For the first time, independent producers, directors, writers and actors will have the opportunity to showcase their television and web-based projects other than short or feature length films, in front of entertainment industry professionals at this year's Waterfront Film Festival.

With limited outlets for independent pilots made for television, web series and other forms of new media such as mobile TV, the Waterfront NewMedia Television Fest will premiere as part of the 10th annual Waterfront Film Festival June 12-15. Offering artists a non-competitive platform to share their work, it will also provide festival audiences with the unique experience of viewing pilots that could eventually be aired via network and cable television, or broadcast through new outlets such as web series, podcasts and mobile TV.

Submissions to the NewMedia Television Fest are currently being accepted for all lengths and all genres including drama, comedy, documentary, reality shows, web series, game shows, talk shows and mobile TV. Deadline for submissions is Friday, April 25.

You may have read news accounts today about the world's earliest sound recording: 10 seconds from the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" (mp3 above). Scott recorded someone singing an excerpt from the folk song on April 9, 1860, and deposited the results with the Academie des Sciences in 1861.

The phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was recently made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

It's certainly a bit scratchy, but fascinating nonetheless. Thanks to FirstSounds.org for the find.

Our developer tells us he's turned off tags on the site while we do some tuning under the hood to get things working properly. Specifically:

• Tags are temporarily disabled on the ourmedia media edit and upload forms (we got so many it brought down the server)

• They are available if one uses Spinxpress or if one adds them to the Internet Archive details page.

• This does not affect channels

Apologies - you should still add them and they'll be in place once we get tags working again.

Meantime, look for a major redesign of the site in about a month.