Samson Technologies, the US distributor of the Zoom recorder, and audio software developer Immersive Media Research (IMR) today announced what they are calling “the missing link” for owners of Zoom’s H2 Handy Recorder. The Vortex Zoom Encoder has a streamlined program for sharing audio recordings, for both Mac OS X and Windows operating systems, and in multiple output formats.

Samson will be displaying the H2 and a other new products this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and next week in Anaheim at the NAMM show.

The Zoom H2 boasts four built-in microphones, and captures 360-degree sound into two stereo WAV files. The new Vortex Zoom Encoder converts H2 dual-stereo recordings into standard formats for sharing and use in familiar programs, portable media devices, and home theater systems.

Vortex Zoom Encoder runs on Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista. The encoder program operates in full-featured mode for 30 days and then reverts to a handy, free player for Zoom H2 surround files, allowing users to hear their four-channel recordings through four speakers. Users can unlock and restore DTS, Binaural, and 5.1 WAV encoding for $25.

Additional details on the output formats:

• DTS WAV is the easiest surround-sound format to author: Users simply drag the 44.1kHz, 16-bit, 2-channel WAV files to any CD-burning program and burn a CD as normal. They then play this special CD through the S/PDIF output on a CD player, computer, or Sony PlayStation 3 into a DTS-compatible home theater system. The signal automatically expands back into glorious 5.1-channel surround sound.
• Binaural WAV employs IMR’s proprietary ImmersiveStereoâ„¢ technology to convert surround-sound recordings into a dramatically real headphone experience. Users can transfer the resulting two-channel WAV files to portable players, burn them to audio CD, or convert them to compressed formats such as MP3 for more portability.
• 5.1 WAV is a six-channel, 44.1kHz interleaved WAV file. Users can drop these files into the free Fraunhofer MP3 Surround Encoder (www.mp3surround.com). MP3 Surround files are completely backward compatible: They play like normal stereo MP3s in standard players, but expand into 5.1 channels in MP3 Surround players such as Winamp. These 5.1 WAV files also load into many DAWs and video editing programs.

Check out this $200 blogging netbook from Freescale:

Created in concert with Pegatron, the reference design features the i.MX515 processor, Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system, a new power management IC from Freescale, the SGTL5000 ultra low-power audio codec and Adobe Flash Lit software, Adobe’s Flash Player for mobile phones
and devices.

Integrating an ARM Cortex-A8 core and manufactured using 65-nm process technology, Freescale’s new i.MX515 provides up to 2100 Dhrystone MIPS and can scale in performance from 600MHz to 1GHz. Advanced power management features included in the i.MX515 processor, such as a dedicated, hardware-based video acceleration block, allow for extended battery life and eliminate the need for fans or heat sinks.

The i.MX51 is one of the only processors to offer both OpenVG and OpenGL graphics cores, thereby enabling 2D and 3D graphics as well as Flash and SVG for enhanced user experiences. Video created for the Adobe Player is one of the leading video formats on the Internet today. Working with Adobe, Freescale plans to enable the Adobe software to run on the processor’s dedicated OpenVG graphics block, thereby extending battery life and enabling netbook web browsing experiences as rich and responsive as those on traditional PCs.

Freescale’s netbook reference design is available now. Volume production for the i.MX515 device is planned for Q2 2009 to power netbooks designed for the 2009 holiday shopping season.

These devices are wimpy – but they are also cheap, cute and good enough to stand in for real laptops for a lot of chores – like blogging and micropublishing.

In related news – the One Laptop Per Child project has announced that it’s laying off half of its staff. The OLPC laptop obviously has different goals than these netbooks, but can the non-profit continue to make laptops when they’re being undercut by mainstream devices?

Do you think that these cheap netbooks make the original focus of the OLPC project obsolete?

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, networking hardware maker Netgear unveils two new Internet-connected set-top boxes.

Netgear’s product launch comes amid a flurry of announcements and launches of other Internet-ready televisions and digital video players and recorders: the Roku digital video player‘s partnership with Amazon, Netflix-enabled televisions, among others.

The company says the pair of Netgear TV boxes promise to “bring the world of Internet videos, live Internet TV, YouTube, popular websites, HD media collections, family photos, music and more to the TV.”

