Apple co-founder, CEO and man-who-can-do-no-wrong-for-the-moment Steve Jobs (left) introduced new versions of every product in the company’s iPod music and video line, including a new iPhone-like touchscreen music and video player that has a full Internet browser and the capacity to download music.

At 8 millimeters thick, the touchscreen iPod is thinner than the iPhone but has a similar set of controls that allow consumers to use the heat of their fingers to flip through songs or albums to choose what to play. It comes with built-in Wi-Fi wireless capability that could be used to download music.

The iPod touchscreen also adds a Safari Web browser connection that allows users to connect to the Internet. Google and Yahoo search services, plus YouTube videos, are built in to the Web browser. Versions of the new iPod Touch run $299 and $399 for 8-gigabyte and 16-gigabytes respectively.

“We think it’s one of the seven wonders of the world,” Jobs enthused at a news conference on Wednesday in San Francisco. “If you have used an iPhone you will feel very much at home.”

The Apple leader also said his company will help users make do-it-yourself ringtones of songs. Consumers can choose any 30-second segment of a song and save it as a personal ringtone for 99 cents a piece, Jobs said. Apple will turn on the feature next week, he said.

Jobs introduced new Zippo lighter-sized versions of the existingiPod Nano with a 2.0 inch video screen. Jobs called it a true pocket-sized Nano.

The 4-gigabyte and 8-gigabyte iPod Nanos with two-inch video screens will cost $149 and $249, respectively. The new Nanos offer 24 hours of audio play and five hours of video time, he said. These are truly pocket-sized deivces.

He also introduced heftier versions of the company’s hard-disk-based iPods, which will now be known as the company’s “Classic” iPod line. The two versions have 80-gigabyte and 160-gigabyte storage capacities and cost $249 and $349, respectively.

During his appearance, Jobs made light of NBC Universal’s decision to stop selling TV shows through Apple iTunes and switch to Amazon.com’s rival media delivery service.

With John Lennon’s anthem “Give Peace a Chance” blaring in the background, Jobs quipped: “That’s for when NBC calls.”

Gather a bunch of Web 2.0 geeks in a room and it’s not long before you hear the phrase “widget economy“ sneak into conversation. But what does economy mean when most developers of these compact little bundles of software joy have a hard time sustaining their interest by, like, uh, getting paid for the work?

Leave it to Google to figure out the funding arrangements.

On Wednesday, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products, told the Searchnomics conference in Silicon Valley that her company has created a pilot program to offer modest financing to developers building widgets, or in Google parlance, Gadgets.

Google Gadget Ventures plans to grant $5,000 to creators of miniature gadget applications that Google wants to see developed further. This being a pay-for-performance culture, the developer assumes the up-front risk. All you have to do is build the initial application, place it in the Google gadgets directory and attract at least 250,000 weekly page views. You’ll also have to submit a one-page proposal to detail how you’d use your new-found cash to improve the gadget.

If you are feeling truly entrepreneurial, Google is offering seed investments of $100,000 to existing Google grant recipients to build an actual business around gadgets. For this, you need to submit a business plan that passes some sort of viability test.

Shy of the millions of dollars that traditional venture capitalists are looking to sell you, or the tens of thousands your neighborhood angel investor is ready to write you out of his checkbook, a new financing rung has been established. Think of it as starter funding.

Rather than entrepreneurs, Google is looking to pay graduate-level fellowships.

Of course, you can’t have an economy until you have a way to measure it. Two weeks ago, comScore introduced its Widget Metrix, designed to track the proliferation of widgets across the Web. The early leader here is photo slideshow creator Slide.com, which, in April, attracted a worldwide audience of 117 million unique viewers, or 13 percent of the Web audience, comScore said.

Against our better (news) judgment, we were wondering what Google was up to on its Valentine’s Day home page. The Web search company gussied up its icon with a chocolate-covered strawberry instead of a ”G” in its name — but apparently mislaid the “L.”

We asked Reuters reporters what they thought was going on. We also asked Google’s press department to free associate on the mystery of the missing “L.” We’d also welcome random speculations from you, dear reader.

Frequent MediaFile contributor Robert MacMillan fired back: “What do you get for the Internet search service that has everything? How about you buy it a consonant?

Taking the literal approach, I checked to see who owned http://www.googe.com. Somebody (Google?) has parked the address at GoDaddy.com. What purpose one could put such a URL to is best left to others to disclose.

Some literate joker wondered if it was a reference to Barnabe Googe, an Elizabethan-era poet known for his love poems. Actually the journalist isn’t very literate at all. He just reads the wikipedia.

