HandBrake – a free, multiplatform DVD ripper and video transcoder  – has been updated.

HandBrake is a great tool if you want to rip DVDs for backing them up or using them with Apple TV or other multimedia system.

The update should provide better quality conversions for all users and should work faster for many.

Apple has opened up iTunes LP and iTunes Extras, publishing Templates, Best Practices and a Development Guide so that anyone has the capability to create interactive content that can be played back in iTunes 9 or on Apple TV.

• iTunes LP lets you create digital albums that include links to listen to album songs and view lyrics, liner notes, photos and videos (such as artist interviews).
• iTunes Extras is designed to present a movie with interactive menus, bonus content, and chapter navigation, similar to those supplied by DVD or Blu-ray authors.

Apple has also published information on testing and delivering the new formats.

Complete information on building content for the new formats is available at the Apple site.

Leading blogging/podcasting/content management platform WordPress today announced that WordPress.com now supports email subscriptions for blogs:

This is a very simple way for your readers to subscribe to your blog and receive updates by email. Anyone can subscribe, whether they have a WordPress.com account or not. All you need to do is add the Blog Subscription widget to your blog and then you and your readers are ready to go.

If a visitor is logged in to WordPress they need only press the Subscribe Me! button, otherwise they can enter their email address.

All subscriptions require confirmation by the address owner, and subscriptions can be disabled at any time – the subscriber is in full control of what they receive.

It’s easy for new media content creators to undervalue email, because we tend to focus on newer, realtime communication options, like Twitter.

Email is still the communication tool of choice for many, though. This announcement means that WordPress.com users now have a painless way to offer email updates.

Note that this announcement is limited to WordPress.com hosted blogs.

If you’ve been waiting for Apple to release a cheap Mac netbook or an inexpensive tablet computer, don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.

Or ever.

Here’s why.

While the Mac is a niche computer, Apple’s targeted the most profitable niche and it’s done it very successfully.

According to the latest numbers from NPD, Apple gets nearly half of the US retail revenue for computer sales. The reason for this is that Apple has intentionally ignored the cutthroat bottom-end of the PC business and has focused on selling great premium computers.

The average selling price for a Mac laptop in October was $1,410, compared to $519 for Windows laptops. Apple isn’t interested in competing in an unprofitable area of the industry.

I’d like to be able to buy a cheap Mac netbook or tablet for blogging and mobile audio production, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon. Or ever.

via betanews

Amazon today announced two new enhancements to the latest generation Kindle—85 percent more battery life and a native PDF reader.

The 6-inch Kindle now has a built-in native PDF reader. This will let users read documents in  PDF format without conversion.

To read PDFs, users can email PDFs to their Kindle email address or move them over using a USB connection. Users that prefer to have their PDF documents converted to the Kindle format can type “Convert” in the subject of the e-mail when sending documents to their “@kindle.com” address.

Amazon Finally Opening Kindle’s Closed Gate

The Kindle has failed to become the iPod of e-readers that it was hyped to be. This is something we predicted when it was introduced:

In order to be anything more than a speedbump on the road to the future of written media, the Amazon Kindle needs to be open to the rapidly expanding world of user-generated content. With 88,000 ebook titles, the Kindle is a expensive, boring gadget. With open support for Internet content, it could be a contender for the next new thing.

Opening up to PDFs, though, could make the Kindle a much more interesting device. Getting content on the device is still a bit of a kludge, but the Kindle’s closed world is opening up to user generated content, at last.

The decline of traditional newspapers isn’t as bad as it looks – it’s worse.

According to an Associated Press story, newspapers are loosing subscribers at a staggering rate, but you wouldn’t know it from their circulation figures because they’ve changed the way they count circulation:

Since April 1, new auditing rules have made it easier for newspapers to count a reader as a paying customer.

These looser standards are especially helpful to a newspaper if it sells an “electronic edition.” That can include a subscriber-only Web site, such as what The Wall Street Journal has, or it can be a digital replica of a newspaper’s printed product.

Under the new auditing standards, if a newspaper sells a “bundled” subscription to both the print and electronic editions, the publication is often allowed to count that subscriber twice.

