The French have always been careful guardians of their long-lived and vibrant culture. But in recent decades, the globalization of communication, commerce, and technology has brought about an influx of unwelcome, widely-used English terms. People look forward to le weekend, and surf le web.

Fed up with the creeping anglicization (is that even an English word?:) of la langue Francais, French linguists at the Academie Francaise – the body responsible for protecting culture through the French language – have come up with equivalents to more than 500 mostly English words for a new language website, being run by the culture ministry’s “General Commission for Terminology”.

Among the offending foreign words being banned from French utterance: WiFi, previously pronounced oui-fee (now acces sans fil a l’internet), e-mail (courriel) and (gasp) podcasting, derived from the very not French iPod (now called diffusion pour baladeur).
The sixty-five page list covers many non-technological terms as well, including words for coach (entraineur) and carry-out/take-out food. A whole page is devoted to the podcasting vocabulary.

It remains to be seen whether these new terms will be widely adopted among the general French population. We are reminded that when a few xenophobic elected officials suggested that Americans reject French foods, cultural icons, and vocabulary earlier this decade, U.S. potato lovers across the country did not rush to call them “freedom fries, ” as was suggested. The shared vocabulary of our increasingly connected world will probably continue to grow — even if some of the terms (supermodel, monetize, long tail) are annoying in any language.

YouTube today announced the winners in its 2007 YouTube Video Awards, which seem to have come and gone again this year with a whimper, not a bang.

Winning videos include Laughing Baby, Potter Puppet Pals and Human Tetris. Here’s the complete list.

Given its place as the number one Internet video destination, you’d think YouTube would put some promotion into their video awards and try to create some drama around them. Instead, they seem to treat the Awards as an afterthought.

Edirol has announced the availability of the R-44, a professional mobile recording workstation.
The Edirol R-44 is a 2 lb. portable recorder that offers up to 24-bit and 192kHz recording and uses SDHC cards to store the audio recorded.

Features:

• 4 channels
• XLR (with phantom power) & balanced/unbalanced TRS combo inputs
• digital RCA and headphones outputs
• 20Hz to 40kHz frequency response
• built-in effects (limiter, low cut filter, 3-band EQ, 6-band GEQ, Enhancer and DeEsser)
• built-in stereo mic and speaker
• pre-record function (captures the sound from few seconds before you press the rec button),
• level control per channel
• transport controls
• OLED display
• USB and control sync mini jack connections.

The device can be powered by DC adapter, external battery and six AA batteries and with the sync connection you can use 2 recorders at the same time – offering 8 channels controlled by one device.

The recorder is selling for $795.  

via Synthtopia: Edirol R-44

SplashCast, a startup that lets you create your own broadcasting channel, has announced that it has successfully secured $4M in Series A funding.

While the company once hyped the idea of injecting social networking into podcasting, now its focus is “a new form of online marketing called social advertisements.” According to the compan, their social advertisements consistently receive click-through-rates 75 times higher than typical banner advertisements used on MySpace, Facebook, and other social network sites.

“It’s clear that Internet sites such as MySpace and Facebook are the new TVs for today’s young consumers and that SplashCast is far and away the best tool out there for reaching this audience,” said Bayliss. 

SplashCasts are like multi-channel TV screens that can be placed on an individual’s social network profile page. Brands and media companies can use SplashCast to distribute videos, games, pictures, and other digital content. You can share SplashCasts so that others can embed them in their MySpace or Facebook pages.

Podcasting pioneer and author Michael W. Geoghegan has a great post today on his site that looks at making money with podcasts.

Geoghegan has written several books on podcasting, has been involved since the early days of podcasting, he helped Disney create their podcast and has run a podcasting network. And while many podcasters have been waiting for the podcast dollars to roll in, Geoghegan has been cutting deals with American Airlines and others.

He thinks it’s time for podcasters that want to make money with their podcasts to start treating their podcast as a business:

People often ask how we consistently sell out our inventory on GrapeRadio.

Easy, we have a kick-ass media kit, a proven track record, a book of business with many repeat advertisers and four entrepreneurs as owners – folks who aren’t scared to ask for the deal. While the amounts aren’t huge, $1,300 per weekly episode, we can command those prices because we have nailed our niche.

A comparative CPM deal would have to be close to net $100 to make sense. No ad network has ever offered us anything close to that. We have also built a great business in white label production, i.e. non-GrapeRadio branded content specific to individual wineries for their sites.

We decided from day one not to do wine reviews so as to avoid any editorial conflicts. Our figures are not awe inspiring but they buy nice equipment, pay for the trips to Napa and leave plenty leftover for shareholder distributions. Given that we all run other businesses full time, it has worked out quite nicely.

The whole article is a must-read, if you’re interested in commercial podcasting.