The smarter sort of journalists answered: “Is the L on the strawberry stem?” Google spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger confirmed that these people are headed down the right track: “The Valentine’s Logo actually has the L - in the strawberry’s green stem. True romantics will see it immediately!”

Why should we stick to the facts here? We prefer this flight of fancy from reporter and editor Michele Gershberg: ”The heart-shaped strawberry represents Love, which begins with an L, while the chocolate sauce forms a G. The O is also smeared in chocolate, from which we learn that love can be messy. “

Apple Chief Showman Steve Jobs unveiled the new Apple iPhone Tuesday, telling the crowd at the Macworld conference in San Francisco that: “We are introducing three revolutionary products.” Actually, it was one product, with three big features, he said:

• Widescreen iPod with touch controls
• A “revolutionary” mobile phone
• A “breakthrough” Internet communications device

“We are going to reinvent the phone,” Jobs declared. The new phone will be priced at $499 for 4 gigabytes and $599 for 8 GB. Shipping is expected to begin in June in the U.S., partnering with Cingular; Europe in the fourth quarter and in Asia in 2008.

Jobs said the secret of the phone is its software — its user interface, which requires no physical keyboard, compared with smartphones like Blackberries and Palm Treos. Instead, Apple has developed a patented touchscreen device that allows users to use their 10 fingers to control the device. (Find early analyst reaction here)

He called it “a revolutionary interface” changing the way consumers think about electronics in the tradition of Apple Macintosh desktop software, and the iPod clickwheel.

Repeatedly Jobs mocked makers of existing smartphones during his presentation, showing feature-by-feature comparisons of e-mail and Web-browsing on the iPhone and its rivals. Apple has partnered with Yahoo and Cingular to offer a Blackberry-like “push” e-mail service, which automatically delivers one’s e-mail to the phone, rather than requiring auser to take the extra step of downloading new e-mail. Network administrators will be able to hook iPhones up to corporate Exchange mail services, Gartner analyst Van Baker said.

The phone contains a two-megapixel camera and uses a GSM-based SIM card. It runs Apple’s OS X computer operating system, so thousands of applications can run on the widescreen device. IPhone is a quad-band GSM+EDGE phone plus it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Users can download address and phone contacts from any PC or Mac. It allows users to navigate through voicemail visually, picking out which voicemails to listen to in what order, rather than needing to listen to a voicemail menu to wade through multiple messages.

Jobs showcased mini Web applications known as Widgets that can run on the new iPhone, which features a full Web browser, the ability to zoom in on parts of Web pages and runs on Apple’s existing computer software, known as OS X.

On the third public call ever on an iPhone, Jobs placed a crank call to Starbucks and ordered 4,000 lattes… then quickly cancelled them. His first two calls were to Apple executives.

“That is the iPod. We’ve just started,” Jobs said.

Full coverage here

(Photos: REUTERS/Eric Auchard)

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs kicked off his highly anticipated Macworld keynote speech by telling the crowd “We are going to make some history together today.”

He went on to introduce Widescreen iPod with touch controls and what he termed “a revolutionary mobile phone

“We are calling it iPhone,” he said. Thousands piled into a San Francisco convention center hall to hear Jobs

“2007 is going to be a great year for the Mac but this is all I am going to talk about the Mac today,” he said.

He said Apple had sold more than 2 billion songs on iTunes. That’s a billion more than they had sold 10 months ago, he said.

He also said Apple has signed up Paramount to distribute movies, joining Disney. Now 250 movies offered on iTunes. It has had 50 million television downloads so far, he said.

The picture shows Jobs introducing the tiny iPod Shuffle music device in September. 

 (Photo: REUTERS/Dino Vournas)

It’s not often you attend a big event characterized in the first sentence of the accompanying press release by the phrases “universal desire,” “community,” “passions” and “friends and family,” perhaps not since the “liberty, equality, fraternity” of the French Revolution.

But that’s how Microsoft Corp. opens up its announcement Sunday ahead of Bill Gates keynote speech at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — where the software giant will showcase dozens of products and services aimed at consumer markets this year.

“As the magic of software makes it easier for people to be creators, publishers and consumers of digital content, it is expanding the way we think about community and entertainment,” Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in the statement.

Gates’ speech featured Microsoft’s plans to offer an Xbox 360 game console that doubles as a set-top box for its fledgling Internet Protocol television (IPTV) service, which delivers high-quality video over Internet networks.

The Microsoft co-founder highlighted Vista’s ability to handle various forms of digital media on an eye-catching, round living room computer, shaped like a sleek hat box, from Japan’s Sony Corp. and a touch-screen desktop PC from Hewlett-Packard. New PCs running Windows Vista will be released to the public on Jan. 30.