If not for these rules, the industry’s numbers would look even worse. Average weekday circulation at 379 U.S. newspapers fell 10.6 percent during the six months ending in September.

Between inflated print numbers and fuzzy tracking of unique visitors on the Web, is it any wonder advertisers are confused these days?

Image: just.Luc (just.Censored)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wants your help to beat a recently approved patent on podcasting that many feel is bogus.

In July, Volomedia announced that it had been awarded a US patent on podcasting, and the company said that  it expects companies creating products relating to podcasting and media synchronization to enter into partnerships with VoloMedia.

Many think the Volomedia patent is overly broad and fails to take into consideration prior work.

“I’m certainly not a lawyer or an expert in patent law,” said podcast pioneer Dave Winer upon hearing of Volomedia’s patent announcement, “but it seems the work Adam Curry and I did in creating the format and protocol for podcasting, in 2001, may have inspired their ‘invention’. It certainly predates it.”

EFF agreed – so they are are working on “busting” the Volomedia patent, and they want your help:

In order to bust this patent, we are looking for additional “prior art” — or evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use before November 19, 2003.

In particular, we’re looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes.

EFF has previously taken on ten of the worst free-speech and innovation crushing software patents approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and they’ve been successful at taking a bite out of eight of the ten so far.

See the EFF page on the case for more information.

We’ve seen a lot of ignorant new media moves over the last few years – but it looks like photosharing site TweetPhoto and their lawyers could be blazing a new trail.

TweetPhoto, via their representatives Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, has sent a takedown letter full of legal threats to podcaster Frank Peters, because Peters published an on-the-record interview with the TweetPhoto CEO Dan Caulfield (now former CEO). In the interview, CEO Caulfield discussed business plans that the company did not want publicly discussed.

Here’s an excerpt of the TweetPhoto takedown letter:

Dear Mr. Peters:

We represent TweetPhoto, Inc. (“TweetPhoto” or the “Company”). It has come to our attention that during the course of your recent interview with Dan Caulfield, Mr. Caulfield breached numerous continuing legal obligations that he has to TweetPhoto, including his obligations not to disclose the Company’s confidential and proprietary information.

The Company is concerned that the reproduction of your interview with Mr. Caulfield on your website will substantially damage TweetPhoto and TweetPhoto will not hesitate to enforce its rights against any person contributing to this damage. Accordingly, on behalf of TweetPhoto, we hereby demand that you immediately disable and remove any link, transcript or any other reproduction of your interview with Dan Caulfield from your website – http://thefrankpetersshow.com.

In the history of ignorant PR moves, sending a podcaster and blogger a threatening takedown notice for publishing an on-the-record interview with your company’s CEO has to be right up there at the top.

The story of TweetPhoto’s bizarre PR fiasco has now made it into TechCrunch and onto TechMeme. Within a few days, TweetPhoto will be best known, not for photosharing, but for loose-lipped CEOs and for hassling bloggers and podcasters.

Voting is now open for the 2009 Podcast Awards.

It’s the fifth year for the annual event, which has the goal to “recognize the best podcasters in the world by allowing the people (Listeners and Podcasters) to nominate, and then vote for their favorite podcast.”

Voting for the slate of podcast nominees is open through November 30th.

People’s Choice Podcast Award winners will be announced during a live Podcast Awards Ceremony in Mid December.

YouTube has announced a new platform for aggregating user-generated content, YouTube Direct.

YouTube Direct allows you to embed the upload functionality of YouTube directly into your own site, enabling your organization to request, review, and re-broadcast user-submitted videos.

YouTube Direct Features:

• 100% open-source
• Customizable interface – allows you to tailor the look and feel of the tool precisely to your audience
• Visitors can answer your call for content by uploading their videos to YouTube via your site without leaving the page
• A moderation panel enables your editors to review and approve/reject all submitted videos, deciding which ones meet your organization’s editorial criteria
• All videos approved by your editors include a link back to your site when viewed on YouTube

This is an interesting development for citizen media – but also an interesting strategic move by YouTube. By giving you a link back to your site for any visitor submissions, YouTube is offering a tantalizing carrot to adopt them as your video platform.