Tech Manifesto

Today, Apple rocks the Moscone West building with a completely new iPod lineup.

99 ¢ Apple iTunes iPhone Ringtones

A new version of iTunes supporting custom ringtones for the iPhone ships this evening. They’ll run 99 cents on top of the cost of the song, but in trade, you’ll be able to make your own custom ringtone from the song. They can run up to 30 seconds in length, denoted by bells that appear next to “ringtoneable” songs — which’ll be 500,000 of ‘em at launch. Apple flips the switch to enable the feature “next week.”

iPod Shuffle Line Adds Red

New (PRODUCT) RED iPod shuffle

New iPod Nanos

The leaked images were real.

The 4GB model will be selling for $149, though it’s only available in silver, while the rainbow-colored 8GB will leave you $199 lighter in the wallet. Both models will be in stores by this weekend.

iPod Classic

The iPod comes in 80GB and 160GB capacities, with 30 hours of battery for audio playback, 6 hours of video on the 80GB version, and 40 hours / 7 hours for the 160GB unit. In addition to the new interface, the iPod

Classic is getting a new all-metal shell, and is selling at $249 for the 80 gigger, $349 for 160. You can order one today, and they should be hitting stores by the weekend.

iTunes Wifi Store

It looks like you’ll be able to do plenty more than browse YouTube and Facebook with the new iPod Touch’s built-in WiFi, with Jobs also taking the opportunity to announce the iTunes WiFi Music Store.

And Finally…

iPod Touch!

Well, what do you know. Turns out the iPod Touch is a reality after all.

While we initially assumed that Mr. Jobs wouldn’t be so kind as to bless us all with two new full-fledged iPods in a single day, we’re elated that he had other ideas. The new flagship iPod has “the same size screen as the iPhone, but it’s even thinner” (eight-millimeters, for those taking notes), and it also touts the “same multi-touch interface” found on the firm’s handset.

Additionally, it boasts a 3.5-inch widescreen display, the ability to “flick through your photos,” and you even get the “slide to unlock” feature, too. And yes, this thing actually has WiFi. Of note, the built-in wireless antenna isn’t exactly attractive, but if it means that we can surf the web (YouTube included) and buy tunes on our iPod, we suppose it may be an acceptable flaw.

As for battery life, the Touch is said to last 22-hours when playing back audio and 5-hours when watching video, but only time will tell how draining web surfing will be.

The iPod Touch will be arriving in 8GB and 16GB flavors and will be priced at $299 and $399, respectively, when they ship “worldwide in a few weeks.”

Thanks to Engadget and Gizmodo for information and event photos.

Om Malik reported today that Kevin ‘Digg’ Rose goes for 3rd startup:

We have learned from sources familiar with the company, that the trio are currently working on a new kind of a communications tool, that can be dubbed as an IM competitor.

Back in October 2005, Kevin Rose wrote in his personal blog an idea that he had for an instant messaging client:

14 yrs of instant messaging - why nothing new?

It dawned on me a couple hrs ago that I’ve been using instant messaging for close to 14 yrs now - and aside from video conferencing and file transfer, not much has changed. Here are some ideas I have for next-gen IM clients:

Social pools: Want to meet someone new? Set your IM account to ’swim’ and you will be placed into a ‘pool group’ of other users within x_degrees of separation. Join a chat room, or chat one-on-one.

Group/Individual Offline: The ability to right click on a group or individual and choose ‘appear offline’ – great for “sick days” from the office.

Tagging: Highlight any text within a conversation and tag it for later retrieval.
/tag keyword1, keyword2 from the IM window.

Randomness at 1:00AM - some of this stuff may exist, I haven’t looked into it. If it does, send me the links Time to crash.

Kevin

It is too early to tell if he still plans to implement these ideas for the instant messaging client, reports say that we will find out sometime later this month. Keep posted for more details.

Leo Laporte announced today, January 21 on net@nite that there is new status updates to UndoTV. This week will hold the first executive meeting.

[LISTEN TO CLIP]

Additional photos live from November 14 event, thanks to Carol Fil, camkerr and mpwebwizard.

Leo introducing the new UndoTV technology features.

Talking about why users need pikspot.

How online content is published today, and the different categories the majority falls into.

The media player is on the right side, time markers and comments on the left.

The site also has a tagging system and the ability to subscribe to users; which is also a YouTube feature.

This page layout look’s a lot like YouTube’s and seems to be completely Ajax driven - including the commenting system.

Layout with “digg” style popularity votes next to each media item called “Kudos”.

Widescreen iPod + Mobile Phone + Internet Communicator = iPhone

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