Cambridge University PhD candidate Rufus Pollock has published a paper that takes a look at the economics of copyrights, and concludes that the optimum length of copyrights is 14 years, a fraction of their current length. Pollock’s research (pdf) looks at the economic benefits of both copyrighted work and work that has entered the public […]

Nominations for the 2007 Podcast Awards are in progress. According to organizer Todd Cochrane, over 100,000 visitors have made nominations via the site for the event, now in its third year. Nominations are being accepted in 22 categories. Voting is expected to be opened in mid to late July. The 2007 awards ceremony will be […]

Soundsnap is a new site for finding and sharing free samples, sound effects and music loops that can be used in podcasts and other multimedia productions. Designed as a resource and community for musicians, sound designers, producers, film makers and web/video game developers, Soundsnap offers content for use in any kind of media production. Users […]

Act for Change, the online activism program of Working Assets, is petitioning Steve Jobs and Apple to unlock the iPhone: “The iPhone uses technology (known as GSM) that should allow it to work on other wireless networks, including overseas. But Apple has configured the iPhone so you’re forced to use it on AT&T. An iPhone […]

freeiPodsoftware.com has a free MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter that turns any number of MP3 files into one iPod Audio Book File. The advantage of doing this is that you can make use of the advanced audio book functionality of your iPod. For example, your iPod remembers where you were listening in your audio […]

Apple has released iTunes 7.3. It adds two main features: the ability to wirelessly share digital photos from any computer with iTunes to AppleTV, and support for the iPhone: About iTunes 7.3 for Windows With iTunes, import CDs or download songs and videos from the iTunes Store. Make playlists perfect for any occasion. Burn playlists […]

Thousands of U.S. commercial webcasters went silent this Tuesday, June 26, to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that could threaten the viability of stations that broadcast mainstream music. Unfortunately for the broadcasters, it looks like the day of silence fell on deaf ears. Tuesday’s Day of Silence was observed by Yahoo!, Live365, […]

Apple has appears to be quietly introducing an RSS reader for the iPhone at reader.mac.com. If you visit the site with a standard Web browser, though, you get a warning message: Change Firefox’s user agent to something like “Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A542a Safari/419.3” – […]

The Wall Street Journal has an interview today with Steve Jobs and AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson about the debut of the iPhone. One of the highlights is Jobs not-so-humble take on the iPhone’s interface: “One of the things we feel is this is the biggest breakthrough in user interfaces in 23 years. Since the Mac […]

Apple today announced that all of its 164 retail stores in the US will stay open until midnight to handle the iPhone introduction. Customers will be limited to purchasing two iPhones, on a first come, first served basis. Beginning Saturday morning, Apple will be offering free, in-depth workshops on the iPhone throughout the day at […]