Loren Feldman, the puppetmaster behind the puppet Shel Israel video blog, is moving on. Puppet Shel Israel is a sort of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog for new media, parodying “new media expert” Shel Israel, while scooping him with entertaining interviews, like this discussion with Digg’s Kevin Rose: While Loren’s puppet has been scoring the […]

Video conversation / social networking community Seesmic moved out of beta and opened up to the general public last week. The company launched in the fall of 2007, and raised $6 million in its “A” series of funding late this winter. Today, Seesmic founder Loic LeMeur announced that the company has raised an additional $6 […]

A scandal has broken out over the fact that the most-viewed video of all time on YouTube, Evolution of Dance, has been beaten by a fan video for the song Music is My Hot Hot Sex. A lot of people are crying foul – not just because the Hot Hot Sex video is so bad, […]

The New York Times has a story today about the case of Stacy Snyder, a 25 year-old mother of two that lost her job over a MySpace photo of her as a “drunken pirate”: In the absence of strong protections for employees, poorly chosen words or even a single photograph posted online in one‚Äôs off-hours […]

The controversy over the Richter Scales’ Here Comes Another Bubble appears to be drawing to a close. The video was taken down from YouTube after photographer Lane Hartwell objected to the unauthorized use of one of her photos in the video. This has led to a great deal of debate over the role of copyright […]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with a variety of individual podcasters and podcasting-related organizations, have released a joint statement opposing a new draft treaty being considered by the World Intellectual Property Organization, fearing that it could stifle innovation in podcasting and other forms of Internet distribution. “The Treaty will stifle innovation in podcasting-related technologies because […]

Senator Bob Dole today announced the launch of a podcast series featuring Medicare beneficiaries from across the country giving first-hand accounts of their experiences with the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The weekly podcast, titled Success: The Benefits of the New Medicare Drug Plan, will be updated every Monday and can be found on Senator Dole’s […]

Apple said Wednesday it was trying to settle a lawsuit over reporting of unacceptable labor practices at a Chinese iPod. Earlier in the week, FoxConn, Apple’s supplier, sued the Chinese journalists that uncovered the practices. Apple recently admitted that FoxConn violated Apple’s Code of Conduct. Unacceptable conditions included dormitory style sleeping arrangements for workers where […]

Microsoft is moving quickly to respond to FairUse4WM, a free program which threatens to undermine Microsoft-based online music service offerings. FairUse4WM, a so-called DRM-stripper, lets users remove the rights management software from music downloads in Microsoft‚Äôs Windows Media DRM (digital rights management) 10 and 11. The formats are used by many online music services to […]

Universal Music Group (UMG) has announced an agreement with SpiralFrog to make UMG‚Äôs catalog available for legal downloading in the US and Canada via SpiralFrog‚Äôs advertising-supported service.SpiralFrog will offer users of its no-cost web-based service the ability to legally download music by many of the world‚Äôs most popular and award-winning artists. No mention has been […]