Apple’s media event today brought a lot of big news, the biggest of which was probably the update to AppleTV. The new iPod Nano looks pretty cool, though, and I’m glad to see the return of physical buttons to the iPod Shuffle. If I were on a more reliable connection, I’d dig up one of those stupid VoiceOver ads, just so you could laugh at it with me.

Instead I’m leaving you with this cute little picture, courtesy of Engadget, of the new iPod family. I’ll have more thoughts and impressions on the full lineup of Apple changes tomorrow (yay home internet connection).

Do you remember your reaction when you saw the first iPod Nano commercial? Those two hands fought over something that seemed, at the time, ‘impossibly small.’ By today’s standards, that first Nano would look commonplace – some people might even mistake it for a new iPhone. All signs point to a Nano announcement at this week’s Apple event, and from all the leaked pictures and accessories, we know it’s going to be small.

This picture, which comes from Apple Insider, shows an old Nano up against a render of the new, touchscreen version. There have been some concerns raised about controls – that screen is awfully small to comfortably navigate your music library. Apple could be headed toward an inline control system, similar to that of the iPod Shuffle. Personally, I hate the idea. I want to be able to use my own headphones without worrying about a stupid control dongle.

From the looks of things, I’d say Apple also scrapped the crappy little camera it added to the most recent generation of the Nano. Thank god. That thing was the laughing stock of Flip SD owners everywhere, to say nothing of all the portable HD handcam owners of the world.

Just how much money does it take to elbow your way in between Apple and Google in the mobile market? Remember, you’ve also got to beat back RIM while you’re at it, and hope none of those three develop anything you didn’t expect. Got a number? Is it in the billions? That’s what Microsoft may be betting to make Windows Phone 7 work.

According to TechCrunch, Microsoft could spend into the billions on development and marketing for the new mobile platform. It’s a huge figure, made to look even larger by the estimated expense of marketing the Droid series of Android phones.

The $100 million Goldberg estimates that Verizon, Motorola and Google collectively spent on marketing helped turn the Droid line of phones into a serious stable of competitors against the iPhone. (Compare that to Google’s fizzled Nexus One launch, where the search giant pinched pennies on marketing.)

To spend 10 times that amount could be either a great idea or the world’s worst gamble. Microsoft has completely scorched consumer bridges with its previous mobile offerings, none of which will transition to the new system very smoothly. Even with a billion dollars behind it, Windows Phone 7 could be too late.

It seems like I get asked this question nearly every time a tech challenged person sees that I have an iPhone. “Do you have that app that lets you look stuff up by taking pictures of it?” The first few times it took a while to figure out what the inquirer meant. Now, I answer before the sentence is done – Google Goggles? Sadly, no.

It’s not that I want GG all that badly. From a functionality standpoint, it’s not all that great. It does have great wow factor, though, so I was thrilled to find out that the camera-powered search would be coming to the iPhone this year. The app has been Android-only since release, but Google will be developing a proprietary app for the iPhone, not just some crappy port.

From here, it’s just a matter of getting it to work all the time.

Cleveland’s trash collection services are about to get a major overhaul, including some high-tech methods for monitoring residents’ recycling habits. The program is supposed to roll out next year, and will include RFID-equipped bins for monitoring trash disposal.

The simple idea is this – every time your trash is collected the truck scans your bin’s RFID code. If your recycling bin doesn’t make it to the curb for a couple weeks, an auditor takes a peek at your trash can. If more than 10 percent of your trash is recyclable material, you get a fine. It seems like an odd system, and one that could be easily gamed, but then why go through the hassle if you could just recycle your waste. It is nice to see the city trying to encourage community involvement in green activity.

You probably know Mafia Wars as one of two things – the game you’re hopelessly addicted to or the game that constantly spams your Facebook news feed with annoying updates. In either case, you know Mafia Wars is a big deal, big enough to draw attention from Snoop Dogg, no less.

Just a month ago, Mafia Wars launched it’s newest iteration – Mafia Wars: Las Vegas – and the game has already hit the 10-million-visitor mark. To commemorate the event, Snoop Dogg will be in Las Vegas to blow up a four-ton armored truck. That isn’t blow up like your cell phone, that’s blow up like a bomb. Bullz-Eye’s own Will Harris will be on site for the event.