Hmmmmm. Just like the Apple TV box we’ve had in the TV room for the longest time.

“Internet video consumption is at an all-time high,” said Vivek Pathela, Netgear vice president and general manager of home/consumer products. “Just in the month of October 2008 alone, comScore estimated that almost half of the total U.S. population viewed more than 13.5 billion online videos. That’s a large number of Internet videos, that are viewed mostly on PCs, even though many people would rather watch them on their TVs.”

Netgear’s Internet TV Player (ITV2000) “is a compact, easy-to-use, “plug in and go” Internet set-top device with a simple remote control that enables viewers to catch up on the world of Internet videos including YouTubeâ„¢, live Internet TV, popular Internet video websites, premium video-on-demand and online video searches retrieving billions of Internet videos from a place it was previously unavailable — the TV in their living rooms. Rather than watching videos on PC screens in separate rooms, families can watch video from a variety of Internet sources on the TV together, in the comfort of their den or family room.” The size of a deck of cards, the compact Internet TV Player connects to the home network and the Internet via Ethernet or wireless USB adapter. It does not require a PC to play Internet video, nor does it require installing any PC software or setting up file sharing or firewall settings.

The Internet TV Player is expected to be commercially available later this summer.

The other new Netgear set-top box, the Digital Entertainer Elite (EVA9150), was designed with more serious video enthusiasts in ming. The device comes with an integrated 500GB hard drive, easily upgradeable to larger capacity disks. Consumers can play “Blu-Ray” quality 1080p video on their TVs, high-resolution digital photos, MP3s and recorded television shows from their PCs or from networked storage. The box can also be used to access Internet content, such as YouTube, Internet radio, Flickrâ„¢, RSS feeds, and videos from popular websites. The Digital Entertainer Elite finds all digital media files on the home network and organizes them into a media library.

This more high-powered box can work simultaneously with Windows, Mac and Linux computers, and Networked Attached Storage (NAS) devices (which Netgear happens to manufacture).The device also supports many file formats and video codecs.

The Digital Entertainer Elite also comes with two USB ports, three of Netgear internal antennas and Dual-Band wireless.

The Digital Entertainer Elite is expected to be available in February.

Eye-Fi today announced that it is developing a way to enable users to wirelessly upload videos from a digital camera to YouTube and/or to a home computer. Eye-Fi currently makes a wireless SD memory card for digital cameras.

“We’re aiming to do for video what we’ve already done for photos: provide the easiest, simplest way to save and share your digital memories,” said Jef Holove, CEO for Eye-Fi.

Eye-Fi’s wireless SD memory cards allow digital camera users to upload photos, and soon video, automatically through Wi-Fi networks. In addition, Eye-Fi hotspot subscribers can also upload their memories away from home at more than 10,000 Wayport and open hotspot locations across the U.S.

The company is designing its video upload service to support full-resolution HD video, with newer still cameras like the Nikon D90 capturing HD video, and Web sites including YouTube now testing display of HD video.

“Some of the most popular clips on YouTube are shot on digital cameras, rather than video camcorders,” said Ziv Gillat, vice president of business development for Eye-Fi. “[our product] will mak[e] it even easier …to post life events, home videos and breaking news – virtually as they happen.”

The company will preview the technology this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Parnassus Group (and a bunch of sponsors) will be hosting the third annual “It Won’t Stay In Vegas” party during CES, Friday, January 9, at the Atomic Testing Museum.  Promoters tout the attendance by and participation of Robert Scoble, as well as Gary Vaynerchuk, and Andru Edwards.

Say the party organizers: “Gary Vaynerchuk has picked out some great wine for the attendees,… and Sony is hosting a game lounge, with comfy seating and plenty of room for people to play all kinds of games on a single console, over a local LAN, or against the rest of the world on Sony¹s PlayStation Network (PSN).”

Party invitations are available to bloggers attending CES “who host a focused, editorially independent (non-vendor) blog and cover the tech or gadget space.” Ask for an invite here.

The new year feels as though it is off to a galloping start. Barely two weeks into 2008, and we’re bracing for the fourth or fifth batch of big announcements from the fourth or fifth big industry convention in two weeks. This week features the big auto show in Detroit, the music industry convention NAMM in southern California, and the much-anticipated announcements at MacWorld in San Francisco.

