A few months back, Apple got into a bit of a hissy-fit and began to throw cease and desist orders at folks who used the term “podcast”. Apparently, they felt that it was their term (that they didn’t invent) so they had the right to defend it.

Fast forward to now, and Apple has done a 180′. Evidently, the bad publicity made them change their view, and they no longer will complain if people use the term to legitimately describe podcasting services.

Unfortunately, the letter that revealed this, written to podcaster Dave Gray at The Global Geek Podcast website, is very vague as to whether Apple will seek further litigation. Apple notes that they don’t license the term, and I’ve taken this to mean that they don’t license the term as in licensing of a song to a filmmaker - they do not charge people for use of it, however its vague as to whether this is only for uses that they consider proper (”accurately refer to podcasting services”).

Regardless of the details, the news is fantastic for podcasters. You can now describe your product correctly without fear of a shut-down order from Apple. As to others… well, why would you use the term in the first place?

Disney has sold over a half-million motion pictures (television and feature-length) on iTunes.

The company and its subsidiaries, ABC and Pixar, all sell content on iTunes. No surprise, as Steve Jobs is a crucial part of both corporations.

Not surprisingly the largest selling content is the oldest content. High School Musical, the Disney Channel’s breakthrough made-for-TV movie, is one of the biggest selling Disney items. It has an advantage though - it’s been selling longer than iTunes has been selling traditional movies. In fact, the sale of High School Musical brought substantial rumour-mongering geared at the launch of the iTunes Movie Store.

Another notable point worth mentioning is that Disney plans on sharing the wealth. Not surprisingly, television channels are feeling a bit left out in this rush to the net, and want their share. Disney is nearing a licensing deal (within the next few deals) that will share this new stream of revenue with the (decidedly few) cable operators who show Disney films.

Via AOL Money

Rocketboom (the controversial video podcast that made headlines when a catfight between the founders ousted the host) has a page on its website outlining the tools that they use to produce their podcast.

Their cocktail of tools includes everything from Quicktime Pro to Movable Type. They use Final Cut Pro, iMovie, and Audacity to edit. Rendering and delivery is a bit more difficult for Rocketboom because they have to deliver in so many formats. They have mobile deals, a deal with TiVo, the usual internet site - I imagine it gets crazy it times.

On the web, they render MOV with 3ivx compression (though it’s noted that they offer WMVs thanks to Flip4Mac). They note that they aren’t moving to H.264 because of the slow compression speed and slower adoption rates.

Capturing content on a screen is an important part of Rocketboom (their Mac laptop is probably the second biggest prop, next to the map). To capture the Laptop’s content the Rocketboom team uses Snapz Pro, and boasts of its efficiency and ease in capturing not only simple websites but video onscreen as well.

There are more details about their architecture over at the page. It’s an interesting look into the tools required to make a massive video podcast work!

“DVD Jon”, the hacker behind the hacking of CSS (content scrambling system) has reverse engineered Apple’s FairPlay DRM (the stuff used in iTunes) and is now going commercial. Johansen has plans to sell the technology (presumedly through his company, Doubletwist Ventures) to companies interested in DRMing their media but not interested in going through Apple to do it.

My first thought on this was the same as Peter’s at GizBuzz - how will he get through this legally?! As I think about it more, I can’t honestly think they went into this without knowing there would be a court battle. I’m sure they have an argument at hand.

Read more at GizBuzz

Seriously, if this isn’t a Photoshop… I’m in awe.

Supposedly Apple is developing a Final Cut Pro for the web, much like the new Ajaxy Mail app. This is a timely leak considering yesterday’s Yahoo! acquisition of JumpCut.

The source of the leak, Sparklepuff, commented that

Right now it’s just running on a beefed-up QuickTime Plugin and a whole helluva lotta Ajax, but it’s gonna be just like the real thing, only hella slower.

I’m excited, are you?

Via As the Apple Turns II

According to Dave Winer, the person who is pretty much the authority on this type of thing (he helped develop enclosures for RSS, as well as RSS itself), today is the third birthday of the podcast.

Dave goes into more detail on his blog, but in essence he notes that while three years ago the exact same tech and terms may not have been there, that series fulfills all the “podcast” requirements (such as MP3 audio via feed enclosure).

He continues to go into more on the Apple squabble over the “podcast” trademark that Apple has begun to defend on a larger scale, noting that podcasts don’t just work on Apple hardware, and perhaps it’d be in Apple’s interest to embrace the podcast term and its widespread use rather than trying to put the term’s users down.

A quick editor’s note: I tend to be a video guy but I’ll try to be fair and cover audio as much as possible. We wouldn’t to forget podcasts!

Via Scobleizer