I wanted to put together a post today about the recently announced Blu-ray set of all six Star Wars films. The set includes never before seen footage, an exciting clip of which was shown at the Star Wars Celebration event. The clip showed Luke in a cave, creating his green lightsaber. Unfortunately, Lucasfilm has been crazy about removing it from YouTube and the like, so in it’s stead, I give you this – one of the funniest Star Wars spoofs I’ve ever seen. Thank you, Robot Chicken.

Sorry, folks. Adult Swim disables embeds.

We have regular porn. We have streaming porn. We have 3D porn, giant porn, mobile porn, and now, NOW we will have 3D IMAX porn. Yes, folks, gigantic people parts smacking all over each other IN 3D! This is just sad.

The film, based on a classic Chinese erotic text, is being shot in Hong Kong. Director Christopher Sun thinks 3D porn will bring the “wow factor” that porn viewers long for. “Somehow when you’re doing a 3-D movie you always want to make an impressive image because the viewers … are going to buy tickets with double or even triple the ticket price to get into a world they’ve never seen before,” he said. He’s right on one count. I don’t live in a world of giant balls.

For all of you thinking this is a great idea, remember that there is someone sitting next to you. On both sides. Someone you don’t know. Oh, he’s also probably touching himself. I can think of very few things I would rather do less in a theater than watch porn. And just in case you thought maybe this one time the porn industry would try to make a respectable film, consider this: “The sex scenes are explicit and sometimes violent, but the main theme of the story is love,” according to the director. NOthing says good love like violent sex.

Source: Reuters

According to the LA Times, Netflix is looking to add more titles to its streaming options by adding exclusive access to Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM film catalogs. The deal, which would manifest as a partnership with EPIX, would cost Netflix something like a billion dollars for five years of exclusivity.

Any time Netflix says it will expand its streaming catalog, I’m a happy man. I do most of my movie viewing via streaming on my desktop, often while I’m doing work throughout the day. More options is always a good thing. Unfortunately, this deal would still suffer, as the current streaming system does, from Hollywood mandated “windowing,” pushing streamable titles beyond the rent date. Hopefully studios will start to get more flexible as streaming becomes more and more popular.

The world has become zombie obsessed, and for good reason. When the shit hits the fan – and it will, haters – you better be prepared to shotgun your way through bloody masses of undead ghouls. That’s where Max Brook’s Zombie Survival Guide comes in, as does this app, courtesy of Random House.

The iPhone app allows you to snap pictures of your friends and then turn them into the zombies they’re sure to become after they’ve been bitten. It’s a great novelty app, especially as far as book tie-ins go. The app also includes support to add the image to Facebook once your friends have been modified.

Despite protestations from its citizens and dire warnings from RIM, Saudi Arabia held fast to its stance that RIM should shut off Blackberry data services in the country today. The handset manufacturer complied around 4AM this morning.

Approximately 700,000 Saudis use (well, formerly used) Blackberry services on a day-to-day basis. The big stink around the situation is that RIM was unwilling to host a data center in Saudi Arabia, instead sending data out to its Canadian servers. Other countries take issue with it as well. Over the coming months, the UAE will definitely be shutting down services and India and Lebanon have talked about doing the same.

If RIM didn’t comply, the company would have been fined $1.3 million.

MacRumors has pictures of what could very well be the screen and bezel from the new iPod Touch. The most notable feature you can see is the little pinhole near the top that looks to be the spot for a FaceTime camera.

None of this is really exciting, considering we already knew that FaceTime would be moving to non-iPhone devices some time this year and that it would start relying on email addresses instead of phone numbers to connect users. From what we know so far, it looks like the fourth-generation Touch could be on track for a september release.

Since the launch of the iPhone, it seems Apple has been the only company we hear about using the cheap little accelerometers and gyroscopes, despite the popularity of those little gizmos in just about every modern cell phone and some other burgeoning technologies. Microsoft, for one, wants in on the game, so the company is making a splash with some very cool photo stabilization tech.

Microsoft developed an image stabilization rig that uses accelerometers and gyroscopes to detect the little movements you make when taking a picture that turn it into a blurry mess. Software then corrects the image to look as it should have before the shake. From the initial before and after posted on the research website, I’d say this looks pretty good, and the tech is small enough that it could easily be built into most cameras.

Take a look at the full range of images on the research site. Don’t stare at it too hard, though – those overlays will make you sick.

We’ve written about the nPower PEG (that’s “Personal Energy Generator”) a lot over the past year or so leading up to its release. Well, the day has finally come that you can order the PEG and make it your very own.