Gates also took the wraps off Windows Home Server, consumer software due out later this year to provide homes a central location to store music, photos, videos and other digital content. Users will also be able to access that content away from home, using a Microsoft Windows Live Web address.

IPTV carriers, such as AT&T , will be able to offer the new set-top box in the 2007 holiday season, Gates will say. The IPTV Xbox 360 set-top box would allow users to not only play games, but also grab videos from any PC in the home and display it on the living room television, download high-definition video, and have a normal TV viewing on par — if not better — than cable or satellite.

As a part of his keynote address, Gates provided a first look at a number of Windows Vista features like DreamScene, which transforms the static PC desktop background wallpaper into full-motion, personalized videos.

Earlier, Gates announced a partnership between Microsoft and Ford to deliver Sync, a voice-activated means to connect personal electronic devices including phones and music players to vehicles. Sync, developed by Ford and based on the Microsoft Auto platform, will offer hands-free phone dialing, address-book synchronization, and other features such as the ability to read text messages through the car’s audio system. Drivers can also control music players using voice commands or controls on the steering wheel.

Read the full Reuters story from Daisuke Wakabayashi

Just what do we mean by freedom? That lofty question invariably leads geeks to invoke one of the oldest jokes going among free software advocates.   

“Free software” means “Free as in speech,” not “free as in beer” is the classic answer handed down by software programming theologian Richard Stallman. 

Inside the rarefied world of geeks, free is about being able to reuse the underlying code of open source software, making improvements and sharing the resulting changes.

Now Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says you can have it both ways. Free software, free content, and, to boot, you can keep the advertising revenue your site generates. For now, he says he’s content to let customers link back to the Wikia home page.

It’s all faintly reminiscent of the late 1990’s dot-com drive to capture eyeballs, and figure out a business model later. This is where lazy people get smug and say history is bound to repeat itself.

All we know is that the debate is just beginning: 

1. Read the Reuters story here. 
2. Wikia CEO Gil Penchina announced the free hosting and revenue offer earlier today.  
3. Here’s one post from the audience at Le Web 3 in Paris on Wikia’s move.
4. Read Wikipedia’s effort to disambiguate (love that word) the issue
5. See Wiki pioneer Ward Cunningham’s bid to untangle the concept
6. Head not spinning yet? See Free Beer as in Freedom 
7. Return to step 1.

(Photos: Reuters photo, Wales: Gus Freedman)

Yahoo Chairman and CEO Terry Semel says in a blog post on Yahoo’s official blog that the reorganization of the company announced Tuesday marks preparation for a third-stage of growth for Yahoo.

Chapter 0: 1994
GET AN IDEA
Two Stanford graduate students create the first online navigational guide to the Web, a human-powered directory. The Web site started out as “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” It soon changes its name to Yahoo!, an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”

Chapter I: 1995-2000
GET BIG FAST
Tim Koogle is hired as CEO. Yahoo expands the idea of a simple directory, adding categories like Cool Sites, directory search, news, stocks, sports and local information. Growth spirals. Yahoo IPOs. It later adds e-mail, shopping, personals, chat, games and travel and instant-messaging.

CHAPTER II: 2001-2006
GET AUDIENCE TO SPEND MORE ON YAHOO

Terry Semel joins as chairman and CEO. Strategy changes include the embrace of contextual search and search advertising, amid a shift to broadband. Steady revenue growth follows. Terry Semel joins as chairman and CEO. Strategy changes include the embrace of contextual search and search advertising, amid a shift to broadband. Steady revenue growth follows.

CHAPTER III: 2007
GET BIGGER THAN YAHOO ITSELF
Semel says reorganization of Yahoo into two business segments and a centralized technology group is designed to serve customers not only within Yahoo’s own network of properties but also via partnerships on other online properties.
He pointed to high-profile advertising and Web services partnership deals Yahoo has struck in recent months with online auctioneer eBay Inc., 170 U.S. daily newspapers and mobile phone powerhouse Vodafone in Britain. “Those deals weren’t done in a vacuum,” Semel said in an interview, noting that the restructuring plan has been in development for “many months.”

The Pot of Gold: 2012, as Semel sees it:
“Thirty billion in advertising dollars will come online globally over the next five years,” Semel writes. That’s on top of the $12.5 billion+ that the IAB says was spent on online ads last year. “No one is better positioned than we are to take advantage of that. I believe we now have the right strategy, the right structure and the right people to provide the best experiences and results possible to our users, advertisers and publishers.”