Before we rush into the next round of announcements, though, we thought we should take a final at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, and highlight the experiences of the podcasters and new media gurus that were there.

There were some common themes in their comments.

• First, several mentioned that they thought that Internet technology was evolving to a point where indie podcasters could cover an event like CES just as well, in text, audio or video, as a traditional media network.
• Second, none were overly “wowed” by announcements at the show.
• Finally, they all expressed disgust at Gizmodo’s TV-B-Gone stunt.

Here are some of their thoughts and links to their personal coverage:

Todd Cochrane, of Geek News Central and Blubrry and CEO of Raw Voice, is still posting fresh clips from the hours and hours of video he (and Slashdot’s Andy McCaskey) shot during CES. You can find lots of video and commentary from Todd here and here .

The other podcasters I spoke with didn’t give specifics of the grueling all day, all night reporting, but it must’ve been simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. Todd says, “we busted our butts did not get much sleep– in fact, from Monday to Thursday it was a whole 14 hours for me.”

Todd also “tweeted” that CES is the “ultimate weight loss event: 8 pounds in 7 days!”

John Furrier, Founder of PodTech, worked with a team of podcasters and bloggers to do marathon live streaming coverage of CES on Mogulus.tv. PodTech, along with hard drive maker Seagate sponsored new media haven BlogHaus at CES. After he got back from CES, John told me that:

CES was a zoo but it represents the entire ecosystem so it’s worthy it to go through. My observations..bloghaus concept of a new press corp again worked great and video coverage was out in force. Tons of videopodcasters. I’m sure there was a boat load of downloadable media.

To me the big thing is HD is everwhere and will put pressure on all aspects of computing to devices. My opinion from this CES is that there is a ‘lag’ in innovation in areas where the benefits of HD show weaknesses in vendors. AMD Intel Car companies, home networking, connectivity… HD highlights big limitiations in those areas. TV display size continues to amaze me.

On a personal note, I walked away with the conviction that we can now cover events with new media or social media tools better than CNN in about 1yr. All the technologies and tools are coming into place..

Although there was no big smashing news (other than blueray) the show had some very telling signals coming out of the event.

Paul Colligan, early proponent of podcasting for business and author of The Business Podcasting Bible, has his roundup of what he saw at CES.

One of Paul’s take-aways was that podcasting isn’t he buzzword that it once was, and that podcasting was getting absorbed into the new media mix:

I think the big “take home” came after deconstructing the panel presentation.

We realized that telling Podcast-only stories is getting harder and harder to do as more and more people aren‚Äôt making their stories Podcast-only… Very quickly we‚Äôll be telling new media stories that had a Podcasting element -

Loic LeMeur, French serial entrepreneur whose current project, online video community seesmic, is in pre-Alpha development, posted daily video highlights from the show:

• “Day 61” (of Seesmic).
• A funny recap with references to a meeting with French beauty corporation L’Oreal

CES: Digital video recorder purveyor TiVo Inc. has announced that its subscribers will soon be able to select Internet video (i.e. podcasts!) for playback on televisions, expanding the digital recording service’s capabilities beyond TV offerings.

The new feature, announced Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show, will let users apply their “Season Pass” recording capabilities to video content available via RSS feeds. Users would need to use TiVo’s software on PCs for the feature, though TiVo said it will provide a guide within its TV-based menu system to record select Web video sources as well.

Here’s TiVo’s explanation of how it works:

TiVo users can subscribe to and watch a broad range of content available on Real Simple Syndication (“RSS”) feeds, including everything from network nightly newscasts, to vignettes and original content from major networks such as Comedy Central or Discovery, as well as niche interest and hobbyist videos covering areas far more specialized than cable and satellite channels, not to mention new, independently produced media content such as DiggNation and Ask A Ninja.

The Web video recording capability is scheduled to launch in March concurrent with a new version of the TiVo desktop software, which will cost $24.95 for new users (and is a free upgrade for current users).

If TiVo’s base of users adopts the idea of subscribing to video podcasts, television and Internet television start to blur into one. This could be the start of something big for video podcasting.

