Marware has announced the upcoming release of their 2nd Generation Apple Nano clear case calls Slyder. Features that appeal to me as a Nano owner: clear case, click wheel access, snyc in case, hard shell, and access to the hold button (which I use all the time while I'm on a run).
Price is suppose to be around $25 and they should be shipping in late November 2006.
Portable media devices definitely have a mainstream purpose of enabling consumption of new media, but within business and government organizations they can be a real threat to information security, especially the infiltration of vulnerabilities and exfiltration of propriety or confidential data.
Here are two links of potential interest on this topic: contractoruk.com, and infosecnews.org.
The growing trend from an information technology (IT) management perspective is that more and more enterprise systems will be locked down to dis-allow personal portable devices from being hooked up, and to some degree maybe all personal portable devices will be physically banded completely from work environments.
The dedicated and very talented team of open source Audacity developers have announced the release of Audacity 1.3.2 (beta) and Audacity 1.2.5 (official release with new minor bug fixes).
Both versions can be downloaded and installed at the same time on a host of operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. But if you are using these on Windows, they also come bundled with 92 LADSPA plug-ins that work with both Audacity 1.2.x and 1.3.x.
The team at Sound Ideas is offering a special Podcast Expo 2006 price for their The Podcasting Production Toolkit that regularly sells for $129 but is only $75 until October 31, 2006:
The Podcasting Toolkit contains 41 music tracks, 189 production elements, and 770 sound effects. Each file produced in 128-kbps MP3 format, ready for immediate use, and named to help you select just the right sound for your podcast.
Back in Sep06 I did on my personal blog a review of currently advertised MP3 players in the Sunday paper advertisements (San Diego Union Tribune). Here is this week's update (10/22/06):
I just picked up the weekend before last an 8GB 2nd Generation Apple Nano at Costco for $239.99. More on this later ...
The new consumer market focused Canon HV10 offers a host of great features in a small form-factor that could be idea for video podcasters, especially in situations where a larger camera unit is not ideal or not cost effective.
Some of the key new features (Canon article):
ZDNET does have a review that looks at good and bad capabilities.
Amazon is selling the HV10 for around $1111.
While there are still no real world picutres for the Trinity Portable Digital Recording Studio, they have recently updated their news section to list off all the Linux-based software they are supporting.
There is also a list of USB devices being supported.
The retail price of the unit is listed on the site as $999 (if shipping to a U.S. address).
TG Daily covers Paul Figgiani's presentation at the Podcast & Portable Media Expo 2006 on audio production. Paul notes that you can get pretty good quality by just investing $100, and that audio production quality matters to listeners. If you don't have a 'good sound' you can lose listeners after the first experience.
