Of course you’ve heard all the hoopla over Apple’s upcomming release of their new iPhone, but the question remains whether or not they’ll have the tech specs to back it up, i.e. battery life etc. Take a look at the new phone’s specs and preview the new ad for the phone:

Creating and posting video to the internet just got a little easier. Pure Digital, the same firm that’s responsible for those disposable digital cameras you find at the convenience store, just launched their newest product Flip Video. The pocket-sized camcorder will be available at various tech retail locations and aims to make it easier for people to capture video with the aim of placing it on your website, Youtube or MySpace.

On why he feels there is a need for such a device in the market, Pure Digital CEO Jonathan Kaplan notes:

“There is so much pent-up demand for capturing and sharing video. But the challenge is that there is no great, easy way to get video up on YouTube”.

Kaplan feels that his Flip Video will fill this need for easier to use and less expensive tools which will enable greater expansion of the user-generated market and increase the number of video posts:

“The user-generated content mainly comes from Webcams, cell phones and digital still cameras. There is no simple, affordable device to capture video so we decided to address that.”

The device starts at $119 for 30 minutes of video capacity and has a model that retails for $149 which holds 60 minutes of video.
Pay close attention as more of these devices hit the market. It will be interesting to see just how small, easy to use, and inexpensive they will become.

Are you a creator of audio or video? Do you have a website?

If you answered yes to both these questions, PodZinger is about to make your content MUCH easier to find. As part of our latest site enhancement, we have added the ability to create your very own PodZinger search box for placement on your website.
Here’s an example of how it looks (we apologize for the low-quality image, it’s really much prettier!):

Now you can allow your audience to search all of your audio and video content the same way they search for anything on the web. PodZinger searches the spoken words within your audio and video, not just the titles and meta-data. This provides more opportunities for your audience to find the good stuff in your material.

To get your customized search box, you will first need to sign-up with PodZinger, register your content, and follow the simple instructions in our “notices” section.

We are proud to announce the release of a new, larger video player on PodZinger! For easier viewing, the size of the player has increased to 480 x 425 pixels. We’ve also introduced the new ZingLinks set of features, which include:

• the ability to embed audio and video on a users page via PodZinger generated html code
• the ability to send audio and video to friends via a PodZinger generated url that will bring you directly to the content
• the ability to email audio or video to friends directly from the player

I’ve posted a clip of a pretty cool commercial on Toyota trucks. Or go to the PodZinger page directly to take a look for yourself



super bowl commercial YouTube.com: AnthonyL - Toyota Tundra TV commercial “Ramp” (2007)

I went the first part of the first day of PodCamp Boston today, and it was a fantastic unconference. PodCamp is modeled after BarCamp, where it’s not formally organized, and anyone can put on a session simply by adding it to the schedule.

I went to Steve Garfield’s morning session where he talked about getting started podcasting and demonstrated a few of his tools by putting up a few audio and video podcasts right there (one including an introduction to PodZinger - as captured on video by Beth).

The next session I attended was put on by Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan of Galacticast, where they talked about how they got started, all the different equipment they used, and the software tools they use to produce their series.

I gave a session about how PodZinger works, and had a lot of great questions from the group. [Doug Haslam from Topaz Partners had some nice things to say about my session.]

There were a lot of other people there, including Rocketboom creator (and PodZinger partner) Andrew Baron, Rocketboom producer Sherng-Lee Huang, from whom I learned how to tie my shoes, Rocketboom producer Elspeth Rountree, an old classmate of mine David Tames, and former Rocketboom host Amanda Congdon.

I wish I could have stayed past lunch on the first day, but I had some prior family commitments.

Check out a few more photos in the PodCamp Boston 2006 photo album I posted.

Amanda Congdon and Henry Houh

Jonathan Faz has written a script that adds PodZinger search to the Mozilla Search toolbar box. To use it, navigate your Mozilla browser to the mozdev.org download page and then and click on “Podzinger.” Then, click the pull down arrow in your search box to select the PodZinger icon. Voila!

There are several prominent publishing tools for blogging such as WordPress (which we use), Blogger and Typepad. On the podcasting front, there are a ton of software available that lets you record audio files, but we find limited resources that helps podcasters easily record, create an RSS feed, and upload your podcast. We listened to what existing podcasters have said and found a few pretty good ones.

Audacity
This free recording software lets you make a professional sounding podcast pretty easily. You can mix, overlay, edit, and join audio and supports several platforms including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux. The downside is that it does not support hosting your podcasts, but a great tool if you are planning to post a podcast on your blog.

Podomatic
This is a podcast creation tool and also a hosting service. Users can mix, record or upload an mp3 and send it directly into another user’s mp3 player. Users can also personalize the message by mixing music and voice recordings.

Podcast Spots
Another good service for creating and hosting podcasts. This site focuses on music podcasts and provides a list of podsafe music you can use.

Feel free to drop us a note if you know of any other good tools!