Update: “Content creators have about a month and a half to figure out the technical details including the right kind of filetype and feed,” says Rocketboom creator Andrew Baron. “The people who do decide to figure it out BEFORE TiVo unleashes this feature, will likely be in a TINY minority. Thus, it could be a great opportunity to try and stick out from the pack.”

Mark Hopkins at Mashable adds “This is clearly a good thing for online purveyors of video, and couldn‚Äôt come at a better time for independent producers, who will be willing and available to fill the gaps of entertaining content brought about by the WGA strike.”

Update 2: More big news for podcasting – Wizzard Media has announced that it served up 1 billion podcasts in 2007.

CES: Taser may get the prize this year for introducing the most stupidtactular product at the Consumer Electronics Show – a leopard-print “fashion Taser,” with an MP3 player holster.

While everybody else was putting iPod docks onto televisions and refrigerators and speakerphones, Taser had the audacity to something truly unique and, well, possibly insane!

The $379.99 TASER C2 and matching $72.99 MP3 player holster let you listen to your tunes anywhere, like other portable media players.

But unlike your iPod, the Taser C2 offers neuromuscular incapacitation!

The C2 has a replaceable cartridge, containing compressed nitrogen, that launches two small probes that are attached to the C2 by insulated conductive wires at attackers or victims up to 15 feet away. The C2 transmits electrical pulses along the wires and into the body, affecting the sensory and motor functions of the peripheral nervous system. The energy can penetrate up to two inches of clothing.

“Don’t tase me, bro,” never sounded so good!

Podcast.com announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas its list of the “Top 10 Podcasts of the Year” for 2007, in conjunction with media aggregation/distribution company Treedia.com, which created the feed management platform used at Podcast.com.

Podcast.com, a podcast directory and feed management site, maintains a list of 43,000 podcast feeds.

To choose this year’s award winners, Podcast.com tallied the total number of times a program in its network had been accessed by users. In 2007, Podcast.com tracked over one million podcast access connections via the Podcast.com portal. The top 10 Podcasts represent those items that were accessed the greatest number of times in 2007.

Podcast.com’s Top 10 Podcasts of the Year Award recipients are:

1. World Soccer Daily Podcast – independent
2. CNN News Update – mainstream
3. ESPN Radio Daily Podcast – mainstream
4. Geek News Central Podcast – independent
5. BBC’s Best of Today – mainstream
6. NOVA – PBS – mainstream
7. Slate Magazine Daily Podcast – mainstream
8. 60 Minutes Podcast – The Full Broadcast – mainstream
9. Face the Nation Podcast – mainstream
10. CNET News.com Daily Tech News Podcast – independent

At the 2008 CES Show, FlyTunes introduced a new digital music service for the Apple iPhone,
iPod Touch and other portable media players and cell phones:

FlyTunes offers a personalized radio-like experience, with thousands of channels of digital music.

Features:

• FlyTunes does not require a receiver or additional hardware purchase – it works with your cell phone or personal media player.
• FlyTunes offers access to over 20,000 Internet radio stations.
• FlyTunes plays everywhere, unlike satellite radio, which does not work inside buildings, or on planes.
• FlyTunes allows users to personalize their music channels. While listening, users can promote favorite songs and flag unwanted ones (never to be played again).
• No setup or monthly fees.

“FlyTunes bridges the massive disconnect that exists between the hundreds of millions of cell phones and portable media players people already own, and thousands of Internet radio stations that broadcast every type of music they could want,” said FlyTunes CEO Sam Abadir. “From the user’s perspective, FlyTunes provides an extremely easy-to-use service that allows them to quickly
get the music they want and to discover new music.”
“Because FlyTunes uniquely sits between the broadcasters and the listener, it offers users personalized music, which has never been possible for satellite or terrestrial broadcasters, and the ability to cache hours of music for offline listening,” continued Abadir.

Hours of personalized music can be cached to a portable media player or cell phone and listened to anywhere. Portable devices with 3G capability can cache additional music, greatly reducing battery drain.

FlyTunes works with Macintosh or PC computers, and will be widely available on January 21, 2008 at the FlyTunes.fm web site. They don’t own the FlyTunes.com site, though, which is never an auspicious sign for a startup.