can create unique content that is timely and of interest to the millions of people searching for content about popular topics. 

Nalts suggests Yahoo Buzz & Twitscoop as tools for getting ideas for his shows. 

Is topicality important to your work? If so, what tools do you use?

Blog search widget Lijit has launched a new Content Networks service to let content publishers band together and create a network.

Lijit is an interesting and useful search tool in that, when installed on your website, readers can search not just for relevant blog posts, but also for other related things you’ve bookmarked, put on Flickr, Dugg, talked about in a social media setting, or put on some other site outside your own blog. As long as it has an RSS or OPML feed, Lijit can search through it for your readers.

The new Content Networks initiative extends that functionality, taking voluntary networks of bloggers and using Lijit to search the aggregated feeds. This reminds me of the old FeedBurner Network (which isn’t around anymore). Readers on a member publisher site can, in Lijit’s words, “search across all the content in the network.”

In addition to capabilities for searching across all an individual’s (or now, a group’s) content, Lijit has promoted itself as a money-making widget, placing content page ads and sponsorships and search based keyword ads.

The advertising capabilities now extend to the Content Networks service as well. As a contributing member of a network, you share the ad revenue from network search widgets that appear on your publication.

I think this could open up a whole host of revenue-sharing questions and problems, especially among large blog networks, where revenues are split among many members. And where some blogs are high-traffic and high-profile, and some not, the big guys’ disproportionate share of attention may make “fair” revenue-sharing problematic.

Lijit’s featured content networks so far don’t look very attractive – in aggregating the related sites, they’ve lost the design and individual character that draws a reader in. The aggregated site is ugly enough that it wouldn’t bring a reader back for a second visit.

The upside? As explained in the Lijit blog, “by collecting similar content in one place, readers have an amazing way of searching across a number of different bloggers writing about the same thing.” As a consumer of content, having an easier way of finding relevant information I need would be a welcome improvement for my time spent online.

The Content Networks idea is a good one, and it will be interesting to see in the months to come whether these potential downsides will be real problems, or if the rough edges will be smoothed out.

Video site Blog TV has announced a “professional” level of user account. Blog TV is a video platform that, to date, has offered free access to users who want to stream live video. The service also allows recording of video episodes and enables text chat during live streaming.

The Pro account includes these features:

• Pro account badge to display on your show page and episode thumbnails
• Ad-free pages
• Ability to broadcast “private” shows to a selective audience
• Priority access to chat
• Longer video recording time (up to 30 min), and 2x storage capacity
• Immediate access to video downloads

Hoping to drive more users to upgrade to the $24.95/yr pro account, Blog TV is also offering an extra two months’ subscription for free.

You can find more information here.

Zoom has introduced the next generation in its handheld audio recorder line, the H4n.

Zoom’s H4n features built-in X/Y stereo condenser mics that allow variable recording patterns at either 90° or 120°. Other new features include digitally controlled high-quality mic preamps and the ability to use internal and external mics simultaneously, for 4-channel recording. The H4n records audio at up to 24bit/96kHz on SD/SDHC media of up to 32GB and syncs via USB 2.0.

The H4n has features to help it handle real-world mobile recording, including a rubberized, shock resistant body, all-metal microphone design and a built-in mounting joint for tripod and mic stand use.

For musicians and songwriters, the H4n offes multi-track recording capability along with Hi-Z Inputs for recording guitar and bass, variable speed playback capability for “phrase training”, onboard studio effects, and over 50 guitar and bass amp modeling settings. In addition, a new stamina mode enables the H4n to operate for 10 hours continuously on a single set of AA batteries.

The package includes a 1 GB SD card, wind screen, mic clip adapter, AC adapter, USB cable, protective case and Cubase LE recording software. An optional remote control is also available.

A new version of free, open source HD video player Miro launched today. The makers of Miro 2.0 say that this is the “biggest update in the project’s history.”

Miro is a collaborative project developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF), a non-profit organization, and by volunteers around the world. PCF has a mission to create a more open and decentralized online video space. Miro is used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world— only a quarter of whom are based in the United States.

Miro was downloaded more than 4 million times last year and has been translated into more than 40 languages by volunteers around the world.

The built-in “Miro Guide” content directory was just updated in anticipation of the release of Miro 2.0. “The Miro Guide now has 6,000 free video podcasts, many of which are in HD,” said Dean Jansen, Outreach Director. “We’re building the best combination of player and directory anywhere, and it’s all completely open.”

Developers say this version of Miro is less a collection of features than a “rethinking” of how people can use video online. “Miro 2.0 is specifically designed for the emergence of HD video online— the video quality goes way beyond what is possible on even the best streaming websites,” said Nicholas Reville, Executive Director and Co-Founder.

Miro can be downloaded here.