GoPro has released of the HD HERO 960, a $179 wearable digital HD video camera designed for sports and active use:

Designed for attaching to your body, head, helmet, and favorite gear, the HD HERO line of sports cameras makes it easy to capture professional quality HD video of you and your friends in action. A wide array of mounting accessories ranging from chest harnesses to head straps, pole mounts to surfboard mounts make it easy to capture incredible footage normally only seen in professional productions.

The GoPro is an interesting line of cameras – inspiring a subculture of extreme sports videoblogging. If you do a search on YouTube or other video sites for “gopro“, there now are hundreds of examples of first-person action footage shot with GoPro cameras.

Microsoft has announced that the Windows Phone 7 Connector for the Mac is now available as a beta version.

Windows Phone 7 Connector is designed to let you synchronize your music, videos, photos and podcasts from iTunes and iPhoto to your Windows Phone 7, so you can take your media with you wherever you go.

Microsoft has apparently decided that it needs Mac users in order for the Windows Phone 7 to be a success. This makes some sense, since Macs tend to attract the higher income first adopters that buy smart phones. But, it also seems like competing with the iPhone for Mac users will be Microsoft’s toughest sell.

Did hell just freeze over? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

More discussion here.

WooTumblog is a new free WordPress plugin that adds Tumblr-style posting to WordPress blogs.

The idea behind this plugin is to bring the benefits of Tumblr’s rapid microblogging to WordPress sites.

This plugin works with any WordPress theme and activates a custom taxonomy that you will find accessible from your WordPress backend. You can then post to the custom taxonomy from the tumblog quickpress widget on your WordPress dashboard page.

Posting tumblog content takes seconds and it is clearly differentiated from your normal blog posts thanks to some in-post styling icons.

Free iPhone App

The developer has also released Express – an iPhone app built to quickly publish images/links/notes and short posts, on the go, to sites using the WooTheme Tumblog plugin.

If you give WooTumblog and Express a try, leave a comment with your thoughts on them!

Apple today introduced an updated version of its home media suite, iLife ’11, in a live streamed event.

iLife ’11 focuses on on updates to its existing apps, with an emphasis on iPhoto ’11, iMovie ’11 and GarageBand ’11.

Here are the key changes:

Media Research firm Say Media reports that one out of three people in the US has given up watching live TV for Internet TV and time-shifted video.

Consumers are spending less time with live television and more time with online content as well as time-and-device-shifted premium video content. This group is young, educated and affluent – and are increasingly difficult for marketers to reach through traditional broadcast media.

The researchers identify two groups among those giving up on live TV:

On Demanders

• Watch less live TV than a year ago and more streamed video content
• Are young, educated, affluent
• Own 5.4 devices for streaming video
• Consume 30 hours of video content weekly
• Are least receptive to TV, online and mobile ads

Opt Outs

• Do not watch live TV
• Are younger (30% are 18-24), live in urban areas
• Get their video content time and device shifted
• Own 3.9 devices for streaming video
• Are most receptive to mobile and online ads

New media is moving beyond the first-adopters to the mainstream. And – as better Internet TV devices become available – this trend is only going to accelerate.

Have you given up watching live TV?

The Combined Arms Research Library raises a some interesting questions about the fine print in Twitter’s Terms Of Use.

Their concern is that Twitter is moving towards a model of hosting more content than the typical 140-character blurb – and Twitter claims the right to use your content for commercial purposes, in any media.

Here’s the part you need to be aware of:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.

In other words – Twitter is saying ‘All Your Content Are Belong To Us’. You own your content, but Twitter gets the right to use it commercially, without paying you.

Twitter needs to clarify their intent on this. In the meantime, this reinforces that you should  publish your content on your own site and link to it via Twitter.

What do you think about Twitter’s Terms?

Here’s an example of an iPhone recording studio that packs a lot of power.

This photo, via Ashley Elsdon at Palm Sounds, captures his vocal recording setup.

Here are the main elements of this portable iPhone recording studio:

• Standard tripod to hold the iPhone at the right height and position;
• An iPhone tripod adapter
• Headphones with a minijack plug;
• A Blue Mikey microphone; and
• Multitrack DAW, an iPhone recording app.

A set up like this is a relatively inexpensive and fairly powerful mobile recording option, for iPhone owners that want to record vocals instruments or audio podcasts. The Blue Mikey is available for $79 online and iPhone tripod adapters are available for around $20. Multitrack DAW sells for $9.99 in the App Store. Other iOS recording apps are available, too.

Beyond that, there’s a good chance that you’ve got the tripod and headphones. Better quality, over the ear headphones and some soundproofing would kick this setup up a notch, too.

Got your own mobile recording setup? Leave a comment with the details!

There’s been lots of discussion recently about “glassgate” – the ongoing problem with glass breaking on iPhones.

With the iPhone 4, Apple put glass on both sides of the phone. Presumably because it looks pretty cool.

But you’d expect a device with glass on two sides to end up with cracked glass about twice as much as a device with glass on one side, wouldn’t you?

Now Squaretrade (a company that sells iPhone extended warranties) says that iPhone 4 glass is breaking 82% more than iPhone 3gs. It’s about what you’d expect, but still a pretty major design problem that Apple has made worse instead of fixing.

But Glassgate and Antennagate aren’t the end of the iPhone 4’s design flaws. Here are three more.

The iPhone 4’s Flash Problem

No – not THAT Flash problem.

This flash problem:

The flash for the iPhone 4’s camera is useless, except for situations where you have to choose between no photo and a terrible flash photo.

Try, if you like, but the iPhone 4’s flash won’t let you take a good photo.

Zoom has announced the new Q3HD Handy Video Recorder, which features HD video and HD audio (24-bit/96kHz) in a tiny package.

While the Zoom Q3HD does HD video, Zoom emphasizes the recorder’s audio capabilities:

The Q3HD uses the same microphone capsules as Zoom’s industry-leading H4n Handy Recorder. From live musical performances, rehearsals and recitals to journalism, education, sports or travel, the Q3HD’s pristine audio is so realistic your movies will transport you back to the moment, to relive over and over again.

With two on-board, studio-quality condenser mics configured in a wide 120° X/Y pattern, the Q3HD gives you true depth and stereo imaging, making your movies sound as if they were recorded on a Hollywood soundstage.

The Q3HD also displays audio meters, allowing you to quickly monitor and set your levels. Set the gain to High or Low to record in soft or loud environments. Or use the Q3HD’s Auto Level to automatically set the right recording level for any given situation. And now with two settings for Auto Level Gain Control, we’ve made it easy to get great sound no matter what you’re shooting. For outdoor shoots, we highly recommend using a windscreen over the mics.

Details below. Pricing and availability to come.

It looks like the other shoe has dropped for old media.

New research shows that people are abandoning old media by the millions for Internet media. And if they aren’t abandoning it, they are cutting way back on the time the spend with it.