The PEG comes with the standard kinetic charging stick and your adapter of choice. The device runs $149.99, which seems a little steep considering it’s meant for use with multiple devices but only comes with an adapter for one. Still, it’s a nifty little charger, especially if you do a lot of walking throughout the day, and the company is from Cleveland. Who doesn’t want to support The Cleve, am I right?

Check out the full range of options at the nPower PEG official website.

This isn’t quite as bad as it seems, but it does give you a sense of what’s possible with all of the data on Facebook. A hacker named Ron Bowes from Skull Security wrote a crawler to compile data from all the publicly available pages on Facebook. Publicly available – that’s important.

It’s also important, though, that such a crawler could be written to grab that kind of data. Though you could just as easily search for these people and get their info, I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea that a bot could be written to compile the same. Facebook security remains a shifting target – for most people, there’s not a lot on Facebook they don’t want people to see. As Facebook continues to grow and expand its profitable operations, there could potentially be more and more truly personal data involved. In fact, that’s how Zuckerberg would prefer things. That’s why this is important.

I’ve been thinking about kicking Facebook for a while, and every time I get a story like this, even as unalarming and completely benign as this story is, it points to the ongoing lack of attention and concern it seems Facebook gives to user data.

I’m on the road today, headed up to NYC to visit some friends, but I thought this was worth sharing. I got an email this morning confirming that my free Apple bumper case has shipped, despite the estimated 3-5 week ship time Apple initially doled out.

Even though I’m not among those cursed with a failing phone, it’s nice to see some quick turnaround on Apple’s part. Hopefully people can start to see a working phone some time early next week.

I swear a story like this comes out every eight to twelve months just to trick unsuspecting (though I’m starting to suspect a few things) people like myself into spending money on garbage in the hopes that it will be worth millions of dollars someday.

Today’s tale: a man saw a box of glass negatives at a yard sale ten years ago and, though he wanted it, was unwilling to pay the $70. He haggled down to $45. It turns out those negatives were some of Ansel Adams’ early work, and the collection (what was once a box is now known as a collection) is worth around $200 million dollars.

So, how many people will be running out to yard sales this weekend?

Among Apple’s various hardware updates today, the company launched a trackpad for desktops, officially dubbed the Magic Trackpad. I’m not real sure where the magic is.

Now granted, I tend to prefer the trackpad to the mouse for general browsing, but this is something that seems aimed at power users, not the casual internet browser. Desktops come with a mouse, so people are comfortable using the mouse. Will they really want to drop $69 for a couple gestures, most of which are mimicked by the controls on your everyday mouse today?

My guess is no, but I’m not naive enough about Apple products to think this thing won’t sell. It would definitely be much cooler if it worked like a tablet (yes, there is some third-party software that can help a bit), but as a simple trackpad, I’m just not that impressed.

It may surprise you to learn that unlocking and jailbreaking your cell phone has to this point been against the law. It’s especially surprising considering some of the first news when a new iOS build is released is who can jailbreak it the fastest.

The legality, at least, will no longer be in question. Feds ruled to make it a legal practice to remove the barriers between you and the awesome powers of your phone. In reality, this doesn’t do much. It’s not like jailbreaking was being enforced in any serious way in the past. This also won’t change things for the current jailbreakers. They’ll keep going, hacking as they have in the past, and the people using alternative app stores will likely continue to do the same. The only people this really affects are the few entrepreneurs out there who will try to make a legitimate buck by opening yet another app store for interested parties.

If you are such a party, start looking for your new apps soon. Otherwise, as you were, folks. Nothing to see here.

Ever since the Twitter launch, people have been trying to convince me that the service is important – some go so far as to say it’s a vital part of the internet community. While I agree that it is somewhat of a phenomenon, I’ve never come around to see the real point of Twitter. The only thing that’s good about Twitter is that it’s free, and it seems even the Twitter-using population agrees.

The story comes courtesy of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s 2010 Digital Future Study, which found that a mammoth zero percent of Twitter users would pay for the service. Zero. Now, part of that is certainly that it’s tough to transition users from a free service to a paid model. In the same vein, though, users that truly care about a service will pay to keep it alive. Ninja Video, a video site that was recently raided by the feds, had sizable donations from its members, even though it wasn’t required for use of the site. The fact that Twitter is ZERO percent – not 0.8, not 0.6, not 0.005 – says a lot to me.

No, this post is not invitation for your views on Twitter. I realize some people think it’s valuable. Some people Know it’s the greatest thing in the world. If it was that important, though, you’d probably be willing to pay for it.