Apple saved the music business with the iPod. Can they do the same for Hollywood?

In the five years since the iPod’s rollout, Apple has locked down the online music business. 1 in 5 Americans owns or has owned an iPod and consumers have downloaded more than 1 billion songs from Apple’s iTunes music store. Riding on the heels of that success, yesterday, Apple founder Steve Jobs fired his first shots in the battle to revolutionize the movie industry. In a special event called “It’s Showtime,” Apple unloaded new gadgets like it was Christmas morning.
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Apple hosted an event today and announced some new products. Unfortunately, the “true” video iPod was not among them, but there were definitely some cool ones.

The products announced were the 2G iPod Nanos, the 2G Shuffles, the 5.5G iPods, iTunes 7 with movie downloads, and the prototype DVR-type device known as iTV.
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One of the problems with having a bucket load of electronic gadgets is the need for a multitude of chargers and all the cables to boot. A typical techie can often be found carrying around a cellphone, GPS, PDA, camera, MP3 player etc and if they need charging that means a bag full of spaghetti cables and chargers.

A much more elegant solution is the SplashPower SplashPad that can charge multiple gadgets at the same time wirelessly.
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Steve Irwin’s television program The Crocodile Hunter may have made him an international television star, but it also made him very popular on the Internet… Including on YouTube. His death has inspired many of his fans and bloggers to pay tribute to their idol online.

At the time Irwin’s death was first announced on Monday, there were 4,200 videos tagged with the keyword phrase “Crocodile Hunter” on YouTube. These video clips were mostly a mix of TV segments featuring Irwin, amateur and professional imitators, and even a South Park Crocodile Hunter parody. But as of Wednesday night that number tripled to 15,040.

If you sort these search results by date added, the new Crocodile Hunter videos being posted on YouTube consist of news reports announcing his death as well as flurry of user generated tributes. In fact, a Wednesday night search for the exact phrase “Steve Irwin Tribute” produced 529 results on YouTube. And many of these tribute videos have well over 500 user comments each. This age of user generated content is providing fans a way of expressing their grief and sharing it with others instantly online.

Here are just a few YouTube user comments from one of the tribute videos:

Rest in peace, Steve Irwin. Steve did so much good and was a great person. He died doing what he loved. I miss him already. Steve Irwin was the best. Mooneskygge

Im still not over his death, he was just one of those guys that i cant imagine as being gone… RpgBouncer

A very fitting tribute…I’m sure Steve would have appreciated it… He was the greatest, most dedicated conservationist in Australia…maybe even the world… Goodbye Steve, Le chasseur de crocodile. A legend. We will remember. ChioGaru

The outpouring of support and sympathy for Steve Irwin by bloggers and YouTube users is nothing short of stunning. But what if major iconic figures such as Martin Luther King, Kurt Cobain, Pope John Paul or John Lennon had just died today? How would the YouTube generation react and interact? Can you imagine all the digital tributes. Crikey!

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Planning on attending Apple Expo Paris? Looks like it might be a hot ticket this year. According to ThinkSecret, Apple will use a September 12 media event for Apple Expo Paris to introduce the 2G (second-generation) iPod nano, an updated 5G iPod, movies in the iTunes Store and an upgraded wall-mountable iMac.

Although the “media event” will be held in California near Apple’s Cupterino headquarters, it will be fed via satellite to a London location for members of the European press. Apple Expo Paris kicks off September 12, the same day as the media event, and these new products will supposedly be on display at the show.

iPod Nano
What does Apple have in store for the 2G iPod Nano? If ThinkSecrets sources are correct, an increased storage capacity and multiple colors. When Steve Jobs first announced the iPod Nano, he said it would replace the iPod Mini. Now that the Nano comes in multiple colors, the transformation appears complete.

iPod Video
Don’t get your hopes up too high for the new 5G iPod. The upgraded iPod will just have bigger hard drive capacities at the same price points. More storage for less money is always nice but this new iPod will probably not be the long-awaited touch-screen iPod. Most people believe that Apple will strategically release a 6G iPod at the same time as Microsoft’s new Zune player. Reports of Apple filing for a touch sensitive media player patent first surfaced back in February. If the touch-screen iPod lives up to the rumors, the Zune won’t pose much of a threat. The Zune is more of a “catch up” product than a leap forward in advanced consumer technology.

iTunes Movies
Apple is also expected to formally announce their movie store initiative at the September 12 event. Several major studios have reportedly partnered with Apple to sell movies in the iTunes Store. Both iPod and movie announcements were originally suppose to happen in August but were postponed for unknown reasons. Perhaps Wal-Mart’s recent efforts to muscle out Apple from the downloadable movie business caused the delay.

New iMac
Details surrounding the new iMac are still a little fuzzy. The new upgraded iMac will probably receive Intel’s faster Core 2 Duo processor and a 23-inch screen already used in Apple’s line of Cinema Displays. Also rumored, but not confirmed, is the introduction of an iMac mounting kit. You wanted to wall mount your new iMac above your fireplace mantle right?

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Here’s a few patent pictures Apple submitted to the US trademark website.

Is the touch sensitive iPod going to be a reality? You be the judge. After seeing these images, I must say it looks like an iPod to me. And with the increasing popularity of tablet PCs, a touch sensitive iPod would be something that would be very plausible.

However, it is still unclear if we are going to see an Apple tablet, full screen iPod or a combination of both. Nonetheless the multi point touch screen is a major revolution.

Check out the following video to see the possibilities:
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/multitouchreel.mpg

Also here’s a link to Apple’s Patent Application on the US trademark website:
Mode-based graphical user interfaces for touch sensitive input devices

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The suits over at Toshiba have confimed that we’ll be able to get our hands on the new HD DVD players November 15th this year. The players are already available in the US and Japan, so why we should be left behind I don’t know.

Two days after Toshiba release the new HD-DVD, Sony will be launching Blu-ray players, a similar but incompatible technology. This just brings back memories of the VHS and Beta video tape war, at least this time the media looks the same so if you choose the wrong one you won’t have to change your DVD storage solution.

Full info over at the good old BBC.

In case you are a New Yorker fanatic (the newspaper, not the NY city) this item will certainly interest you, it is a digital copy of the entire New Yorker archive which goes from February 1925 to April 2006, more than 75 years worth of news (81 years to be exact). The content comes in a small 3-inch x 5-inch, portable and brushed aluminum hard drive with a storage capacity of 80GB, it’s not full of data (there are 750MB of free space) so the next time The New Yorker creates an update you’ll able to add more stuff on to the drive.
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