Read Reuters’ full story

Photos: (Yahoo.com, Search Engine Journal’s Yahoo Visual Timeline)

Walt Disney studios chief Dick Cook, who was speaking at the Reuters Media Summit, had one question for Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who also spoke with Reuters today.

Cook questioned why baseball games take so long. Why can’t the league introduce a basketball-style shot-clock for pitchers?

Selig acknowledged that games take too long to finish and it’s an issue the league is studying. The average Major League Baseball game took 2 hours and 48 minutes last year, he says. As a kid, Selig recalls watching pitcher Bob Buell of the former Milwaukee Braves pitch games that lasted just 1 hour and 45 minutes, start to finish.

But Selig rules out putting pitchers on a shot-clock. “It’s a game without a clock,” Selig emphasizes. “There is something timeless about it.”

“You don’t want to introduce the clock to this game … I believe we all talk to umpires over and over: ‘Tell the guy (the pitcher) to throw the damn ball.’” 

Click player below to hear Selig discuss the issue.

We started by asking him whether the game needed to be speeded up…

(Updates with additional answers)

Reuters correspondent Ben Klayman is interviewing the commissioners of the U.S. National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association at the Reuters Media Summit in New York this week.

Question: Theron Schultz says:
How does each league plan to attract fans to stadiums in the face of new technology allowing fans more control over how they view games? Specifically, as my control over my “personal” broadcast via Internet increases, what incentive is there to pay to go to the game when anything I want is literally at my fingertips?

Answer: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, speaking at the Reuters Media Summit:
“It is a good question and it is actually something that is really important to us, which is to keep the stadium experience. We don’t want it to become a studio game.

“We think — it actually was evident Monday night — when you tuned in the television set and you were watching the (snow fall during the) Seattle-Green Bay game.

“Most people probably had an immediate reaction that this game was in (often wintry) Green Bay. But it was in (often rainy) Seattle. It just adds to the atmosphere when you see the elements (cold weather). But also when you see the enthusiasm that comes through the television set with a full, enthusiastic crowd.

“We want to make sure we attract people to our stadiums and entertain them in the facilities. It does become more challenging when there are more media opportunities and there is more access.

“It is the first reason we have such an emphasis on building new facilities…Our facilities have to be outstanding. Depending on where you want to start counting … somewhere around three-quarters of our league has new facilities (stadiums). We think that’s terrific for our sport

“Second - There’s no reason why you can’t use new technology at the stadiums, which we have done quite successfully. (For example, there is) Kangaroo Television - where fans can come into stadium and rent a device - essentially a large PDA (personal digital assistant) - and they can get more access, more data, and they can get more angles on television.

“(Fans) can see what’s happening in other games. So it’s our challenge to make sure that those fans are entertained… and they have opportunities to come in and follow the NFL as you might at home with other devices.”

Question: Michael Wagner says: 
Are you planning on implementing fair practices to keep small-market teams viable in today’s world? Being a huge Buffalo Bills fan, there is constant worry on the fan’s part that the city will lose the team due to the emergence in clout of large-market teams that can pay their players and stuff huge amounts of money, or have expensive stadiums built. 
 
Answer: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell:
“Revenue sharing is the fundamental premise and foundation for the league’s success in large markets and in small markets. By sharing our revenue at such a high level we have been able to make sure that our teams have the capability of being able to be successful on the field, to afford to put the best players on the field, to put the best coaching staffs on the field, to have the best facilities and that ultimately is what allows our teams to compete.”
 
Question: Jack G says: 
Do you believe the NFL Network is setting its negotiations properly without coming across as greedy?
    
Answer: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell:
“It’s disappointing to us also. We want to be on the broadest possible television platforms. We’re continuing to work with the cable operators that haven’t agreed with us on distribution terms, but we think ultimately the consumers will demand this product and the cable operators will have to find a way to get that to them.”
    
Question: Patrick says: 
Malcolm Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has bought up a good-sized stake in U.K. soccer (football) franchise, Manchester United. What do you make of that investment? Does it signal a “market top” as far as NFL franchises go?
 
Answer: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell:
“Ultimately, franchise values are based on the success of the league overall, and supply and demand. Because we only have 32 franchises, I think there will always be people who are interested in owning these assets. They are terrific entertainment opportunities. They are unique in their markets. They play a role in their markets that unifies a community in that it’s more than just a financial investment or economic investment. It’s an opportunity to own one of the most cherished assets in the world. We have not seen any, I’ll call it restrictions or limited interest in our franchises. As they become available, there’s a great deal of interest in acquiring them. We know people who are interested in acquiring them if the opportunity arises.” 
 
Read full stories from the Reuters Media Summit