Apple on Wednesday overhauled its iPod line of MP3 music players, adding features borrowed from the iPhone 4 to some and downsizing others almost to the size of a postage stamp.

The new iPod touch gets iPhone 4′s Retina Display, FaceTime video conferencing, front-facing camera, and iOS 4.1 operating system.

Retina Display offers a resolution of 960 x 640 pixels, or five times as many as on the previous iPod touch. And with the combination of the front-facing camera and FaceTime app, iPod touch users can make video calls to other iPod or iPhone users who’ve got the same setup on their devices.

Read Complete Review of new Ipod Here

If you live in Germany, don’t worry about those drunken party pictures on your wall. A job interviewer may not be allowed to see them.

As part of a workplace-privacy proposal, German lawmakers recommended restricting the access employers have to job applicants’ Facebook profiles, the New York Times reports. If the law passes, job recruiters could search publicly-available information and job sites like LinkedIn, but social sites like Facebook would be off-limits.

Germany has always been a stickler for personal privacy, having previously investigated Google and Apple for mining personal information. With this new bill, which has backing from Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s cabinet, employees can Facebook as they please — but employers may miss out on important information from potential workers. But until the bill passes, Germans, fix your privacy settings.

Apple is expected to announce its revamped Apple TV on Sept. 7, two weeks prior to the fall television season, Bloomberg reported today. What’s more, the company reportedly has a few content deals in the works that will allow iTunes users to rent TV shows for 99 cents.

Industry watchers speculate that this may be Apple’s new offensive on content companies that offer online video, such as Hulu and Netflix. The new Apple TV is expected to be called “iTV” and feature an app store that will allow users to download specific shows and channels. Its three-year-old Apple TV predecessor allows users to purchase or rent Hollywood movies and TV shows, and will stream photos and music from computers to the TV and sound system.

The slimmed down model also is rumored to come with a slimmed-down price — $100, as opposed to the $230 currently charged. What’s different? Unlike its predecessor, which features a 160GB hard drive, the slimmed down iTV likely won’t have a hard drive and will require broadband connection. The video output on the new device would be 720p, not the “full” high def of 1080p — a difference most people won’t notice.

“The content deals would give Apple users access to some of the most-watched shows on TV,” Bloomberg reported. According to Bloomberg sources, Apple is currently in content deal talks with News Corp.’s Fox, CBS Corp., NBC Universal and Walt Disney. (Msnbc.com is an NBC Universal-Microsoft joint venture.)

It was only a matter of time.

You can touch your iPod, changing songs with the swipe of a finger. You can touch your iPhone, clicking away on a virtual keyboard or zooming into images and maps. You can touch your iPad, flipping though a book or digital magazine or playing games on the 9-inch screen. So it only makes sense that you should be able to touch your iMac.

A European patent uncovered by the blog Patently Apple indicates that Apple could bring multitouch to the desktop, giving computer users the ability to touch the screen of the display in addition to the computer’s keyboard.

The patent shows a series of sensors that could be added to a standard iMac, including an accelerometer to detect the angle of the screen and in turn change the display’s resolution or orientation.

As the illustrations and accompanying descriptions indicate, swiveling the screen down to a touch-screen experience could also disable the keyboard and mouse and show a different style of operating system designed for touch.

In the touch-screen mode the patent also shows a new type of interface that looks very similar to iOS, the operating system used on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

It was only a matter of time for iOS to appear on the desktop.

Read Complete Update Here

The US government doesn’t give a crap if you jailbreak your iPhone but, Apple is pissed about it (surprise surprise!).  To that end, the company applied for a patent to disable jailbroken devices, the Register  reports.

Ostensibly, Apple just wants to protect you from an unauthorized user breaking into your phone: The patent application describes systems that would automatically detect “hacking programs” that would indicate “an unauthorized user may be using the electronic device” .

Of course, since Apple has no way of knowing who actually “hacked” the phone, it will just assume thieves now have access to all your sensitive information … and can then erase said information from the phone and alert AT&T to shut down service. You know, in order to protect us, of course. “In other words,” writes Lauren Indvik on Mashable, “the system described in the patent allows Apple to effectively kill jailbroken devices under the guise of protecting customers from theft.”

Fuck you Apple, you are taking the joy out of everything.

More on this story here.

His name: Christian Owens. His age: 16. He made his first million dollars in two years, “inspired by Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs”. This is how he did it.

The British teen–who lives in Corby, Northamptonshire–got his first computer age seven. Three years later he got a Mac and taught himself web design. Four years later—at age 14, in 2008—he started his first company. It was a simple site that some of you may now: Mac Bundle Box. The site was pretty, rooted into Apple’s own design guidelines and style.

The page sold a package of very neat Mac OS X applications for a discounted price and for a limited time. He would negotiate with the developers to get a discount deal on their apps. The resulting bundle had a combined retail value of around $400, but he would sell it for a tenth of that price.

Not only that: If enough people bought the package, a new application would get unlocked for all buyers, which guaranteed very good word-of-mouth promotion. And to top it all, Owens dedicated a percentage of all sales to charity.

The idea did well. Very well, in fact: In its first two years, Mac Bundle Box made $1,000,000 (700,000 British Pounds).

Not happy with that success, Owens jumped into a new venture called Branchr, a pay-per-click advertising company that distributes 300 million ads per month on over 17,500 websites, iPhone, and Android applications. The company, which claims to deliver “contextual, behavioral, publisher-defined, and geographically” targeted ads in those platforms, has already made $800,000 in its first year and employs eight adults including his 43-year-old mother, Alison.

He doesn’t know where he would be in 10 years, but the next thing he wants to do is to make one hundred million British pounds with Branchr. He seems to be on his way to success. He claims his business is growing strong—Branchr has already bought another company—and he reinvests all the money back into the company.

His secret to success? There’s no secret, he says:

“There is no magical formula to business, it takes hard work, determination and the drive to do something great.”

In an age of idiotized kids who can’t focus on anything, we salute you, Christian.

Read Complete Story Here

Apple has invited the media to a special iPhone 4 press conference this Friday, sparking rumors that a recall may be imminent.

The company hasn’t said exactly what it plans to discuss at the press conference but the smartphone’s much-discussed “death grip” antenna problem is expected to be the focus, PC World reports.

PR experts say Apple must recall the iPhone 4 to save its reputation, but many analysts say such a move, which would likely cost the firm over $1 billion, is unlikely. Apple is likelier to offer iPhone 4 buyers a free case to cover the reception trouble spot in the lower-left corner of the device, analyst Toni Sacconaghi told investors this week.

More on this story here.

Filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, known for animated cinematic greats like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Howl’s Moving Castle , is no fan of Apple’s “magical” new iPad–or gadgets in general.

According to Kotaku, Miyazaki compared iPad use to masturbation in a recent interview with a Japanese publication, “Neppuu.”

“For me, there is no feeling of admiration or no excitement whatsoever,” Miyazaki reportedly said about the iPad, which he dubbed a “game machine-type thing” that people use by “stroking with strange gestures”. “It’s disgusting. On trains, the number of those people doing that strange masturbation-like gesture is multiplying.”

It’s not only the iPad Miyazaki is giving the cold shoulder: he has said that he doesn’t own a computer, fax machine, or DVD player; rarely watches TV; and doesn’t know how to use a video camera.